Charleston Rowena Mudd

When we were five years old, I tried to kill Murmur. I mean it. I really did. Everybody thought she was such hot stuff—having visions, seeing God, healing the sick. The responsibilities of a child saint are huge. She simply didn’t have time for me, so she stopped being my friend.

Truth is, no one had time for me. Not even my own mother. She was always saying Murmur Lee this and Murmur Lee that and running up to the cathedral every time Murmur put on a show. She never missed a Murmur event, even though she exhaustively explained to my father that the whole thing was a farce and a crime against God. But whether they were believers or not, Mother wasn’t alone. Everyone—even people who weren’t prone to insanity—went Murmur-mad for a few weeks in the spring of 1971. I suppose I was among them.

But I had good cause. We were the only two children on the island. We had pricked our fingers with a hot needle and mixed our blood. We told each other everything. One time, just to make our bond even tighter, we showed each other our private parts. Every afternoon, Murmur and I played together, building sand castles or dressing up our Barbies in clothes we made ourselves, or cooking up mud pies and having fake teas.

Well, all of that came to a screeching halt once the adults decided Murmur was in touch with Jesus. My mother always baked cookies on Thursday mornings, and Murmur and I would reap the benefits of her labor as soon as they were out of the oven. She stopped baking as soon as Murmur got in touch with Jesus. Every Saturday morning of my life, my parents took me to town and we ate breakfast at Woolworth’s and then they took me to the park, where I rode the carousel and ate pink cotton candy. Sometimes I threw up. Well, all of that ended as soon as Murmur got in touch with Jesus. Murmur and I had a secret hideout. We discovered an old Indian oyster midden hidden in the oaks on the western end of the island. We’d go out there and say curse words and stuff like that. Well, all of that ended as soon as Murmur got in touch with Jesus. On Friday nights, Murmur would come to my house or I’d go to hers and our parents would order us pizza and we’d have a sleepover. Well, all of that ended as soon as Murmur got in touch with Jesus. The final straw was when my parents announced that my birthday party was to be postponed yet again—I’d had the mumps on my real birthday, so we’d chosen May 17 as the new date. Mother had taken on extra responsibilities at the parish—there were strangers to be hosted and greeted and fed, so no party for me, and no new date was announced—and all because Murmur had gotten in touch with Jesus.

It was a weekday. Iris Haven was overrun with miracle-seeking pilgrims. I waited until I was sure Murmur’s morning performance was over and the pilgrims had started to clear out. I remember so clearly what I was wearing—a mint green shorts set that Mother had bought for me at a department store in Jacksonville. The bottoms had an elastic band around the waist, which I didn’t like, and the cotton made a soft scratchy sound when I walked, which I did like. Scratch scratch.

Mother had returned home from Murmur’s place and was on the phone, gossiping about what had happened that morning. I guess a woman with a bad back from Hastings had been in attendance, and when she left, she claimed to be suddenly without pain. As I sneaked out the back door, I patted my pocket to make sure my secret weapon was still there.

I marched myself over to Murmur’s, full of confidence and resolve. She lived at the end of the lane, in a big windy house her great-great-grandfather had built. It was haunted. Everyone said so. But ghosts didn’t scare me. In fact, I liked them. I went to the kitchen side of the house and knocked pretty as you please. Mrs. Harp opened the door and didn’t even give me a chance to speak. That’s how little I mattered. She said, “Murmur Lee cannot play with you, Charlee. She’s resting.”

“But Mrs. Harp, I just have to see her. I won’t be long. Pleeeeeaaase?” I was cunning and mean and guiltless: I was on a mission.

She looked at me the way adults do when they don’t want to give in to a child’s demands but a voice in their head is saying, Oh, go on, what harm can it do?

“All right, Charlee. But make it fast.” She stepped aside and I shot in.

Murmur was on her bed, perched in repose like a perfect little angel. She didn’t fool me. She was a hellion. We both were. Saint, shmaint. I walked over and shook her shoulder.

“Leave me alone. You’re not supposed to be touching me.” She opened her eyes and stared at me with blank disdain.

“I’ll touch you whenever I want.”

“Nah-huh.”

“Uh-huh.”

I grabbed her hair and pulled as hard as I could.

“Ouch!” She dug her nails into my arm. “You’re not supposed to be here. Go away. Leave me alone! I have to rest.”

I pinched her skinny leg. I thought about tearing the scab off her knee.

“Stop it! I’m gonna call my mommy!”

“‘Stop it,’ ” I mimicked. I tried to grab her nonexistent titty—this is an innate move all girls are born knowing. “She’s not here. Hahahahaha!” I loved the lie. I jumped on the bed and pinned her down. “I hate you! You’re not my friend! You’ve never been my friend!”

Murmur’s lips pinched up and I knew what she was getting ready to do. She could spit like a boy. “Don’t you dare!” I slammed my hand over her mouth. She bit me. I grabbed for the weapon in my pocket. Since I no longer had her pinned, I lost all leverage. She tried to throw me off. I hung on. We slapped wildly and grunted and struggled—all of this done in a desperate hushed fury because, if the truth be told, we really didn’t want to get caught. Neither of us did. This death match had been long in the making. She bit my left arm. With my right hand, I scratched her throat. We went tumbling off the bed. Boom! I hit my head really hard on the nightstand.

Still we fought on, crying and scratching and slapping. I managed to get back on top of her. She reached up and tried to choke me. I said, “Eat this and die!” I pulled a plastic Baggie filled with an entire package of Ex-Lax pills out of my pocket and jammed them down her throat. She made some kind of awful noise, which scared me.

“What in heaven’s name!” Mrs. Harp was a small woman, but she pulled me off of her daughter with one arm. I never heard her coming.

Murmur spit out the Ex-Lax, wailing all the while. Her cheek bled from a cat scratch I’d gotten in as we fell onto the floor. “She—she—she tried to kill me!”

“Hush, Murmur Lee!” Mrs. Harp’s steel grip was not an enjoyable experience. I tried to squirm away, but she only squeezed harder. “Charleston, have you lost your mind? What are these pills?”

“Ex-Lax,” I mumbled.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Her grip tightened with each name. “Murmur Lee, did you swallow any of those?”

“I don’t know,” she whimpered.

Mrs. Harp’s pale freckled face was flaming red. “I want you to go home this very second and tell your parents what you did. You tell them they’d better punish you. You need a good spanking. I’d do it myself if I thought you were worth my time. And tonight after services, I am personally going to speak to them. You are in trouble, Charleston Mudd.” Then she shoved me and said through gritted teeth, “Now you get on home.”

I looked at Murmur as I made my way out the door. Her shirt was torn. Ex-Lax tablets clung to her chin like big fat zits. Her tears diluted the blood that slowly trailed down her cheek. I shot her the meanest smirk I had. Saint, shmaint.

Mother and father put me on restriction for a week. So what? No one was playing with me anyway.

Later that night, I heard them in their bedroom. They were laughing about what I’d done. Father said, “Mm mm mm, well at least there is one person around here who is unimpressed by little Miss Murmur Lee.”

I put my pillow over my face and sobbed. I mean huge, unladylike, convulsive sobs. My father was wrong. I was wildly impressed. Murmur was so special that the Pope himself was probably going to call her to Rome. All the evidence pointed to it. She’d never given me one hint about any of this God business. Maybe she hated my guts. When did she start hating me? I wondered. I didn’t want her to hate me. And I sure didn’t want God to make her a saint. It wasn’t fair. He needed to find some other little girl to make a saint, because without Murmur, I didn’t have a friend in the whole wide world.