Chapter 31
SIX MONTHS LEFT
I don’t recall coming home from the hospital, or slipping into bed, but these things must have happened, because I remember lying on the mattress, weightless, and the feeling of floating out to sea.
I was certain that what I’d seen at the hospital was not a dream, but a real memory from my childhood.
I searched for my old Discman in the bedside drawer, dusty from lack of use. I put on the headphones and pressed play.
My mother sang “Folk Song” in her hypnotic voice,
There was a woman in town who sang so sweet
Her beauty was beyond compare
But one day a bright specter she did meet
There aft she was no longer fair
She ranted and raved and ran over town
Chased by somethin’ not seen
She ran so far that she came to a cliff
And it chased her over to free’n
The low tone of prophecy vibrated beneath the words now, still echoing in the earpieces after the track had gone quiet.
The Cursed Woman was not just a concept album—it was also a confession. A story passed down through my mother’s family, only just now reaching me.
The next tracks played—“Duet with the Devil,” “Black Gum Tree,” “Mountain Girl,” “Let Me Out”—and instead of imagining my mother conjuring these stories, I saw the real people behind them.
My ancestor meeting a devil at a crossroads and exchanging her soul for a beautiful singing voice, the same cursed soul that she would pass down from girl to girl like a tattered wedding dress.
My grandmother getting hit by a truck and landing in a tree on her 33rd birthday.
My mother growing up alone and unloved in the mountains with her aunt and uncle, reviled for her curse, her only consolation the music that damned her in the first place. Her deep desire to escape her little town, and to live freely out in the world and become a star.
A few images kept recurring in the songs: a white dog, a bright specter or a man in white, and a big, hulking tree.
I remembered my mushroom vision: the white dog leading me to the tree in the moonlight, and the man in the white suit leaned against the trunk, waiting for me.
The man pulling me deeper into the quarry, my body drenched in blood.
Then the high, joyful chords of the title track rang through the mesh, and this time I did not feel lifted.
It told the story of a woman damned from birth who, try as she might, could not escape her fate.
It was better if she did not try to hold on to things, to have people who needed her, because everything she touched crumbled in her fist.
I thought, What if it wasn’t random? What if this curse had done this to my baby? Perhaps it was the creature that had haunted me all this time. Perhaps it had taken this beautiful, sweet thing inside me and poisoned it.
My musing was interrupted by the voices of the final track, “Lullaby for a Demon Child.”
My mother sang that even though she was leaving too soon, that when I got scared, she would still guide me. She would be my moon, my light.
It felt like she was reaching out through the music and touching her fingertips to mine, our twin shadows finally meeting.
For so long, I had wanted to feel connected to her, to feel there was some piece of her magic inside me, just waiting to be unearthed.
And this was it, wasn’t it?
This was the little shard of her lodged in my gut. Not a beautiful voice or a creative genius.
A curse.
Days might have passed, but I wasn’t sure. One morning, it was like I finally blinked back into consciousness. There was a spoiled, creamy taste in my mouth like expired milk.
When I looked in the bathroom mirror, I saw a stranger.
My belly sagged. My hair was long and matted, and new moles had formed on my flesh. I looked like I’d been floating on the bottom of the ocean.
I robotically scrubbed away the grime and put on clean clothes that hid my middle. Then I went downstairs to find Micah making dinner in the kitchen. He’d grown a scraggly beard like he had on the trail, but there was something more unhinged in the jutting of the hairs.
When he saw me standing at the kitchen island, his face softened and he came around and clutched me delicately. “How are you feeling?” he asked with fear in his eyes.
I could see he’d been suffering these past few days, and I understood that he needed me to be good for him. I could give him that. “Much better now.”
“Good.” He released me and went back to the stove. “I need to ask you about something you said a few days ago—about a curse? Your mother told you that you were cursed? I figured it was just a dream or a side effect of the medication, but you seemed very agitated about it.”
I wanted to tell him—he was the person I told everything.
“Yeah, I think I might have uncovered a memory where my mother told me about a family curse that makes every woman in the bloodline die at 33.”
He looked up from the stove and studied me for a long moment. “Are you sure you don’t want to see someone?” He said it as if we’d discussed it before, and I wondered what else had happened over the last few days that I didn’t remember.
He continued, “Because it might be worth it. You know, I’ve seen this kind of thing before, when someone goes dormant and starts believing in delusions, and it might not seem like a big deal now, but one day it might be too much and…”
My heart sank. He thought his brother and I were the same, that the curse was just a postpartum nightmare, something to be medicated and reasoned away.
The last few days had been rough, but now that I was up and no longer on the pain meds, my mind was clear.
This wasn’t a delusion. It was something to be investigated.
But Micah clearly couldn’t be a part of that.
“Yes, I’m sure. I’m better now. I just needed some time.
” I knew this was the right thing to say—the perfect words to soothe him.
“And I didn’t mean that I thought the curse was real—just that I might have uncovered a strange memory from my childhood.
Who knows what my mom meant, or if I’m remembering right.
Maybe it was just a crazy dream from the anesthesia. ”
I watched Micah’s shoulders relax. “Thank god. I was worried.” He gestured at an old-fashioned dessert tin on the counter with bright flowers printed on the metal. “Hess left those—chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips.” My favorite.
I had no memory of Hess’s visit—had I spoken to her, or had Micah sent her away?
He served us dinner at the table, and I tried to remember how one behaves during a meal with her husband. I must have done a passable job, because he kissed my knuckles and told me he was happy I was feeling better.
I gazed in the mirror hanging on the wall behind him and saw the stranger staring back at me.
I watched her mouth curve into a smile.