Amy Greene - Bloodroot

“Doug,” she shouted over the wind. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” I said.

“What?” she said. “I can’t hear you!”

“It’s true. You are a witch.”

“I can’t hear you!” she shouted again.

“Nothing,” I said.

She tugged at my arm, smiling. “Come sit with me!”

I didn’t move and Myra’s smile faltered. I thought a moment of sadness passed across her face, but looking back she was probably already too wrapped up in John Odom to care. Since that day, I’ve been thinking about the anger that took hold of me. I didn’t even know it was in there. Now I know it always was and always will be. But I could never have hurt Myra, or gone through with poisoning Wild Rose. I can’t turn my anger loose, even on a horse. I guess it will poison me instead, maybe for the rest of my life.

BYRDIE

Even with Myra there to love, them first few years after Clio died liked to done me in. I volunteered me and Macon to clean up the church and take care of the graveyard so I could at least stay close to her body. Saturdays we’d head down the mountain and while Macon scraped chewing gum off the bottoms of the pews I’d pull weeds from around the headstones with Myra crawling over the grass. Summer evenings I’d drag my lawn chair out of the truck bed and set in front of the graves of my children, watching lightning bugs rise out of the ground like sparks going up in the dark. They was all lined up together, small markers for the babies and a bigger one for Willis and a double headstone for Kenny and Clio. I’d think about their bones down yonder, scraps of the clothes I buried them in still clinging on, and try to feel close to what was left of them. But I couldn’t reach none of my children that way, no matter how long I set there. I couldn’t even picture their bones after a while. Macon wouldn’t come out to disturb me. He waited inside after he was done cleaning the church. I know he thought I was taking comfort, but for a long time being in the graveyard didn’t do me a bit of good. Then one evening I was listening to the tree frogs, thinking about heading back up the mountain, when I felt Myra’s hand on my arm. She was three years old, standing on the grave of one of her aunts that never even made it to her age. She was alive and solid and there with me. I took her fingers and studied them, rubbing over the dirty little fingernails with my thumb. She looked at the graves, decorated with the wild-flowers I had brung, and asked, “Is this Heaven, Granny?” I took a big breath of night air and drawed her close. “No, honey,” I said. “It’s not.” I buried my face in her neck and thought, You are.

Me and Macon suffered a lot of heartbreak, but at least we had one another to lean on. I ain’t going to say it was always peaceful between us, but it was always loving, even when we fought each other. I never cared to fight. In school, I scrapped with boys and girls both. When me and Macon first got married we’d get mad and scrabble around in the floor, smacking each other and pulling hair and grinding our heads together like billy goats. To us, that was all part of being married. There wasn’t no hate in it.

Once we got older we didn’t fight like that no more. Neither one of us had the stomach for it. We figured it was time to rest in our old age. We didn’t talk much either, but it wasn’t out of hatefulness. We just got to where we liked the quiet. We’d set back and watch Myra dart through the house, long red hair ribbon streaming out, chattering like a magpie and pretty as a doll. It was her time now, we’d done had our own.

Macon didn’t show it, but he loved Myra from far off about as much as I did close up. He was always leaving gifts on her pillow, like that red ribbon she wore all the time. When she found it she took it right to the mirror and tied up her hair. Then she ran to find Macon smoking by the stove. He stood there pretending not to wait for her. She throwed herself at his legs and asked, “Am I pretty?” He stroked her head and said, “That red suits you, Myra Jean.” Times like that, I wanted to bust, seeing how much Macon loved to please our grandbaby. He’d stand in the kitchen door while I cooked supper and watch her play in the yard, letting in flies to pester me. In the summertime it was hotter than a firecracker in here, with grease popping and splattering on my arms. I’d finally get plumb ill and say, “Macon, let that youngun alone. How’s she ever going to grow up with you stifling her down?” But I never could get Macon to give that child rest. I knowed what it was. We’d lost so many, he was scared to let the last one left out of his sight. If Macon was out of the bed at night, I knowed he was standing over Myra watching her breathe.

I struggled with them same old demons. It was hard to let Myra loose when I wanted to keep her with me every minute. She was wild, but not as bad as her mama. Sometimes the schoolteacher would send home a note saying Myra wouldn’t set down at her desk. She’d stand up to do her lessons, or wander over to the window and stare out. But she settled down in the later grades. The most trouble we had out of Myra was when she took it in her head to climb to the top of the mountain. She’d slip off and Macon would have to go find her. He’d pepper her legs with a switch but she’d head right back out. Thank goodness she quit doing that, but she never did lose that old restless nature. She didn’t run off once she got bigger, but she’d set on the back steps and chew her fingernails to the bloody quick, looking off in the woods like she didn’t even know she was doing it. I’d feel like squalling, watching her gnaw at herself that way, because I knowed what it meant. Still, Myra was a good girl. She didn’t give me too much grief, but I made up plenty for myself to worry about. If I found a tick in her ear I’d mark the date on the calendar and watch her real close for that spotted fever I’d heard tell of. First sign of a sniffle and I’d have to go off somewhere and collect myself before I let Myra see my nerves all tore up. Only thing that got me through her childhood, with all them croups and stomach bugs and sore throats, was going to the good Lord daily in prayer.

Sometimes Myra tried to tear away from me when I held her, but she’d always come back to be petted and loved on because she knowed how bad I needed to do it. But Macon showed his love in different ways than mine, like buying them trinkets to leave on her pillow and whittling things for her. He carved up a whole set of animals for her to play with, and brung her home I don’t know how many puppies and kittens over the years. I’d get mad enough to wring his neck when I’d see him carrying another mutt up the hill. Sometimes people would set out a dog or cat at the filling station just because they knowed he’d take it home if he found it hanging around the pumps looking hungry.

In 1969, the summer Myra turned twelve, me and her left Macon working in the yard one day and walked up to the Cotters. Oleta Cotter had had female surgery and was laid up for several weeks, so me and Margaret Barnett took turns going up yonder to see about her. The Cotters live the furthest up the mountain and keep the most to theirselves. They don’t poke their nose in nobody’s business, but they’d give you the shirt off of their back if they knowed you was in trouble. I learnt that after Clio got killed. Oleta came down the mountain every day to cook for Macon and take care of Myra until I could stand to get out of the bed. That’s how come I didn’t care a bit to see to her worshing and make sure them boys was fed when she was laid up. It was hot that day and I had sweat dripping in my eyes by the time me and Myra got halfway up to the house. Them two youngest Cotter boys, Douglas and Mark, ran out of the woods to meet us like wild Indians. They stopped in the middle of the road plumb out of breath.