Bloodroot Read online

  “Hey there,” he said to Mama. I felt Johnny’s body get stiff beside me. Mama put a sack of flour in the truck like she didn’t hear.

  “I said hey there, gal.” The man’s voice was loud and ugly. “You going to let on like you don’t know me?” Mama lifted her face then and looked at him. The red spots went out of her cheeks. “It’s been a long time,” the man said, “but I knowed it was you the minute I seen all that damn hair.”

  Mama stared. It was like she couldn’t move. Mr. Barnett put down his dog feed and stepped toward the man. I knowed Mr. Barnett would protect Mama.

  “What’s wrong, Myra?” the man asked. The way he grinned at her made me feel funny. “Do I look too much like my brother?” Mama didn’t say anything. He turned his mean eyes on me and Johnny, like he just noticed us. His face got white as Mama’s. “What’s this?” he said in a different voice. “Are these your younguns?”

  “Get on in the truck, honey,” Mr. Barnett said to Mama. Then he looked at me and Johnny and said, “Y’uns, too.”

  “If I recall, you was a churchgoing girl, Myra,” the man said. He stepped toward the truck and it was like Mama woke up from a dream. She opened the passenger door and got in fast, just as me and Johnny was climbing in the driver’s side. Mr. Barnett said, “Watch it there, feller,” but the man kept on coming. I squeezed close to Mama. She was pressed up against the window staring straight ahead.

  “You ever read that part in the Bible,” the man asked as Mr. Barnett got in behind the wheel, “that says your sins will find you out?” Mr. Barnett pulled the door shut but I could still hear the man’s voice. “I know what you done!” he hollered, slapping the hood as Mr. Barnett backed out of the parking lot. “I know what you done to my brother!”

  Looking back, it don’t make sense about that man being at the co-op the first time Mama ever let us off the mountain. She probably figured it was the Lord punishing her, but I don’t think He works that way. Sometimes the world is just hard to understand. I don’t believe it was seeing that man that ruint Mama. I think it was her worst fear coming true, of that man seeing Johnny and me. On the way back from the co-op she whispered, “I knew better.” It was the last words she spoke for a long time. After that, I never wanted to leave the mountain again. I seen what she had tried to hide us from.

  JOHNNY

  In the early spring of my eighth year, I ended up with ringworm. We kept a few chickens and Whitey had puppies, but wherever the fungus came from it was ugly, traveling up my leg in big scabby loops that looked like burns. That morning while my mama was sewing a rip in Laura’s dress, she happened to glance up and notice. It was one of those days she would come to life and see what needed replacing in the pantry and picking in the garden and what needed to be washed. Those were the times she would silently note the holes in our shoes, slip off for a day or so, and come back with new things in a brown paper sack for us to take whenever we found them. Laura and I seldom got sick or hurt in those last two years on Bloodroot Mountain, but when we did we looked after ourselves. She never made mention of my copperhead bite, as if she didn’t even notice how bad off I was. It was up to me to get better alone. Later that same year, when Laura ate the wrong berries and got sick to her stomach, I was the one who took care of her. But for some reason, my mama happened to see the ringworm that morning and it must have reminded her of the way her granny used to cure ailments like mine.

  She finished sewing Laura’s ripped dress and slipped it back over my sister’s head. We followed her out the back door and up behind the house where the mountain was steeper and wilder. It was hard to keep up with her, ducking under branches and climbing over fallen trees. Now and again her hair would get hung on a twig or bush and she would push on without caring. I tried to help Laura along and we both slipped a few times on the wet, slimy rocks. More than once we came across swampy puddles and trickles of ice-cold water running down the mountain because it was early spring and the woods were thawing out. By the time we reached the spot on a slope where she wanted to stop, we were all three briar-scratched and muddy. There were shreds of low fog and the air was colder so far up the mountain. It hurt my throat to breathe, but it tasted sweet.

  Our mama pointed to a scattering of white flowers along the ground, peeking up through a leftover litter of winter’s dead leaves. She got down on her knees and dug one up with a trowel she had brought in her dress pocket, then held up the root for us to see. It was thick and fleshy, like a finger under a mess of thin, wiry hair. She snapped it with her long, strong hands and I was scared when I saw the red sap because it looked like splattered blood. I didn’t know much better than to think she had wounded a living thing, made a sacrifice for my ringworm. “The Cotter boys used to gather up this bloodroot and sell it,” she said. “But it might die out if we take too much. Granny used bloodroot to treat everything. Warts, headaches, sore throats. When Granddaddy’s gums would bleed she’d put it in his toothpaste. You know he still had most of his teeth when he died, and him an old man. Granny said, too, the Indian warriors used to paint their faces with it.”

  Laura took hold of my shirttail. We hadn’t heard our mama speak so much in a long time and didn’t know what to make of it. If we stayed close while she hung sheets on the line or split wood or scaled fish we could hear her reciting verses sometimes that I thought might be from the Bible. Otherwise, we seldom heard her voice anymore. I held still and willed Laura not to move either, afraid of breaking the spell. Then our mama turned on us with those wild blue eyes and I had a crazy fear that she was going to eat us up. But she just reached out her fingers, stained red with bloodroot sap, and smeared some high on my cheekbone. She did the other side, too, and I must have looked funny because she laughed. I’d heard my mama laugh before, but that day it felt like a miracle. She knelt in the leaves and dipped her finger in the sap again and again until my whole face was painted. It tickled and soon all three of us were laughing, scaring up birds from the trees. Then suddenly it was over, her laughter dried up like turning off a spigot. She went back to the business of gathering bloodroot as if nothing had happened.

  On the way back to the house I fell behind and stopped to look at my reflection in the creek water. She had given me the face of a warrior, anointed my cheeks with birds in flight and marked my forehead with snakes coiled to strike. I thought, “She must know that I’m a copperhead now.” Or maybe she knew I was bitten all along.

  LAURA

  I might never know for sure who that man at the co-op was, or what Mama done to his brother. Me and Johnny was little then and didn’t talk about it much. All we knowed was how Mama changed after she seen him. First she started forgetting to make me and Johnny breakfast. The house didn’t smell like ham and eggs anymore when we woke up. Mama would still be laying in the bed with her eyes wide open and the covers pulled up to her chin. When I touched her shoulder she’d flinch. I cried because she looked at me like she didn’t know who I was anymore. Johnny said, “It’s okay. I’ll fix you something.” He tried to make biscuits but they was flat and hard like crackers.

  Them first weeks after the co-op it was like Mama was waiting on somebody to come. She’d pace the floor and look out the window. One evening we was setting in the front room listening to the radio and heard a bump at the side of the house. Then the lilac bush by the kitchen door started rustling. Mama jumped up and went after her granddaddy’s shotgun. Me and Johnny stood in the kitchen holding hands. She went out and the gun shot off. Me and Johnny ran down the back steps and seen one of the Cotter man’s cows had got loose. It ran back in the woods bawling and Mama turned to us with the shotgun still in her hand. Johnny said, “Don’t worry. It was just a cow.” But Mama started crying so hard she couldn’t stop. All me and Johnny could do was stand in the light of the kitchen door and stare at her. We didn’t know how to make her get better.

  The winter was even harder. It came a storm and I found her laying in the snow, so cold her lips was blue. I throwed myself across her to w
arm her up. “What’s wrong, Mama?” I asked, but she didn’t say. After that she got worse. Some days she acted more like her old self. But on the worst days she stood in one place for hours without moving. It was like her soul flew off someplace. Mama never had talked much, and she always liked being outdoors better than indoors. But after that trip to the co-op she hardly ever said a word. Sometimes she even slept outside in the woods under piles of fallen leaves.

  Me and Johnny did the best we could for ourselves. Mr. Barnett and his wife was worried about us. He brung us food and clothes and one day he said they might ought to tell somebody how Mama was acting, but I knowed he didn’t want to get her in trouble. It got so bad on the end that Johnny’s ribs was poking out. I hated seeing him so skinny. He was the one that held me when I was hungry and made me laugh when I got scared.

  It was good to have Johnny but I needed Mama. One time she was gone all day and I slipped off from the house and went far up the mountain to Johnny’s rock. I pressed myself flat and stretched out my arms. The rock was smooth and cool and a wind was blowing, raising bumps along my arms. I closed my eyes and prayed hard for Mama to come home. I still had my eyes shut when I heard feet coming. My heart went faster. I never had a prayer answered the minute I said it before. I was afraid to look. Somebody was standing over me. I heard breathing and knowed it was Mama. It seemed like something magic was about to happen. Finally I got the courage to look. It was a big brown and white horse with Mama’s blue eyes, staring down at me. I never seen anything so pretty. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t move. I just laid there and shivered. Whatever it was, God sent it to me. I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could get out any words, the horse had done walked off in the trees. That’s one memory I never told Johnny about. I didn’t want him to say it was another one of my dreams.

  JOHNNY

  I watched my mama sometimes at night, peering around the door-jamb into her bedroom. There was no door and she used to tack a ragged blanket up, but eventually it fell down and she never bothered to put it back. She would kneel by the bed with her back to me and though I couldn’t see her mouth moving, it seemed I could hear the creak of her tongue, the snap of her opening and closing lips like dry twigs underfoot.

  I always bowed my head and prayed with her, asking God for the same thing every night. I wanted my father to come for me. I realized at some point that I must have one. I only asked my mama about him once. She was rolling out dough and I was sitting at her feet, flour sifting down on my head as I cut pictures from an old catalogue. I asked, “Do I have a daddy?” Her rolling pin stilled. “Of course,” she said. “Everybody does.” I thought for a second. “What’s his name?” When she answered, her voice was small and hoarse. “John. His name is John.” It didn’t occur to me until later that I had been named after him. Then I asked, “Where did he go?” She put down the rolling pin and stared at the dough. “Far away,” she said. “Across the ocean, to another country where there were children who needed him more than you do.” She stood there for a second longer before turning and walking out the kitchen door. I was sorry without knowing what I had done. I never brought it up again. But even as small as I was, I didn’t believe her. I had my own idea of a father, one who was closer to home and easier to find. Hiding there in the dark I saw him best, a taller version of me with black eyes like mine and nothing like the wild blue of my mother’s. Sometimes I saw him sitting behind a desk in an office wearing a tie. Sometimes I saw him bent over a hoe tending his garden, at a house in the valley where the mountains were a distant, smoky dream. He lived alone, waiting, preparing a place for Laura and me. When we got there, he would let us sip strong black coffee before we left for school on a yellow bus. At night the three of us would sit together watching a television set like the one the Barnetts had in their living room.

  One summer I hid in the woods and watched a man walk up the road, shirt off and slung over his shoulder, naked back gleaming with sweat. From a distance I couldn’t distinguish his features, and some object I couldn’t make out dangled from his hand. As he got closer my mouth went dry. I thought maybe God had answered my prayer.

  The man stopped in the road near my hiding place to wipe sweat from his brow. He didn’t look the way I had imagined, but I thought he could still be my father. I wanted him to be so badly that I couldn’t keep quiet. I burst out of the trees and skidded down the embank ment. I stood panting before the man and he took a few step-back ward.

  “Hey, buddy,” he grinned, eyes wide. “Where’d you come from?”

  I wanted to answer but my tongue was numb. I was convinced that I had been saved. The man waited for me to respond. When he saw that I didn’t intend to speak, he held up the big can in his hand and shook it.

  “You know where I can get me a little gas? My pickup quit on me back yonder.”

  That’s when all the hope drained out of me in a puddle at the stranger’s feet. Standing there in the middle of the road, staring sorrowfully up at the empty gas can, I had no idea how soon I would find my father, or at least a piece of him.

  The moon was full that night and I could see everything in my mama’s bedroom, long curls of flowered wallpaper coming down in places and the corners netted with cobwebs, a rocking chair with missing slats. There was a rag rug on the floor, like others scattered all over the house that she would take out and beat in the sun, dust flying around her head in a brown swarm. Under the window was a bureau with yellowed glass knobs that held her nightgowns and the few graying shifts she wore every day. Sometimes I watched her slip them over her naked body before she left the house to wander the mountain or fish along the creek and I never knew when she would be back.

  So many nights I had watched my mama kneeling beside the old iron bed, but this time she leaned her back against it so that I could see her face, bowed and silvered in the moonlight. I can only think she must have wanted me to know about the box. I couldn’t tell much about it in the shadows, a small, blackish square that she held open in her hands. Then she turned and looked in my direction. She seemed to stare straight through me. If she had spoken a word, I might have bolted away from there and never gone back. I’m still not sure whether she really caught me spying that night, or if my mind was just playing tricks on me. Even then, with cold shivers running down my spine, I was making plans. The minute I knew she was gone in the woods, I would steal back into her room. I would take the box and look inside. Finally, I would know something about her.

  LAURA

  At the beginning of our last summer on the mountain, I was outside trying to catch a salamander with a blue tail that kept disappearing under the back steps. It was getting dark and Johnny came to me with a peaked face. I got up quick and dusted off my knees. It worried me if Johnny got upset. My eyes was stinging before he said anything.

  “Is she still gone?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  Johnny’s throat clicked when he swallowed. “I was spying on her last night.”

  I balled up my hands into tight fists. Part of me wanted to hear more but the biggest part wished he’d turn around and go back in the house without me.

  “I found something,” Johnny said. I couldn’t bring myself to ask what it was. He stood there for a minute trying to work up the nerve to tell me before he finally gave up and said, “Just come on.” I followed him because that’s how it was with us. I would have followed him anywhere. The house was full of gold twilight, brown shadows in the corners. I shivered because it seemed like this was a stranger’s house and not ours anymore. We went in Mama’s bedroom and it felt wrong being in there. I was a little bit scared of her ever since she had changed toward me and Johnny, even though she never hurt us. I thought about her shadow moving in the yard at night. I thought about her arms splitting wood and her teeth tearing at whatever needed tore, fabric or thread or a sealed-up bag.

  I snuck with Johnny to her bed. He knelt down like he was fixing to say prayers. I was already crying when I got down beside him
. For a minute I couldn’t see where his hand disappeared to. It was gone inside Mama’s mattress. Then I seen there was a slit, puckered around Johnny’s wrist like a mouth with thread teeth. The whole time he was rooting around in the mattress I was begging him in my head not to show me. Sometimes we could hear each other that way, maybe because of being twins. But this time he didn’t hear, or else he ignored me because he didn’t want to know whatever it was by hisself.

  His hand came out holding a wood box. It was whittled and I knowed who made it. It was Mama’s granddaddy. She had a whittled bear and a turtle he made setting on the kitchen windowsill that she showed me and Johnny one time. Johnny held out the box to me. I shook my head, so he opened it hisself instead. I didn’t understand at first what I was seeing. It was three hard yellowish pieces pushed through a red ring. I swallowed and my tongue tasted like pennies, like that blood-colored ring was in my mouth.

  “What is it?” I asked Johnny. My voice sounded muffled to my ears like when I covered them with my hands. Me and him looked at each other for a second.

  “It’s a finger,” he said.

  A choking sound came out of my throat. I wished it was possible for Johnny to lie to me, but in my heart I knowed he was telling the truth, even though I’d never seen a human bone. There was a rotted scrap of somebody in the house with me. It had been there before I knowed about it, maybe before me or Johnny ever drawed breath. The whole room was filled with it, a little piece broke off of death. I screamed and Johnny about dropped the box. I scooted back but he put his hand out to keep me from going.