Curses and Other Buried Things, page 12
“Why do you bother yourself with the likes of us?” he asked. The question posed others. It peered into Suzanna, at her days spent tending Ruger’s fields.
She lowered the rifle. “My daddy says I ain’t so good at being a girl.”
August rubbed his mouth, perhaps to hide a smile. It appeared just the same, dimpling his cheeks and wrinkling the corners of his eyes. “Ma’am, I don’t believe that one bit. I reckon you’re more woman than this town has ever seen.”
Warmth rushed to Suzanna’s cheeks.
Her feelings were soft and lacy, and she’d only known herself as coarse.
Farmhands chuckling, Suzanna stepped toward August, so near to him, sweat from his hair dripped onto her skirt. “Sweet talker, huh?”
“No, ma’am.” His voice reminded her of melted butter.
“Take your roughhousing elsewhere,” she told Obediah. Her skin tingled from August’s proximity. The sensation came as a shock, for her emotions had seemed plaited and pinned like her tresses, as stiff and starchy as her petticoats.
Obediah retrieved clothes from a fencepost and shoved them against August’s chest. He breezed past Suzanna, his audience following in an exodus from the corral.
August whistled. “Well, I’ll be darned. You got these boys under a spell or something?”
“You best go and wash up.” Suzanna turned to leave.
“Miss Yawn, I ain’t one for superstition,” he called, “but if magic exists in this world, I’m convinced she looks like you.”
Chapter 12
Susana Prather
August, Present Day
Sleep has a particular smell.
Like that of Strickland’s Department Store, both sweet and stale, reminiscent of rotted figs or pond water green with algae. It is the smell of skin and spit and sweat. It is a pillow drawn from its case and exposed naked to the light, with brown stains ringing across its fabric.
My sleep reeks of earth. I manage to wake without its metallic perfume by resealing my window. I hammer three-inch nails into the pane, then build a wall over my door. At this point I’m unsure whether my efforts are meant to keep me inside or to keep things out.
Vines branch into a curtain over my window.
I oversleep because their leaves block the sun.
Before anyone notices, I hack their tendrils with a machete. I cut them to the ground. There, hopping and slithering in the grass, are dozens of toads and snakes.
They creep from the swamp in an organized horde.
Nails and barricades don’t prevent my sleepwalking for more than a couple of nights. I can drag my feet all I like, but I’m still headed toward my end. I feel it beneath my muscles and bones, festering as my exhaustion grows. An instability, something wild and unhinged. It sinks its roots deeper. It appears on my face as blue veins and a sallow complexion.
No matter how much I research, the question of what to do next remains unanswered. I dissect Suzanna’s curse and rearrange its words.
Until you see the truth of what you are.
I study my family tree and write an analysis of each firstborn daughter.
Until they say otherwise.
I mutter over and over that I’m not cursed.
With my blood I make what only my bones can break.
Careful not to set off the smoke detector, I burn herbs in the center of my room. I line the baseboards with salt, whisper prayers, and hang a wooden cross over my bed.
I go about my days as if the curse isn’t slowly eating me alive.
Godwin comes around. He works the fields and does odd jobs even after Papa recovers. They fix the irrigation pump. They load hogs into a trailer and drive them to the butcher.
Nanny wants to expand the vegetable garden, so Godwin accepts the task of clearing land in exchange for Papa replacing his AC unit. Day after day, Godwin chops and burns.
His woodsmoke fogs the house.
I avoid him, or at least I try, by delivering produce to the Green Frog. Whenever I return from errands, he stands in the yard, shirtless, dressed in brown overalls and boots.
He digs up stumps with a hoe. “I could use some help if you’re done piddlin’ around.”
“Eat dirt.” I hurry past him. A ball of mud explodes across my back. I arch my spine as the soil oozes down my neck, between my shoulder blades.
“You first, darlin’,” Godwin says with a laugh.
I can’t say I hate him. What I feel is more like repulsion, as if we’re forces so opposed, we cannot exist together. Even his nearness destabilizes me.
I find Godwin in the carport a couple of days later. He crouches next to the riding lawn mower, tinkering with its control panel.
“What’re you doing?” I ask him.
He fits a jumper wire to the ignition switch. “Hot-wiring the mower,” he says without glancing from his work. “Your grandpa couldn’t find the key.”
“That’s the most redneck thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Girl, I used to race these things.” Godwin hops into the seat and presses the tip of his test light against the ignition switch. The engine rumbles awake. “Yee-haw!” Shifting the throttle, he steers the mower onto the front lawn and cuts lines through the grass.
Midday washes the landscape with a dusty gold hue. Insects sibilate every which way, a crescendo in the slobbering heat. I wander to a lumber pile and pry an axe from a stump.
An antlion writhes in the burrow at my feet, snatching a bug with its pincers.
I place a log face up on the chopping block and raise the axe over my head. With a strike, I split the wood in half. Godwin doesn’t watch. He whips around the yard like a race car driver.
Pain shoots through my foot.
I yelp and collapse onto my backside, examining my left sneaker. The point of a nail protrudes from the vamp. Blood soaks the fabric, blooming from a red dot into a puddle.
The lawn mower goes silent. Boots crunch gravel.
Godwin drops to the ground beside me and reaches for my foot.
“Don’t touch it,” I beg through clenched teeth. “Nanny! Papa!”
Godwin runs his thumbs from my ankle to toes, perhaps to confirm the nail didn’t pierce bone. He shimmies a rag from his pocket and forces it between my teeth. “Bite this.”
Without hesitation, he tears the nail from my foot.
I scream as pain sears up my leg.
“You have a tetanus shot, don’t you?” Godwin peels off my bloody shoe and inspects the puncture. His calluses grate against my skin.
I spit out the rag. Its taste lingers, a tonic of salt and soot. “You couldn’t be gentle?”
“When the pain comes, sugar don’t make it better. Sometimes you just need a rope to bite onto and somebody to hold your hand.” Godwin recites the words like a proverb. He tucks the nail into his overalls and meets my gaze, his expression all steel.
“You didn’t hold my hand,” I say.
“Want me to?” Godwin fights a smile. He offers his hand, swearing when I lick my index finger and wipe it across his palm. “Oh, real nice.”
Days finish with lightning bugs and box fans and begin with cutting vines and shooing alligators from the backyard. The Okefenokee draws closer each night. I try to ignore it.
As Godwin chops wood into blocks, I hobble onto the front porch and lean against a column. “Nanny, did Papa install a fire hydrant out front?” I raise my arm to block the sun. “Never mind. It’s just Godwin.”
“Very funny.” He splits a log. His shoulders are the color of raw meat. “It’s genetic.”
“You hear of sunscreen before? What about aloe vera?”
He lowers the axe and pivots toward me. “SPF fifty, baby.” He gestures to his chiseled body, his burnt skin glossed with sweat.
“You should get your money back.”
Godwin swings the axe. His muscles flex. His cheeks swell with a breath. “It’s five dollars,” he tells me once lumber sloughs off the chopping block.
“For sunscreen?”
“The show.”
“I’d rather watch cotton grow.” My face burning, I launch off the column.
Barney Fife, the stray cat, bounds from beneath the fig tree and makes a beeline to Godwin. The animal rubs itself against Godwin’s calves, flicking its bushy tail.
Godwin pets the cat with tentative strokes. He flashes a silly grin, beaming in such a way I can’t help but smile too. “This’s one cool cat.”
“You like Barney?”
He scoops the creature into his arms, cradling it against his chest. “I’m usually scared of cats. This one is cool, though. I’ve watched him play with the neighbor’s hound dogs.”
A pang of melancholy shoots through me as I watch Godwin tote the animal. For a moment, he looks younger, like the person I knew all those years ago. His eyes shimmer, and part of me—a massive part—wishes they still lit up whenever he glanced my way.
The Green Frog places an order for baked goods and casseroles, so I stay indoors and make biscuits while Nanny frets over whether to send Godwin for extra mayonnaise.
Olan Mills photos smile on the fridge as Nanny and I labor over Pyrex and dough.
Ever since Missouri Jane found what she called “the face of Jesus,” a design in the floor tiles, Nanny has tiptoed around the kitchen, careful not to step on the likeness.
Papa returns from lunch. He and his picking group meet twice a month at the café in the basement of Berryville Antique Mall. They play their instruments in exchange for meals.
Music and the work of our hands. That’s what defines us, Papa believes.
“Lunch must’ve been nice,” Nanny says when he pecks her cheek. She dusts crumbs from his flannel and scratches a globby stain, jalapeño raspberry jam if I had to guess.
“Ordered that pimento cheese sandwich.” Papa chuckles and pats his belly.
Nanny motions to his clothes. “I was looking at your shirt to see if you brought some home with you.”
“Why, you hungry?” Papa kisses my forehead, his breath stinking of cheddar. He goes to the hall closet and fetches his tackle box.
“What’re you fishing for?” I ask.
Papa shrugs and gives me a wink. “Whatever is stupid enough to bite my hook.”
I place a bowl in the sink and turn on the faucet. As I wash my hands, Godwin walks past the kitchen window, dragging a tarp piled with brush.
“Why is he still here?” I ask Papa.
“He’s family.”
“No, he ain’t.”
“Susana, mind your grammar.” Nanny gives me a disapproving look, then resumes mixing a base of whipped cream, crushed pineapple, and pistachio pudding. She’ll take the Watergate salad, known around here as Green Stuff, to Hard-Shell’s luncheon.
According to her, a woman isn’t truly Southern if she isn’t on a church food committee.
Papa nods at the window. “That boy out there—his grandpa worked this land with me, so did his pa. We may not share blood, but we got the same kind of bones holding us together.”
“You don’t need Godwin’s help. You have me.”
“This ain’t about work, Susana,” Papa says with a sigh. “I promised Gus I’d look after his boy. Godwin needs people. All folks do. Nobody should have nobody.”
“Take him to breakfast or something. Don’t make him clean up our yard.” I brace my weight against the kitchen counter. If Nanny and Papa knew what happened—or almost happened—a year ago, they wouldn’t force me to spend time with Godwin.
He scares me, I think. Or maybe I’m afraid of the propensities I inherited from Mama. Being around him makes the curse feel more alive inside me.
“My mind’s made up,” Papa says. “Godwin is family. He has our bones.”
What Papa calls bones, others would call spirit or grit. We are built from the same material, and that makes us kinfolk. To Papa, the word carries a definition far broader than one in a dictionary. Kin is the history between us. Kin is our sore backs and the dirt beneath our fingernails. Kin is the land we dwell upon. And with that word comes loyalty.
Godwin has a place with us whether I like it or not.
The next day, Godwin and I extend the garden with rows of beans and leafy greens. We kneel and bury seeds. Earthworms wiggle in the cool dirt. I gather them for JC to use as bait.
“Nanny says if you get a bump on your tongue, you told a lie,” I say when Godwin sits on his calves and scratches his tongue.
“Susana Prather, you take my breath away.” He plunges a spade into the soil and motions to his mouth. “Guess I’ll get another, huh?”
I wince from his sharpness.
My chest aching, I place a pinch of ground in my mouth. Its flavor is like the smell of petrichor. Geosmin, the taste of healthy earth.
“You put dirt in your mouth,” Godwin says.
“It’s how I test the soil. Papa taught me.” I lock eyes with him. The annoyance in his gaze morphs into something else. “What?”
“Nothing. I just don’t know any girls who stick their tongues in dirt.” He motions to my row and seed packets. “Space the collards farther apart.”
“Three inches is fine.”
“Yeah, well, once the seedlings grow, you’ll have to give them more room.” Godwin watches me sprinkle the seeds close together. He must sense my defiance.
Rising to his feet, he yanks off his ball cap and slams it on the ground. “You know what your problem is? You can’t stand people telling you what to do.”
“I can’t stand you telling me what to do.”
“Why? What have I ever done to you, Susana?” he shouts, waving his arms. “I told you to go live your life. Big whoop.”
“No, you told me to go live your version of living.” I scramble from the earth, brushing rocks and leaves from my knees.
“Fine, you don’t agree with me. You wanna work this dirt until you’re buried in it. I don’t care what you do,” Godwin yells. His chest rises and falls beneath a ratty T-shirt cut to shreds. “I’ve seen what’s out there is all.”
A barred owl hoots from somewhere in the Okefenokee.
Godwin curses and shakes his head at the sky. “When I was in elementary school, I went on a field trip to the zoo. I remember the tigers, how they paced their cage. They weren’t aggressive, just restless, like they needed to step outside for some air. That’s how I feel, like I can’t breathe this air anymore, and if I don’t find a way out, God knows what’ll happen.”
“Is that why you left Berryville?”
He wipes his nose. “I need some water.”
“Godwin . . .” I stop him. “I want to know.”
“What, so you can psychoanalyze me?” he shouts. “I’m not a good person, Susana, and I can’t be different. Me coming back to this godforsaken town is proof. I can’t change. I can’t get out. I’m stuck this way, and nobody can do a darn thing about it.”
“Did you mean it?” I can’t believe I’m asking the question. “What you said last year?”
He shrugs. “Did you?”
We spoke our minds that night, after he took me to a dive on the outskirts of town. I liked the smell of the smoke and how his lingered in my hair from the cigarette he begged off some guy at the bar. I didn’t want to wash him off.
Until he said what he said.
Godwin retrieves his ball cap and looks at me with an apology in his blues. “We bring out the worst in each other, don’t we?”
Our fight protected me from repeating Mama’s mistakes. It proved Godwin and I were headed in opposite directions. We still are.
“I hope you find your way out,” I tell him.
“And I hope you get whatever it is you want.” Godwin turns and moves toward the house. By the time I walk to the front yard, his truck no longer sits in the driveway.
If the curse didn’t exist, I think I’d farm this land, raise a family on it. I would grow old in some old house with a man who loves me. Perhaps I’d go see what made Godwin so desperate for more. Whatever it was, it must’ve been a wonderful sight.
Everything I have right now, I’d like to keep. Maybe that’s what I want—not more, just more of the same. I’m still not sure. I haven’t thought much about the future.
Doing so has seemed like wishful thinking.
Missouri brings Charlie over for supper. We eat corn on the cob and Boston butt, then linger in the backyard while Papa churns strawberry ice cream.
“Susan had a poster of Chad Michael Murray in the closet,” Missouri says with a laugh. She and I swing in the hammock as bullfrogs perform in the wire grass. “Daddy took us to Blockbuster on Fridays. Susan bought the poster and snuck it home without Mama knowing. We giggled about it, felt like we had a boy hiding in the closet.”
I rest my temple against her shoulder. “Y’all were close, weren’t you?”
“For a while.”
“Do you know if Mama sleepwalked?”
Missouri nods and points her toes at the swamp. “Not long after you were born, I saw her sleepwalk outside and had to chase her down.”
“She must’ve been eighteen.”
“A lot happened that year.” Missouri shoots me a nervous glance. “Why do you ask?”
“Nanny said Mama had trouble sleeping.”
“Susana, if you’ve been sleepwalking—”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“But I do,” Missouri says, her voice cracking. “I should’ve helped Susan get medical care. Because of her insomnia, she hallucinated and fell asleep at weird times—”
“None of that was your fault.”
“After Susan wrecked her car, she worried she’d hurt you.” Missouri squeezes my hand. “I should’ve done more to help her. Maybe if I had, she wouldn’t be gone.”
“You were seventeen.”
“I didn’t try hard enough. That’s the biggest regret of my life.” Missouri wipes her eyes. She gazes at the treetops, the Milky Way visible beyond moss-draped branches. “Your mama deserved better than what this town gave her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You don’t need to protect me anymore.” I finger the name tag pinned to her uniform. “Our family keeps so many secrets. Nanny and Papa rarely talk about Mama—”
