10 minute read
WELL DONE! Fiction - A Bleeding Heart by Ann Hite
A Bleeding Heart by Ann Hite
The first walk I took alone in the charmed woods out behind our cabin, I heard a voice ringing in my head like the church bell at Black Mountain Church on down the mountain a piece. Later when I got older, more book learned, I would explain the experience away due to my four-year-old imagination. But deep in my heart resided the knowledge that this tale really happened. Mama warned me more than once to stay away from the forest. Not because she believed in magic. Naw, she never believed in no such thing as long as she was alive. She was being a mama. See I was first in her life except for her healing. Healing was in her blood. It was what made her the woman she was. And that very morning, she took off with Mr. Williams to fix his five-year-old son’s broken leg.
“Robert got on our old mule and she threw him for a loop.”
Mama frowned at Mr. Williams. “Boys that young have no business on the backs of mules.”
Mr. Williams nodded. “Yes ma’am but Robert is a boy with his own mind that nothing seems to change.”
Mama looked at me standing in the door. “I’ll be back, Maude. You stay close to your granny.”
“Yes, Mama.”
As soon as Mama slipped down the drive, I checked on Granny, who had slipped into one of her catnaps after telling me the story of her grandmother Polly, whose Cherokee name was Treewalker, given to her by her grandmother, the first granny witch on the mountain. Polly walked the mountain day and night without any fear. See at night, I heard a pretty voice all tissue soft with puffs of lavender floating out of the magic forest. Lord, I kept this to myself. Mama worried too much anyway and Granny would have gone on her own to find it. They was that different. Plus, sharing things with them two didn’t always go well. A few days before, I told Mama I saw folks in colors. Mama was a bright green of new leaves in spring. Granny was a warm yellow like the buttercups dotting the meadow near our cabin.
“Maude, there is no such thing as seeing people in colors. It’s just your imagination.” Mama’s real practical side was what made her a granny witch.
“Ah, now, Rebecca, the child may see colors. She never tells untruths.” Granny had been the granny witch before Mama like her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother before her. The woman could name every plant on the mountain and taught Mama all she knew.
“Don’t encourage her.” Mama snapped. She was so different from folks on Black Mountain, she seemed a stranger. Granny said that was Mama’s college learning. It separated Mama from the rest of the mountain. That’s how Mama met Daddy but that’s a story I pushed out of my mind each time it crept in. Mama brought him back to the mountain with the idea of helping the folks to understand science. Daddy must have believed she could do such a thing cause he followed. Of course that turned into a big joke behind her back and Daddy left. He only visited here and there.
I put one foot in front of the other and took myself to the magic woods. The trees came together and formed a cover blocking out most of the sunlight with just some sprinkles here and there like a candle flame moving in a breeze. The mountain Laurel was bursting into pinkish-white star blooms. The last time Daddy came to visit, we went to the meadow at night to look at the stars. So many filled the sky my breath left my chest. He named every single one. Even let me name a couple. But wandering through them woods was not the time to start thinking on Daddy. My senses had to be sharp.
On the forest floor was a bunch of Bleeding Hearts, tall dark pink flowers, that swayed in the wind. They were my favorite. A bleeding heart is what I had when Daddy wasn’t here. I bent over and cupped a few stems in my fingers. Just a few sprigs for the house.
Don’t break the flowers. They hurt just like you.
The words floated through my mind, petals falling to the ground.
“Where are you?” I let the Bleeding Hearts be.
Only a red bird sitting on a limb above my head sang. Granny said they brought the dead to us. A bumble bee bounced from one Mountain Laurel bloom to another.
The sound of Dragonfly River provided music and the sound of the moving water pulled me towards it. The wind blew strands of my hair into my eyes. How could someone with red hair have a granny who was part Cherokee? This was the question I asked a lot just to see Mama squirm, knowing she would have to talk about Daddy. I loved my daddy best, but I wouldn’t tell Mama any such thing. Wasn’t a bit of sense in hurting her feelings, and seeing how Daddy was never home, I needed Mama. My red hair came from him. He was Irish. His daddy came to America from Ireland. Daddy promised one day he would take me with him for his first trip there.
I put my feet straight into the river. My breath left my body and my toes numbed just like when snow had fallen in my boots the past winter. The wind kissed the hot parts of my body.
“Girls your age shouldn’t be in the river alone.”
I turned to see who had caught me and slid down on my behind, turning it numb. A beautiful woman with long black hair, straight and shiny, held out her hand.
“Come on. You’ll catch your death.”
I closed my fingers around her cold hand. A fiery burning rushed up my arm. She pulled me from the water. “Your granny will be disappointed you did this. And your mother trusts nothing, especially you, little girl.”
Lord, this woman knew them and would spill the beans. “I just wanted to walk. My granny told me about her grandmother, who walked this mountain from a little girl until she got too old. Night and day. Never afraid. I don’t want to be afraid, but sometimes I am. I want to be strong like her.”
No color surrounded this woman. Everyone had a color. Why not her?
“Tell me what you're afraid of.” Her voice blended with the rushing water. “Let’s walk.”
“I’m not afraid.” We walked side by side, and I was warm, but if I fell behind, a cold crept into my bones.
“You just said you were. Tell me.”
“I am afraid of my daddy never coming back.” There it was out.
She squeezed my hand. “Your father doesn’t fit here, child, but he has a deep love for you. That is what brings him back over and over.”
Several blue butterflies flew around her head. One landed on the collar of her dress and rode along. “Tell me of this woman?”
“Granny said she was Cherokee and knew the plants better than she knew people. She was one of the first granny witches here on the mountain.”
A mockingbird landed on a limb close to our heads and began to sing.
“So they call healers, granny witches now.” She guided us up a steep path. “I only know one woman who walked this mountain. Her name was Polly. Her father was the war chief of their Cherokee tribe here on the mountain. The peace chief was her mother.”
We stepped through the trees onto a large flat rock jutting out in mid-air. The sun was orange and red as it sank into the clouds. The woman picked up a green and yellow Tulip Tree bloom, holding it for me to look at. “Polly loved this mountain more than life.” Tears squeezed from the corner of her eyes.
I swallowed a sob.
The hem of the woman’s dark skirt scrubbed the rock as she walked me closer to the edge. “Polly gave her life to an Irishman to save this mountain, but it didn’t stop her father from leaving. He walked with his people off the mountain and never came home. Sometimes fathers have to do what they have to do.” She brushed my tears away, and they turned into tiny yellow butterflies.
We walked into the trees, now much darker and moved onto the main path. Silence moved through me like a beautiful song.
The woman pointed to another path barely lit now. “Go home this way. Your mama and granny are worried sick. I kept you too long.”
I began to walk away.
“Maude?”
I stopped. “Your father will come back home many times before he leaves for good. Go now.”
Lightning bugs flashed on and off. My clothes were dry. “How long have we been together?” But she was gone. I ran down the path. The sky had gone to the purple just before dark. A bright star shown on the edge of the sky, close to the treetops.
Mama sat on the back of Old Mary, our horse. “Maude.” She jumped from the horse. Her green light surrounded her.
Granny appeared at the corner of the cabin. “You found her?”
Mama hugged me to her so tight I couldn’t breathe. “She found us,” she called. “Where have you been?” Her voice was strained.
Granny stood close “How did you find your way home?”
“I was walking and a woman with long black hair showed me how to get home.”
“Lordy, she’s done seen Polly.” Granny looked at me. “Did you go to the top of the mountain, Maude? Sweet Baby Jesus, Polly done saved my girl.”
Mama squeezed harder. “Don’t tell her those ghost stories.” She released her hold and held my face in her hands. The last light let me see her scared expression. “No more going into the woods, Maude.”
I wanted to tell her that Daddy would come home many more times before his last. I wanted to cry on her shoulder about my missing him. I wanted to talk about being on the flat rock. Instead I looked over Mama’s shoulder. The woman stood at the edge of the woods drenched in a blue light. Holy light. The sky was full of stars. She waved. I would walk the path again to see her.
