Page 15 of Poison Wood
Once she was gone, the femininity leaked from our house in a slow drip. First it was her clothes. Then the perfume bottles. Then the floral soap in the powder bathroom. Then the titlepowder bathroom. When we had the occasional visitor, my father would say, “The extra commode’s down the hall.”
Piece by piece a masculine, nondescript decor crept in. No more plants or scented candles. No more cinnamon potpourri at Christmas.Things in our home became sensible. We had clocks and grills and Drano. Everything served a purpose.
“You hungry?” Debby says as she sits at the table and removes her boots.
I stand and look around the new kitchen. Looks like Debby is bringing some of the femininity back. Cutesy blue gingham curtains hang on either side of French doors that were once a wall. A large white farm sink sits against the opposite wall under a large window and hand towels that sayY’all Spoken Here.
Of course there’s a sign my father still stakes his claim here. A shotgun propped against the far wall.
I shake my head. Oh, Dad.
“I’m not hungry,” I say to Debby.
She exhales. “Good, ’cause I’m too darn tired to cook.” She stands. “I’m gonna go on to bed.”
I grab my bag and head for the stairs that lead up to my childhood bedroom.
Chapter Four
Riverbend, Louisiana
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
12:16 a.m. CST
My room is one of the only spaces in this house that wasn’t updated. It’s a time capsule of first-place ribbons and trophies. Track. Horse shows. Swimming. I only kept the blue ribbons. Any other color I considered first loser. But there aren’t any trophies or ribbons from high school. All these were achieved before Poison Wood. Before I traded in sports for sneaking around in the dark and stealing shit.
I drop my bag on the wooden floor and beeline for my closet, for another bag.
Old coats line one side of the narrow walk-in closet. Tucked behind the last one is the suitcase I left here years ago. No red ribbon on this one. I didn’t want it to stand out. I pull it out from under the coats and bring it to my old white iron bed. Dust covers the hard shell of the suitcase. Good. That means it probably hasn’t been disturbed.
I put it on top of my bed and open it.
The faint smell of lavender escapes, and my stomach knots. Lavender is supposed to be calming, but it doesn’t calm me. That’s a smell from my past. The one my mother always used. That was one of the first changes I made after her funeral. My father took me to the store with him because he said he needed a girl to help find the cleaningstuff. A smile spreads across my face. My father is not going to win any favors with feminists. But I was happy he took me because it gave me a chance to buy all new supplies, including laundry detergent, with new citrus scents. Then lavender laundry soap reappeared in Poison Wood’s dank basement with washers and dryers going at all hours of the night and girls hiding in its dark corners with booze and cigarettes.
I look down at my old Poison Wood uniform: white starched shirt, blue-and-green plaid skirt, knee socks, tie. The uniform was a way to even the playing field for the girls was what headmaster Archibald Crowley told us. What a joke. He didn’t know the playing field was never going to be even at that place, dressed alike or not. It was what was on the inside that determined the hierarchy among us.
Once Katrina pulled a large pair of silver scissors from the desk drawer in our corner room and started cutting her skirt to make it shorter. Summer laughed and said, “Me next.” After Katrina cut two inches of fabric from both skirts, she looked at me and pointed the scissors at me. “What about you?” Something about the moment felt pivotal. Are you with us or against us type of thing. My recent acts of defiance aside, I’d spent the majority of my youth looking for praise. Good girl. Attagirl. Nice job. Only in my last year of middle school had I started to understand negative behavior could get you even more attention. Defiance and anger became my new norm. I understand now that was the grief of losing my mother catching up to me, but at the time it felt bold and grown up. But I hadn’t felt so bold when my father caught me with that boy and failed to recognize my behavior for the cry for help it was and shipped me away for someone else not to recognize it, to label it something it wasn’t. I held out my hand to Katrina. She smiled.
I dig past the clothes and look through the folders containing the articles I cut out in J-school. Then I move past those folders to another that has nothing to do with Poison Wood or Heather Hadwick or Johnny Adair.
I pick it up, my hand trembling.
My mother’s obituary. Her young, beautiful face smiling up from it. I see a little of myself in her eyes, but that’s it. I’ve always been told I look like my father. My mother was soft and willowy. And even though I got her height, there’s nothing soft about me. I have my father’s sharp eyes and jawline. Sharp angles that give me an air of authority and trustworthiness on camera. Similarities people always commented on when I was a kid. I liked it until I didn’t. Until I tried to claw my way out of his shadow as a teenager, trying to find her own identity.
And now I’ve come full circle.
I drop the obit back in the bin and focus on the other items. Things I’d saved, unlike the articles, before I knew I’d be a journalist. Things girls keep that seem important but now, to my adult eye, seem worthless. A plaid tie from my uniform. Woven friendship bracelets. A yearbook. Letters from my father.
I pull one out and read it. His letters were always matter of fact. I smile at this one where he wrote a snake had gotten in the henhouse and eaten one of the hens. A reminder he said of why I wasn’t allowed to ever name the chickens. Don’t get too close to things that are easy to lose. I fold it up and put it back in the envelope.
I dig deeper and find a packet of photos. Most were of the forest, close-ups of the dew on a leaf, sunrise on the pines, things I photographed when I believed I was artsy and avant-garde. But among those pictures of the Kisatchie is one of a group of girls. I hold it up and study it. There are four of us in it: me, Katrina, Summer, and Heather. But Heather isn’t standing next to us. She is in the background staring at us. I remember Katrina taking my camera and holding her arm out so the three of us would all be in the shot. We hadn’t even realized Heather was there. As I study the photo closer, my heart rate kicks up a notch. I pull it closer, wishing I could zoom in. Heather is wearing something around her neck. Something that looks like a gold locket.
And the memory that comes back is one of me in our corner dorm room and Katrina running in out of breath and flushed and laughing. “Hide this,” she said as she put a gold necklace in myhand. “It’s Heather’s. It’s just a prank. She’s so obsessed with it. And it’s such a piece of shit. I mean it’s not even real gold.”
I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to tell her I kept cheap things, too, like a hairbrush with dark hair tangled in it. But I laughed with Kat and loved the look she gave me when I agreed to hide it. “I knew I could trust you,” she said. She held out her pinkie and I entwined my pinkie with hers, and the moment was sealed.
I kept cheap things too.
