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She felt that rumbling underground and when she heard Granny Sing, she started making them sounds too. Most of our kin pretended not to notice, but our momma, she sat on her back porch and she listened. Every Sunday, she put on her best dress and went down to the gully to Sing to the Tree. Only our great granny still practiced the old ways. By the time Momma was born, though, most everyone was interested in other things: Model T’s and the war in Europe and that fancy new chapel in the next holler with its stained glass and pearl white walls. When we was little, our momma told us our kinfolk used to gather round the Tree and pray like they was at church. Momma always told us the Tree don’t hurt family. Momma always told us the Tree ain’t got a taste for our family’s blood. I press my hand to the cellar door, and I imagine Hannah pressing her hand back. Her face is the same brand of bright as when she belts one of us for “our own good.” Her cigarette flares between her teeth. The low sun makes a halo of her white hair, like she’s fit for sainthood. “What you doing, Rebecca?” Aunt Marylou asks. Or maybe it’s the Tree I’m feeling, trembling to life in the gully by the river, opening its mouth, readying to feed, waiting for somebody to tell it what to do. Fear.Īunt Marylou’s footsteps, they shake the earth. Hannah makes a tight, muffled sound and I smell piss. There’s a creak, like she’s moving off the porch and a low schff, like she’s dragging that axe behind her.

Maybe my voice is a little too loud, a little too croaky and rough, ‘cause Aunt Marylou’s praying snaps silent. ‘Cause that blackbird, that tiny offering, it ain’t gonna do much unless somebody Sings to the Tree. I’m afraid to tell her about Aunt Marylou’s axe and how it looked fit for chopping through wood or bones or both. ‘Cause she’s been down there all day and time’s running out. You know, the black ones? I don’t think Aunt Marylou saw.” “I killed one of them birds that’s always on the Nelson’s fence.

She kicks a mason jar, and I wonder how many she broke since Aunt Marylou locked her down there last night. It’s dark as tar down there, but I hear shuffling, bare feet on packed dirt and I imagine Hannah between all them cobwebs and last year’s canned tomatoes, her mouth stuffed with a dirty handkerchief, her hands tied up and clenched like she’s fixing to pound the whole world flat.

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“Hannah?” I whisper, leaning down to try to see between the cracked planks. I take my chance, gnats swarming all ‘round me, as I crawl into the tall grass, past her, across the lawn to that dark space between the shack and the barn where the cellar sets. “Show me what You want me to do.”Ĭlosing her eyes, she lights her cigarette. “Show me what You want me to do,” she says over and over again. There’s an axe in Aunt Marylou’s lap, the handle long, the blade shining, and she touches it. It’s the strong stuff she trades Pickle Nelson for, and the turpentine stink pulls tears out the corners of my eyes when the wind shifts. There’s a half-gone jar of hooch in her hand. Maybe Aunt Marylou’ll be there when it happens, sitting like she is now on her back porch in that rocking chair of hers. One of these days that barn’s gonna fall right over and smash Aunt Marylou’s shack. The hayloft window gapes like it’s surprised to see me there, crouched in the chicory. There, across the tangle of grass that used to be our tomato garden, is Aunt Marylou’s house, that shack with the old barn leaning against it, rotted planks slumped on busted gutters. I only stop when I reach the edge of the woods, my side stitching, my bare arms sweaty and bramble scratched. And I think about Hannah in the cellar where Aunt Marylou put her, tied up and gagged, all her magic silent.

I think about my momma, even though she’s dead and gone under the earth. I try not to think about what that blackbird’ll look like all chewed up and wrung round the Tree’s branches like an old dish towel when I run back up the gully and through the woods. Hannah’s the one who got Momma’s voice, not me.

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And those roots? They crawl out the river like spider legs, knots and whorls winking at me like we got secrets between us.īut I don’t rightly know how to share them, I don’t know how to Sing to that Tree. The Tree’s face is pinched and lurksome in the afternoon light. But it’s hard to keep my heart from hammering when I lay that blackbird, swaddled like a baby in one of Momma’s old blouses, against its roots. Rated PG-13 for violence, including child abuse.

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