People Who Come From Storms

They called me a quack and a mystic, but I knew better. I was the same thing my mother had been, and her mother before her - I was a healer, and I was worth respecting. So when the men looked sideways at me and the women whispered rumors behind their hands, I only smiled, laughing at the irony of people who gossiped behind my back then begged at my door the moment they needed my help.

It had always been that way. For three generations at least and maybe more.

When Winter came in my nineteenth year and all the world was sleeping, I hid Springtime in my home. Hid it, because people both hated and wanted what they didn’t understand. I loved being what I was even if no one else could see the beauty in it, and when I waved my hands and flowers curled their way out of pots and soil, I rejoiced, knowing that I was something good. Something more alive than most people could ever claim to be.

Maybe my pride was what turned the whole thing sour that year. They say it comes before falling, right? What they really mean is, pride turns you blind to where you’re headed. It made me think I didn’t need anyone else, and what’s more blind than thinking you can go this life alone?

She came when the storms were howling and the snow had turned fierce with cold. No one ever came inside my house, at least not long enough to notice where things got…strange. Out of season. The cottage on the edge of the woods was no man’s land until someone needed to fix a wound or get a baby out and facing the right direction. Then it was the place you stood outside of with an uncertain face and an awkward feeling resting heavy on your shoulders.

A long time ago, people had come for other reasons. To make the harvest strong. To get the gardens blooming. But that had been before my grandmother’s time and long before my mother’s, so I didn’t let the idea of what had been cling to my skin or make me sad for what I’d never experienced in the first place. Now I was a healer, and if the price of that was to live my life just off the paths that other people took, it was fine by me.

But then she showed up. It was a sudden thing - a knock at the door, a request for shelter, pretty blue eyes and a face shaped like the curved leaves of the anthurium plant - and maybe that’s why it took me by surprise. Okay, I said, you can stay while the storm howls. Just for a while, then you’ve got to be on your way.

Sure, she told me, I never stay anywhere too long.

The first thing I noticed as she settled in by my fireplace was the way she did it with confidence, her expression serene and her curves melting into the velvet chair like they belonged there. No awkwardness on those sloped shoulders, no uncertainty in the way she talked to me like I’d met her a hundred times before.

You like plants? Me too, she said. Nice to see them in the Winter like this.

No comment on how that shouldn’t be possible. No observation of the way my marigolds spilled out over the edges of the room and cascaded down the bannister that led from the top floor down to the den. Just a small smile and a nod, like she was approving not only of the impossibly flame-orange blossoms all over the space, but also of me, this stranger who stayed quiet and stiff on the edge of the stone hearth.

Now I was the awkward one, uncertain as a farm boy entering the crowded city streets for the first time in his life. I’d entered new territory without even leaving my house.

I like marigolds most of all, she said. I like the way they seem to give off light when you look at them. I think they like to be looked at.

I think she liked to be looked at. And I was suspicious of the way I liked to look at her, too, my eyes trailing vine-like across the slender lines of her collarbones, the swell of her chest beneath a well-worn dress of homespun wool. Her hair was the color of wheat, her lips pink as wild strawberries early in the season. I looked darker by comparison, my skin like the heartwood of an olive tree, my hair black as wild cherries when they’d gotten just past ripe.

You’re a quiet one, she told me. I don’t mind, but I’m not quiet at all.

She didn’t apologize, but I wasn’t asking her to. Her voice was rich and rough along the edges. It sounded like growing things, like good soil that made a home for seeds.

I don’t mind talking, I said. Just not used to it. I live alone.

She smiled without looking at me, but I knew the smile was mine nonetheless. It was meant for me, only me, like a secret was being shared between us in the soft light of the birchwood flames.

Some people like living alone and don’t get lonely, she noted. Some people like it but get lonely anyway. Which one are you?

I’m not sure, I told her in spite of myself, I think it depends on who I feel like being from one day to the next.

That’s a good answer, she said. Do you ever talk to your plants? If I had plants I think I’d like to talk with them. They’re good listeners.

I had to try not to laugh. I hadn’t laughed in a long time.

Is it really listening if they can’t walk away? I asked. Maybe they think I’m annoying.

So you do talk to them, she decided. I thought so. You seem like someone who talks when she’s got something to say, no matter who’s there to listen.

That’s a big statement for someone who just met me, I said.

A shrug, a tilting of her head to the side. I’m good at reading people, she said. Maybe too good, sometimes.

I wondered at that but didn’t say so. Instead I looked at the fire and thought about the situation. People who come from storms couldn’t really be trusted, could they? But who was I to think so, when I was strange as they came to the people who put their judgment on such things. And she was here now, so it couldn’t be helped.

I can make some supper, I said. I was going to have okra stew. I made some bread earlier today, too.

That sounds good, she answered. I’d be grateful to share it if you don’t mind the company.

Sure, I agreed. I don’t mind.

And somehow, I didn’t. I didn’t mind at all.

***

So she ended up staying, not one night but many. Days, too, and then for a season. And the first day I asked her if she’d be moving on, and she just smiled and said she’d do it when I kicked her out. I didn’t. Don’t know why, but that’s the way it happens, isn’t it? You think you know what you’ll do when she shows up, but then you find yourself acting like a total stranger when the time comes.

She said she didn’t stay anywhere for too long, but she stayed with me. She liked the place I’d made, she said, and she especially liked the marigolds. They seemed to get a little brighter when she was next to them.

For a long time I hid the way the plants grew and tried to make my world stay closed the way it ought to be, from strangers. But then she wasn’t a stranger anymore, so I let her see what I could do.

You’re the best person I’ve ever met, she told me.

I believed her, because that smile came back and it was still just for me.

I might think that even without the plants, though, she admitted, just because I like you so much.

And it was nearly Spring, and I kissed her then, and she kissed me back even harder. And we were like honeysuckle vines that finally found something to hold onto, because together we could do what was natural for us.

I like you, too, I told her as she pulled me close, I like you so much I think it might hurt.

Let it hurt then, she said.

She made love to me next to the flowers and the herbs, and our skin smelled like rosemary when I woke up in her arms the next morning. She seemed to absorb the world around her, soaking it in and reflecting it back twice as bright, twice as beautiful.

Spring turned into Summer and she stayed, and I wasn’t as unfriendly when people stood awkwardly outside my door anymore. And somehow the whispers stopped and the sideways looks became smiles, not friendly but not unfriendly, either. Nothing was like the secret smile she gave me, though. That was something different. We were something different.

So maybe that’s what went wrong. Maybe that’s why my hands stopped having the same affect and why I felt the bond between my plants and I shifting and turning quieter, turning less. And it’s a sour thing, to love two ways at once and feel so certain that one can only exist when the other gets smaller.

You don’t look at me the way you did before, she said one day. It makes me sad. It’s because of the plants, isn’t it?

They won’t listen to me anymore, I told her. They stopped listening to me and you’re the only thing that changed.

When she smiled this time it wasn’t for me. It wasn’t really even a smile. Just a movement of her lips and then she turned away.

I should be moving on, she said.

My words were gone and I couldn’t say a thing as she got up and walked out the door. I just stood awkward and uncertain, a stranger in a strange place, a visitor in my own home. And after just one day the plants started to listen again. But I didn’t much feel like talking to them anymore.

***

It was Fall then Winter again, then I waited in the storms and pretended I wasn’t. I was just listening, I told myself, I told the marigolds. Just hearing the wind howl and feeling fine. The flowers had gone to seed by then and the same was true for everything else. My walls were a mess of ivy and I couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

I could clean everything up and try to make it right again, but when I woke up the next day it’d gone wilder than before. So I stopped trying. I just let it go.

People were all strangers again and I did my work but didn’t say much of anything to the men and women who stood by my door and turned awkward when I came out. They were uncertain when I handed them what they needed and closed the door without a word. It was all just coming and going, growing and waiting while pretending that this was good and right the way it had been before.

It wasn’t, though. You can’t go back once you’re heart’s gone to seed. You have to start over, maybe, plant those seeds in good, rich soil and talk them into growing. But I didn’t seem to have much good soil left for planting. She’d taken it with her when she left.

And when it stormed, the ice coating my windows and turning the world to glass, I let everything grow without me and pretended I wasn’t waiting. But I was.

***

It’s Summer now and I’m watching the sky turn angry and dark, then I’m listening to the rain start to strike the roof of my cottage and trickle down the windows. I’m feeling restless but I’m forcing myself to sit here with my dead marigolds and my out-of-control ivy like they’re both the way they’re supposed to be.

I’m losing the ability to pretend. My pride isn’t what it used to be.

I hear a knock on the door and I’m trying not to let myself feel the flutter in my chest, but it’s there and I can’t do anything but get up and go turn the handle. And here she is.

“I came back,” she says. “Seems like I can’t wander for too long at a time, anymore. What are you going to do about it?”

I’m smiling. “I’m going to grow you some marigolds, and I’m going to love you even though it hurts. And I’m going to make us some okra stew.”

I will, too. There’s nothing uncertain about it. My world is looking brighter already - and for the first time, I think I like the way it looks right back at me and smiles. Just for me.