Naomi Jackson - The Star Side of Bird Hill

Hyacinth opened up the top half of the back door to let the night air in. Then, she undid the locks of the sea-green cupboards with keys she fished out of her nightgown. For weeks, Phaedra had been dying to know what her grandmother kept there. Whenever Phaedra begged her to open the cupboards, Dionne told her that curiosity killed the cat. Phaedra was annoyed that Dionne, who was generally unafraid of trouble, wouldn’t help her. Phaedra bet Dionne that Hyacinth hid a secret cache of Shirley biscuits there and her sister just shook her head, saying it was probably something boring, like mothballs or detergent.

Both of them were wrong. When Hyacinth opened the cupboard doors, she revealed herbs of all varieties in glass jars, each labeled in her careful fourth-grade print.

“What is all this, Granny?” Phaedra asked.

“Roots.”

“You mean to do obeah with?”

“Dear heart, labels are for things, not people. I don’t work obeah any more than Father Loving does when he says that a couple drops of holy water on a sick man’s forehead can make him well. There’s all kind of magic, some for daytime, and others for the night.”

“So, it’s all just different ways to make people well?”

“You could say that. All different ways to help the body do its work. Now, we need to find roots to make a tea.”

“What kind of tea?”

“The same tea I gave your mother to drink.”

“To make her strong?”

“To make her womb weak.”

“What do you mean, weak?” Phaedra asked.

Hyacinth turned the full force of her gaze on Phaedra, the way that she did when she wanted to be heard. With Hyacinth looking at her, Phaedra felt naked, as if her grandmother could see what was beneath her skin, the sturdy parts and what she was ashamed of too.

“A strong womb carries a healthy baby. A weak womb lets go of the baby before it grows.”

“So why would you want to give Mommy that to drink?”

“I gave it to her when she started tumbling big with you,” Hyacinth said, releasing Phaedra from her gaze so suddenly that Phaedra felt herself slip.

“You mean Mommy didn’t want me?” Phaedra grabbed the clothesline where she and Dionne hung their clean underwear after they washed them in the shower, but she felt it give, wavering where she wanted support.

“Sweetheart, it’s not to say Mummy didn’t want you. She was facing down the facts of her life and couldn’t see where another child might fit. I told her myself that if she thought life was hard with her and Dionne and that husband, she would understand what hard life really was with another one pulling at her. If she’d seen just one bit of the sparkle you have now, she would have been trying to bring you out sooner. One day you will see that what must be born will be born. Everything else will find another way.”

“Why would you tell me that?”

“Sweetness, the only thing that has power over you is what you can’t say, even to yourself.”

Phaedra considered this for a moment, letting the night frogs fill the silence between them.

“Everything hurt needs sun and air to heal it,” Hyacinth added, hearing what Phaedra had not said.

“So what you’re saying is that it’s not that she didn’t want me, but that she didn’t see how to make it work.”

“You could say that. I can tell you one thing, though. No matter what she did, her belly just kept growing and growing. You were determined to come.”

Phaedra touched the dime-size birthmark nestled inside her bruise’s faded half-moon. “Is that where this came from?”

“She tried one last time with the doctor but you would not come out no matter what he did.” Hyacinth bent down and kissed Phaedra’s scar, leaving a wet imprint of her lips that the breeze soon dried. Phaedra was hard-pressed to recall the last time she’d been kissed by her grandmother. She wished their closeness would last a moment longer than it did.

“Now help me make this tea. Granny’s eyes not so good anymore.”

“Yes, please,” Phaedra said. For the first time, it felt less awkward to say, “Yes, please,” which her grandmother had taught her to reply with, and which the Bird Hill girls said without issue.

Phaedra pulled down the jars from the cupboard as Hyacinth called their names — nettles and burdock for cramps, peppermint and gingerroot for an upset stomach, pennyroyal and tansy leaves for hastening the menses. She scooped the herbs in the quantities Hyacinth specified into a pan, and then into seven tea bags.

“Who’s the tea for, Gran?”

Hyacinth’s lineless face was obscured by the glass jar of chamomile she held up to the light. “Your sister,” she said, nonchalantly.

Phaedra already knew the answer to the question forming in her mind. She steadied herself with the work of alphabetizing her grandmother’s roots.

THE SECOND SESSION of vacation Bible School began just as July in Bird Hill was yawning toward a close. Going back for round two was particularly hard for Phaedra because now she didn’t have the benefit of ignorance about what VBS entailed to make it seem exciting. Just when Phaedra had conquered the steep ascent from the beach to her grandmother’s house, just when her latest rereading of Harriet the Spy was getting really good, just when she had learned how to launch boomerangs with Chris in Ms. Zelma’s backyard — she was thrust again into the tyranny and tedium of VBS.

Vacation Bible School always followed the same schedule: a prayer when they arrived, morning activities, lunch, afternoon activities, and a prayer before dismissal. Phaedra’s favorite things were praise song and Bible Jeopardy because these were the only times when she wasn’t being scrutinized, teased about her accent, asked about what her life in America was like, and, occasionally, interrogated about when her mother was coming to collect her and her sister.

The one area where Phaedra excelled, even though she didn’t necessarily enjoy it, was memorizing Bible verses. The prospect of wresting the Bible verse memorization championship crown from her nemesis (and three-time winner) Angelique Ward motivated Phaedra to go to VBS even when she didn’t want to. Well, that, and the fact that Hyacinth insisted that she was not going to let the good money Avril had spent on VBS go to waste because the girls would prefer to wear out her furniture with their lazy behinds than to learn about the Lord. During recess, while the boys ripped around and the girls jumped double Dutch or played with each other’s hair, Phaedra stood off to one side, repeating scripture she’d committed to memory the night before with her grandmother’s help. She was not surprised to learn that she and her mother shared the same favorite verse: “No weapon formed against me shall prosper.”

While Phaedra flailed against the injustice of being forced to go to VBS, Dionne sucked up whatever feelings she had about it. Her mounting disinterest in Trevor meant that she sought him out infrequently, but VBS guaranteed that she saw him every day. Dionne simply dried up her remaining affection for him and threw herself into a role she knew well — taking charge of the little sixes and sevens who came for the morning program. When Trevor asked Dionne why she no longer had time for him, she told him that she had plans with her friends. Even he could see that she was becoming popular with the older girls on the hill, who had gone from seeing Dionne as an oddity to claiming her as an asset, asking her opinion on boys, their hairstyles, clothes. It wasn’t unusual that summer to walk onto the netball court in front of the church and find Dionne holding forth to a group of rapt girls about, for example, how to rock leg warmers in spite of the warm weather.