Grandmama stoops over in the vegetable garden, picking tomatoes. Her long-sleeve blouse, brown floral and faded from the years, keeps the fine hairs of the tomato vine from itching her arms. It’s eighty-plus degrees and she’s got on nylons, too. I’m burning up just looking at her.
Agnes Wilder reminds me of a shriveled up apple that fell on the ground and rotted; what’s left barely resembles the sweet fruit it once was. She loves her some Jesus, but she don’t act like she’s learned much from him.
I imagine she was born into this world bawling and squalling, and that permanent scowl just never left her face. If she’s ever smiled, I’ve never seen it. I don’t know what happened to her, but it made her foul-tempered and damn near impossible to live with. I loved my papaw something fierce, but I can’t imagine what he ever saw in Grandmama that made him fall in love. Or so I’m guessing, because otherwise I can’t square how the two of them ever married.
“It’s gonna be a scorcher,” Aunt Violet says to her, following me across the yard.
Grandmama props the bushel basket on her hip, then casts a scornful glare that lands right on Aunt Violet.
And just like that, her spunky confidence shrivels, her eyes cast down, looking at her shoes like they have the answers.
Aunt Violet has never lived up to the standards of what Agnes Wilder thought her daughters should be. My mama fit that mold for a time, until she did the unthinkable and got pregnant out of wedlock. It’s almost like Grandmama blames the daughter that stayed for the one that ran away. Aunt Violet has that wild and free spirit, too, though. Being pinned under a religious thumb just didn’t suit her. The tighter those reins got, the more Aunt Violet bucked. Until eventually she didn’t give a shit anymore and lived how she wanted to—going through men like they were handkerchiefs, drinking like a fish, and finding trouble with the law every chance she got.
“Your squash looks good,” Aunt Violet says, trying to seem unfazed by her mother’s coldness.
Grandmama responds with a grunt, then turns to me. “You acted like a fool yesterday.”
“Well, that bastard deserved it.” Aunt Violet quickly comes to my defense.
Grandmama’s hand flies out, faster than thought possible, and slaps Aunt Violet across the face with a wicked smack.
“Grandmama!”
“Don’t you cuss at me.” Grandmama pushes herself right up in Aunt Violet’s face.
Tears glass over my aunt’s eyes as she cradles her stung cheek. A ghost of the feeling mirrors my own, something I’ve felt a time or two myself.
“I just meant he was no good for what he’d done.” Her gaze slips back to the ground.
Secondhand embarrassment lingers thick in the air.
“That ain’t right,” I say cautiously. Even as Grandmama wields those hazy white eyes on me, I bolster up my confidence, ordering it to not back down. It cowers, anyway. Years of fear and habit are hard to break.
“Get inside,” she snaps at me. “We have work to do.” She gives Aunt Violet a get-gone look, one Aunt Violet doesn’t have to see twice.
As I follow Grandmama up the porch steps, she tells me about some new salve she wants to try out today. I turn back to see Aunt Violet pull a pint of vodka from underneath her car seat and pour the last of it into her Styrofoam cup.
For a moment, I’m struck by a glimpse at an all too likely future, slipping vodka into my soda, just so I can deal with Grandmama. I should have moved out years ago. But this house and these four walls are all I’ve ever known. Opportunities are rare around here.
In the kitchen, the cobalt blue perfume bottle that usually carries my Sin Eater Oil sits empty on the counter next to Grandmama’s secret recipe box.
Recipes in that box go back generations. Every Granny Witch has one, a grimoire of sorts. Filled with old-world traditions passed down from our Scottish roots, mixed with indigenous rituals our ancestors were taught when they immigrated here. Diverse in their practices, some Granny Witches are gifted naturally in herbalism and midwifery. Others in realms such as magic. Grandmama wasn’t born with witchery in her blood, so she uses me—and my Sin Eater Oil—to bring her charms and hexes to life.
Like rashes for cheaters. Misfortune for thieves. Insomnia for liars.
On the box, the thin script reads RECIPES in a faded charcoal black. The painted red rooster on the front is all but worn away. It’s a simple box with dovetailed corners made from soft wood. Grandmama keeps it locked with a bone-tooth key that lives on a brass chain around her neck. Carved from dark wenge wood with teeth for the bits. Animal or human, I do not know; both, I imagine.
I’ve never seen inside the box for more than a second or two at a time. She holds those recipes and their secrets close, for her eyes only. Over the years she’s shown me how to mix herbs to make medicinal cures for common ails. Taught me how to birth babies. Shared a few minor spells that don’t cause too much of a fuss. But anything more than that, any of her Granny Witch magic, that’s a secret she’s not willing to part with. Not yet, at least.
The tipped-open lid reveals the recipe she’s been working on this morning. I stretch my neck to see what it is—
“Load the visiting basket,” Grandmama says and slams the lid shut.
That long-handled basket can mean only one thing: it’s harvesting day. Like that old hymnal “Bringing in the Sheaves,” but instead of harvesting grain, we’re harvesting Sin Eater Oil.
Every few months, when the bottle runs dry, we make our rounds to the nursing homes in the neighboring counties. If we don’t find a soul that’s soon to be parting from this world, Grandmama will find one that’s just about ready and help it along, so I can swoop in and save them before dying. It works—most of the time.
Harvesting is God’s work, Grandmama says.
I say it’s awfully damn convenient how God’s work always coincides with our supply running low and our pockets empty.
The Pleasant Hill Nursing Home is a redbrick facility with a dirt-brown shingle roof. It sits on a soft rug of green Bermuda grass. Misshapen boxwood shrubs scatter along its base. Two cheerful crape myrtle trees flag each side of the long covered walkway, their fluted forms fan heavy with pink blossoms. This place reminds me of my old elementary school, but instead of children, it’s full of the elderly.
Bone Layer parks the truck near the back, so it’s a bit of a walk to the front doors. Ms. Claudette, the attendant at the front desk, nods a hello as we enter.
Inside, we’re greeted by the perpetual smell of antiseptic and vanilla air freshener. An uncomfortable silence haunts the halls, only broken by the occasional moan of someone distinctively old and mentally declined. As a child, I thought this place was filled with sadness and sickness. And I suppose it might feel that way to a kid. But I also discovered the magic a young person has on the aged.
“How are you, Miss Martha?” I say to the tall sweet woman sitting crooked in her wheelchair, always parked near the front door. I kneel to get on her level. “I see you’ve got a pretty yellow dress on today.” I smooth flat her hem that was hung on the brake lever. Not once has she ever spoken; the result of a stroke some years back. But her left foot starts tapping as soon as you speak to her, she’s still very much there.
We visit often enough, trying to sell our baked goods, tinctures, and salves so that harvesting day doesn’t look any different than the other times. But we try not to visit the same home twice in a row, just in case the harvesting doesn’t go as planned. Or should anyone start asking questions. But still, we’ve done this enough that I know the patients well—their names, their stories.
Grandmama raises her brow in question. I shake my head no. As old as Miss Martha is—their longest resident to date—I don’t pick up a hint of death around her. Grandmama sharply waves for Bone Layer to come along as she shuffles up to the front desk. He dutifully carries the basket of “goodies,” following behind her.
“Claudette,” Grandmama says to the attendant. “I have the perfect new salve for that stubborn arthritis of yours.” Grandmama pulls from the basket a small baby food jar she’s mixed: dried nettle leaves, almond oil, and beeswax. It’s tinged a slight purple for the tiny drop of Sin Eater Oil she’s added to it. Something that will make it extra potent and effective.
I begin my rounds in the opposite direction, taking a light stroll down the hallways. I check in on each resident, letting my extra senses sift through the souls filling the facility. I’m searching for that soft whisper of a soul’s song. That tonal sound we all carry, but that’s different for each of us. For one, it was a tinkling piano. Another, the coo of a dove. And on one particular occasion, the purring rev of a car’s engine.
It’s not something I hear with my ears, but an echo inside my head. It calls to my own soul, which always answers back.
