We sat at the table over cups of coffee that grew cold before us. Reverend Ayers had brought a basket of muffins his wife, Mary, had made. There was some talk of burying Gertie up at the cemetery by Cranberry Meadow with Martin’s family, but I wouldn’t have it.
“She belongs here,” I said. Martin nodded, and Lucius opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it. And so it was decided we would bury her in the small family plot behind the house, beside her tiny brother, my mother and father and brother.
As Reverend Ayers was leaving, he took my hand. “You must remember, Sara, that Gertie is in a better place now. She’s with our Lord.”
I spat in his face.
I did this without thinking, automatically, as if it were as natural to me as taking a sip of water when thirsty.
Imagine, me spitting in Reverend Ayers’s face! I’ve known theman all my life—he baptized me, married Martin and me, buried our son, Charles. I have struggled all my life to believe his teachings, to live the word of God. But no more.
“Sara!” Lucius said, looking alarmed as he pulled a clean white handkerchief out of the front pocket of his trousers and handed it to the reverend.
Reverend Ayers wiped at his face and stepped back away from me. He looked…not angry or worried about me, but frightened of what I might do next.
“If the God you worship and pray to is the one who brought my Gertie to that well, who took her from me, then I want nothing more to do with him,” I said. “Please leave my house and take your vicious God with you.”
Poor Martin was horrified and stuttered off excuses for me.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, as he and Lucius walked Reverend Ayers out. “She’s sick with grief. Not in her right mind.”
Not in my right mind.
But I am in the same mind I have had all along. Only now there is a piece missing. A Gertie-shaped piece cut from the center of my very being.
And perhaps, with this new grief, I am seeing things clearly for the first time.
I understand now that Martin has never known the real me. There is only one person who ever did—who saw all of me, all the beauty along with the ugliness. And it is that person I long for now.
Auntie.
For so long, I have done my best to push all my memories of her away. I’ve spent my whole adult life trying to convince myself that she got what she deserved; that her death, terrible as it was, was the consequence of her own actions. But that’s never been what I truly believed. What I think about most is how I should have done something to stop it. If I had found a way to save her, I tell myself, maybe my life might have turned out differently. Perhaps all the tragedy and loss I have suffered is somehow linked to what I did that one day when I was nine.
It’s funny that she is the person I long for most in times like these, when my heart has been shattered and I see no sense in going on.
She is the only one who might know what to say to me now, who might be able to offer true comfort. And I know, I just know, she would laugh when I told her I spat in the reverend’s face!
She’d throw back her head and laugh.
Reverend Ayers says there is only one God,” I told Auntie once. It was only a few weeks after I’d seen Hester Jameson out in the woods and asked Auntie about sleepers. “And that it is wrong to pray to anyone or anything else.”
Auntie laughed, then spat brown tobacco juice onto the ground. We were bumping along in her old wagon, all loaded with animal pelts, for a trip to a dealer in St. Johnsbury. She made the trip four times a year, and he always gave her a fair price for the skins. This was the first time Father had consented to let me make the overnight trip with her. Before leaving, Auntie had sprinkled some tobacco on the ground around the wagon and said a safe-journey prayer to the spirits and the four directions.
“Young Reverend Ayers looks at a lake and sees only his own reflection in it; that is what God is to him. He does not see the creatures that live down deep, the dragonflies that hover, the frog on the lily pad.” Auntie’s face was full of pity and scorn as she shook her head and spat tobacco juice again. “His heart and mind are closed to the true beauty of the lake, the place where all its magic lies.”
Auntie held the reins, guided the horse to pull us along the narrow dirt road that was full of ruts from wagon wheels. Sometimes I doubted Auntie needed the reins at all; it seemed she could get the horse to do just what she wanted by talking to it. She had the amazing ability to communicate with almost any animal; she could call birds to her, bring fish closer to her net. Once, I saw her coax a lynx out of hiding and right into her snare.
We bumped along slowly. The air was warm and sweet and full of birdsong. We were several miles east of town now, surrounded by rolling green hills dotted with cream-colored sheep that bleated contentedly as they ate their fill of fresh spring greens.
“But he’s a clever man,” I said. “He has studied for years. He reads the Bible every day.”
“There are different kinds of cleverness, Sara.”
I nodded, understanding just what she meant. Auntie was the cleverest person I knew; people came to her little cabin in the woods from all over town to buy remedies and cures, spells for love and good crops. But no one talked about it or admitted that they’d paid Auntie for a syrup to cure a child’s cough, or a charm to wear to attract their heart’s desire.
“Reverend Ayers says when we die our souls go on to Heaven, to be with God.”
“Is that what you believe?” Auntie asked, her eyes fixed on the rough road ahead.
