Chapter 27

It was spring of her twelfth year, 1956, and Lily ventured to Flatland. She knew of only two who lived there. Kee Granny and the carpenter, the granny’s son.

In all likelihood, the carpenter would not be on the bald. Lily watched him walk past Boone Station and down Turtleback to Covington to tinker for a customer during the day, his tools and a large hatchet on his belt. There would be days when Briar Slocomb’s dog walked by his side, so close in sync that the man appeared to have four extra legs.

Higher up the trail, the creek bounced over little falls that talked to ferns and mosses along its banks. Smooth stones cut white ripples through the water. This spring day the weather was warm, the air soft. For once, Lily let worries of her mother’s health fade from her mind as she drank in the solitude. She thought of going to the Falls. Instead she turned, as if she had been summoned, up the trail that passed Rattler’s den and ended near the granny’s beehives. Rattler’s hole was empty and his mist gone, so she watched each side of the trail to avoid disturbing him where he might lie in wait for an unsuspecting mole. Or he might be resting, sunning himself beside a log, taking in the warmth of the earth.

She veered off to the west to see the cedar.

 

Sister Sun, sweating from exertion, sends extra heat in an attempt to revive the trees that encircle the cedar Granny chose.

 

Lily had carried her potato plugged can and fed the surrounding trees each summer for six years. Year by year, each tree weakened, but the cedar grew in breadth and stature. Kee must be proud, Lily thought.

 

Sister Sun sees the girl climbing toward the ridge. Sister Sun is tired. She grunts at the realization that Lily doesn’t get the joke about the trees and the purpose of the cedar. Great Spirit should take hold of the old crone before the phony kills something more significant than a few trees.

 

As she walked, Lily pondered this reversal of what she had pledged the oak, the black walnut, and the sour persimmon. With each trip, she had assured them of the nourishment Kee had ordered, but somehow Lily’s intent had turned on her. Now leafless, the older trees were dying.

The cedar’s massive presence amplified the impending loss of its brethren. A bed of needles coating the ground promised softness, but Lily knew from experience that all needles, pine, fir, or cedar, offered only prickles. The lone thriving tree, the cedar, stood like a vibrant emerald flame against the sky.

 

Sister Sun sees the girl standing before the cedar. “I see you standing there. Why don’t you listen, little girl?” Sister Sun’s heat amplifies Lily’s thirst.

Sister Sun signals for a passing asteroid to pause and help her get the girl’s attention, but the asteroid, a random passerby, ignores the signal and flies behind the earth.

 

The granny’s church would be the place for water, a drink to wash the dust from Lily’s throat and a bucket or two for the drooping trees.

There was no one on the bald. The smokehouse where the carpenter slept looked as if no one had been there in weeks. Its door stood open to the air, its makeshift porch empty.

A myriad of colors drew Lily to the side of the church. Reds, yellows, purples, and whites scattered in patches squared out, each to its own. Drawing nearer, she recognized the cultivated area as the granny’s garden. She had not thought of the granny as having a garden, but she would need one, living on the bald most of the year. Lily had expected vegetables. Instead, she found an orderly garden of flowers in bloom.

Stones the size of large shoes marked the garden expanse. Within the walls were small squares that held each kind of flower in its space. Among the squares lay a path, paved with tiny stones from the creek. The pattern was brilliant. The stones lay so rain could seep into the ground and water the plants as they grew. It was the most precise garden Lily had ever seen. There was within its structure an exact design that controlled how and where to place your feet.

The garden threw out an explosion of color. Lily looked close. Within each square was a stick. On that stick was a tin can lid with the name of the flower etched in precise letters. Lily marveled at the number of different flowers.

She expected a granny, as a healer, to grow a separate herb garden for her salves and brews. But Lily could not tell if some of the plants were flowers or herbs. Perhaps Kee Granny grew herbs unnoticed, especially the ginseng that brought such a high price in Covington. If no one knew where her herbs grew, no one could steal them or thin them so sparsely they would not reproduce.

But the flowers. Lily stood mesmerized by shapes and colors. She read the names aloud. Purple coneflower. Foxglove in pinks and yellows and white. Clematis with purple petals and golden centers. Hellebore, black nightshade, poppy as red as holly berries. Angel’s trumpets, their blooms bowed as if in prayer. And a vast span of pennyroyal, its creeping stems covered with lavender orbs that Lily thought looked more like dandelion heads ready to puff than pennyroyal. In one corner, a stand of mountain laurel in pinks and whites. In another, three yew trees leaned against the church wall, their needles so filled with deep green they resembled coal.

Lily walked to the far corner. There were no plants. Rather four green logs, each pointed in a cardinal direction. In the center, a light smoke drifted up from ash that kept the fire aglow night and day. In time, Kee Granny had taught Lily that this ring represented Cherokee Harmony, a belief that striving for wisdom through experience would lead to a courageous heart and a deep respect for all life.

By the time Lily and Anna had been on Turtleback Mountain for ten years, Lily knew each trillium, each bleeding heart, each wild iris, and where they thrived. She knew the best week for hickory nut gathering, where wild grapes flourished, where black walnut grew, and where to gather blackberries and dewberries in spring. All this she had learned as a child from days in the woods with Kee Granny.

Another year went by. Anna ignored the road and hurried up the footpath Lily and Granny used, calling to the granny each time she stopped to catch her breath. Thankfully it was not a day that Anna felt too sick to get out of bed, but she could barely even make it up to the older woman’s house without falling to the ground. The granny met Anna, pasty and frail in a weathered sort of way, at the door. “It’s Lily,” Anna gasped. “She’s in awful pain.”

The granny grabbed her black valise and ran, her bones jiggling beneath her long skirt. She found Lily in the loft, rolled into a quilt-covered ball and clutching her gut.

Lily’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of her Kee. “It’s knives,” Lily said. “Cutting me inside.”

Kee Granny enticed her with a honeyed voice. “You’re gaining life-giving power.” She showed Lily two long-necked gourds. “It’s a celebration day. Come down and dance.”

Lily hesitated. “No. I want to go to sleep so I won’t hurt. Give me Mama’s potion.”

Kee Granny put the splotched gourds in her apron pockets, took Lily’s hand and drew her near the ladder. “It’s time.” She nodded. “It’s your time.” She smiled and the two scars vanished into wrinkles.

Lily could not remember Kee smiling. Ever. So she followed Kee Granny. At the bottom of the ladder, she started for the rocker.

“Here, child. Drink this.” She gave Lily a vial of extract she had made from cramp bark. Lily cringed at the taste.

Kee Granny set two vials on the table and pulled the two small, earth-colored gourds from her apron. “Sit. Roll these under your feet. Sway and bend. Release the pain through wonder and welcome.” Soft and hymn-like, Granny’s voice created a rhythm. “Roll, sway, and bend. Welcome,” she chanted over and again.

“You’re a woman. You have a voice among your people.” Kee Granny hummed a minor tune then said, “A man will come for you, and the two of you will rejoice in your beautiful blood.”

Lily bent forward as she rolled the gourds, her fists grinding into that hidden throbbing deep within her belly.

Across the room, Anna watched silently, her arms crossed over her chest, in deference to the granny’s power. “I’m her mother. I should have recognized this,” she said.

“Shhh,” whispered Kee Granny.

After the rolling and breathing, Lily gradually straightened up. She rose from the rocker, extended her arms like a soaring eagle’s wings, and swayed.

Kee Granny hummed a high-pitched, irregular melody built on some ancient pentatonic scale, minor and haunting. Her feet beat out a dance, not neat and tidy, not Western, but primal, unworldly, heady. Lily’s body and Kee Granny’s life-empowering song intertwined in an inseparable, slow rhythm. The granny’s severe brown dress swept the floor and puffed out dust from the paths she had trod. Together they gave off the musky smell of new-turned earth.

Lily’s feet and arms set her into a spin that accelerated with the song’s rhythm.

Anna waited. She mourned the loss of compassion that her mother had failed to show her the first day of her womanhood. She coveted the palpable love Lily and Kee Granny were experiencing. At the point Anna expected Lily to whirl herself into a fall, Lily and Kee Granny stopped. Anna glanced around the room for some hidden hand that had touched the two simultaneously. If it was there, it was invisible.

Lily stood, her feet apart, in the middle of the room. The granny placed her hands on Lily’s shoulders. Lily’s bloated womb opened, allowing cleansing blood, beautiful blood, to trickle down her thigh.

Kee Granny stepped back. Lily laughed at the relief. She wrapped her arms around Kee and wept.

Anna slipped outside, drawn by the pungent aroma of early spring honeysuckle.

 

“Where’s she going?” asks Sister Sun.

“Quiet. It’s her knowing time,” answers Great Spirit. “She needs to be with herself.”