Read Online The Witch of Belladonna Bay by Suzanne Palmieri - Free Book Online Page A

here.”
    â€œThere’s so much to talk about, Minny. I have so many questions. What happened that night Lottie was killed? Why did Paddy confess? Was her funeral nice? Did anyone bring sunflowers? Lottie loved sunflowers.” My voice broke.
    She patted me on the head and rose from the steps.
    â€œWhy don’t you just sit here for a while, and then, when you’re ready, you come in and I’ll make some tea and we can have a nice long chat, okay? Lost people always need a moment or two before they decide to be found. It happens all the time … where I come from, that is.”
    I nodded but couldn’t seem to speak. Reciting the Declaration of Independence was starting to sound like a mighty fine idea.
    â€œI’m sorry that I used to call you names when I was little” was what decided to come out of my mouth. Mouths can be so unpredictable.
    â€œOld and ugly if I recall correctly,” she said.
    â€œI was somethin’ back then, wasn’t I?”
    â€œThat’s one way to put it. You come inside on your own time.”
    She went back into the house but didn’t let the door bang the way Jackson had. It wasn’t her style. We’d had a lot of fights when I was growing up. That woman could yell without even having to raise her voice.
    I knew from experience that arguments with Minerva were like small firecrackers. Fierce, then over in a second. I loved her absolute readiness to forgive. Her loyalty, too.
    It was always obvious Minerva missed Fairview. But she wouldn’t return. Not even after Naomi died. She’d said, “Her body’s in the ground here, so it’s by this ground I stay.”
    It was an angry statement because Naomi wasn’t supposed to be buried. She was supposed to be burned. There were an awful lot of rules and regulations regarding the Green family of Fairview, Massachusetts. All families have their traditions, but the Green family’s were the oddest I’d ever run across. Especially the one I witnessed the night my mother died.
    Most of those strange Green Ways were hard to carry out in a place so far removed, both culturally and spiritually.
    Though I couldn’t remember much of the fight Naomi and I had mere hours before she died, I did recall the scene that took place after she was dead.
    It was night, and Minerva thought Paddy and I were fast asleep. She’d given us sleeping medicine (a mix of herbs: valerian root, chamomile, and cannabis) “to calm us,” but it didn’t work on me. Jackson was passed out drunk, with good reason for a change.
    A soft singing floated up the stairs from the kitchen that night. I’ll never forget coming down into the dark foyer. I’d never felt smaller. I was seventeen but felt like I was six years old. I crept down the hall and peered into the kitchen. The air was heavy with “you’re not supposed to be here.”
    Minerva had my mother laid out on the long kitchen table. Naomi’s nude body glowed, thin and white like a marble statue. I watched as Minerva washed my mother, gently, with a white piece of cloth. She dipped the cloth in a glass bowl filled with cloudy water. Salt water. Minerva had used the same milky water on Paddy and me when we were feverish, as she told us stories about these rituals. “ Chun na farraige, ” she sang as she carefully wiped down each part of Naomi. To the ocean. Minerva got a kick out of teaching us certain words and phrases when we were little. I learned them all. I’ve always been quick with languages.
    When she was done with the water, she laid the bowl aside and anointed my mother with pungent rose oil. “ Chun an domhain.” To the earth, she sang.
    I sat in the shadows and watched Minerva wind flowers into my mother’s hair as she sang. Wild roses with leaves, thorns and all.
    Gracefully, she wrapped my mother in crisp white linen sheets. “ Chun na gaotha. ” To the winds, she