WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (32 page)

Another voice chimes in
. “Run Willodean, run.”
 For
half a second, I want to flee and listen to the voice, trust my instinct, my gut. 
Instead, my need for love kept me there. 
Need.
 I hate that word.

“Run, Willodean, run.” The voice faded in and out. 
Oh—I ran alright.
 I ran straight into Branson’s arms and I vowed to love this man to death. But it wasn’t his death—
it was my own.
 

***

I came back to m
yself.  The gold wedding band burned my palm like hells fire.  I dropped it along with the two nickels.  It
fell into the pile of Branson’s body parts. I scooped the riddled bones, nickels and the ring into the demon jacket,
and twisted it up so tight, I wouldn’t have to worry about it hatching demon babies. 
I storm off to the kitchen and bury it deep inside the trash. I could barely breathe. I hear the demon jacket whispering from the bottom of the can. It sifted, rustled and drove me mad.

“Stop it.” I screamed. “Just stop it.”

The rest of the evening was torment. 
It was getting late. I felt unclean as if I had committed murder, the s
mear of bloody bones still on my hands, the stench of his cologne like breathing in poison. 
I stripped off my clothes and made my way to the bathroom,
and turned on the shower.  It was dark outside.  I flipped off the lights and the room fell into the darkness I was used to. 
For as long as I can remember I have taken showers in the dark, with only
glimmers of light from the other bedrooms. 
I don’t remember when it started or why—I just always remember doing it. Something about it settled me, gave me peace.

I drowned myself underneath the hot steam while it pulsated hard pellets on my skin that
stung and made it red.  To be clean, to
be washed in the waters of redemption—I had to pay for it with my own pain. Inside the house, inside me, is a Martyr in a cross laden room, waiting for punishment,
to die and be glorified. 

A large mist enveloped the bathroom. The small lamp from the bedroom flickered shadows on the walls, like th
e walls of Maw Sue’s house.  The darkness beyond the dark, the lesser light beyond the black.  Under the steady stream of water, I closed my eyes. 
It carried me
to the same place each time.  A
place in my dreams, a place that seemed real as if I’d been there before. I am standing naked in an open field, my head lifted upward peering into the night skies under a shimmering moon while the sky pours out a thick pelting rain of purification, of pain, 
of punishment as it beads on my skin like hail stones.  The hard pellets remove the film of shame on my skin, like fish scales plummeting to the hard ground.  My arms reach and reach and yearn for a place of vulnerable nakedness, where I can be me, whole, complete and real, for the first time, no judgment, just me. 
I scream chants into the deep of night wanting a fresh, newborn rain
to coat me like new love.  The clouds part
the heavens
and out of the split, a new rain falls, and washes me, with love.  I am renewed.   

Since standing naked in a f
ield might alert the neighbors, I daydream in the privacy of my shower.  It is
a calming daily ritual of necessity. After finding the ring and the pictures of Branson, the film is hard to remove, so I stay
until the water is cold and I have to get out.   M
y skin was water wrinkled 
and I shivered.  Punishment enough.  I dry off and don’t bother to put on a gown.  I climb into my all-white bed, complete with sheets, comforter and pillows, all white.  Pure, undefiled white. 
It reminded me of Maw Sue’s spare bedroom, the one Mag and I used to sleep in as kids, the room with the outside door that was blocked with the moaning
freezer.  The feather bed
inside it looked and felt like we were sleeping inside
a giant marshmallow.  It had a white chenille bed and it was so tall, we’d have to take a running leap to get in it.  But once we did, we’d sink.  It was perfect. 

The little girl inside me, hidden in the house, dreamed of being pure white again
, so the bed was as close to white as I could get.  My purity had long been taken. 
The cool air of the box fan hanging in the corner throws down
wind kisses.  They are kisses from God purifying my tainted body.  Kisses on
every square inch of my body. 
Loving me. Holding me. Seven.
 When my spiritual nature can no longer take it—
I turn carnal.  T
he spirit of wind
drifts into a need for a man.  Instead,
I clutch the man pillow wanting tou
ch, needing touch, someone to love me.  I desire a man’s man,
masculine arms to reach out and wrap me up and make me feel safe. I want to be loved, forgiven, kissed and saved. Saved from everything that frightens me. Saved from a life that is slowly killing me. Saved from myself. Saved from the curse. In the outskirts of my mind, I hear her soft cries inside the house, inside
one of the locked rooms. 
The door of my heart is bru
ised from her bloody knuckles banging.  She wants out.  She is tired of being a prisoner inside the house.  She cut deep
grooves and scratches into the door with her fingernails
and anything she can find, in an attempt to hurt me, so I would let her escape. 

“I’m sorry.” I say in little whispers. “I can’t.” Lumps of tears roll down my cheeks wetting the man pillow. “I can’t let you out. You know why. 
You know.
 So quit asking.”
My voice turns dark and deprived. 
The air around me cracks and whistles. I am lost in the turbulence of the
fan. I know it’s the little girl trying to make me do something I don’t want to do.  She stirs things up.  In my mind, I see the blades rip out of the box and spin
out of control and tear everything in its wake, apart, 
including me.

“Look for the crumbs Willodean.”
I hear Maw Sue’s voice between the fan whirrs.  

“Well no shit dead grandmother who speaks from the grave.”
I jumped up from the bed.  I speak to a ghost that never seems to leave me alone.  She is worse than the stirrings of the little girl sometimes.  Both of them irk me. 
“Do you ever die? Why do you keep doing that? Isn’t there a clause in heaven, once your dead, you can’t come back to irritate family? Jeesh!” I realize I’m stark naked and talking to a dead person, my grandmother, who I’m not entirely sure is dead. I grab the
white sheet of purity and pull it to my chest. 
“And by the way, I AM looking for the crumbs. In fact, there’s a bit 
too
 many crumbs of Branson dropping out of nowhere. Did you
have something to do with that?”  I glared into the nothingness of the room waiting on a ghost to answer me.  “In fact—I’m a
bout sick of this crap, legends, Cupitors, Amodgia
n house of horrors hocus pocus.”  No answer.  “Do you hear me?”  I screamed, my voice getting caught into the fan.  “
I’m one messed up girl Maw Sue. Worse than you ever was.”

The room turned silent. If Maw Sue was there—she didn’t answer which made me wonder if I heard her at all. 
I am a reactor. I over-react.
My reactionary nature turned sarcastic and cynical. 

“So Maw Sue…let’s not talk crumbs shall we. Or better yet, if we do, let it be a man crumb. I want a tasty, six foot, brown hair, blue
 eyed tall drink of Texas water. 
And I’d like to screw him till the cows come home.
Deliver that kind of crumb and we’ll talk.” 
My voice slipped into a seductive tone of wickedness.
My radical hormones likely sent Maw Sue rotating Venus.  “Mmmm, mmmm.” Said the spider to the fly as I licked my lips.  I laid back on the pure white chenille comforter with fringe trim.  Lena gave it to me, still in the original package when she bought it with green stamps, no less, in nineteen seventy something.  She didn’t have use for it and thought I might like it in my new house.  Little did she know I was about to turn it black. 
My hands stole up underneath the covers finding hidden things of pleasure. Lost in a land of orgasmic chills, I was in ecstasy with my man pillow
beside me.  Spasms of electricity rocked every inch of my impure body.  I watched the pure white bed turn inky black.  Just like I was, inside and out. 
Once the dirty deed of desire was fulfilled, I fell asleep, satisfied but empty,
lust fulfilled in my body, but longing in my heart.  I dreamed of the little girl standing naked i
n the field, under the moon and stars while the cleansing rains washed her, purified her and saved her.
But it went wrong, horrible wrong.  The dream
turned into a nightmare.

Memories drench me.  Giant horrible crumbs fall upon my chest and pelt me to the hard ground. 
I could not move, could not breathe. I was keenly aware of my surroundings but yet still in a frozen dream state. The
rain did not wash my sins and the crumbs did not come to save me.  This time—they came to confront all I put away. 
They
let the pink elephants out of hiding and removed the muzzle from the little girl’s mouth and unlocked her room door.  They let her out. 

“Noooo. NO! Nooooo!” I screamed and screamed but I couldn’t wake up. Everything that was done, 
was done.
And there was nothing I could do about it. 
Make lovely your losses. Make lovely your losses.
 The haunting statement
slices through my ears making them bleed. 
As a child, I couldn’t comprehend
its meaning.  Now—I know.  I see
the magnitude of my casualties as they filter in and out of my slain memory and tra
ce their fingers over the scars, and the gaping wounds of my losses. 

Dark Thirty

I loved hearing Maw Sue tell the story
of my birth. 
It was so vivid and dramatized, I was positive I fell out of a hard back cover of a Grimm’s fairytale. It was also a burden, a hard stone in my heart,
weighing me down. 
I grew up feeling as if I had to fulfill some prophecy, some gr
andiose event foretold ages ago. 
Life was just waiting on me to pop out of my mama’s belly and slip into those glass slippers or in my case, be eaten by a troll or torched by a dragons eye. That red stone around Maw Sue’s neck was the devil anyway, a red eyed dragon
always unsettling to look at.  It watched me, constantly, every move I made. 
There was some kind of energy in the tone of Maw Sue’s voice, a magical presence
in the air when she told me the story of my humble but awesome beginnings.  She spoke of a mystical power that guided all things, all tribes and nations and I was part of that tribe of nations.  It made me feel special and if she believed in it—then it made me want to believe in it too.   

It
wasn’t without its faults though.  It
was a hopeful story—
a story that said the end is better than the beginning.  And
Lor
d knows, I needed to hear that, considering what I was up against.  And then there’s the mirror bin, an ancient talisman passed from my ancestors,
which is my second line of defense
against enemies and foes and the more time passes, the more I seem to accumulate. 
According to Maw Sue’s pig trail philosophy, the mirror bin is made of maple wood
and
the blood of many generations before us, all c
ontributors. 
I paused with that thought, because I wasn’t sure I’d give my blood to anyone,
much less to make a wooden box.   

I was always intrigued when I sat at Maw Sue’s feet listening to her talk.  I was more myself that I’d ever been.  I marveled at every word.
With every telling, I gather a little more gumption for the journey. 
Survive another day.
 
I certainly needed it because the story in itself, was bigger than me.  Way, way bigger.  It made me wrestle with myself, always at odds with my shadow, the story was
simply too big, a set up for failure, huge expectations, shoes
I could never fit.  Sure, a
part of me believed I had a place in this world, a mold to fit, soil to sink my toes in, and a travel itinerary to
get there, all mine to behold.  It was the getting there part, I found hard.  

It is because of Maw Sue that I see the world in which I was born and live out every day, through vivid eyes of imagination and magical interpretations. Because of her, I hav
e eyes to see and ears to hear, a gift from Proverbs 20:12 which she recited all the time.  It is b
ecause of her blood flowing through my veins, I am also gifted and cursed. My troubles
came early. 
It was one of the coldest and stormiest nights on record in Pine Log, Texas, according to Dan Petoskey, weather man of KLRT-7 news.