The Witch House of Persimmon Point Page 5

  “The deed says it’s only five acres.”

  “The original acreage was over forty. Took up the whole peninsula, probably stretched into Maryland. That’s a whole lot of digging.”

  “Can we dig now?” asked Maj. “I’d like to go outside and see the moo, moo, moo, moo, mooon. And Crazy Anne said I have to see the ponies.” Maj had been patiently listening, eating too much pie (even the lemon pawpaw), and coloring, and she was plain old bored.

  “Tomorrow. It’s too dark anyhow,” said Byrd.

  “You see Crazy Anne, too,” said Eleanor, with a deep sigh. “It feels a little strange. I don’t remember deciding to be the older, wiser, silly, slow-on-the-uptake grown-up.”

  Byrd rolled her eyes. “She’s my great-grandmother. And though it irks me to no end, I haven’t seen her. And she won’t talk to me. Or can’t. You know, I gotta admit, it feels nice to have conversations about these things with people who understand. It’s fun to see others react to things like ghost spotting, but even shock and awe can get boring after a spell.”

  “I think that’s a good way to describe family. The ability to simply … be. And to know. And to not have to pretend,” Eleanor said, giving a little half smile.

  “Sounds great. Call me when you find one of those,” said Byrd.

  “But they’re all here, Byrd,” whispered Maj. “Nan and Anne and Lucy. Others, too. Like Ava. Anne’s the loudest, but they’re all here, and they are your family. They are our family.”

  “Well, they haven’t haunted ME yet,” said Byrd. “And trust me, I never met a spirit who didn’t love to haunt me. And these are the ones I NEED TO TALK TO. Figures. And yes, sarcasm runs in this supposed family of ours. And a love of pie.”

  “They already told you all their stories. They’re right up here,” said Maj, tapping at her forehead. “Now you just got to tell Mama.”

  “I guess we could start with Nan. If you get a notebook from the library, we could start to draw up a chart or something,” suggested Eleanor.

  “We got a family tree right here,” Byrd said, pouting.

  “I know. And it’s lovely. But if we write down dates and facts as you tell me her story, maybe we can make a connection you haven’t made yet.”

  Byrd’s face lit up. “Finally. You are useful! You are! No, I mean it. That’s perfect. I’ll grab a pad. Sometimes it’s the simplest things, I SWEAR.” Byrd practically skipped out of the room.

  “Maj, it looks like me and Byrd will be burning a little midnight oil. How about we get you all set up on the couch in the conservatory? We’ll leave the doors open. That way you can hear us talking and you won’t be scared.”

  “All right. But not because I’m scared. This house doesn’t scare me one bit. But it can scare. It likes to scare. Sometimes it feels bad that it makes people sad. Sometimes it feels good to watch them run.”

  Byrd caught the last part of Maj’s words as she reentered the kitchen, and she stopped short.

  For the first time all day, it was Byrd and Eleanor who shared a look. One part worry, one part understanding, and one part alarm.

  And the clock went tic tock tic tock tic tock. Tic.

  9:00 P.M.

  Maj burrowed deeply into a pillow nest on the couch in the conservatory as Delores curled up at her feet.

  “Are you cozy, Maj?” Eleanor asked, covering her with a heavy crocheted blanket.

  “Yes, very much. I like it here with this lamp, and I can see and hear you both at the table, like I’m watching a play, or TV. Don’t worry, Mama. I won’t stay up. Tomorrow I get to play outside. Thank you for bringing me here. Byrd, will you tell me a bedtime story?”

  Byrd was lighting a candle. “A scary sort of bedtime story? Or a romantic one, because I don’t like romantic stories. Not one bit.” Byrd walked up, looking as though the word romantic had given off an awful smell.

  “I don’t like kissing stories. Aren’t you going to tell Nan’s story to Mama? The one with the girl covered in melted glass? Tell me that one.”

  “It’s sad.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s scary.”

  “I know.”

  “If it’s sad and scary, I might just have to be a big party pooper, girls,” Eleanor broke in. “I am the grown-up. This can’t become some kind of free-for-all. Pie for dinner, sleeping on sofas, ghost playmates.”

  “I already know the story, Mama. I just want to hear it again.”

  Eleanor sat on the couch, and Maj rested her head on her mother’s lap.

  “I think I’m too tired to argue. But you promise to try and go to sleep. When we’re done for the night, I’ll bring you upstairs. I’ll even carry you. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “Okay, Byrd. Tell us about Nan.”

  “Okay, I guess here is just as good as the kitchen table. This story starts with a doorknob.”

  “That’s not a very good start to a bedtime story,” said Maj.

  * * *

  “You aren’t even in a bed,” Byrd retorted. “Oh, FINE. Once upon a time … does that work?” she asked. She had lit all the candles in the room. They flickered warmly. The one on the small side table reminded Eleanor of the doorknob.

  “Yes.”

  “Once upon a time, at the very tip of the very coast of this very large nation (in an even vaster world) … there was a house. The people who lived there were rich, and those who saw the house thought there was no finer place in all the world. But even then, it had a sad history. Built on sour land, it soured the people who lived there. When Nan came across the ocean, she brought light into a dark place. Only, see, darkness always has a way of seeping in. A closet is left unclosed. A bed unmade. An argument. A lie. A secret. And when the dark came back, it came with a fury.

  “Nan built this house knowing there had to be a place for both dark and light to live together.

  “That’s why it’s blue and white. She painted the house as a warning. ‘Can’t be a good day without clouds. Can’t trust a cloudless sky.’”

  “Is that the same kind of thing that the words on the gate mean?” asked Maj.

  “Yes. Kind of. Hold on … who’s telling this story? Didn’t you tell us you’d be going to sleep?”

  “Carry on,” said Maj in a fake grown-up voice.

  Byrd cleared her throat. “Well, our Nan knew a little bit about life being untrustworthy. The world had taken too much from her. So much, that at one point, all she had left in the whole wide world was a pretty doorknob. But before that, she’d had so much love. Because the story … our story … yours, mine, and your mama’s, all starts in Italy. Once upon a time in Italy.…”

  The Book of Nan

  1900–1910

  5

  Nan Amore

  HAVEN PORT, 1910

  As the sun rose over the rubble of the heaven she’d sought for so long, Nan Amore stood in the center of the destroyed foundation of Haven House, willing it all back. Something glistened from under a blackened piece of wood, and reaching down, and under, her fingers brushing against the sticking of dewy green grass (fairies, Mama, that’s fairy water, right?), she picked the familiar object up without being able to identify it, so out of its context, yet so familiar it made her head spin. It made the sorrow and shock bloom into a nest of memories. It was the doorknob to Haven House. The one she’d touched with trepidation at the beginning, the one that grew into a symbol of comfort and safety as the years went by. She ran her fingers along its flower-etched surface until the heavy brass pulled her to the ground. It was all gone. “Give them back,” she cried into the unforgiving morning. Her yelling didn’t make it rain, didn’t do anything but beat against the buzzing newly born sorrow nest, letting loose millions of stinging memories instead.

  6

  Nan in the Barn with a Boy

  ITALY, 1900

  Her beautiful mother sat in the sunshine and moved back and forth in her rocking chair. The creaking of it soothed Nan, though she didn’t want to admit it. It was h
er birthday, she was turning sixteen, and what was she doing? Snapping the ends off green beans.

  “I should be in Paris at a cafe, not here helping cook my own birthday meal,” she said.

  Her mother smiled, tilting her face toward the sun and closing her eyes. Nan loved the way her mama’s hair collected all the light of the afternoon.

  “But don’t you agree, Mama?” she asked, putting the bowl of beans on the table. She then kneeled next to her mother, putting her head on her lap so that the rocking chair stilled. “I love you, you know I would never go far away. I’m just terribly bored. And I don’t even like beans. Mama, are you listening to me?”

  “This chair,” said her mother, dreamily, “has rocked babies in our family for as long as anyone can remember. I rocked you right after you were born. The sunlight was just like this. I’d never seen anything more beautiful than you. We’d only just come to live here, and I was still trying to make a living selling the herbs and treatments. You are a wild soul, Anna. Much like I was. But you lack the fear I had. You’ve never taken any of my teaching seriously enough. You must start to learn the old ways, Anna. Without these skills, this community will not accept you when I am gone. I may have done you a disservice, allowing you so much freedom, so much safety.”

  Nan, not caring for the moment that she had just turned sixteen, curled up in her mother’s lap like a little girl. Mama only called her Anna when she was serious. “I’ll never have to worry about that, because you will never leave me,” Nan said.

  Her mother kissed the top of her head, and the two silently rocked back and forth together, looking out over the rolling hills and the dirt road that snaked its way to the horizon.

  * * *

  Nan’s childhood had been like no other, at least not like that of the other children growing up in the small town of Stella di Perduto, where young girls were constrained by religion, the patriarchal culture, and violent crime attached to family pride.

  The Amore family on the edge of the village was different. Ava Amore was as feared as she was respected. Her curing, healing ways were known all throughout southern Italy and perhaps beyond. Ava tried to teach her children, Nan especially, the healing arts, but be it laziness on their part, or business on her own, not one of them knew enough to keep her little family safe.

  When Nan was older, during those moments she dared to look back to that time and that place, the sun was always bright in the sky. The landscape was gentle. There were gentle rolling hills, gentle flowing rivers, gentle breezes. Nan often lamented not absorbing any of those qualities.

  Maybe if she’d spent more time appreciating the world surrounding her, instead of daydreaming about distant shores, she would have been less reckless. Maybe if she’d paid attention to the way her mother’s hands lingered on her hair, she would have noticed the impermanence of safety.

  We never really know how much we’ll miss people and places until they’re gone.

  * * *

  No, Nan wasn’t gentle or nostalgic. She was more like the colors surrounding her, brilliant and vivid. Green treetops against a blue sky with white fluffy clouds, the purple of the sage, the yellow of the squash and daisies and dandelions. The light, fresh green of white grapes and the deep blackish purple of the red grapes, the dark green grape vines and orange stucco on her home that faded pink in the sunlight. And then there were the blue-gray stone pathways that led through high yellow and green grasses on the paths into the village proper. The colors made Nan long for a brighter light inside herself.

  And the air, ocean saltwater with hints of garlic, grapes, hardworking men, lavender, roses … Nan loved the smell of roses. Her mother would pour her a tub once a week, and when the roses were in bloom, she would add the petals.

  “May I get Florencia to finish snapping these, Mama? I want to have my bath.”

  “I suppose so, but don’t be mean when you ask her. You know she always feels I favor you.”

  “That’s because you do,” said Nan, kissing her mother on her cheek before flouncing outside and almost toppling the bowl full of beans.

  * * *

  See Nan in a metal washtub, her bare sun-kissed shoulders, her graceful legs. The tub is stationed just outside the kitchen, the door that overflows with herbs from pots and tangled window boxes.… See her floating just under the rose petal–dappled surface. Her eyes rest shut and she can smell the fragrance steeping, steaming, streaming out of each perfect petal. She dreams that she is in Paris, or any other fast city, and she is dancing, her hair wildly falling down against her back. She is the belle of the ball. The mysterious young woman from anywhere. See her sister, Florencia, and her brother, Vincent, spy on her from behind the sheets on the line. See her build a future that will never come.

  * * *

  Nan Amore had big plans. But she knew that to travel in the world, she’d have to pay her own way. She had no intention of marrying, so she was taking in sewing from those in the village. She didn’t make much, but it was a start. As she sewed she thought of all the places she would go. First, France. Her father, before he died, always told stories about the coffee in France, how bitter … but what does coffee matter?

  “Anna! Wash your hair!” her mother shouted through the window. To Nan she sounded a million miles away.

  But Nan washed her hair dutifully, then called her mother to help her out of the tub. “Mama, you are the most beautiful of anyone I’ve ever seen.” Ava Amore was petite, smaller than Nan or her sister. She had red hair, bright red with no signs of gray. Nan and her siblings looked like changeling … black hair, black eyes, round curves, high cheekbones, young, taut skin. Her mother showed her age on her face and her hands. Frowning was her resting face, and the frowns had created deep creases in her mother’s skin. Nan loved them; she would trace them when they would lie together in the fields after picnics or at night when her mother snuggled with them, telling them stories of the magical world they supposedly came from. Nan’s only fear about her wonderful plans was being away from her curious, warm-hearted, ever-frowning magical mother.

  * * *

  A month after her birthday, Giancarlo began calling on Nan Amore.

  When he came to the house, Nan made fun of him. He was such a dandy. He wore a fancy suit—the same one every time—and had a silly little half-grown mustache that seemed more like a smudge of dirt than a symbol of his manhood. And his hair was slicked back with too much oil. He may have been handsome, Nan didn’t know or care.

  She’d been furious when Mama gave him permission to court her. But whatever anger Nan felt paled in comparison to the rage Ava unleashed on her when Giancarlo left.

  “You will not destroy this opportunity. Do you know how difficult it was to find a suitable man who isn’t scared of coming too close to us? Or who doesn’t assume you and your sister have already had relations with the devil? Do not laugh, children. This is what is on the minds of everyone you see. Don’t fool yourselves. Sometimes the only way to stay safe is to simply agree. And that works both ways. Understand?” Her children nodded. “Nan, be kind to that boy. He is your future.”

  “Mama, why are you entertaining this folly? Are you trying to marry me off, be rid of me?” asked Nan.

  “Florencia, Vincent … go outside. Now,” said Ava. Then she turned, placing both hands on Nan’s shoulders, and roughly pushed her against the wall.

  “As a matter of fact, I am. You are not a child any longer. And you are not protected by the ways of our people. This is not your fault … I thought we’d have more time. I thought I could teach you, and then you would apprentice, and once I was gone you would simply take my place and protect Florencia and Vincent. Listen to me, Nan, I am running out of time. You will have to marry.”

  “What do you mean, are you sick?”

  “Not yet. I have some time. And I have some cures. But the chance, the real risk of it, helped me realize I will not be here forever. Just do as I say. I can’t force you to marry him. But I can try to pave you a road. I
did not raise children who are close-minded to ideas. Give this a chance.”

  Nan agreed.

  * * *

  So Nan and Giancarlo courted under the watchful eye of her siblings. But, after a few weeks, Vincent and Florencia grew bored tagging along. They didn’t believe this sweaty, insecure Giancarlo would try anything improper with their Nan, so they let them walk alone.

  Only, it wasn’t Giancarlo they had to worry about. If she was supposed to consider marrying him, Nan needed to know if she could love him. She wanted to be touched, to feel the romance, to have her body explored. She led him to the barn and laid herself on the hay. He stood there, looking at her, sweating and dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. “And what are you doing Nan? Taking a nap?” He laughed nervously.

  “I want you to touch me.” She said it unafraid of how he would react. No one thought she was innocent anyway. And besides, she didn’t love him. She looked at him as the first adventure of her life. He was on her in but a moment, hurried and grunting, squeezing and groping. “Slow down…” she said. He tried, but when his fingers found their way inside her, he just shoved and shoved until her entire body began to shiver. She arched against his hand, never wanting him to slow down again, and then she shoved his hand away. She could see the bulge in his pants.

  “Please…” he seemed to squeak out of his throat. She didn’t know how she knew what to do, but she did. She undid his pants and took his swollen thing into her mouth. It didn’t take long. When he left that day, she thought he would never come back, that she had shamed them both somehow, but she was wrong. He came back the next week. This time he led her to the barn.

  They repeated their encounter, all fingers and mouths, but took more time. He played with her breasts and kissed them while his fingers worked, and she shuddered harder and faster. But they knew not to go further; they knew they could not sin all the way.

  “We could do it if you marry me,” he said.

  “You don’t want to marry me,” she said.