Chapter 48 Family
Family
Lydia Brown
The veil over Birdie’s mystery grows thin. What is coming to light are answers I feared I’d never find. That I have a rightful place in all this. That my lost years had purpose and that my destiny is being fulfilled.
In these remaining summer weeks, Kate and I follow a simple routine of transcribing Birdie’s words, but there is no urgency.
There is no deadline. Every Wednesday I go to the mountain to be with Granny C in the chamber room and Gus accompanies me.
She tutors Eddie. School will start soon. They’ve become fast friends.
Recently, Granny and I discovered a gift growing in the ash where the crone’s trailer had burned.
Ginseng in mature abundance is rising up.
Granny C believes a ginseng burial ground had been protected by Birdie’s trailer and clearing until they were exposed to the elements.
Today, a pound of dried ginseng root brings twenty to thirty dollars.
Even beyond the grave, Birdie provides for her people.
More truths come forth from the chamber findings.
Each woman from that forgotten Scottish priory begat a line of women who are scattered across southern Appalachia.
Over the centuries, they’ve worked as healers, midwives, teachers, apothecaries, and librarians.
They each birthed their generation of successors—except Birdie.
She didn’t birth her successor. The records show her babies were stillborn.
She chose in her stead Granny C, Loretty, and me.
Birdie was the coven’s librarian, and as a Keeper, that job is mine.
I will now oversee and protect the clan records.
That’s my destiny. The elaborate plan included my curious birthmark, Trula Freed, my husband Jack, Romi Harker, Gus, and the skeptic Kate. Birdie laid down a trail of breadcrumbs and I followed. I was not being shunned. I was being pulled and pushed to where I needed to go.
Tomorrow, on Friday August 15, Gus goes home, so tonight on the porch, Kate, Professor Covey, and I celebrate her birthday.
She turns fourteen on Sunday, and we baked her a chocolate sheet cake decorated with gold and silver icing that spells HAPPY XIV BIRTHDAY GUS—our edible version of an illuminated manuscript.
Kate’s gift is a leather diary weathered to look like one of Birdie’s books, complete with leather binding. It was made at Penland School of Craft. The key hangs from a silk cord and can lock her secrets inside.
Professor Covey gives Gus a first-edition Nancy Drew mystery book, The Witch Tree Symbol.
The thirty-third book in her mother’s favorite detective series.
On the cover is an image of witches’ broom fungus which changes the natural structure of a plant.
It’s a metaphor for Gus who is changing into her own.
Maybe Lucy will read it and remember when she was a girl looking for mystery in her days.
My birthday gift is the Ouija board. Gus can recite the opening and closing prayers for safety, and she knows enough about the other side to be cautious. I resist saying she should hide it. All teenagers know that wisdom. Ouija is best kept hidden.
This final afternoon, Uncle sits on the bed watching Gus pack the duffel bag that’s large enough to hold a body.
Around her neck hangs a dull green stone wired to a thin strip of leather.
It’s a raw emerald Eddie found among the stones in the mushroom cave.
The cuckoo clock strikes five, and she reaches under her bed and pulls out a scrapbook.
“What’s this?” I had wondered when the project would surface.
“It’s for you. From Uncle Jack.”
“Uncle Jack? What do you mean?”
“He hid photos and poems for you in secret places around the cottage and I found them. Photos of the two of you, and new poems he wrote. He put dates on the back so I could figure out the order.”
My hands tremble as I open the cover. The first is a photo of Jack and me on our wedding day.
Not the one framed on my bedside table where we stand posed just so.
In this one our faces are slightly out of focus because the sun is in the wrong place.
It’s behind us creating a misty aura. We look ethereal and hope-filled and achingly young. I never saw this photo.
“Where did you say you found these?” I ask, but Gus is silent.
The next page holds one of Jack’s handwritten poems that he titled “Brimful of Grace.” It starts Grace falls into this / measured chalice, taunting us.
Seeing new words from Jack’s brilliant mind makes me sob, and I grab tissues so I don’t drip tears on the precious album.
I turn page after page of wonder, and there is our history as I’ve never seen it before.
Photos that weren’t the first choice where we smiled in unison.
These photos were the castoffs that didn’t make the original cut, likely taken by an amateur cousin or aging uncle.
But in hindsight they are the most precious.
Eyes closed, mouth open in jest for my sister, Lucy, who the camera often catches that way.
A close-up of an ear or missing the top of Jack’s head but catching the scar on his cheek that I love.
Some were taken so far away that we’re specks in a wide panorama making us look like an afterthought or tiny humans in the big scheme of things.
Gus points, “And this poem tickled me, Aunt Liddy. Mom went in there a / week ago. Smiling, she said / Kudzu was on sale, / and they have Green Stamps! She musta got lost in that / leafy verdant vale, / Dodging sprightly vines, / Snagging stamps, adrift on the / Cut-rate kudzu trail. Did you know he could be funny like that?”
“I did. Every topic was fair game for that clever man.” I pull my eyes away from the page and hug my niece. “I love every page,” I say and squeeze harder. “They mean the world to me. Truly.”
“I know,” she says simply then adds, “Do you smell that?”
And I do. Cherry pipe tobacco, and it lingers as the final packing is finished and piled on the porch ready for transport.
“You gonna miss me?”
“With every breath I take.”
“You gonna feed Uncle?”
“When she’s here, but I won’t worry if she goes off. She’ll know when you’re coming back.”
My niece says, “You have four white cats in your wood now. They’re spirit cats, Aunt Liddy.
They hold the souls of those who love you.
You’ve got Uncle Jack, your mama and daddy, and Trula Freed.
They’re powerful spirits on the other side, and they’re coming close to your cottage to watch over you. That’s a good thing.”
What can I say to something so glorious?
Since Birdie’s ghost spoke to me in her chamber, my bridge to the spirit world has been rebuilt.
The nightly visits are a comfort. But what a complex maze I’ve traveled to become part of this ancient, feminine history.
The last decade has seen progress for my gender, but my fervent hope is that Gus’s generation and every one that follows will have more choices and fewer barriers.
May we lift each other up and let no one be left behind.
We sit in the swing with Uncle between us and rock slow while a flock of Canada geese heads south. We’ll meet Lucy at six at the inn. “You ready to see your mama?”
“I guess.”
“It’ll be a good thing.”
“How you figure that?” Her sullenness has returned.
“You’re not the same girl who came in June. That girl was looking for a fight but didn’t find one. When your mama was your age and determined to be called Lu, she tested boundaries and it got her into trouble, but that didn’t stop her. You and your mama are more alike than different.”
Gus hugs me fiercely and I close my eyes to feel her wiry strength, smell her vanilla scent with a hint of spicy pepper. I wait for her to let go and whisper, “I’m always here for you, a phone call away. Any time night or day, I will come when you call.”
“I want to be your junior intern next summer.”
“I’m counting on it.”
I glance at the clock. “It’s time.”
We walk to the car and Uncle is in the lead, the duffel dragging the ground, marking the trail.
The cat waits while Gus loads the bag then comes back and speaks parting words I can’t hear.
At Little Switzerland, our favorite waitress Sandy saved the best table for us on the patio.
When we’re seated, I say, “We’ll take three burgers and fries,” and surprise Gus.
“Three?”
“Your mama’s joining us for dinner.”
“Isn’t she too busy?”
“Not tonight.”
“Oh,” Gus says.
And here comes Lucy right on time, looking younger, wearing jeans and a T-shirt like her daughter.
Gus walks into her mother’s open arms, and Lucy ruffles her daughter’s blond pixie hair.
It’s a different meeting this August night from the one in June.
We chatter about underground tunnels, hidden chambers, caves, and emeralds.
About new friends and a white cat named Uncle and a mystery that started far away and spans five hundred years.
Lucy is entranced, her elbow on the table, her chin cupped in her palm.
Then I tell the most wondrous news that came in a dream last night. I say, “You have a message from Mama.”
“Oh my stars,” she whispers and claps her hands like a little girl. “The spirit voices came back.”
I nod and flush with joy.
“What’d she say?”
“Write that book.”
“What book?”
“The one that’s inside you. Mama wants to know how it ends.”
“The one about a tobacco farmer who raises bees?”
“Could be. Or maybe the one about a witch who died and left a treasure of silver and gold. Gus can help with that one.”
When we part after dinner, Lucy’s hug is sincere. “Thank you—for everything.”
And when Gus embraces me, she whispers, “Watch for Samuel. He’ll be passing over soon.”