“Sounds like a typical teenager.”
“Teenager? I’m talking about when she was seven!” Maggie flaps her wings. “Headstrong from the start. She wanted to go far away for college, but I needed her back home to help with the store, and there’s a perfectly good college nearby. She had a knack for weather, and even if Miranda and I were the only ones who ever knew the truth of it, her magic meant the world to the farmers in these parts. The vineyards, the greenhouses, the little old man with the tomato stand on the side of the road. Everywhere else in Georgia was in a drought, so dry the trees were bribing the dogs, and she could give us rain. And if a tornado came from somewhere else, she could make it veer off.”
“I thought you said knacks were little things.”
She clicks her beak in annoyance at that. “Some people are born with a little basic power, and some people are born with gifts, and some people are gosh darn Mozart. Your mama was that last type, and lordy, she hated it. She called me a nag, but this wasn’t like asking a normal kid to do the dishes—one spell fromher was the difference between a farming family having enough money for Christmas and going bankrupt.”
But what she’s saying does not describe the mama I knew.
“My mom was all about responsibility,” I say sharply. “She was dedicated to her daughters. Never late on a payment for anything. Worked hard, and always took good care of us.”
Maggie hops up onto the back of the couch. I guess even when they’re run by people brains, parrot bodies can’t sit still. “Well, people change sometimes. See, your mama and I had a big argument. We needed rain, and the moon was right for big magic, but she refused to do the spell. It was homecoming and she didn’t want to lose blood or have a Band-Aid in her pictures or rain for her date. I remember her standing on the front porch with her hands in fists, shouting, ‘I never promised to hurt myself for you, not for anybody. It’s my life.’ Like it was ever forme.Ha!”
She’s quiet for a minute, and even though cockatoos don’t have expressive faces, I can tell that this wound runs deep.
“And I’ll admit—I was angry, too. I’d sacrificed things in my life to keep food on the table and be at every school play, and I always did my bit to help the community, even though I’d never had powers like hers. So I brought the basin full of water and ingredients and told her…” A cockatoo sneeze. “Lord, I’m ashamed of this, but I was mad, and she was seventeen. I told her she had a responsibility to the community that was more important than one selfish night of dry-humping a boy on the dance floor in a glittery dress.”
I grimace. Arguing with Mama never went well for anyone at our house. I can’t imagine having the gall to call her selfish—or the thunderstorm that would follow.
“She was madder than I’d ever seen her, and the sky went blackas she pulled out her pocketknife and slit her wrist, and screamed, ‘If you won’t be happy till I’m bled dry, maybe this’ll do it!’ And then she did her spell to bring the rain, but…her anger plus all that blood pouring out meant the storm she summoned was stronger than anything she’d brought before, stronger than anything the region had ever seen. We had floods. Chunks of roads washed away. Hundred-year-old trees fell. Houses were blown to kindling. Whole herds of cows swept away by swollen rivers. The weatherman didn’t know what to say. A freak summer tornado, he called it. Around here, it was catastrophic. Leveled my family’s old farmhouse. We lost everything we had, except the properties downtown.”
“And what did Mama do then?” I ask in a tiny voice.
“Well, first, she fainted from the blood loss. Scared the bejesus out of me. Thank heavens she missed all the big veins. I carried her to the neighbor’s farm and patched her up, had to give her stitches myself because the road to the hospital was blocked. As soon as she was better and the roads were clear, she ran away, and I never saw her again. She never called, never sent a letter, nothing.” I can hear strain in her voice. If she were human still, she’d be crying.
“And you didn’t go looking for her?”
Maggie runs her beak over a few long wing feathers. “She always kept a little bottle of falls water in her purse, and I reckon she did a spell to hide from me, probably the last magic she ever did. She kept up with Tina McGowan for a while—they were best friends when they were young—and Tina has never been good with a secret, so she told her mother, Diana, and Diana told me. Your mama didn’t even invite me to her wedding. Your daddy—was he a good man?”
“He was. His name was Ed. They were in love until the end—until his heart attack. And he was good to her. No worries on that part.”
Maggie deflates a little in relief. “Thank goodness. The local boys she dated were not up to snuff. It’s a relief, honestly, to know that she had a good life. We needed her here, but I always assumed she was too ashamed to come back after that flood, and it was easier to blame it on me. Better to hate me than hate herself, I reckon. I loved that girl with all my heart, and I’m so sorry we never made up before she passed. If only I’d known. When did it happen?”
“Two years ago. It was so sudden. We’d barely found out before she was gone.” Which brings up a new question about magic. “Do you have a gift? Could you have changed things? Is there magic that can cure diseases?”
A raspy chirp. “No, honey. Nobody can stop cancer. I have—I had—more influence than average. I could make folks do what I wanted. Except your mama, I guess. She was immune. You are, too, it seems.” She flaps her wings. “Or maybe parrots just ain’t magical.”
I tuck my arm around my grandmother and give her a gentle squeeze. “I can’t imagine anything more magical than a parrot who talks in complete sentences and always poops in her cage. It’s just…”
When I woke up today, I did not expect to be running therapy for my grandma, a pink-feathered witch from an entirely different era.
“You and Mama were both stubborn, and you butted heads,” I start. “I’m just as stubborn as y’all, but my generation does things differently. I’m angry at the situation, I guess. When you set upyour trust, you had plans that didn’t involve me and my sisters. It’s not your fault you didn’t know about us. I’m sure you would’ve done things differently if you had. Right?”
An annoyingly long pause. “The thing I need you to understand is that this building is part of our legacy. I had to protect it. These are not just empty stores. We’ve owned this land for generations, and I’ve lived in this apartment ever since that storm. I couldn’t allow some horrible developer to sweep in and turn this place into—I don’t know—Apple stores and cheap condos.”
“It takes money to make a business profitable,” I remind her. “And thirteen thousand dollars is not enough to do that and pay taxes and everything. Is there any way to change the trust? Maybe just sell one storefront so we can use that money to fix everything else? I could make a life here, but…the video store is dying. Even you have to see it.”
“Nothing gets sold!” she barks. “You have a responsibility—”
“Woman, how well did that argument work with my mother? Do not push me.”
She quiets.
“Thank you,” I say. “Now, I am currently debating whether to go back to Alabama and drag you there with me or try to patch together a life here, and it’s about fifty-fifty. So what can you tell me—without using words likelegacyorresponsibility—that might induce me to stay?”
Maggie flutters down to the floor. “Just so undignified,” she mutters. “Trying to be serious in this body. But I think I’m getting the hang of it. Let’s see.” She looks up, mischief sparking in her shiny red eyes. “What did you choose from the Ziploc bag?”
14.
