Company’s Coming

“That witch come up right outta that creek there. I seen it with my own eyes. It like to spooked me something fierce, the way she come walking up that riverbank, with fog slipping off her shoulders all slow-like. She had weird eyes, not even a color exactly. They just looked straight through me on up the path, like I wasn’t there atall.” Braxton Hicks hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans and elbowed Jim in the ribs. “God’s honest truth.”

“I swear, Braxton. You’re scared of your own shadow.” Bridget Fitch shook her head at her brother. “That lady ain’t no witch. Mama just says so cause all the menfolk want to get between her legs.”

Braxton jumped down from the chinaberry tree beside Bridget. “You think you’re so smart just because you’re a New Year’s baby!”

The fight never ended; the fraternal twins had been born five minutes apart, Braxton at 11:55 PM, December 31, 1999; Bridget at 12:00 on the dot, January 1, 2000. The different birthdays caused some problems over the years.

“I followed her,” Braxton said.

“What’d you do that for?”

“I wanted to see her cat.”

“What cat? That lady doesn’t have a cat.” Bridget narrowed her eyes at her brother.

“Then how come Mama says she’s always throwing her cat on somebody if she ain’t got one?”

Bridget leaned over on the wooden fence, resting her elbows on the top rail. “Braxton, I swear sometimes you’re dumber than Mama.”

“Don’t you call Mama dumb!” Braxton glared at Bridget from inside the fence.

Bridget stood up straight and started walking toward the road, glancing over her shoulder to say, “Oh, shut up and go read your damn bible.” She knew it would send Brax into a tailspin, practically foaming at the mouth and hollering blasphemy at her back, and she smiled as her feet found the road.

Maybe it was mean to call her mother dumb, but for Chrissakes, she named her son Braxton Hicks because when she went to the hospital with contractions, the nurse told her not to worry, it was just Braxton Hicks. Bridget’s name had a similar genesis of stupid misunderstanding, but she just rolled her eyes and understood that she was, even as a child, much smarter than her mother ever would be. Mama and Braxton seemed to think that God wrote the bible instead of men, and they clung to it with ferocious ignorance, seeing everything expressed so literally that they always missed the deeper meanings of the stories, as if they were taking a moral stance against allegory itself.

Braxton was back in the tree by the time Mama shuffled home from her job at the discount store. The sun slipped behind the treeline as Mama approached the house. “Braxton, get your fool self down from that tree before you break every bone in your body.” Braxton jumped down, nearly landing on top of his mother, who swatted him on the backside and asked, “Where’s your sister?”

Braxton shrugged and took his mother’s bag, carrying it into the house to hang it on the coat rack on the wall at the foot of her bed and promptly exiting.

“Come on, Braxton. We gots to get the spare room cleaned out. Company’s coming.”

“Who?” Braxton asked as he approached the door to the spare room, wishing it had a wardrobe like in the Narnia books, but it was just jumbled up with a bunch of boxes and whatnot.

“Your Aunt Sarah,” Mama pushed the door open and instructed Braxton to stack the boxes in the western corner, under the map on the wall but not to block the closet door with them.

“Ain’t she the one you don’t like?” Dust motes swam thick as jelly in the sunlight streaming through the window.

“Maybe I should vacuum up some of this dust first, before you go stirring it all up all over the house.” Mama went to the hall closet and hauled out her trusty Hoover. “Go to the kitchen and get me a glass of tea.”

Braxton did as he was told, pouring his mother a glass of the weak, beige tea she kept in a pitcher in the fridge, slightly sweetened. Mama was vacuuming the walls when he returned with it, and she gulped in down in three enormous swallows. He opened the closet door and asked why they didn’t just stack the boxes in there.

There were a few old coats and some clothes that would never fit Mama again, but other than that, the closest was empty. Most of the boxes fit, stacked one on top of the other in the closet, but there was one box that was longer than the rest, and it wouldn’t fit in the closet.

Braxton was opening it when Bridget returned from her afternoon wanderings. “What’s in that box?” She asked Btaxton, settling down on the floor next to him.

“I don’t know. It wouldn’t fit in the closet, so I thought I’d see what’s in it. Maybe the stuff can fit in another box that can go in the closet.”

The flaps were tucked into one another, holding the box closed, and they made a thwap sound as Bridget pulled them loose from each other. There was an off white dress, a bundle of letters tied together, some pressed flowers, and a shoebox covered in floral wallpaper.

“It’s awful quiet in here.” Mama appeared in the door to the spare room and saw the contents of the box on the floor. The color drained from her face, and she gathered it all up in her arms. As she left the room, the shoebox fell from her grasp, spilling its contents on the floor.

A few colored rocks, some printed sigils and talismans, and a deck of tarot cards landed between Bridget and Brax. Bridget picked up the cards and gave her mother a cynical look. “What’s all this?” Her eyes didn’t leave her mother’s face while she waited for an answer.

“Don’t you worry about none of this. You just read your bible and mind your manners.” Mama glared at Bridget and picked the rocks up from the floor. “Give me them devil cards. Should have burnt them up years ago.”

“Why you got devil cards?” Braxton crowded closer, trying to get a better look at the tarot cards.

Bridget clutched the deck to her chest, never breaking eye contact. “No. I’m keeping these. And I’m tired of reading the bible and never talking about what the stories mean.”

“There ain’t nothing to talk about. The stories mean what they say, nothing more, nothing less. Quit looking for more than what’s in front of you.” Mama took the dress she had been wearing when she met the twins’ father, the bundle of letters from him while he was overseas in the army, and took them to her room.

“Let me see them devil cards,” Braxton moved closer to his sister.