Strange Folk, page 5
Tiffany narrowed her eyes. “Don’t fuck with me. Everyone knows about your family. You don’t have to, like, keep it a secret.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought my mom’s family was dead until a few weeks ago.”
“Wow. That’s messed up.” Tiffany paused. “So you haven’t noticed anything weird?”
Meredith looked across the church lawn to where her mother was talking to the man from last night.
“I mean, yes. Definitely. But I thought Belva was into energy healing and stuff.”
Tiffany smiled mockingly. “This isn’t California. Belva’s a legit witch. Mountain magic and shit. I was hoping you could teach me what she showed you… but it sounds like you don’t know anything.”
Meredith deflated. Is Tiffany messing with me? Why don’t I know any of this? Anger bloomed at the thought of her mother keeping something so special from her. It was hot and sticky and made her itch.
Tiffany leaned in. “If you want to learn magic, I know a place. The Ryders don’t know it like Belva, but they’re not uptight either. Anyone is allowed to come, and they let you party.” She grabbed Meredith’s phone from her hand and typed in her number. “Text me if you ever want to go.”
As Tiffany rejoined her family, Meredith noticed Mr. Hall approaching in his purple blazer and polished oxfords. She had him for fifth period English, and she was surprised to find someone like him in Craw Valley. He reminded her of a rare bird she once saw on a field trip to a small zoo. It had preened in its roost, surrounded by the common foal.
“Good morning, Meredith. How did you find the service?”
“It was fine, I guess.” Meredith hadn’t absorbed a word of the preacher’s muddled speech. She’d been too distracted by the spectacle. “What did you think?”
“This particular message didn’t resonate with me. I struggle with the blind-faith element of Christianity.”
“Then why do you come?”
“No other place in town offers a public forum for literary analysis and interpretation. I take what I can get.” He winked at her.
Meredith could feel him straining to be clever, and she found it a little off-putting. What does he care what I think?
“Did you know I taught your mother?” He looked at her intently.
“Yes, she mentioned it.”
“She was one of the most brilliant students I’ve ever had. So… incisive.” He paused and smiled. “You remind me of her.”
Meredith instinctively warmed at the comparison, but when she tried to imagine this version of her mother, the girl was a stranger.
She heard her name being called from the other side of the lawn where her mom stood with Belva, Luann, and the man from last night, and she excused herself from Mr. Hall. Cliff and Billy came out of the creek and dried their bare feet on the grass as they walked over to join them.
Meredith heard the man ask her mother, “Would you like to grab a drink with me tonight?”
Her mom looked surprised as she replied, “I don’t know, I have to be with the kids…”
Meredith knew this was an excuse. They could take care of themselves.
“She’ll go,” Belva said. “We can keep the kids.”
“But—” Mom protested.
“She’ll meet you at the bar around eight.”
The man smiled and nodded, and then he headed for the parking lot, disappearing into the cloud of dust kicked up by the cars leaving.
Meredith caught up to her mother as they walked across the lot. “That’s the guy from last night.”
“Yes, Otis. We went to high school together.”
“What were you guys doing? Everyone was being super sketch, and then I smelled something weird.”
They both watched as, a few steps ahead, Belva took out an empty bread bag she’d swiped from the refreshments table and scooped in a bit of dirt from the church lawn.
“Grandma Mama makes homeopathic remedies out of herbs from her garden, and Otis’s father needed one.”
Meredith narrowed her eyes and searched her mother’s face. “Tiffany told me Belva’s a witch.”
“Oh, ha. That’s an old rumor.”
Meredith’s heart sank. She thought when faced with a direct question, her mother would certainly reveal the truth. But she could feel the lie in it. They never lied to each other. They always shared the same reality, criticizing others for the lies they lived.
“It’s only a rumor,” Meredith repeated.
Her mother nodded. “Yes. She helps people. That’s it.”
Meredith studied the familiar lines of her mother’s face. Then she got into the dusty SUV and slammed the door.
* * *
Back at the cabin, the family squatted on stools in the side yard and snapped the ends off beans from the garden into piles for compost.
“Who are the Ryders?” Meredith asked casually. It was better to come at this sideways, judging by her mother’s behavior that morning.
“That’s Leroy’s family,” said Belva.
Meredith’s eyes lit up. “Who’s Leroy?”
Belva sighed. “My ex-husband.”
“So, like, our great-grandfather?”
“That’s the one.”
“Where is he now?”
“His body’s under six feet of dirt, but I like to think his soul is burning in hell.”
“Grandma Mama!” Mom exclaimed as Meredith and Cliff giggled.
“Opaline, they should know where they come from. I know you’ve done your damnedest to keep that from happening, but they’re here now.”
Mom stayed quiet, and Belva continued, “Leroy came from a family of moonshiners. Real rough people. But when I met him, he was working at the old plant. He was a real cat daddy, if you know what I mean.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” Meredith said.
“It means he was good-looking, and he knew it. I fell pretty hard for him. He dated a lot of the girls in the county, but he said I was special.”
This was her chance to ask what made Belva special, but Mom cut her off. “Grandma Mama is very smart. Her parents made her drop out of school in the fourth grade, but she kept studying on her own. She can identify any plant or bird in this area.”
Belva waved her away. “After we got married, things were good for a while,” she continued. “I got pregnant real quick with Redbud, then your aunt Ruby Jo, and then Billy right after that. We were a nice little family. But then Leroy started to change. He got laid off from the plant and started working for his father. They would take these old cars and put secret compartments in the bottom so you could hide the booze if you got stopped by the law or robbed on the back roads. He got hooked on liquor and started drinking all day, every day. He started beating me, and I tried to… intervene…” Belva made eye contact with Mom, and Meredith recognized the omission.
“But it was no use. So I filed for divorce.”
“She was the first woman to ever file for divorce in the county,” Mom interjected again.
Belva laughed. “At first they weren’t sure how to even do it at the courthouse, and I told them that it was probably how they did it when a man filed. They looked at me like I had two heads.” She shook her head, and her face lost some of its glint. “Leroy died only a few days after it was done. The family blamed me, said I put a curse on him, but I don’t see how they figured that when he drove off the side of a mountain drunk as a skunk and died face down in a creek. Seems like no fault but his.” She clucked her tongue in disapproval. “Things ain’t been very good with the Ryders since. They don’t like me meddling in their business. As long as they don’t mess with me, I don’t mess with them.”
“You are so badass.” Meredith was transfixed. “So does Redbud still live here? Why hasn’t she come over?” she followed up innocently, avoiding eye contact with her mother.
Belva raised an eyebrow at Mom, but she stayed quiet. “Your grandma is a troubled woman. She has her own kind of life, and we’ve got ours. Best if we don’t mix them.”
Meredith wanted nothing more than to meet this mysterious woman, but she knew better than to question Belva. It wasn’t that Belva had ever done anything to her that might inspire fear; it was the sense of what she could do.
* * *
Meredith pretended to read in her room while she waited for Mom to leave for the bar and Belva and Luann to lie down for the night. Once the house was quiet and Cliff was asleep, she crept into the back room that her mom had declared off-limits.
The room was warmer than the rest of the house, though Meredith couldn’t see a heat source. It was as if an invisible fire raged in the empty black hearth. There was something tantalizing about the rows of jars, despite their hodgepodge, recycled appearance, and she ran her fingers along them, reading the labels. Each unfamiliar word evoked a new intoxicating image—boneset, devil’s bit, bloodroot, fleabane. And then there were things she recognized but had never considered as something to be bottled—ant eggs, ditchwater, church dirt, black cat fur.
Next to the shelves was an old table filled with pictures of people in the dreamy, faded tones of decades past. Meredith’s gaze snagged on an image of a woman in the garden with her hands on her hips. Even in the stillness, she radiated a powerful force, as if she might step out of the frame. Meredith had to make herself look away.
On the wooden table in the center of the room sat a battered black leather book thick with the edges of inserted pages. The energy surged inside her at the sight of it, and she walked over to the book. She trailed her hand across the unmarked front and opened to the first page. There were handwritten words in a vintage-looking cursive reading:
Property of Belva Buck
*Trespassers will be shot*
There was nothing else on the page. With shaking hands, Meredith flipped to the next one. The left corner was dated June 17, 1965.
I am a woman today. And for my first act as a woman, I will make Leroy mine.
Granny Pallie showed me this trick with a bit of honey and it worked ok. I saw him looking at me in church which is more than he’s done in the ten years we’ve been in school together.
But I know it can be stronger.
I have a love recipe in my heart, and I think that if I say it to the bees over and over, day after day, eventually it will get into their honey. And it will—
“Find something interesting?”
Meredith shrieked and spun around, her heart beating hard in her chest. Belva stood in the doorway in her polyester housecoat and slippers with a forbidding glare.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—” She slammed the book shut and faced Belva once again, afraid to make eye contact.
Belva walked over to the book and reopened it to the first page and scanned it, her face curving into slight amusement. “I had a real flair for the dramatic when I was younger.” She studied Meredith as if debating something with herself, then she put her fingers under Meredith’s chin and forced her to look her in the eyes. “What you want to know, child? There’s no need to go snooping around at night.” Belva sat down on one of the wooden stools under the table and motioned for Meredith to join her.
Meredith took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. Here was her chance.
“What is this book for? Is it like a diary?”
Belva nodded. “Sort of. But it’s more than that. It holds all of the recipes I’ve written and ones my Granny Pallie taught me when I was about your age.” She flipped to the next page with the heading “Love Honey.”
1 handful of cotton
2 red clovers
A few drops of honeysuckle nectar
Dash of nutmeg sugar
Put all ingredients inside a copper bee smoker. Light it with a match soaked in rosemary oil and drop it in. Go to a hive you know well at sunrise and say the words while you smoke them:
Come to me, my love
You will find me in the creek swimming you
Or in the kitchen baking you
Or in my bed sleeping you
I will think only of you
And you will think only of me
You will be hungry when you eat
You will be tired when you sleep
Until you come to me
My love
Belva flipped farther into the book, and Meredith saw more pages of recipes with lists of ingredients with instructions and sections of words like poems. She saw drawings of animals and plants, and stacks of old pages in another handwriting that must have been Granny Pallie’s. “It’s the most precious thing I own, and I usually keep it hidden.” She raised an eyebrow. “But I forgot this afternoon. I was coming to put it away when I found you rifling through it.”
“Are these recipes… spells?”
“I wouldn’t call them that. Ain’t my word.”
Meredith continued to flip through the book. “But it’s true, then. You’re a witch.”
“Like I said, I don’t have much use for other people’s words. There’s the work, and I do it, and there’s no point to calling it anything special. Keeps you humble and close to the land. That’s what’s most important.”
“What do you mean?”
“There is power in the land, and when we need it, we can call upon it humbly and respectfully. That is at the core of the work. We must respect and feed the land, so that it may feed us.”
Meredith nodded. She had too many questions. “What can the land power do, exactly? Like, what kind of… work?”
Belva paused. “It helps us in all ways—with our bodies that move us and the plants that feed us and the weather around us. It helps us love the people who are here, and to stay connected to the people who have moved on. It protects us from people who seek to do us harm. It provides whatever we need, as long as we pay our respects and give back.” She stood up and went to a drawer where she pulled out an old wooden pipe. She started packing it from a small baggie in the drawer.
“Can anyone do it?”
She nodded over her pipe. “Yes, I believe anyone can do it, in some small way at least. Helps to have a good mind and a strong will, but also a willingness to give yourself over to something greater. Some lack a natural constitution for it, and they struggle. Your aunt Ruby Jo was like that. She went wherever the wind blew her. Always looking in the wrong places for something to make her feel special. Never could get a hang of it.”
“Where is she?”
Belva sighed. “She passed years ago.” She put a palm to her chest and looked up at the ceiling. “But like I was saying, there are some in our family who are born with special gifts. They’re usually related to who we are. Like Billy. He’s gentle and wild, so he’s real good with animals. Says he can sense what they’re thinking and feeling. Or me. I always taken care of people, even when I was a youngin. So, my talent is for healing. Making people feel better and all that.” She took a puff from the pipe and coughed huskily.
“Healing is most of the work. Helping people in their time of need. A lot of it you can do on your own. But sometimes, the problem is something bigger. You can’t just spread a poultice on it or light a candle. It takes a group of people and some powerful work. You gather at a crossroads, and you enter the spirit world together.”
Meredith’s eyes widened.
“There are exceptions. Your granny Redbud, for one, was born angrier than a hornet. She loved a good fight. When she started coming into her gift, she told me she could feel the power of the land coursing through her at night.” Belva gestured toward the photograph of the mesmerizing woman in the garden.
Like me, Meredith thought.
“She had a talent for pulling power straight from the land. Some of the time she didn’t even need a gathering to make something big happen. She was a powerful woman.”
“What happened to her?”
Belva sighed. “When her husband died, your grandpa, she gave up the work. And then she lost herself.”
Meredith waited for her to elaborate, but Belva only stared off into space. “Where is she? Why can’t I see her?”
Belva’s eyes bored into her. “I told you. It ain’t safe. I’m not gonna say it again.”
Meredith backed off. “What about Mom? Does she have a gift?”
Belva sighed again. “Red kept your mama away from me after Hank died. She was angry and in a lot of pain, and she had to find somewhere to put it.” She looked away. “So I never really got to show Opaline what I know. If she has a gift, it’s not something like Red’s. It’s something more… inside. Even when she was little, she liked to keep to herself. She wasn’t one of those kids that demand constant minding. I’ve always respected her for that.”
Meredith had loved that her mother kept to herself around everyone but her and Cliff. It made her feel special, like they were the only people worthy of her mother’s fierce, vibrant attention.
But it hadn’t been real. She had hidden herself and this amazing secret from them just like everyone else.
The thought burned angrily in her chest. Just because her mother hadn’t learned the work didn’t mean that Meredith couldn’t. “What about me? Do I have a talent? Can you teach me?”
Belva studied her. “You’re not ready yet.”
“But I feel ready. I think I can feel it. The power of the land. I’m ready, Grandma Mama. Please.”
“When your blood comes, you’ll be ready.”
Meredith’s cheeks burned with shame. “But what if I never bleed? Does that mean I’ll never be able to do the work?” Her anger ignited. “What about Billy? Did he have to get his period?”
Belva raised an eyebrow. “Watch your tone. Your mama might let you run your mouth, but that ain’t gonna fly with me.”
Cold sweat broke along the back of her neck again, and Meredith went silent. She looked down at the table.
“The gifts in our family usually come around puberty. It don’t have to be a period, but I can sense it’ll come for you soon. You gotta be patient.”
“But when?”
Belva raised both eyebrows this time. “I said soon. Don’t make me repeat myself again. Until then, stay out of this room. If you don’t respect the rules, you will never learn our ways.”
