Page 91 of Night Songs

My musing was interrupted by the voices of the final track, “Lullaby for a Demon Child.”

My mother sang that even though she was leaving too soon, that when I got scared, she would still guide me. She would be my moon, my light.

It felt like she was reaching out through the music and touching her fingertips to mine, our twin shadows finally meeting.

For so long, I had wanted to feel connected to her, to feel there was some piece of her magic inside me, just waiting to be unearthed.

And this was it, wasn’t it?

This was the little shard of her lodged in my gut. Not a beautiful voice or a creative genius.

A curse.

Days might have passed, but I wasn’t sure. One morning, it was like I finally blinked back into consciousness. There was a spoiled, creamy taste in my mouth like expired milk.

When I looked in the bathroom mirror, I saw a stranger.

My belly sagged. My hair was long and matted, and new moles had formed on my flesh. I looked like I’d been floating on the bottom of the ocean.

I robotically scrubbed away the grime and put on clean clothes that hid my middle. Then I went downstairs to find Micah making dinner in the kitchen. He’d grown a scraggly beard like he had on the trail, but there was something more unhinged in the jutting of the hairs.

When he saw me standing at the kitchen island, his face softened and he came around and clutched me delicately. “How are you feeling?” he asked with fear in his eyes.

I could see he’d been suffering these past few days, and I understood that he needed me to be good for him. I could give him that. “Much better now.”

“Good.” He released me and went back to the stove. “I need to ask you about something you said a few days ago—about a curse? Your mother told you that you were cursed? I figured it was just a dream or a side effect of the medication, but you seemed very agitated about it.”

I wanted to tell him—he was the person I told everything.

“Yeah, I think I might have uncovered a memory where my mother told me about a family curse that makes every woman in the bloodline die at 33.”

He looked up from the stove and studied me for a long moment. “Are you sure you don’t want to see someone?” He said it as if we’d discussed it before, and I wondered what else had happened over the last few days that I didn’t remember.

He continued, “Because it might be worth it. You know, I’ve seen this kind of thing before, when someone goes dormant and starts believing in delusions, and it might not seem like a big deal now, but one day it might be too much and…”

My heart sank. He thought his brother and I were the same, that the curse was just a postpartum nightmare, something to be medicated and reasoned away. The last few days had been rough, but now that I was up and no longer on the pain meds, my mind was clear. This wasn’t a delusion. It was something to be investigated. But Micah clearly couldn’t be a part of that.

“Yes, I’m sure. I’m better now. I just needed some time.” I knew this was the right thing to say—the perfect words to soothe him. “And I didn’t mean that I thought the curse was real—just that I might have uncovered a strange memory from my childhood. Who knows what my mom meant, or if I’m remembering right. Maybe it was just a crazy dream from the anesthesia.”

I watched Micah’s shoulders relax. “Thank god. I was worried.” He gestured at an old-fashioned dessert tin on the counter with bright flowers printed on the metal. “Hess left those—chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips.” My favorite.

I had no memory of Hess’s visit—had I spoken to her, or had Micah sent her away?

He served us dinner at the table, and I tried to remember how one behaves during a meal with her husband. I must have done a passable job, because he kissed my knuckles and told me he was happy I was feeling better.

I gazed in the mirror hanging on the wall behind him and saw the stranger staring back at me.

I watched her mouth curve into a smile.

32rhea

2009

SIX MONTHS LEFT

If you search for a record of Lulabelle Powers in the state of Tennessee, you will find no trace of a person with that name before her arrival in Nashville in 1967. No birth records. No medical records. No school records. Widen the parameters, and you will find two Lulabelle Powers—a nurse who served in the West Virginia branch of the Union army during the Civil War, and a housewife who died in the 1930s in Atlanta.

Twenty-eight unauthorized biographies have been written about my mother’s life. Four full-length documentaries are available to watch. Thousands of hours and pages of interviews and articles.