Curses and Other Buried Things, page 1
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Dedication
For Susana Godwin (1793–1897)
And the women who gave me their grit
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter 1: Susana Prather
Chapter 2: Susana Prather
Chapter 3: Susana Prather
Chapter 4: Susana Prather
Chapter 5: Susana Prather
Chapter 6: Susana Prather
Chapter 7: Susana Prather
Chapter 8: Susana Prather
Chapter 9: Susana Prather
Chapter 10: Susana Prather
Chapter 11: Susana Prather
Chapter 12: Susana Prather
Chapter 13: Susana Prather
Chapter 14: Susana Prather
Chapter 15: Susana Prather
Chapter 16: Susana Prather
Chapter 17: Susana Prather
Chapter 18: Susana Prather
Chapter 19: Susana Prather
Chapter 20: Susana Prather
Chapter 21: Susana Prather
Chapter 22: Susana Prather
Chapter 23: Susana Prather
Chapter 24: Susana Prather
Chapter 25: Susana Prather
Chapter 26: Susana Prather
Chapter 27: Susana Prather
Chapter 28: Susana Prather
Chapter 29: Susana Prather
Chapter 30: Susana Prather
Chapter 31: Susana Prather
Chapter 32: Susana Prather
Chapter 33: Susana Prather
Chapter 34: Susana Prather
Chapter 35: Susana Prather
Chapter 36: Susana Prather
Chapter 37: Susana Prather
Chapter 38: Susana Prather
Chapter 39: Susana Prather
Chapter 40: Susana Prather
Chapter 41: Susana Prather
Chapter 42: Susana Prather
Author’s Closing Note
Discussion Questions
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Acclaim for Caroline George
Also by Caroline George
Copyright
Author’s Note
All of this is true except for the parts made up.
The story you’re about to read was inspired by my family’s history and folklore. Since childhood, I’ve heard tales about my great-great-great-grandmother Susana Godwin. She was Creek and lived in the Okefenokee Swamp of South Georgia, where she ran a commissary. People in the area called her a witch, either because of her ancestry or the mystical encounters recorded in Robert Latimer Hurst’s historical text This Magic Wilderness.
Of the many books I’ve written, this is by far the most personal. I wanted to celebrate my Southern heritage by returning to my roots and decided to use familiar names, events, and settings to give the story a richer authenticity.
Although I spent months researching, I acknowledge the experiences portrayed in this book are not inclusive of everyone and may prove triggering. I did my best to handle sensitive topics with grace, choosing subject matter well-known to me.
The journey to bringing this story from conception to the page required a year of honest reflection and forced me to confront my generational trauma. I realized, like protagonist Susana Prather, I had curses of my own and needed to reckon with things passed down.
My sincere hope is that you’ll leave this book freer than you came.
—Caroline George
Prologue
The swamp will not take her.
Nor will the monsters that idle within caves of cypress roots. They watch from the shoreline, their eyes blood-red coals burning the South Georgia night. Some rustle and writhe from leaves to ripples. A splash here, the flick of scales there. Teeth bared and ready to devour.
But neither alligator nor snapping turtle nor fanged snake will dare maul the girl approaching the bank. She is the cursed and the curser.
The cursed, the curser.
From her grandparents’ farmhouse she drifts, past the propane tank, past quilts pinned to a clothesline. Her eyelids flutter. She doesn’t see. She won’t remember. Sleep claims her limbs and propels her forward. Inch by inch. Toward water darker than ebony and pitch.
She isn’t the first to complete this pilgrimage, and she likely won’t be the last, for history prefers continuation. It clings to blood and bone and generations. She is marked by those who walked this walk before her. She carries a collection of oral traditions and secrets left to rot in graves. Her secrets may weasel their way into similar holes.
With each of the girl’s nearing steps, the swamp becomes more agitated. Its insects buzz, gators hiss. Cicadas and crickets harmonize an age-old hymn, or perhaps they recite a spell. Muttering louder and louder until all goes silent.
The girl freezes. Her toes sink into mud. The hem of her nightdress sweeps across water, slurping inky pigment up its skirt.
Stillness, forlorn and insidious, breathes across the landscape. It pauses the rocking chair on the back porch. It adds scents of soil and decay to the greasy after-smell of chicken livers and gravy. Primordial and familiar. Loving and wicked.
Desperate for her.
She must sense the lure. Her right foot lifts from trembling earth and guides her into the quagmire. Another step washes her ankles with liquid the color of sweet tea. Water stained and made acidic by the Okefenokee’s cypresses.
Within the farmhouse hums the fuzzy voices of Andy Griffith reruns. Papa must’ve fallen asleep in his recliner with a basket of strung beans on his lap. If he awoke and peered between curtains, he’d see his granddaughter in a frightful state, wading to waist-deep, clothed in nothing more than a hand-me-down nightgown.
He will not wake for hours; neither will she.
The girl cuts a path through lilies blooming white in the tannic darkness. She lowers into depths softer than silk as alligators sail toward her in a V formation. Their snouts glisten. They swim circles around her, their rough hides grazing her legs.
Water up to her chest, then her neck. Swamp devouring her as it eats the bank, chewing grass into ribbons limp and squirming.
Down she goes into the murk.
Until she vanishes beneath a single ripple.
Chapter 1
Susana Prather
July 4th
Blood holds all kinds of curses.
I’ve heard those words since I was in diapers. A saying of sorts, like “get while the getting’s good” and “cain’t never could.” I figured all families cautioned their young to remember their ancestry. To mind their inclinations. I assumed I wasn’t the only person in Berryville, Georgia, whose great-great-great-great-grandma cursed her bloodline.
Around here, there’s no shortage of ghost stories, but hexes aren’t so common, especially ones like mine. Going back generations, every firstborn daughter, from Suzannah Owens to Mama, lost her mind and met a tragic end.
The curse remained dormant until their eighteenth birthdays.
Nanny won’t admit she believes the folklore. She thinks superstition isn’t Christian and claims stories are stories and curses are the consequences of sin. Whenever someone mentions the hex, Nanny rolls her eyes and calls it hooey. Even Papa says the family curse is nothing more than a scapegoat, what people blame when life isn’t fair.
But my grandparents nail horseshoes above doorways to bring luck to all who enter. They never leave a rocking chair rocking to prevent haints from taking a seat.
Occasionally the words leave their mouths.
Blood holds all kinds of curses. Mine holds more than most.
My grandparents deny belief in the unnatural, but I sense their dread. They won’t look me in the eyes and confess what we all know.
They’re waiting for the curse to take me too.
Even now, as they huddle with everyone around the dining room table, counting candles for my birthday cake, I feel their unease like the breeze from the box fan.
Nanny impales the sour cream pound cake with eighteen candles.
I crush an embroidered napkin in my fist. I pick at its stitched flowers as everybody lowers their forks and swivels in their seats to watch me blow in another year.
My grandparents divided the party between two tables. My friends sit at a foldout. JC Owens, Cleo Shealy, Daisy Ruger, Stokes Burrell, and Holler Sloan. My family occupy the main table. Nanny; Papa; Aunt Missouri Jane; her boyfriend, Randall; Uncle Ronnie; his wife, Kaye, and my eight-year-old cousin, Charlie.
Nanny wouldn’t risk the bad luck of seating thirteen people at her dinner table.
Papa shimmies a disposable camera from his pocket. “Smile big for me.” He glances through the viewfinder. “Oops. Hold on. Forgot to wind it.”
I maintain a smile until his camera clicks.
Missouri Jane fumbles with a lighter. She holds the flame above wicks, quivering as she lights candles one to eighteen. “Make a wish, Susana.” She squeezes my shoulder before lowering into the chair next to me. Her powder-blue uniform reeks of burnt sage and incense.
She’s never been one to
I lean over the spread of Southern cooking. Cheese pie, chicken livers, purple hull peas, tomatoes sliced and seasoned. I extinguish the candles with two breaths.
I wish for cooler weather. I’ve tried wishing for other things, but Mama hasn’t emerged from the swamp, and the curse hasn’t become any less of a threat.
Smoke wisps toward the chandelier, through a canopy of streamers and balloons. Never in my life has Nanny purchased decorations. The summer heat must’ve gone to her head.
Or maybe she worries this is the last party I’ll have.
Dread churns my stomach like butter. I avert my gaze from the cake to keep from getting sick. Dread, the nameless kind for a nameless curse. It does have a name, I suppose.
Suzanna Yawn.
Her portrait hangs next to the grandfather clock along with photos of Mama and Great-Aunt Susie. In keeping with tradition, firstborn daughters are named after Suzanna. We all bear a striking resemblance to her. Nobody has been able to explain the oddity.
Same name. Same face. Perhaps it’s all meant to remind us of the fate breathing down our necks. Of the curse we’re rumored to share. If I survive long enough to have a daughter, I won’t name her after the person who supposedly doomed us.
Charlie blows a kazoo. I flinch at the sound, my heart leaping to my throat. I accept a slab of cake from Missouri Jane, who squeezes my shoulder again. Her focus goes to the pictures on the wall and the clock with its hands reaching toward eight thirty.
I was born at 11:05 p.m.
“Open your gifts, Susana!” Charlie bounces in his seat.
Papa tacks him down with a hand to his head. “Hold your horses.”
As if on cue, my friends rise from the foldout and beset me with presents. A Dairy Queen gift card from Stokes and Holler. A butterfly necklace from Cleo and Daisy.
“Happy birthday, Susana.” JC inches forward, dressed in his Okefenokee Swamp Park uniform and a ball cap that never leaves his scalp. He swings a key chain from his thumb. At the end of its chain dangles an alligator claw shriveled into a fist.
“Is that for me?” I motion to the mummified appendage.
Last year, JC took me into his family’s laundry room and showed me the mason jars above the washing machine. Each housed a serpent preserved in formaldehyde.
He told me to choose one for my birthday gift.
“You might like this better.” He offers a paper bag from Floyd’s Gas Mart.
I reach into the bag and unearth a poetry book. Its binding has decayed into thread and glue. I leaf through its pages, each fragile piece of parchment decorated with old handwriting.
JC cracks a smile. “Figured you’d appreciate that more than a snake.”
“A bit.” I rise from my chair and collide with his chest. I embrace him a second too long, maybe because he smells like childhood. Netting fireflies and playing in antlion burrows.
Maybe because he gives me safe feelings.
“Okay, leave room for Jesus.” Cleo prods my arm with her acrylic nails, remnants from last weekend’s pageant. Her doe eyes flash a warning. She acts like this when JC gives me attention. Ever since they started dating, she’s only tolerated cordial exchanges between us.
The fact he’s my fifth cousin doesn’t matter. He took me to junior prom, so Cleo is convinced we’re secretly in love.
My friends return to their table and talk about football and who’s pregnant at Berryville High. The six of us grew up together. I met JC and Stokes in kindergarten and Cleo, Daisy, and Holler in first grade. We were joined at the hip throughout elementary and middle school.
Now we share a handful of classes.
I think we might’ve parted ways years ago if our town was a little bigger, if we thought we could make new friends at school. History and proximity keep us tethered.
No matter how intolerable Cleo becomes, how much we all change, the excuse of You’ve been together forever echoes through my head whenever I get the urge to cut ties.
Missouri shovels cake into her mouth, still gazing at the clock. “What’d you wish for?” she asks me. Her hand shakes. The cake sloughs off her fork and lands in her lap.
“I’m not supposed to tell.”
Missouri swears under her breath and rushes to clean the frosting from her skirt. “Sorry. My nerves are shot.” She conjures a smile. “I’m being silly is all.”
She found Mama’s cardigan floating among lily pads.
Mama vanished into the Okefenokee, and no one heard from her again.
“Just another day,” I whisper and hope my aunt believes I believe it. The clock will tick past 11:05 p.m. Curse or no curse, I won’t perish in the night.
The swamp won’t take me like it took Mama.
I want to believe I believe it.
Ronnie and Kaye hand me thirty dollars as they begin their farewells. The process takes an hour. They migrate from the dining room to the hallway, where they chat about the upcoming school year. Then, they wander to the foyer and exchange hugs.
Papa takes Charlie out back to show him a possum trap, which delays the ritual.
Eventually my relatives wave goodbye and pile into their Buick. As much as they come around, I should be closer to them, but they’re the sort of people who can talk for hours without getting personal. I know more about the guys in Papa’s bluegrass group.
My friends leave with Randall in tow. Once their vehicles reverse down the driveway, Missouri Jane reveals a thermos of Green Frog coffee, superior to the Folgers Nanny keeps on hand. We relocate to the kitchen’s laminate table for a second round of cake.
Papa leans back in his chair. “Tell that man of yours to set a date,” he says to Missouri. “Before I pull my shotgun on him.”
“Daddy, you’ve been threatening to pull a gun on Randall for the past eight years.” Missouri downs her coffee, then nudges an empty mug to the table’s center.
She and Randall moved in together after their engagement. Eight years later, there’s no wedding in sight. Nanny and Papa disapprove, as do the folks at Hard-Shell Baptist.
Randall isn’t a bad man. He doesn’t beat Missouri, and he co-owns an automobile repair shop with Willy Burrell. An entrepreneur, Missouri calls him. I consider that a stretch.
He spends too much time on the couch, and he keeps the liquor store in business. Whenever I visit their trailer, I find bins of empty beer cans out back.
Missouri won’t leave Randall. She doesn’t think she deserves better. After her first man cheated, all she wanted was a guy who’d stick around. She got her wish.
“And I’ve meant it every time. Ain’t right of him to give you that ring and not marry you.” Papa dusts cake crumbs from his mustache.
“Seaborn, there’s no talking sense into her,” Nanny says with a sigh. She tunnels fingers through her short, gray-blonde hair. No matter how often she does so, the strands always return to their styled places. Even they know not to test her patience.
“Into me?” Missouri scoffs, propping her elbows on the tabletop. “You’ve made your feelings clear, Mama. Everybody from Kettle Creek to Berryville knows the pious Agnes Prather frowns on her daughter’s love life.”
“Shacking up with that man . . . it isn’t God’s way.” Nanny takes a long sip from her mug. “Perhaps if you’d gone to community college like I told you, you wouldn’t be stuck waitressing and taking care of your deadbeat fiancé—”
Missouri groans at the ceiling. “Do you see what I have to deal with, Susana?”
I grab her hand and lace our fingers.
Nanny and Missouri go together like oil and water, or perhaps fire and gasoline. The problem is, they don’t understand each other. Missouri hates farming and long sermons. She goes to the nail salon every two weeks and buys her clothes new.
She turned out different from the rest of us. I’m glad. Without her, family gatherings would consist of Ronnie’s jabber and Kaye’s latest multilevel marketing scheme.
I do think Nanny and Papa are too hard on Missouri. They tell her, “Life is what you make it.” As if she could become a millionaire out in Beverly Hills. Life is what you make it. But not everybody receives the same material.
I finish my coffee and rise from the table. “I better head on to bed.”
The microwave blinks 9:59 into 10:00.
