The Arms of God: A Novel Page 9

  Witchhazel gave the mayor three different remedies that she mixed up in a bowl by the bed. She grounded dry persulfate of iron into a fine powder and held it up to his nose until he breathed it all in. Then she gave him raw table salt to eat and finally an hour later fed him three teaspoonfuls of powdered loaf sugar and resin.

  The mayor’s wife watched the large black woman as she pulled the ingredients from an old leather bag that she wore on her back. And it was Mrs. Emily Murphy herself who brought Witchhazel a sandwich while the servants shook their heads in disbelief at the woman who would not let them speak to her without first saying “mam.”

  When Witchhazel was all done and satisfied with her work, she climbed back up into that carriage with Gabriel; and Johnnie Mays quickly drove her home. She left enough persulfate and raw table salt for four more doses and explained to the mayor’s wife at exactly what time to administer them.

  Mrs. Emily Murphy had handed her a crisp one-dollar bill; but Witchhazel rolled her eyes and motioned it away, pointing to a new green velvet hat that hung in the foyer that Mr. Murphy had gotten for Christmas. That and a sack of flour was all she took.

  One week later the mayor was back in his office and Witchhazel never had a lack of food or liquor since.

  Tree had to wait until she was seven years old before she and Olivia could walk the path to Witchhazel’s house without E. Saul or Ruth holding their hands. It was not a long walk or even dangerous, but there was a short and tempting detour that led to Sticky Ledbetter’s still, which was often a place where poker led to knife fights and more than dancing went on behind the shed.

  Sticky had a deal worked out with Les Narron, the sheriff, so complaints or reports to the law always fell on deaf ears. And since it was actually over in Smoketown, it was not much of a threat to Les or the department that was responsible primarily to the citizens on the other side of the burned-down church.

  It was the first day of summer, not according to the calendar, but according to children who sat at the edge of their desks with shoes rubbing too tightly on itchy feet and faces wiped way too clean. They waited in reckless anticipation for school to be over. Teachers struggled for attention in competition with tractors and blue jays; and they too watched the clocks for the exact moment when freedom rang. When school ended for the year, summer began. Not before or after.

  Olivia and Tree had already made great plans for the hot days, the long and lazy afternoons after chores and without homework. They had both found it difficult when they started school one year earlier and had to be separated. Neither one of them had yet to realize that they went to different schools because of their color. They thought it was just a line that somebody drew dividing the two schools’ populations.

  Everybody up from Olivia’s house went to a new brick building called Alamance School and everybody down from Tree’s house went to an old barn built on a tobacco field, simply known as the Farmschool. Since the division came between them, the two little girls just assumed that there was a line down beneath the earth running straight between their houses marking school districts. And although they met and played every day after school, summer meant making up for all the lost time that the invisible line stole from them.

  Before the final day of school, Ruth made a list to give to Witchhazel that she stuck inside Tree’s front pocket of her bib overalls and then snapped them with snaps on both sides. With strict instructions about going nowhere near Sticky Ledbetter’s wood shack and staying clear of the Mudbank Creek that was a breeding place for copperheads and water moccasins, Tree hurried off to school trying to make the hours go faster.

  When the day was finally over Tree ran all the way home, beating everyone from the Farmschool and meeting Olivia just as she turned the corner from Alamance. They dashed to Tree’s house, dropped off their things from the last day of school, grabbed a biscuit from the table, and headed out front. Miss Nellie yelled something about slamming doors; but Tree and Olivia were already well on their way, down past Tincan Gentry’s house, and crossing the street into the garden beside the church cemetery, the garden everybody called Gethsemane.

  A small patch of land Gethsemane was named by the women at The Ashley Grove Church, AME Zion Congregation, that was just across the road. They called it that because there were four short rows of sunflowers that grew every year and stood like tall crooked bodies with faces to the sky looking radiant but sleepy, dropping their heads hard and long just as the sun lowered. They reminded everyone of the disciples who fell asleep when Jesus was praying and were used more than once as an illustration in a preacher’s sermon.

  There was a bench behind the flowers and Tree and Olivia stopped to finish their biscuits and decide the best way to go to Witchhazel’s.

  Although they intended to stay on the path, when they got close to Sticky Ledbetter’s place they heard laughter and singing that stopped them in their tracks, turning their heads away from the clear and straight way and toward the sweetness that drifted up from the still. It was easy from there. They simply followed the hum of voices and the sugary smells and ended up just twenty feet from the wood shack.

  They giggled at the danger and when Tree darted ahead to a large mound of dirt, Olivia sat down and emptied her shoes of the pebbles that were pressed between her toes and causing her discomfort.

  “Livia, Livia, get up and come here. Livia!”

  Tree suddenly realized that the adventure was cut short by her friend’s absence and she was feeling a bit too vulnerable to be so near the still by herself. Though she thought she should move back closer to Olivia, she was also drawn for just a closer look at this “Den of Iniquity” that caused her grandmother to rant at the devil and spit out Scripture with a vengeance.

  This was the place her mother had said men go to piss away their families’ earnings and women go to piss away their families.

  Tree peeked from behind the mound of dirt and heard the voices of a man and a woman as they came from the front of the shack and walked to a spot just a few feet away from the little girl. Tree sucked in her breath as she heard a light low voice that was both strange and familiar and she froze in fear that the man and the woman would realize that they were not alone.

  She knew that they were just on the other side of the mound that kept her hidden; and when she finally decided to take a quick look over on the other side she saw a hand reach around and almost touch her leg. That was when she noticed the fingers. Long, slender fingers, white as pearls with sharp red tips that dug at the dirt, grabbing and pulling, trying to hold on.

  “Damn it, Willie, you’re hurting me, ain’t you ever heard of letting a woman get ready?”

  “Not when I’m paying for it,” came the gruff reply.

  Tree was frozen. If she moved they would surely hear her. If Olivia came any closer she would see her mother participating in the most abominable act that seven-year-old girls can fathom. She watched the pearl hand scrape at the ground, tear at the side of her wall, and then fall limp, palm open as the red-tipped fingers curled and dropped.

  “Hardly worth three dollars, you cheap cunt.”

  “Well if you lasted longer than three minutes, maybe you’d get your money’s worth.”

  There was a rustle of clothing and Tree watched as the hand slid around the dirt. She counted to twenty, a secret she learned from her grandmother, a method to think before acting. And then she jumped from her seat and ran until she found where Olivia was putting on her shoes. She grabbed her up and the two of them began pushing through thornbushes, jumping over logs, and dodging low-hanging limbs.

  “Tree, slow down, Tree! What’s the matter with you?” Olivia fought to stay at the heels of her friend.

  Tree didn’t stop running until she was at a clearing that was on the road heading into the grove of pine trees, away from the creek and away from Sticky Ledbetter’s. Then she dropped from the waist down, her head facing the ground, her arms holding her sides.

  Gasping for breath she said, “Won’
t nothing. I just, uh, I just didn’t want that man to see us.”

  Olivia laughed and threw a rock at her friend’s feet. “You crazy, you know that? I almost lost my shoes chasing after you.”

  She fell into the small grassy area. Tree smiled and sat down next to her and they both laid back and watched the sun play in the tops of the pines.

  Tree narrowed her eyes at the green that split and shattered in the sky and tried to forget what she had seen and heard. Mattie was one of those women. For three dollars she had allowed a man to enter her, to touch her in the warm and mysterious place where babies waited to be born. For three dollars she had opened herself to a man who called her names and did not love her openness.

  Most of what Tree knew about sex came from Geneva Gentry. Geneva had seen her daddy riding her mother like a horse and said that it was a horrible, painful thing that had made her mother cry and scream out. Ruth had tried to convince her that sometimes it wasn’t bad, but it should never be done unless you were in love.

  It was a gift Tree’s mother had said, and must be respected, never given without thought and prayer. And although she had tried to explain the beauty of intercourse, Tree clung to the story of a man mounted on a woman, who now clutched at the earth for forgiveness. She was now filled with shame as well as an overwhelming sense of responsibility for her friend.

  She would never tell Olivia. She would never tell anyone. This was the secret she would keep to her grave; and she promised such a thing to the sky and the sun and the parting of green above her head.

  “You my best friend, Olivia.”

  “Nah, Tree, you and me, we sisters.”

  “Yeah,” Tree said, stretching it out like a yawn. “Through thick and thin, we more than friends, we sisters.”

  Olivia smiled, remembering Miss Nellie’s rhymes that she would sing while the two girls played near her.

  “I know what let’s do.” Tree sat up, the idea lifting her spirits. “Old Lady Witchhazel got potions for everything. Maybe she’s got something that can really make us sisters.”

  “You mean like cutting our fingers and mixing the blood? I know some boys at school who did that. They made themselves a boys’ club and say no girls allowed.”

  Olivia rose to her feet, slinging her shoes behind her head. “Like that, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Something that nobody can take from us; something nobody will know about but us. Something that can make us so close that nobody will ever come between us.” Tree took off her shoes going barefooted like Olivia.

  “Well, let’s go then.”

  Olivia was already up and heading toward the smoky cabin at the end of the path when Tree came up behind her. “Last one’s a rotten egg!” And she hurried off ahead of her friend.

  “Oh, yeah?” Olivia yelled to Tree as she slowed down. “First one’s got to eat it!” And then she ran to catch up.

  There were squeals and laughter when the two girls finally made it to the steps at the porch. Gabriel lifted his head, then dropped it again to the ground without even sniffing what he already knew was not dangerous. Tree knocked on the door with great enthusiasm while Olivia peeked in through the window, careful not to step on Gabriel’s tail.

  “I’m coming! Lord, there better be a fire or Judgment Day for this much racket!” But no fire or messiah stood at her door, just two sweaty girls, barefoot and grinning.

  “You children lost?” Witchhazel opened the door.

  “No, mam. I come for some things for my mama. She say she’ll send E. Saul over with a quail later on for pay.”

  Witchhazel motioned them in and the two friends walked through the door, taking in the sights and the smells just as they had when they came with Ruth on their first visit.

  The cabin was an extension of the forest that surrounded it. There was a woodsy odor that permeated through the walls and down along the floorboards. There were scents of camphor and orange flowers, jasmine and cloves. And there was, as always, an iron pot that bubbled and stewed like a witch’s brew, hanging over the fire in a fireplace cut into the far wall.

  Roots hung from the ceiling away from the fire; and the old medicine woman had her own way of telling them apart. Bags of yellow straws and baskets of dried flowers stood in corners and out along the porch. There were paper sacks tied with strings that were marked with small zigzag lines drawn with the burnt end of a stick. These were placed along a shelf that wrapped around the house and stood high above the little girls’ heads.

  Neither the place nor the woman frightened Olivia and Tree, but they were careful not to touch or disturb anything around them. They knew Witchhazel could take away aches and get rid of fever. They knew she could cure the colic and soothe coughs and spider bites. They had seen her teas put babies to sleep and old men back to walking; and they both had experienced her healing on a firsthand basis. But they also knew she could make stuffed dolls that looked like somebody. And she could squeeze the small toy until the look-alike person vomited or had large bruises on the inside of their thighs or down along their spines. They knew that if she got a lock of your hair or a fingernail she could boil it in salt water and bury it and worms would eat away your stomach and liver.

  It was common knowledge to most folks who abided by Witchhazel’s cures that not everything that she knew about herbs and roots was of a healing nature. But even knowing these things, Olivia and Tree were not afraid of her. They merely respected her and her dwelling with the same reverence and mystery that they took with them to church or a graveyard.

  “You Ruth’s girl?”

  Tree was studying the recently acquired pieces of slippery elm bark that were spilled out on the table near the fire. “Yes, mam.”

  “Your mama let you come by yourselves?” Witchhazel enjoyed their curiosity.

  “Mama say it fine now that me and Olivia is seven years old.” Tree spoke with a certain amount of pride that brought a smile to the old woman’s lips.

  “So you must be Olivia.” Witchhazel had seen the little white girl before when Ruth had come with the two of them, but she had never spoken to her. “And you seven too, huh?”

  “Yes, mam.” Olivia turned away.

  “Well, you gonna tell me what your mama want or am I ’spose to guess?” Witchhazel was eating pumpkin seeds, spitting the shells into a pile near the stove.

  There was a second while the two girls looked at each other in a state of puzzlement when Tree remembered the list in her pocket and quickly gave it to Witchhazel.

  “That chickweed and mugwort stop the swelling in your granny’s feet?” Witchhazel was studying the list. Tree shrugged her shoulders.

  The old woman could not read anything except the names of the flowers and herbs she used. She had started getting lists about thirty years ago when people began to know what to ask for. So she memorized the way they looked written down just as she learned how to find them growing in a field or near a creek bank. She observed the loops and hooks in letters the same way she mastered the feel of prickly leaves and the differences between tree barks and brown mosses.

  She had even learned the spelling of her own name when Elsie Luther had all her teeth pulled and sent her son, JW, to fetch some witch hazel for her sore gums. The old medicine woman had listened to JW as he read off the list and then looked at it herself to see the doubled dip in the first letter and the likeness in the two in the middle, sitting side by side. She was proud of the way that there were two words molded into one, each made with five units, and how the whole name ended with a very tall and a very straight line stretching from top to bottom.

  She traced the word over and over in the dust on the floor, with a stick along the ground. And with her finger dipped in honey, she watched her name dry upon the table, golden and thick as she joined the two words together and christened herself with a gilded baptism.

  “Let’s see, castile soap and black cohosh, mormon tea and comfrey? Who at your house got hay fever?”

  Tree thought for a minute and remem
bered her brother’s sneezing and runny nose. “E. Saul.”

  “Well, tell your mama to feed him a little bee pollen. I’ll put some in your bag. I got everything except for your flaxseed. Lotus DeVaughn bought all I had last Thursday.” Witchhazel pulled out a small stool and stepped up to the shelf and picked out four small bags and dropped them on the table while she stood looming over her guests. “You girls need anything else?”

  Olivia shifted closer to Tree, both dropping their eyes to the floor and putting their hands in their pockets. They walked over to the old woman as she stepped down from her perch.

  Tree was the one to speak. “Well, yes, mam.” She spoke slowly. “Well, I mean Mama don’t, but we was wondering about something.”

  Witchhazel pushed the stool back against the wall waiting for the request. “Well,” she said with a certain amount of impatience.

  The little girl spoke hesitantly. “See, me and Olivia, well, we feel like sisters; and well, we thought maybe you had a potion or something that we could swallow that would really make us sisters.”

  Olivia joined in. “We could bring you flowers or something. We can’t catch no bird.”

  Witchhazel stared at the little girls trying to remember her own childhood and how it felt to be so small. But Olivia’s face stared back with a whiteness that kept pushing Witchhazel from any youthful memory.

  She was touched by such a request, especially since few folks called upon her magic anymore. Most people simply used her as a pharmacist, not even needing her assistance in diagnosing illnesses or prescribing medications. Most everyone, by this time, ascertained the problem on their own and just needed Witchhazel to fill a bag with the herbs whose properties they understood but whose bloom or leaf they could never find.