Chapter 2 #2
Neither of my aunts ever looked away from life’s ugly parts, and Hattie-May, unfortunately, struggled to be subtle about it. Or maybe it wasn’t a struggle at all. Maybe, like most things with Hattie-May, it was a choice.
I’d long ago trained myself not to react. Not to scowl nor act surprised at any of the questions that crossed clients’ lips. People came to me for answers, not judgment.
The tiny lines feathering around Mrs. Earline’s mouth deepened as she pursed her lips.
Great… I turned away and placed the kettle on the gas burner with a thunk. No one spoke. The only sound was the click of the stovetop’s igniter before the flame caught.
If Mrs. Earline got upset and bolted, that was thirty-five dollars plus (generous) tip down the drain. I should’ve collected payment up front like Aunt Ruth always nagged me to do.
“Well,” Hattie-May said finally, walking into the small kitchen and retrieving a water glass from the cabinet. “Glad to hear the syrup helped.”
She smiled at Mrs. Earline, whose expression relaxed, before walking to the sink.
As Hattie-May stood next to me to fill her glass from the tap, her scent enveloped me like one of her hugs.
Suddenly I was back in that yard again, my small hand gripped on my aunt’s forearm.
Tears filling my eyes, my sister peering around my body.
Would this strange old lady yell about tears the same way Daddy had? I’d set my jaw, every muscle in my body going tense, ready to do battle if necessary.
“I see you fighting something in there. Speak and let it out. Let me help.” The gentleness in Hattie-May’s voice had caught me by surprise.
Maybe it was relief. Maybe I was just a little girl longing for someone to hear her.
Maybe it was more than that, but as if my words had been summoned, I found myself answering her.
“If I’d stayed home from school…”
If I’d stayed home from school, everything would be different. If I’d been there. I could’ve stopped it.
“Oh honey,” she soothed. “There’s nothing you could’ve done.”
“Uh-huh,” I sniffed. “I saw—” I stopped myself, clamping my mouth closed. Don’t talk about that. Never ever.
The old woman—Hattie-May—tilted her head. “You saw something?” It wasn’t a question. “Something in here?” She tapped my forehead.
My brows knitted together. How could she know?
Hattie-May had sighed. “Listen to me again, dearie. There’s nothing you could’ve done.”
“But—”
“Nothing,” she’d interrupted firmly. “None of this is your fault. What you experienced—the knowing, the seeing—it’s normal.”
“No,” I whispered, shielding Frances further. “Mama said to hush.”
She smiled sadly. “You can talk about it here. In fact, you should talk about it with me. As much as you want. It seems impossible now, but I promise you the Sight, that’s what we call it, is a good thing.
When you learn to use it, it can be a gift.
” Hattie-May had winced as she pushed to her feet. “And I have it too. So does your mama.”
My mouth had dropped open. That piece of me desperate for understanding scrambled forward, feral in its urgency.
“How do you know?” I asked. The door squeaked open, and another woman, who was as tall and slim and sharp as Hattie-May was soft, appeared on the porch, her boots clomping with each step.
“The Sight’s been passed down through generations of Robbins women. I’m a Robbins woman. And this is your Aunt Ruth.” She gestured behind her, to the woman who was her physical opposite. “She’s your mama’s older sister. She’s a Robbins too. So is your mama. And you.”
“Mama don’t have a sister. And my last name ain’t Robbins.
” I’d shaken my head. Back home, nobody’s house looked as if it would writhe across the forest floor.
Old women didn’t kneel in the dirt with long sleeves caked in gardening soil, and they didn’t know your secrets.
They surely didn’t give you new last names. “My last name is Waters.”
“Your mama absolutely has a sister. And Waters is your daddy’s name. But make no mistake, you’re a Robbins, just like her, through and through.” Hattie-May looked at my sister, who’d peeked around me, her thumb in her mouth. She patted Frances’s fuzzy hair. “Both of you are Robbins girls.”
I learned later that it wasn’t unusual for one sister to receive the gift and the other not, and now I sometimes wondered if, even in that moment, Hattie-May had known that the Sight would skip Frances.
It certainly hadn’t skipped me.
That vision I’d had at eight years old, the one that had stopped me in my tracks just outside this same window, had been right. This place, this life, had swallowed me up. I’d fully become a Robbins.
The teakettle whistled, and I looked up to find Hattie-May’s gaze on me, her expression curious. Daydreams often stole chunks of my time, and if we’d been alone, she’d have asked me where I’d gone off to and if I’d had a nice visit.
I poured the water into the white ceramic cup.
“Milly, I wonder,” Hattie-May chirped, sliding into one of the empty chairs at the table. “Could you give us a moment? I need to chat with Earline about that quilting competition. You know, I’ve been thinking about entering.”
My gaze jerked toward Aunt Hattie. She hadn’t sewed anything a day in her life.
Never mind the fact that if I interrupted one of Aunt Ruth’s readings, Ruth would go ballistic.
In learning to channel my Sight, to wrestle intuition from the door inside, housed behind my rib cage, and direct it into the leaves, I had to practice again and again with both Ruth and Hattie-May.
I listened to them. I spent hours watching them work.
And there were rules. Like don’t interrupt a reading when homecoming dress money is on the line!
“Aunt Hattie, I was just—”
“I left my glasses in the greenhouse. Be a dear and grab them for me? You know I need them to drive, and I have to leave to pick up your sister here in a minute.” She leveled a stern gaze at me, forbidding any further excuses.
I huffed and set the kettle on the table, leaving through the doorway to the front hall.
I opened the old front door wide, waiting a moment before closing it again in front of me.
If Aunt Hattie thought she could get rid of me that easily…
I crept back to the kitchen entrance, not making a sound, straining my ears to listen as Hattie-May began to speak.
“Earline, you know Joyce Miller, don’t you? Correct me if I’m wrong, but y’all go to church together?”
This is why Hattie wanted me gone? To gossip?
Rumor was Joyce’s husband was a mean drunk who liked to beat on her, but every time she left, he stopped drinking and she went back to him. Her daughter was in eleventh grade, a year between me and Frances, and had a fuck around and find out reputation.