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"It?"
"That shed is the site of a great tragedy."
"I know. The dead slaves."
"What?"
"The dead slaves. It's their burial place."
Grammy Weenie let out the first laugh I had ever
heard from her lips. "Is that what you think? Slaves?
My Lord, Beauregard, you think the island slaves
were buried up here? They were dumped down in the
West Island without markers. My family has owned
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this property for the past one hundred years — they
wouldn't buy a graveyard, I can guarantee that, child.
No, it's where Babygirl . . . where she . . . died. I
thought you knew that. Your mother's sister, the first
child. Beau. Babygirl, then Evvie, then Cricket. I had
three daughters . . . Your aunt. She lived up here the
last years of her life. I thought you knew by what you
said. I thought you knew. Babygirl, Beau. You know her
name, for the love of God, I thought you knew."
I shook my head. "I don't know what you're talking
about — her name was Cindy."
I thought Grammy was going to fly into a rage at
my insolence. "It was Short for Lucinda, Beau. But
the Gullahs all called her Lucy. Lucy Wandigaux Lee."
8
"That's why I never go out in those woods. She died in
a bad way. She had what Sumter has, and she is as bad
as Sumter. Your grandfather planted those trees out
there, on the bluff, just to hide that place. How I
loved her and feared her, Beau. But she let it get to
her. She didn't learn to contain it. She had no choice.
But when it gets in the blood, dear God in Heaven,
what must then be done?"
I was puzzled. I looked out through the storm and
saw nothing but gray rain.
Grammy Weenie continued, "Her imagination,
Beau, her visions. It is part of the Wandigaux line. I
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have had them, and I know you have your dreams,
don't you? You used to tell me your dreams when you
were four and five, and then you stopped. You did the
right thing, child, because it never does one good to
let these things out into the world. It is like the blue
of our eyes. Handed down. And she would've been
fine, too, but Lee was worried about her fits of
depression and anger. She was backward and slow,
and he hated her for it; God, how he hated her for it.
Old Lee was not understanding of differences, of the
unusual. But then, he was not a Wandigaux.
"Old Lee could not suffer her moods any longer,
may God forgive him, and he had this, this quack, per-
form an operation upon her. This horrid doctor. To
— to take out the emotions from her head. He swore
he was only removing the part of her that hurt, that
carpetbagger from Boston, he swore she would never
hurt again. But I tell you. Beau, after he stuck his nee-
dles beneath her scalp, above her eyelids, all she did
was hurt. There was no hope for her then. None.
They say humans can't live without hope, but she did.
Oh, yes. She lived. She spent nights out in that shack.
She worshiped what none could see, but she saw. She
saw. All around us, an invisible world. The world is a
skin, and she was able to hack at the flesh of life to
the beating heart, and no man or woman should ever
do that. It is forbidden to us. Children came to her. I
saw her playing with them out in the woods, teaching
things children should not learn. And one by one
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those children died, swimming into a rough surf,
swimming away from the something that came
toward them. And Lucy, my daughter, who had been
merely slow, merely different before her surgery, after
. . . after . . . she was a monster. She said the children
were infested and that sea would cleanse them. She
laughed while they went under."
I gasped, "Zinnia and her brothers."
Grammy Weenie continued, "I have the sight,
child, but it is faulty and I often wonder if it is any-
thing more than a strong intuition. But Lucy had what
Sumter has. The full Wandigaux curse. You can go
back hundreds of years and find it, back to France
when certain members of our family were tortured for
conjuring. It doesn't go with everyone. You may have a
little, I've always felt you do. But your sisters are lack-
ing, as are your mother and your aunt, as far as I have
been able to tell. And it is a curse, not a blessing. Lucy
never saw the world as it was, only as she created it in
her mind. She stayed a child up until her death, even
though physically she should've been a woman. And
children do not live long. Beau, you have to cross that
bridge into the world, and Lucy could not. The
Gullahs here know about her, what she did. They
know. They know how gods mate with humans, they
know both the visible and invisible world. They have
stories . . . they have stories about seeing what can't be
seen. Most of my life, child, I was taught that the
church was the dwelling place of God. I have no doubt
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he has other places, also, be they temples, mosques, or
tents. But who would've thought there would be other
gods? That there are cathedrals for these gods? And
what that doctor did with his needles, with his scalpels,
with his drugs, was to cut a peephole through the altar
of some creation other than our own. I had heard it
said that frogs do not see most of the world; only
movements in verticals and diagonals, so they will be
able to catch flies, you see. We, too, catch our flies,
and see only what we need to see to survive. Who is to
say there is not another world moving all around us to
which we are blind? And perhaps, until we enter that
world, its inhabitants, also, are blind to us. Lucy
became a bride of a god, a terrible, savage god. And
she bore children, yes, children. Two. First, one which
was more her blood than its father's, a child she
named Summer for the season in which he arrived.
Old Lee and I cared for him and hid our shame from
the rest of the world. But within a year, in spite of our
watching Lucy as much as we could stand to, she bore
another. The second was more his father's son . . . " [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]