THIRTEEN
Outside a one-level home about twenty minutes from the print shop, there’s a skinny tree planted in the front yard. On each of the bare branches are blue glass bottles. Maybe fifty in total. I can’t tear my eyes away from it. It looks like one of those art pieces you’d see in a gallery.
“Tell me again why we’re here?” Robby whispers as we pile out of Myah’s dad’s car on a rocky driveway. Actually it’s not just rocks. Most are broken oyster shells.
“ ’Cause I ain’t going in no haunted house without knowing how to protect ourselves from demons,” Myah snaps, but low enough so her dad can’t hear. She shoulders a book bag as we head up the walkway.
In a rocking chair, an old woman waves at us, smiling before slowly standing up, her knees a little wobbly.
“Hey, Mama,” Mr. Horton says, climbing up the porch steps. “Myah wanted to stop by, and I figure I’d fix the cable. For the hundredth time.”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” the old lady grunts with a grin, swatting him away.
He walks into the house while Myah runs up the steps and dives into her arms.
“Heyyy, Grandmama!”
“Miss Missy, what you up to now?” Grandmama says, but laughs and swallows her up in a tight hug. A hug like my grandma used to give me.
Fighting the prickling tears, I clear my throat.
“Oh, right,” Myah says. “Harmony, Robby … this is my grandmama. Grand, these are my new friends!”
“Hello, there,” Grandmama says in a scratchy voice. She tall, tall as Myah’s dad, with the same wide smile and chocolaty skin. No one can say those three aren’t related. “Y’all come on up here. Want some lemonade?”
On the porch, Grandmama passes around slices of her lemon pound cake and cups of lemonade that’s more sugar than water. Robby eats like he’s never been fed before, which only makes us all laugh.
I don’t want to talk bad about her grandmama’s house, but even out here on the porch she got a lot of stuff and most of it look like trash. Dry weave baskets, shells, rocks, rocking chairs, nets, even a mirror. Then that tree … I take my camera out and snap a few photos.
“Grandmama, we got questions about haints,” Myah says.
Grandmama gives her a dark look. “What you getting yourself into now? Ain’t I tell you to leave that stuff alone?”
“I know,” Myah says shyly. She shifts so her back is a little to me. “But my friend here has the questions. Not me.”
Why she acting like that? She’s the one who wanted to come here!
“You call them haints, but they’re really just ghosts, right?” I ask Grandmama.
“You’re all wrong, baby. See, spirits, or ghosts, are just people who pass.
But haints, they mischievous, evil little demons.
When I was a little girl, haints would get in the house, sit up on your chest, and steal your breath while you sleep.
Others would take your skin, so they can walk around during the daytime.
They’re attracted to pain and prey on the weak.
That’s why when somebody dies, you gotta do what you gotta to keep them from coming up in your house. ”
Myah nods. “Grandmama, tell them how you protect yourself from haints.”
“Well. There’s a few things my mama taught me about.
You gotta start with a cleanse. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and those little devils can’t stand the sight of God.
Clean yourself and the house. To keep them out your house, pour salt at the door or brick dust.” She points to a bowl of uncooked rice in the corner.
“Keep a bowl of rice by the door. They’ll see it, get distracted, too distracted from counting to follow you inside. And lastly, that haint blue.”
She points to the ceiling inside her house, which is painted a light blue mixed with mint.
“You paint the ceilings haint blue so them haints will think it’s the sky and will pass though it.
Some people paint the doors or shutters ’cause they say haints can’t pass through or over water, so they’ll run off at the sight.
” Then she points to the tree. “You can even slide bottles on the bare branches of trees to keep haints away.”
So that’s what that tree is for. This stuff isn’t junk, it’s protection.
“How can you tell the difference between a ghost and a haint?” Myah asks.
“You can’t,” Grandmama says, real hard. “That’s why you should leave them all alone. Or they’ll come home with you and never let you go.”
I shudder.
Grandmama stretches over and palms Myah’s necklace.
“This is what we call a mojo bag. Some folks call it a prayer in a bag. It has different herbs in it to keep you safe. It blocks things from getting too close. I made one of these for each of my grandbabies. You never know what’s out there.”
“But I’m the only that still wears it,” Myah says, all proud.
“That’s why you my favorite.”
Myah sucks her teeth. “You told Lawrence he was your favorite last week!”
Grandmama taps her chin. “You sure it was me and not some other old lady?”
They fall into each other laughing, and I can’t help but watch with a sting of jealousy. Grandma and I used to have silly inside jokes too.
Mr. Horton comes out of the house, dusting his hands. “Mama, I told you about unplugging things.”
“Well, how else am I supposed to use my curling iron?”
“Use it in the bathroom, not in the living room.” He sighs. “Come on, y’all. Let me take you on home. Don’t want your folks looking for you.”
I stand and grip the shaking rocking chair behind me.
Grandmama smiles. “Ah! Your peoples must be from the South. I can see it on you.”
“My grandma is. What’s the rocking chair thing about?” I ask.
“They say don’t rock an empty rocking chair or there will be a death in the family.”
Robby pales and slowly stands, holding his chair steady.
Grandmama walks us all over to Mr. Horton’s truck where we say our goodbyes.
Myah jumps. “Oh! Be right back! I forgot something.”
“What you forget?” Grandmama calls for her, but Myah’s already running inside the house as Robby and Mr. Horton hop in the truck.
“Thank you so much, Grandmama,” I say.
She holds my hands steady. “You come see me whenever you’d like. I love company.”
With Myah out the way, I dare myself to ask the question.
“Have you … really seen a haint?” I whisper.
She stares at me, her eyes growing serious.
“That one in there,” she says, her chin tipping toward the house.
“We keep her close for a reason. See, some my stories got deep in her head. So deep that Myah think she can talk to the dead folk. She was using one of those Ouji boards to try to communicate with them and charging kids to speak to their dead loved ones like one of those psychics with a crystal ball. Playing with them people like those ghost tours do. Her father had to pay all those families back. She almost got kicked out of school! When I saw what she was doing, I took the board from her. So, I don’t tell my stories no more like I used to. ”
My stomach drops. Myah was selling fake readings?
“Then, you don’t really believe in ghosts, do you? Is that why there’s never any Black people on the ghost tours?” I ask.
Grandmama shrugs. “Well. I can’t speak for everybody everywhere, but us Gullah Geechee people don’t mess with them ghost tour stuff ’cause we been around here a long time and know more than anybody that them haints are tricksters.
Our ancestors taught us that. You may think you talking to ghost, but you really talking to a demon.
And one is harder to get rid of than the other. ”
I open my mouth to ask more just as Myah skips out the house, book bag on her shoulder, smiling.
“You find what you looking for?” Grandmama asks.
She shakes her head. “Nah. Daddy, we ready to go!”
When Mr. Horton drops us off, Dad is loading his car up to head to the club. He stops to chat with Mr. Horton as Robby runs inside to Lena.
“So, what time we linking up tomorrow?” Myah asks me.
“Umm. I don’t know,” I mumble, backing away from her. “I might be busy.”
Myah’s smile slowly fades. She sighs. “Grandmama told you, didn’t she?”
I start to deny it, but I can’t hold my anger in much longer.
“You were selling readings!”
Myah holds up her hands. “It’s not like that.”
“You said you could talk to spirits.”
“I can! Girl, I swear,” she insists, checking over her shoulder to make sure our dads aren’t listening. “Grandmama just don’t believe me.”
“Okay, fine, this city is full of ghosts. Talk to one right now.”
Myah chokes. “It’s … it’s not that simple! And you of all people know it. How many of them ghost tours have you been on where nothing happened? Ghost come when they come, ain’t no call on demand.”
“Then how do you think you’re gonna help us talk to Mr. Truman?”
“ ’Cause I can just … feel it this time. Okay? Trust me!”
“Trust you? You out here pretending you can talk to the dead and ripping people off. Wait, did you really hear screams that day by the Myers House, or were you just making that up too?”
Myah squirms. “I … I heard something,” she mumbles.
“Girl! We’re about to risk our lives going into that house. We don’t know what could be in there. Ghost, demon, or nothing, and you want me to just trust you?”
Myah huffs, arms crossed. “Well, I’m putting a lot of trust in you too, ghost hunter! This whole thing was your idea. Meanwhile, everybody and they mama is looking for Jabari. Really looking. Do you really think you can help the way you think you can?”
I start to pop back but freeze up. ’Cause I don’t know if I can really help. I don’t even know who Mr. Truman or Jabari are, and I’m out here risking my life for strangers.
I say nothing and walk off.
I hope Myah’s being honest now, and she can “feel” that Mr. Truman’s ghost is in that house.
And I hope nothing happens in that house that’ll make me regret ever opening my big mouth.