WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (71 page)

When I walked back to the car, dad was standing
outside the door, arms folded and concerned. 
Lena’s face was terror in the making. 
Not my daughter. Not my child.

I hung the Lily with one of Maw Sue's clothes pins on a rope inside the darkness of my bedroom closet. Every day I would go in and check it. Weeks later when it was dry, I placed it inside my Mason jar next to Big Pop’s red rose. Every night, in the darkness of my bedroom
and holding a candle, I faced the darkness.  I preformed the ritual Maw Sue taught me in overcoming.  I faced the darkn
ess. I sat in it. I let it breathe on me and rule me. Sometimes, I thought for sure it would swallow me whole and I’d never recover. But I lit the candle, each time, and the darkness would flee. “Devenio! Devenio! Devenio!”
I’d whisper.  It was ancient words that made the lesser light surrender to the greater light. 

The Funeral

People
line up.  Drab and
eerie music plays from the wall speakers. I feel sick watching this drawn out ceremonial tribute to man’s walk on earth, of deaths curse upon flesh, to ache, to remember, to mourn in agonizing grief, the memories of the past, of what we had and what we lost. It’s like being stabbed in the chest over and over. I want to run and never stop running. Run and hide all these feelings pouring out of me, deep lacerations that make me want to get drunk, swallow a bottle of tic-tacs, run ba
ck to Branson, have random sex, spend my whole paycheck, anything to rid them out of me. 
My demons are storming from the hidden rooms inside me, screaming and banging on the walls, rattling the doorknobs, scratching their fingernails against the windows. 
They want out.
 I don’t know how much longer I can keep them in. Brick by brick they tear it down, wall by wall they push.

I stand in the back
of the room to avoid people.  I don’t want to talk.  I am not in a chatty mood.  People pass me as if they recognize the girl I used to be, little Willodean, the one who used to stir up the neighborhood with trouble.  They want to speak but my fragile shell of a carcass frightens them, as if
I might break from the slightest wrong word. My tongue grows heavy. The taste is bitter and I fight against its moisture but it has its way with me
and enters my vision. 
My mind goes back, quickly, frighteningly into the past. I’m lying in bed. I’m fourteen or fifteen, I can’t really tell. The lamp on my nightstand illuminates a small corner of my bedroom and morbidly lights up the Mason jar with decrepit dried flowers. The petal people sit inside their glass house like watchmen, idol gatekeepers. I am keenly aware of the shadows lurking from the hidden dark spaces. I’m crying uncontrollably, locked up inside myself, inside the house, inside the rooms, unable to speak. Lena of all people, sits beside my bed. 
Why is she there?

“Willodean, what is it?” She says. “You can tell me. Don’t you know I was a young girl too? Can’t you talk to me? What is wrong?” I glare at her unable to speak. It’s like this wall of pressure is on my vocal cords and resistance is robbing me of speech. I cry harder. I want to scream at her for some reason, just scream, shout at her—tell her, to make her see it’s real, to make her see me, 
the real me
—but my voice is gone, locked up inside the room. 
No voice, no validation that proves I’m real.
 Lena gives up and leaves.
When the room is vacant, it isn’t. 
People crowd around me. The petal people are no longer
inside the house, inside me, they are in my room.  The
y walk and hold their mason jars full of immortelles, while they chant, their lips continually speaking
their own stories, sorrows, and grief.  One petal man
reaches out with his wilted arm and grabs me, a strange evil look in his eyes.
I jerk away from him and his stemmed arm falls off.  I turn to run but I’m stopped. 

“What did you say hon?” The old lady with gray hair
says.  Her hair is in a tight bun that pulls her skin back till her eyes are slanted.  I am back in the viewing room not inside the Mason room. 

“I—uhh, I don’t know
.” I said in a bundle of nerves.  I had no idea if I said anything out loud or not. 
“I’m sorry, ex
cuse me.” I rushed off to hide frantic that people would see the crazy stirrings inside me. 
I need to be careful in public. 
Good Lord Willodean. Get it together.
 My skin aches as if it has no stability to cling to, no bones to wrap itself around, just an empty carcass, a crackle shell looking for a place 
to hang, to molt, to die.
 My eyes burn and puddles of water well up but they are not my tears. They are 
hers
. 
She
 is here with me.
She
 has found
me in her relentless search. 
Inside the room where I have kept her, she pounds on the walls and with each punch of her fist, my chest caves in. 
Why now? Why here?
 She has never been so strong before, as if she will simply unzip my skin from the inside and step out of me, introduc
e herself, live her life, live my life. 
I double down and resist her exit. My gut is twisted in knots.

“Don’t leave me again.” Her voice screams between my ears. She is running up the three spiral staircases, out of breath but fearless in reaching me, chasing me down, not letting me go. I wrap my arms around myself
binding my own body with cords to keep her in. 

“The only way to stop this is to let me out.” She says in a desperate plea. “Surrender. Let go.”
No. No. I can’t do that. No. I won’t. That is dangerous. You don’t know what you’re doing.
 I argued with the devil dialogue.
The little girl inside me. 
 
I have lost too much. I am not letting you out.

“Let me out of hiding.” She pleads. 

If I accept and let her go—will the war within me end?
 
I could not say.
I was not sure.  I didn’t trust her. 
Visions plague me. I’m a spent shell casing, lying on a battlefield, a bullet
fired and dropped to the ground.  A gun
with no ammunition, nothing to defend myself, nothing to fire back, no more tactics, no more running, no more excuses, no more masks. I felt hollow, numb, my knees weak. I needed my man pillow to hold, to cling to and wrap my legs around. I needed something to squeeze, a place of stability, a centerpiece to run to, to envision, to see, to focus, and to maintain. I want to shout but my mouth only trembled. I want to talk to somebody, to scream, to cry, to party, to drink Hennessey, to smoke, to have passionate sweaty sex, to exhaust myself and collapse in rapture, to shop, to spend, to buy, to drive fast, to spin out of control, to grab someone, to emerge and sink into their skin, to dissolve within their body, anything, something, oh God give me something, so that I no longer exist to feel, hear, see. No gifts. No curse.

“You’ve done all that before. It doesn’t work.” The little girls says, her voice a whisper knowing my
every thought. 
My intimat
es. My secrets. I felt invaded when she enters in. 
For the umpteenth time I felt that the void within me, that place of dark, mysterious abyss, of avoidance, of denial, of pain. A landscape so overwhelming, that to touch its beauty is to touch our own wicked hearts, where everything that frightens us, lies in clear vision, standing with us, to engage us, to confront us, without protection, without barriers, without anything stopping it from ruin. We will either confront it—
come what may
—or it will destroy us in cinders, leaving us in ash. It is the vulnerable place inside me where life has left me naked, without a name or voice, or recognition. 
No identity, no value, no respect, no purpose
. I am stripped of everything I ever
desired. 
Everything I ever dreamed of. I am laid out flat, held up by nothing, staring at the sky with blankness, a trance, a moonlit night, shrouded by the darkness that surrounds it. I hear the waters of the river licking the sandy banks, while the stars above me blink and close their eyes, ashamed and rejecting. The wind refuses to dry kiss my wet skin. There is a hard tap on my shoulders.

A big blue mountain rises in front of me. I am startled out of my mind when it speaks. “I’m so sorry about your loss, Willodean.” The hat lady said.
It wasn’t a mountain after all. 
“He was a good man.” She squeezes my arm and brings me back to the busyness of the room. I am distracted by her enormous velvet hat, a striking shade of blue and abstract from her green plaid dress. An odd combination.

“Yes maam.” I say politely. “Thank you. He was.” 
Keep it together Willodean. Keep it together.
 I don’t know half the people here, but they know me, which means they will want to chatter.
Don’t break.
 
Put on a mask.

Earlier, upon arrival, I was assaulted by a mob of
gray haired people hunched over and walking with canes.  Old lady perfume and Old Spice cologne.  Dentures and snuff. 
I’ve been hugged countless times, pinched on the cheeks, prayed over, and numerous other elderly antics I don’t want to talk about. I am morbidly lost here and there, lost in my house, inside myself, inside the dark room of death. It’s all like a slow, bad dream. I can’t wake up. I can’t bare conversation with strangers, so I slip off to the corner and slither discreetly behind a fake fichus tree and lean against the wall. Maybe I will blend in with the leaves.

Between the tree leaves I watch. People interact with whispers, some in agonizing silence staring off into the distance. Others are laughing telling stories. The hardest thing for me is the walk by, the dreadful casket view. The way people parade by the wooden box, stopping briefly to stare at Papa Hart’s lifeless corpse, puffed up with formaldehyde, makeup and paint
. I shudder thinking about it.
 I can’t bring myself to do it. I keep a fifteen foot distance the whole time. I want to remember him like I know him to be. 
I will not say goodbye
.

In my head I go into a childish tantrum. I cause a scene. I embarrass Lena Hart. I rush to the center of the room, stomp my feet on the ugly brown carpet and scream like I’m on a mountain. “He is not here! He is NOT here!” I march over, slam down the casket lid and lift my hands to the sky. “Straight up. Don’t you people get it? Straight up!” Everyone is astonished at my conduct. They look at me with the same cuckoo expression they always gave Maw Sue during her fits. I’d be the talk of the town. “That Willodean Hart has done it again.” They’d say. “Just like she did when she was little.” The Pine Log Herald would read, 
LOCA
L WOMAN HAS MELTDOWN AT FUNERAL. 

I am so caught up in my head I don’t realize I’m laughing
out loud and drawing attention to myself, so I sink deeper into the tree leaves. 
The child in me wants to rise up and not care what people think, not give a damn, but the 
Willodean—adult—never—have—fun
 tells me to save face and spare the family name. Lena Hart cuts her eyes at me so I won’t fulfill the curse, cause a scene. 
Not my daughter. Not my child.

Men with black suits and somber faces point and direct people to seating. The funeral director is motioning with hand signals to another guy standing by the back door. There is rustling pew noises, coughs, sniffles and a low murmur. I want to melt into the wall, erase this day completely from my memory. The forked edges of Lena Hart’s eyes rake over me and force me out of hiding. I come out from hiding and reluctantly sit down on the pews next to my sister. Scuttles and scrapes
are heard.  The hush that overcomes the room is
unbearable. My
breath utterly suspends in time. 
The organ starts to plays soft elevator music. I feel like I should be pushing buttons—
floor 100 please
. Get off, walk to the edge of the skyscraper and jump. 
End the pain.
 
End the misery.
Bodies wiggle and nervously fidget.
It’s making me panic inside. 
A family mass of broken people, snug, side by side and holding each other up. Pieces of the willow tree snap and break until I am just a mere stump. I go into my internal mode, swaying side to side in little nervous ticks, hitting my mother’s shoulders and then Mag’s. I feel a hand grab mine and squeeze. Sister signals converge, melt into oneness, each of our pain submerging together, passing our grief back and forth. We are back in the deep clutches of nightfall alone and scared laying in our childhood beds, each supporting the other, while the adults around us fall apart and the world we knows spins into orbit.

The eulogy is long. The preacher goes on and on until I no longer hear. I am lost in my head. My right heel bops up and down to keep me from screaming a piping voice of lament. And then the hard part—
the goodbyes
. I sat still. Unmoved. Everyone crawled over
and around me. 
I felt sick to my stomach. 
Get to the porch Willodean.
 
It’s the final look, the last view, the end snapshot, the last kiss, the last bitter cold touch
. Woody Woodpecker flew inside my head and said, “That’s all folks!” and then heckles a laugh. I tast
e the sweet sap of my childhood. 
I fear I might hyperventilate. 
Look
, look, look.  
Love looks
. The words haunt me and filter through
my heart. 
No. No. I don’t want to look.
 I’ve looked in love so much this week, this century, this lifetime; I swear I don’t think I can do it again, 
ever.
 If I stare into God’s gaze one more time, I’ll blow up and take everyone with me. 
Vapor—dust—cinders!