Page 19 of The Bane Witch
19
Four Don’ts
Their faces are slack and pale when I enter the room, white as chalk. They huddle in a semicircle around Aunt Myrtle’s thirty-two-inch television panel, silent. I didn’t realize they were up yet, or even still here. Though I suppose I didn’t expect they would leave before 8 A.M ., considering how many of those toddies Myrtle kept passing around. The news is on, but I’m not really hearing whatever the reporter is saying because I’m taking in the room—the long faces, the half-drunk cups of coffee, the occasional worried glance. Even Rowena, Aunt Bella’s pet chicken, seems distracted by the screen, pecking feverishly at the air before it.
“Is something wrong?” I finally ask from the doorway to the kitchen.
They all turn at once, a theater of mimes, their eyes falling on me with mute accusation. Aunt Myrtle looks sick to her stomach.
“What is it?”
“Where have you been?” Rose hisses.
Before I can mumble an excuse, Donna tsks from her chair and shakes her head, and Azalea’s wide eyes slip from mine to the TV screen. That’s when the picture and audio come into focus.
“The death was caused by phytolaccagenin toxicity from pokeweed berries, a poisonous perennial once used medicinally by Native Americans. Doctors say the man would have consumed a sizable amount to experience such dramatic symptoms, though very little matter was found in his stomach, likely owing to the prodigious vomiting. Who took his car and why is still under investigation. Ted?”
“Thank you, Nancy…” Ted says with a plastic smile.
Don. I gulp and meet their eyes. “You don’t understand—”
“Oh, I think we do,” Rose says, rising.
“You lied to us,” Lattie shakes out through clenched teeth.
“No, I didn’t lie.”
“Piers, how could you?” Myrtle asks. It is her look of disappointment that breaks me inside. I’ve betrayed her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I—I can explain,” I try to tell them.
“There’s no need,” Aunt Bella cuts in, her voice sharp as slivered steel despite her age.
“There’s not?” Barbie asks, as shocked as I am.
“No,” Bella insists. “There’s not.”
“But killing an innocent is the worst offense a bane witch can commit!” Rose shrieks. “The girl is clearly guilty. She doesn’t deny it.”
“She’s not guilty,” Aunt Bella says, her eyes reaching into mine. “At least not of killing an innocent. Of lying by omission, perhaps. But that is another matter.”
“I don’t believe it!” Barbie spits, crossing her arms.
“He tried to rape me,” I manage. They stop arguing and fall quiet. I place a hand on my stomach, breathe in, let it rise like bile. “That man tried to rape me. He wouldn’t have died at all if he hadn’t forced himself on me, pushing his—his tongue into my mouth after I’d eaten… I’d eaten… berries. Pokeweed. To make it look like I’d killed myself. I wanted my husband to think I was dead, so he wouldn’t come looking. He’s a dangerous man. Like the men you hunt. It was the only way. I might have died, actually. I jumped off a bridge, but the river spit me out. And then I needed a ride, a way out of town, to safety. That man, Don, offered to drive me to DC, but he pulled off the main road while I was sleeping. He wanted sex. In payment for a few bottles of water and a sandwich.”
A ludicrous giggle vibrates up my throat. It’s mad. The whole thing. My story. My life. My death. They’ll kiss me now for sure, bury me in the soft moss beneath the Douglas firs. And I don’t know if I care anymore. I’m so sick of carrying the wrongs of others inside me, on my body. Anger swells hot and salty like brine in my stomach. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it would kill him. That I’d been feeding. That I had this… power. But I couldn’t have stopped him even if I did. And I did try. He was big. My rib was broken. He brought it on himself.”
“You poor dear,” Myrtle whispers.
Words continue to tumble out, as if I need to hear myself say that it was not my fault. “I didn’t know that would happen. At first, I didn’t really understand it. But after the other night, the man in the café, I finally put the pieces together.” I sit on the arm of the sofa, turtling into myself, wanting to disappear. I don’t mention the man I killed when I was only five. Myrtle is keeping this secret from them, and I assume her reasons are good. “I know you don’t trust me, and this looks bad. I know my mother let you down. But I’m not her. Please. You offered to give me a chance—six weeks. Let me prove I can do it differently.” Six weeks was laughable last night. This morning, under the glare of the television screen, the flash of Don’s headshot, it looks downright generous.
What’s more—after the dust of the conclave has settled, after my experience at Beth Ann’s property this morning, the weight of the killer still inside me like a parasite, a real entity needing to be put down—I realize that I want this. I messed up with Henry because I didn’t know. But if I had, I would have laid him down a long time ago. Of that, I am sure. Yes, it is messy and gray and morally questionable, a responsibility and a burden, but it is real—action, solution, permanent. So much more than words. And the victims of these men, the women and children who are hurting, they deserve that.
“Too late,” I hear someone mutter.
“Why?” I spin around, the speaker silent. “Whatever it looks like, that man got what was coming to him.” I jab a finger toward the front of the room, to the reporter—Nancy—and her immaculate teeth. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time trying to rape the wrong woman. It wasn’t planned, but it saved me. I can’t say Don deserved to die for what he was going to do, had already done to someone else, but I don’t regret it. If it saved another woman after me, I don’t regret it at all.”
They stare at me like owls, eyes shining preternaturally, unblinking.
“I can do this,” I say. “I can be this. Let me prove it to you.” I’m not just begging for my life anymore, I’m begging for a chance, for a destiny that belongs to me.
“Spoken like a true bane witch,” Azalea says, chin jutting. I see other heads begin to nod, Lattie and Ivy and Tina. I want to fall at their feet.
Bella strokes the chicken in her lap delicately. “Our arrangement stands.”
My head lowers, eyes fluttering to a close, as I blow the anxiety out between dry lips.
“But speak true, girl. Are there any others we should know about?” She points to the TV screen where the news is still playing. “This is not our way.”
My eyes dart to Myrtle’s. She doesn’t move a muscle, but there is a pallor in her face, a tightness to her jaw. I shake my head vehemently. “No, I swear. It won’t happen again. Not like this. Myrtle will teach me. I can be discreet. I can be invisible.”
They don’t know it, but I’ve already had the best teacher. Henry forced me to smile against my pain, to put on a pretty face and hide the mess we were behind closed doors, to scream only on the inside. Now that I understand what’s happening, I can be careful. I can act with intent. I can be the bane witch they need me to be. I can keep myself, Myrtle, and countless others safe.
“It better not,” Donna says, rising to her feet. “Myrtle, we leave it in your hands. Don’t let us down. We’ll be in touch.” She grips the handles of her mother’s chair. “Come along, Mother. We have a flight to catch.”
As Myrtle sees them to the door and helps Donna lower Bella’s chair from the porch, I slump over my knees.
I feel a hand on my shoulder and look up into Tina’s bright face. “There, there,” she tells me with a wry smile. “The worst is over now. You’ll see.” It’s the first brush of kindness she’s shown me. She crooks a finger beneath my chin. “So much promise. Don’t spoil it like your mother did.”
“Okay,” I say stupidly as she walks away.
They clear the room, each stopping to hug Myrtle goodbye and head out to their respective cabins where they will pack up and prepare for their journeys home. I can’t help feeling like the person who farted at the party. I notice a tray of bagels on the table. I stick half of one in my mouth and begin gathering cups of undrunk coffee to take to the sink. Myrtle finds me there after seeing the last of them out.
“Put those down, Piers,” she says plainly. “We have to talk.”
Now I feel like a kid on the verge of being grounded. I let her lead me back to the living room. She clicks the TV off. “You want to tell me where you were this morning?”
I lower my head, unable to look her in the eye and lie.
She exhales forcefully, her lips forming a grim line. “You’re lucky to be alive,” she tells me, her eyes level and sincere.
I shake my head. “I don’t understand. These women live to kill men like Don every day. Why am I so different?”
She takes a breath and sits across from me. “Consider this your first lesson in being a bane witch. We are the venery—all of us together, every witch of our line. And we act with mutual interest, you understand? We do not act alone. This is not an every-woman-for-herself mentality. We survive together. A witch on her own is a dead witch.”
“ Those who hunt alone often starve. ” I repeat the words I heard her say to my mother so many years ago, words that sent my mother into a rage.
“That’s right,” she says. “It’s a saying of ours. It means we are stronger together. Safer together. You understand?”
I nod my head.
“There are four things that are never tolerated in the venery.” She raises a finger. “Men—no husbands, no sons, no long-term lovers.” Her eyes bore into mine as if she can smell him on me, and she raises a second finger. “Secrets—full transparency is the only way we can know we are truly safe. If you are caught hiding something, you better hope it’s worth dying for.” She raises her third finger. “Exposure—we operate in the shadows. It’s the only way. The world as we know it has long festered a hatred for women, let alone witches, a hatred for everything we are and stand for. There is nothing it despises more than a woman with power. We are everything they want to eliminate. And we exist by living and killing covertly.”
I look down at my hands. A curl of skin sprouts beside my right index fingernail, parts of me peeling away. I pick it off and look up. “What’s the fourth thing?” I ask, almost afraid to hear it.
“The killing of innocents.” She appraises me. “You accused us of being murderers, and maybe by the standard definition that’s true. But we take only a certain kind of life, the kind that’s rotting from the inside, that breeds evil and pain and preys on those weaker than it. We do not take an innocent. To do so is to step away from being a bane witch and step toward becoming a monster.”
This will be my future. A sun-parched horizon looms before me, loveless, without exclusive possession. I belong to the venery; nothing belongs to me. My mother’s mulish assertion of independence, however damned, takes on a polished cast, like tarnish clearing from silver. Gerald, I am becoming achingly aware, was never the prize. Her own sovereignty was.
“Myrtle,” I ask, knowing I can no longer afford to live in the dark. “What happened between my mother and the venery?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I think so,” I tell her honestly.
Her shoulders slump as her eyes fall from mine. “Your mother had a bright future with us,” she begins. “Lily was strong, so much stronger than you give her credit for. And our numbers were dwindling. There was a second venery here in the United States, but they’d died out a decade before, unable to keep their line safe and fertile. So, when your mother showed such early signs of a power beyond what any of us had known, the venery was ecstatic. We believed we were being given the power to do the work of both lines. But my sister, Angel, was a poor teacher. She’d fallen in love young with a politician’s son. It was a doomed match for many reasons, not least of which was his life in the public eye. She was persuaded to leave him against her will, but she came away pregnant. It was all the venery could do to get her to hold out for the birth, telling her this child would fill the hole her lover had left behind. Angel gave birth to twins—your mother and a little boy. She clung to him, even as your mother wailed in her bassinet. In the end, they had to pry him from her fingers. The loss sent her over the edge. She was never the same after that. She raised Lily, but her heart wasn’t in it. And she did only the bare minimum to keep her own gifts from destroying her. Honestly, we should have taken Lily away, but we feared how Angel might react. She wasn’t as strong or as early to bloom as your mother, but Angel was already more powerful than most of us.”
I can’t imagine how much longing and loneliness my mother must have felt, knowing she was always the consolation prize, the unwanted child. And yet, my childhood wasn’t all that different. “And Mom? What did that do to her?”
“Angel filled your mother’s head with all her fantasies of love and marriage and normalcy. She poisoned her against the venery, against her own self. Lily was mortified when she began to bloom. She tried to hide it, but you know how impossible that is. Eventually, she was convinced to ease into her cycle. But she was so young. I think it traumatized her. She met Patrick just out of high school. Like her mother, she fell hard. They tried to run away together. It was a terrible mistake. No matter how we pleaded, she wouldn’t break it off with him. When he died, she was inconsolable. It was her fault, you see. It can happen so easily; all it takes is one careless second. She’d been feeding after months of starving her power because she was having violent nightmares, the cravings building inside her like compressed air. She tried to avoid him, hoping she could take her mark quickly and be done with it. She picked a fight, locked herself in another room, slept alone. But Patrick came to her in the night. By the time she woke up, he was lying beside her, kissing her neck. It was a hot summer that year. They were near the Gulf Coast. The humidity was through the roof, and they were a couple of kids with next to no money. The place they were renting didn’t have air-conditioning. She’d been sweating in her sleep. You can imagine what came next.”
“That was my father?” I asked, my throat closing on the word.
Myrtle nodded. “She renounced us after that. But then you were born. You were right about her wanting a boy, even though she could never have kept him. A son wouldn’t have tied her to us. A son wouldn’t have carried on our legacy, everything she hated in herself. A son could have had everything she wanted and never got. But she loved you in spite of herself. She wanted better for you than she’d had. It was misguided, but it came from a pure place.”
“Why?” I ask her. “Why did the venery let her live? Why did they let her keep me?”
Myrtle shook her head. “We thought with time, we could win her over. Get at least the bare minimum out of her. We thought it would grant us access to you, allow us to carry the line on through you. But Lily never caved. How she found the will to hold so much back for so long without destroying herself and you in the process, I’ll never understand. But the drugs played a role. It’s a wonder neither one of you killed Gerald by accident in all those years.”
“Believe me, I wanted to kill him on purpose plenty. I just never knew I could.”
Memories drift back to me, like reflections on the surfaces of bubbles, tenuous and faded, the colors off, the symmetry transposed. Gerald’s ashtray, always resting on the arm of the recliner, like a loyal pet. My mother treated it with reverence, a holy relic never to be touched. If I strayed too near, she would smack my hand. The dishes I wasn’t allowed to wash. The piles of laundry she tended alone, her hands encased in lime green latex, like alien attachments. I never saw them kiss, or even hug. Twice I saw him press himself against her from behind, the kitchen counter biting into her midsection as if it might cut her in half. He liked her near, focused on him, like a lady-in-waiting. But he was too fixated on himself—his game, his beer, his meal—to want anything more than a servant or a security blanket. And she let that be enough for her. I understand why now. “Bad joke,” I admit.
Myrtle gives me a lame smile. “The man you did kill, the bad thing when you were five—that’s unheard of in our clan. Once that happened, I imagine your mother knew exactly the crosshairs you would fall into. She didn’t know how the venery would react, and she wasn’t willing to take the chance. She had her issues, but she also did a lot of what she did to protect you.”
“And you?” I ask her. “You never told them. Why?”
She smiles. “Because when I looked into your eyes that day, child, I saw the future staring back at me. There’s a force in you, Piers. Something we haven’t seen before. I knew you were a wild card, but I was willing to take the gamble. And I still am.”
I reach out and squeeze her hand, grateful.
“Anyway, Lily threatened to expose us if we crossed her. In the end, it wasn’t worth the risk. A witch like her, we knew she could do it and probably would. There was always a certain desperation to her, like a person living on the edge of a cliff. One shove in the wrong direction… We drew our line in the sand, and then we watched and waited.”
“Gerald,” I say plainly.
“He was a dull man. And cruel. I’ll never know what she saw in him, other than a whisper of Patrick—”
“He was safe,” I cut in, my voice threadbare. Narcissism coupled with stupidity made him oblivious. She was playing out a fantasy, like a doll. Middle-Class, Doormat Barbie.
Myrtle pulls her lips in, swallowing words. “Well, he caught on eventually. Your mother was careful, and she could go years in between, but she did feed and she did kill. And he figured it out. How is anyone’s guess. Or maybe she finally grew tired of his bullshit. I don’t know. I just know she upheld her promise and killed him before we had to. After Patrick, and whatever falling out you two had, Gerald was all she had left. I wasn’t surprised when she took her life after. She probably thought we’d come for her anyway. She would have hated that—letting us have the final say. At least this way, she died the way she lived, by her own rules.”
I take a deep breath, letting Myrtle’s words wash over me, filling in all the gaps that have lingered in my understanding of my mother. “Thank you for telling me.”
She looks weary, as if telling me this has taken a little piece of her. I hate to press further, but there’s still something I don’t understand. “Can I ask you one more thing?”
“Sure,” she tells me, her lips pressing together.
“Why did the venery want access to me so badly? They didn’t know about the man I killed. And you let me live all those years without knowing what I was. Based on what I heard at the conclave, that was a risk the venery wouldn’t usually take. I know you thought the drugs had managed to suppress my gifts, but I still can’t reconcile that with everything I’ve learned over the last twenty-four hours. Why take that kind of chance?”
When Myrtle’s eyes meet mine, they are fathomless. There is so much to this woman I still don’t know. So much she can choose to share or not. But there is one thing I know for certain—whatever she is about to say, she means it.
“Because, Piers,” she says, watching me as she lets the truth spill from her lips, “your power is stronger than your mother’s ever was. Everyone can see that.”