Chapter 26

After Mr. Hudson dropped Lily off and drove away, Lily found Anna inside in a chair. Her mother’s white face and loosened hair terrified her. She screamed out to Mr. Hudson, but he was gone. She shook Anna’s shoulders, trying to waken her, but Anna’s head only lolled in a circle as her eyes rolled toward the ceiling.

Lily wept. Her mama was dead. And dead while she was gone to play at Julie Hudson’s house. Lily cried until she hiccupped. She filled a glass with water from the bucket and sat down next to her mother. She set the glass on the crack between the two wide planks that made the table. The glass tipped and water spilled over Anna’s arms and into her lap. Anna roused.

Lily squealed, “Oh, Mama, I thought you were dead!”

“Help me up. To the bed.”

Lily could barely hear her mama, her voice was so weak. While Anna rose, bracing herself on the table, Lily pulled the chair out of the way. Dried blood coated the chair seat. The back of Anna’s dress was red with new blood.

Lily gasped.

“Go for Granny Slocomb,” Anna said.

Lily ran. She ached for the wings of a great black bird to carry her up the grade to Flatland for help.

 

Few days passed without a trip to Flatland for medicine for Anna. As winter approached, the daylight lessened but the symptoms strengthened. Lily no longer went to Covington for school. Each day Lily climbed the path. Rattler never appeared, and Lily saw no improvement in her mother. The days found Lily with tears on her face from the worry. She wondered if the medicines were worth the trip, but Kee Granny’s church compensated for Lily’s anxiety.

Kee Granny’s church held strange things: canned tomatoes crowded on a wooden shelf, a shotgun taller than Lily herself, so many empty bottles Lily could not count, herbs and blooms hanging like harvested tobacco from pegs Kee had nailed out from the walls.

Mountain physician, Granny Slocomb came each time with her black leather valise bulging with snuff cans of plants she had ground and refused to identify. Her woven pine basket had long ago deteriorated. Her worn bag still tied her to Jackson Slocomb, not Beloved Mother, but it was what she had. The granny asked Lily to boil up a pot of water when needed. Granny stirred powdered greens and browns into the bubbling water until she had a drink that resembled thin mud. Once the drink cooled, Lily held Anna’s head while the granny coaxed her to drink a glass, sometimes spoon by spoon. Anna gagged and fought the granny, alternating from grabbing her head to pushing the granny’s hand away.

There were times when Kee Granny stayed, sleeping on the porch even in mid-winter, until Anna came closer to being herself. Lily once counted Granny’s doctoring to take six days, before it brought Anna back.

Anna awakened with numbness in her right side. She howled with pain in the back of her head that moved to her forehead. Lily’s footpath from Boone Station to Granny’s church up the hill hollowed out deeper and deeper. When the attacks came every two weeks, Granny brought her gourd rattle. Dry beans inside swished like dying leaves resisting the need to fall. Lily sat against the far wall and wondered if this rattling sounded like what Rattler might. After the gourds failed, the granny added a little rabbit-hopping dance at the foot of the bed to each visit.

With each treatment, Lily saw her mother lose more and more of who she was. When Anna awoke from Granny’s different brews, she was more disoriented. She called for people, some Lily knew little of. People like Ruth, Anna’s sister in Covington. Juanita in Breakline who had visited with her son, Jason. Gladys. Lily knew no Gladys. Winston. She knew no Winston. And Gabe. Anna never called to Clint. Lily wondered why, since her parents had been married eight years when her daddy was killed.

Anna had insisted on doing her part when out of bed. But she was no longer out of bed for days at a time. It was as if someone had opened a plug in the bottom of Anna’s feet and let her spirit drain out, taking her lifeblood with it.

The school truck no longer stopped for Lily. Lily could no longer leave Anna alone.

A year after the day she had come home from spending the weekend with the Hudsons, the month of the Harvest Moon once again, Lily stepped out to gather firewood and looked toward the heavens. There above the shake roof hovered a pale, pale mist. Lily considered telling Kee Granny, but a second of uncertainty destroyed the thought when she heard her mother call.

Anna uttered a tentative call. “Lily?” She called louder. “Lily, come in here.”

Lily kicked the door open, her arms laden with hewn fireplace logs. “What do you…” Seeing fresh blood on the floor, Lily stood rigid. “Mama?” She let the logs fall, each hitting the floor with its own thump.

Sticky blood had created a puddle on the plank flooring beneath Anna. Her knees wilted when the metallic smell hit her nostrils. She fell into the nearest chair, catching as it tilted backwards. “Don’t talk. Get the granny.”

Lily gawked at the crimson that eddied as it tried to seep between the boards. But it stayed, trapped by a burl on the floor. “I can’t leave you.” Lily had never seen so much blood.

“Go, girl. Now.”

Lily raised her voice in fright. “But what…”

“Go and go now. I need a granny.” Anna bent over as if she had a sharp pain in her belly.

Lily ran out, leaving the heavy door ajar.

 

Lily passed her eleventh birthday with no one noticing. With Anna ailing more month by month, Lily laid quarter after quarter on Kee Granny’s worktable. Lily had climbed the rise to buy herbs for Anna’s vomiting, headaches, and cramps, and for bleeding coming more often and more freely each time. Lately the bleeding had put Anna in bed, but never as much blood as today’s.

Maybe she should talk to Gabe. He wanted them to move to Covington, but Lily knew no one in Covington. She only knew Juanita and Seth White in Breakline. They couldn’t live in a camp for miners. Lily would ask Kee Granny for a double dose.

At the church, Lily opened the door. “Kee? Kee Granny? It’s me.” Lily stepped in. “Mama’s bad. A lot of blood.” Lily licked her dry lips and held her breath. “Maybe she needs a double dose?”

“Give me a minute to mix it up.” The granny snapped off a puffy green plant. She broke off three pointed blades and squeezed out the juice. It turned black against the air as it covered the bottom of a chipped crockery saucer. Granny asked Lily to bring peppercorns from across the room.

Jars, each filled with red, green, or black liquids, crowded the shelves. Plant blossoms, some dried, some fresh, hung from the boards along the wall. Empty jars, dusty with age, cluttered the floor beneath the shelves. The room had not changed since Lily had seen it years before.

A whiff of mint and black pepper teased Lily’s hunger. Lily remembered there was nothing cooked to feed her mother. She handed the granny a jar of black peppercorns and moved to inspect a branch near the window. Its green sepals held a cluster of firm berries. Black berries with tiny points at the top, more blueberry than black. Lily reached to pluck a berry.

“Leave that be, girl.” The granny spoke with her back to Lily.

Lily shifted her eyes sideways. How could Kee Granny know she had almost touched the berry?

After mashing the peppercorns into the liquid with her pestle, Kee Granny spooned the concoction into a small jar and tightened the lid. “Give it to her slow. Some when you get home. Some at daybreak.”

“Have I seen this before? What is it?” Lily asked. She swirled the brew around inside the jar, eyeing it to see if it would separate.

“Do what I say. Ain’t no mind what it is.”

“Can’t you come with me?” Lily said. “To see about Mama.”

“No. This is what she gets.” Granny grabbed Lily’s hand to stop her swirling the potion. “If you’re going to be a Beloved Mother, you got to learn to do what you’re told.”

Reluctantly, Lily put her quarter on Kee Granny’s table and followed the trail back down Turtleback. Maybe she could pause and ask Rattler if all this blood and pain and secrecy were part of being a Beloved Mother.

 

In answer, Sister Sun heats the north wind and sends out a clap of fierce thunder.

 

Lily looked upward, but she did not understand the language of the universe. Farther down Turtleback, she found Rattler not at home.