For my very own Momma—
and all her nine aunts and uncles
At first I’m sure someone peers at me. Leans close to my face. Her hair (yes, it’s a girl) brushes against my cheek. Her fingers on my shoulder. A close inspection of my room and then right back to where I’m lying. Checking.
A wail pushes through a wall, cries in the night, squeezes at my heart.
She moves toward the sound. Comes back to me. Watches. Swims through the darkness. Disappears. Reappears. Like the anguish pulls her. Like moving to a dance. Or the waves of the ocean.
1
The Gift.
Fifteen.
Fifteen.
I awoke with a gasp, sitting straight up.
Aunt Odie sat in the rocker Momma used to sit in (and rock me) after I was born. Where Momma sat for a bit after Baby Lucy was born (before she bought my sister her own rocker to take with her later on down the road, when she grows up some). Momma’s a planner.
My aunt shifted herself around. Like she was uncomfortable. “Morning, Evie,” she said, not even bothering to whisper. She stared off in a corner and smoked an unfiltered, roll-your-own cigarette. Something she never does unless she’s not at home. Can’t at her place. Mustn’t. Against the law.
“Aunt Odie,” I said, stretching my toes toward her, lifting my fingertips to the ceiling. “You’re spreading secondhand smoke to me, the birthday girl.”
“I know that.” She grinned, stubbed the butt out in an ashtray that rested on her belly, shifted again. “Get on outta bed. We got big things to do today. Miles to go before we eat.”
The curtains behind her moved in a breeze that couldn’t be there, seeing the windows were shut.
I blinked at the almost sun that peered into my room.
Let out a sigh.
Stretched again.
In just three days, I would start tenth grade, and I didn’t think I could stand it. Not the excitement. Not the scary parts.
Aunt Odie kept not looking at me, like she was mustering courage. Something tapped at the back of my skull.
“Ugh,” I said. “You know I got school coming up.”
My aunt gave me a somber look. Bits of the sun touched at her hair, making the gray look silver.
August 25 always arrives too quick—my birthday or not. The start of school.
Again.
Every year.
No matter what.
Except Saturdays and Sundays.
Of course.
“Yes sirree, buddy,” Aunt Odie said. “You heading on back means I’ll be losing my best worker.”
I couldn’t speak. I wanted to say, I’m ready. But all that came out was the “I’m.” What I wanted to say was, I’m ready to go with you on my birthday adventure but not to high school. What I wanted to say was, Why do I have to grow up so fast?
I flopped back, turned over, and buried my face into the cool side of the pillow.
Sure, I wanted to go on off to another year of high school. What teenager doesn’t, right?
We’re supposed to want to start a new adventure.
I swallowed back a big old gob of spit. I didn’t want to go too.
I felt uneasy all the way to the core.
To the center.
Blech. An institution of higher learning. Good if I wanted to head to college. Except this also meant—
No more freedom.
No more sweet Baby Lucy.
No more sleep as long as I wanted.
I rolled onto my back. Stared at the ceiling.
And no more running off with Aunt Odie before the sun got itself all the way up. It was sad.
Sad.
Aunt Odie let out a rumble of a laugh. “Quit your whining,” she said, though I hadn’t uttered a word.
I squinched my eyebrows at her.
“We got us plans,” she said. “Your momma said we could head out on our little trip as long as I got you back to the house by the time Baby Lucy wakes up. So hurry on up, girly. The Cadillac’s all cooled off on the inside. Breakfast sandwiches waiting in tinfoil. Big jug of sweet tea. It’s time for us to git.”
I rubbed at my eyes.
“Happy birthday, Evie,” Aunt Odie said, just like a best friend would. Her voice all honey.
“Why, thank you,” I said, and thought to bow, but bowing is not that easy when you’re lying in bed.
With a grunt, my aunt pushed herself out of the chair and set it to rocking. The curtains waved and rippled. She caught the ashtray before it slipped to the floor. Pinched the cigarette out all the way. “Number fifteen. The most important celebration ever in a Messenger’s life. Not including marriage, births, and deaths.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and waited for her to leave so I could get dressed.
2
I almost didn’t have the chance to go to the potty, that’s how quick Aunt Odie ran me out of my sleeping house, all quiet.
I’m surprised she let me change out of my jammies.
Shorts.
T-shirt.
Pulled my way-too-curly hair back in a ponytail in my bathroom. I could hear Aunt Odie way off in another part of our home.
“Closed-toe shoes, girly. No flip-flops today.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I hip-hopped down the hall, slipping on my tennies. Past the family portraits of the Messengers way on back to black-and-white and grainy sepia.
“I tell you,” Aunt Odie said as we went outside. The weather held a full house as far as humidity was concerned. I tried to shrug away from the suffocating feeling. Impossible. “We got us a morning storm on its way.”
I glanced at the sky. Clouds, dark and threatening, swirled everywhere. The air dripped moisture. The grass was so damp the dew made my shoes wet, then my toes, straight through the canvas.
“Shoulda let me wear flip-flops,” I said.
Across the street I eyed Buddy McKay’s house. He is the cutest thing in all a New Smyrna Beach.
And nasty, too. In a really cute sorta way.
Tried to kiss me the day I moved in this here place just over a year ago.
I sighed, remembering. Then sighed again.
I’d almost let him. His hand warm on my arm. His breath all peppermint.
“Closed toes for today.” Aunt Odie unlocked the car from where she balanced on one foot on the front porch. Like she was a huge flamingo. One wearing a perm. The petunias smelled the yard up. The magnolias, both fat with blossoms, kept their flowers and fragrance all closed up.
“Get on in there,” she said. “You know my corns slow me.”
I did. “Ooooeee,” I said, fastening the seat belt and making sure it was snug but not snug enough to choke the life out of me. “Something smells good.” My stomach rumbled, agreeing.
A picnic basket sat at my feet.
Fifteen.
I leaned my head back on the soft leather of the Cadillac.
Closed my eyes.
Breathed deep the smell of breakfast.
“See your own future,” I said. I used the most commanding voice I have. “What lies ahead for you, Evie Montgomery Messenger?”
I needed to make my family proud or just be done with it, which I knew might prove easier.
But there was no future. All I saw was the back of my eyelids.
3
Aunt Odie is the best cook there is in all Florida. Maybe Georgia and Alabama and Louisiana, too.
She makes everything from scratch, even her own mixes for things like cakes and biscuits and brownies. She sells the mixes down to the Publix supermarkets. And lots of o
ther places. Like the Piggly Wiggly. And Walmart. Plus to grocery stores in the other states I have mentioned.
The whole summer long, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and some Saturdays I help my great-aunt measure and stir and package—right there in her huge professional kitchen, the biggest part of her house.
She pays me seven dollars a case of product, which is a pretty good hourly rate. No taxes pulled out. Straight under the table.
I’m saving up for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
But there are production rules. Hair in a net. Wear food-grade gloves. No rock-and-roll hoochie-koo music.
The most important thing about mixing mixes, though, is love. Love in every box. That means I have to think good thoughts while I work.
Can’t mix when I’m agitated or angry or feeling down in the dumps.
Can’t mix if I didn’t sleep good, or even had nightmares.
Most of the time it’s not hard to do. I’m a happy girl.
“People know,” Aunt Odie says, her hands laced over her belly. “They know if we think good or bad things. And Mixed with Love Is the Secret Ingredient.”
I believe her. She has the business that brings in oodles of money that affords her to live in this fancy-schmancy neighborhood. I’m only a helper. Plus, it says those words on every box.
• • •
Right now I was eating an Aunt Carolina (yep, Aunt Odie doesn’t use her own name, and she didn’t make me wait miles to eat. In fact, we were still in the driveway.) Drop Biscuit split in half, slathered with honey, and topped with grilled ham and an over-medium egg. Just like what is pictured on the packaging.
The sandwich was still hot. Smelled like heaven with a dash of pepper.
Aunt Odie provided a bib and plenty of napkins and a quart jar of fresh cold tea, lemon slices bobbing in there plus a cyclone of sugar to make it taste perfect.
And there were hash browns.
“Your momma knows I’m feeding you and all, but she intends to make a day of it after our adventure.”
Aunt Odie eased into the car.
All the windows were fogged up. Even the ones in the back. She flipped on the defroster.
Fastened her seat belt.
Turned to me and smiled.
“I put on my JC Penney girdle for you, Evie.”
I dabbed at my lips with the fancy birthday napkin.
“That ol’ rubber thing I pulled out of your bottom drawer the other day?”
“Yup.”
I swallowed my bite of food. No wonder she was squiggling around. “I thought you said you hadn’t seen that since the seventies.”
“That’s right. I look any thinner?”
“Sure,” I said, after a glance. She didn’t.
So you know, I’m not supposed to lie when I’m working on the mixes either.
Aunt Odie wrestled with the steering wheel, moving it this way and that, settling with her stomach snug against the wheel.
“Et’s-lay o-gay,” Aunt Odie said. Aunt Odie speaks perfect pig Latin. All my great-aunts do. I’m only partially proficient. “Edal-pay oo-tay ee-thay etal-may.”
Then she tore out of the driveway, driving as fast backing up as she does when she puts the car into go.
“It might be there is nothing,” she said when we sat in the middle of the road, staring at my house. For someone itching to go, she wasn’t driving. “Now lookit. You know there is the Messenger oddball who has no skill. Happens every onct in a while.”
I thought I might choke. “Well, thanks.”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“I know.”
She was talking about the Gift.
In my heart I was torn. It wasn’t what I wanted. Healing like Momma. Cooking like Aunt Odie. Hair like Aunt Carol.
And I didn’t want to be an oddball, either.
Could I do that? Not be like anyone else in the family? Hmmm. It was scary, but I kinda liked the idea. Being . . . being me.
“But if there is something in there”—Aunt Odie tapped at her head, then at her heart—“my friend down to Cassadaga can pull the Gift right outta you.”
“Lookit,” I said. Worry fell over me like a shawl.
“Lookit nothing,” Aunt Odie said. “I know you’re nervous. But . . .” She stopped talking long enough to take a gigantic bite from her own breakfast sandwich. Egg dripped on the bib she rested on her bosoms.
“There’s no denying it, Evie. We gotta do what we gotta do. Messengers are here . . .”
“. . . to bless others with their skills,” we said together.
“Right,” Aunt Odie said. She sighed. Maybe because I had the right answer. Maybe because that sandwich tasted so good.
A raindrop the size of a nickel smacked onto the windshield. One pinged on the roof.
I said, “You know you don’t like driving in weather.” No need to argue about the other stuff. She wasn’t listening.
Aunt Odie put the car in gear. “You’re right. So we better get going.”
Buddy McKay came outside to deliver newspapers, his hair like a rat’s nest, which seems impossible seeing it’s a pretty close cut. He’s sixteen. Too old for me, my momma would say.
His lips looked ripe enough to kiss.
He licked those ripe lips in a downright sexy way at me as Aunt Odie roared down the street, lifting her sandwich in a salute. I stared out the window at Buddy, craning my neck to watch him till he was nothing but the shadow of a figure.
Before we even got to the four-way stop, the sky opened up wide like a yawn and poured what seemed like the whole Atlantic Ocean on us. Aunt Odie ate on. And drove, too.
4
We almost couldn’t see Cassadaga. That’s how black the storm was. The streetlights were on, looking like blurry pumpkins the closer we got to them.
“This place ain’t but a mile long,” Aunt Odie said. She muttered the words at the steamed-up windshield, wiping at the glass with the back of her hand. She wore a bit of egg on her chin. Now we drove eight miles an hour and that was still too fast.
I clutched at my seat belt. Tried to stare through the rain. Breakfast swam in my gut.
“It’s on the right.”
“I can’t see a thing,” I said.
“Look harder.”
“I’m looking.”
The heavens split, turning angry clouds bright with lightning, showing the sky to be deep purple, not black or gray at all.
“There,” she said, and would have pointed, I thought, if she hadn’t been so afraid to turn the wheel free.
Pale light bloomed in the rain. Blue as an eye.
A chill ran over my body, like I had taken off my skin, thrown it in the deep freeze, then slipped the flesh back on.
“What?” I said. “I mean, who?”
Aunt Odie didn’t say anything. Just drove through the flood, that had to be high as the hubcaps.
She pulled into the underwater driveway, smiling like she found sunken treasure. Which was almost the case, seeing the water standing in the yard. Good thing this—what? place of business? house?—was up off the ground on cinder blocks. Kept the interior dry. Anything tucked beneath the place, though, was washed away, sure. Hope they didn’t lay out fishing poles and gear there. Hope there was a shed for the hoe and shovel. But maybe people who saw the future knew that already and had moved anything of value to the front porch.
“What a day to turn fifteen,” Aunt Odie said, giving me the ol’ eyeball. Like maybe it was my fault the rain came and not a habit of Florida weather.
“If I had a choice,” I said, fingering the door handle, “I woulda chose May. Like Lucy. Or September, like Momma. That would make me a Libra. Not a stinky ol’ Virgo.”
The Virgin, I thought, then remembered Buddy’s hand on my arm, all warm. My breath caught.
&nb
sp; “Oh, you choose,” Aunt Odie said, then hefted herself outta the car. I heard her splashing around. Probably wishing for rain boots. “Birth and death ain’t left to chance.”
“Sure they are,” I said without conviction, then opened the door and looked at the swirling water at my feet. I expected to see a flounder or a catfish. There weren’t any. “I need a life preserver.”
“Time’s a-wasting,” Aunt Odie said, “and this girdle is squeezing the life outta me. Plus, Sandy’s waiting to watch One Life to Live.”
Sandy is Aunt Odie’s best friend from high school. Once every two weeks they watch all their favorite soaps together. Sandy was coming in this evening after my party.
“This is my birthday celebration,” I said. Thunder crashed, moving the air around us. I felt all grumpy between the eyes. Raindrops splashed around me. Patted my head. Wet my shoulders. Wouldn’t be making any mixes in this all-the-sudden mood. I squinted. Now that I was out of the car, my feet soaked (not just the toes), I could see the blue light was a sign that read OPEN. Water came right up to my ankles.
“That’s right,” Aunt Odie said. “It’s this storm and this girdle that’s getting to me. I’m sorry, sugar.” She sloshed through the yard, splashing me as she came nearer. Rain popped all around us.
No girdle to explain my poutiness. Couldn’t blame the storm. What had descended upon me?
“Love you,” she said. “You know you are my most favorite niece.”
I grinned, my mood almost switching to happiness despite the foul weather. “And about the only one you have.”
Aunt Odie offered me a hug and I took it. Then we walked through the surge that felt cold as the tea we’d been drinking, and up the steps where Aunt Odie plucked two unopened hibiscus flowers from the bushes that fronted the porch. She tucked one behind her ear and motioned for me to do the same. The flower dripped the surge down the side of her face.
I’m not sure she even noticed.
5
Who would paint their business this purple color?
I went to knock on the door.
“Coming,” someone said.