Page 9 of We Already Dug the Grave

“Mama don’t have a sister. And my last name ain’t Robbins.” I’d shaken my head. Back home, nobody’s house looked as if it would writhe across the forest floor. Old women didn’t kneel in the dirt with long sleeves caked in gardening soil, and they didn’t know your secrets. They surely didn’t give you new last names. “My last name is Waters.”

“Your mama absolutely has a sister. And Waters is your daddy’s name. But make no mistake, you’re a Robbins, just like her, through and through.” Hattie-May looked at my sister, who’d peeked around me, her thumb in her mouth. She patted Frances’s fuzzy hair. “Both of you are Robbins girls.”

I learned later that it wasn’t unusual for one sister to receive the gift and the other not, and now I sometimes wondered if, even in that moment, Hattie-May had known that the Sight would skip Frances.

It certainly hadn’t skipped me.

That vision I’d had at eight years old, the one that had stopped me in my tracks just outside this same window, had been right. This place, this life, had swallowed me up. I’d fully become a Robbins.

The teakettle whistled, and I looked up to find Hattie-May’s gaze on me, her expression curious. Daydreams often stole chunks of my time, and if we’d been alone, she’d have asked me where I’d gone off to and if I’d had a nice visit.

I poured the water into the white ceramic cup.

“Milly, I wonder,” Hattie-May chirped, sliding into one of the empty chairs at the table. “Could you give us a moment? I need to chat with Earline about that quilting competition. You know, I’ve been thinking about entering.”

My gaze jerked toward Aunt Hattie. She hadn’t sewed anything a day in her life. Never mind the fact that if I interrupted one of Aunt Ruth’s readings, Ruth would go ballistic. In learning to channel my Sight, to wrestle intuition from the door inside, housed behind my rib cage, and direct it into the leaves, I had to practice again and again with both Ruth and Hattie-May. I listened to them. I spent hours watching them work. And there were rules. Like don’t interrupt a reading when homecoming dress money is on the line!

“Aunt Hattie, I was just—”

“I left my glasses in the greenhouse. Be a dear and grab them for me? You know I need them to drive, and I have to leave to pick up your sister here in a minute.” She leveled a stern gaze at me, forbidding any further excuses. I huffed and set the kettle on the table, leaving through the doorway to the front hall. I opened the old front door wide, waiting a moment before closing it again in front of me. If Aunt Hattie thought she could get rid of me that easily…

I crept back to the kitchen entrance, not making a sound, straining my ears to listen as Hattie-May began to speak.

“Earline, you know Joyce Miller, don’t you? Correct me if I’m wrong, but y’all go to church together?”

This is why Hattie wanted me gone? To gossip?

Rumor was Joyce’s husband was a mean drunk who liked to beat on her, but every time she left, he stopped drinking and she went back to him. Her daughter was in eleventh grade, a year between me and Frances, and had a fuck around and find out reputation.

Earline cleared her throat, and while I didn’t risk a peek, I could picture her gaze fixed on the mug in front of her, her lips pursed. She was probably second-guessing why she’d ever come out to see us in the first place. “I know Joyce. Why do you ask?”

Why indeed?

“Joyce is a sweet lady,” Hattie-May continued quietly. “You know, her husband recently passed away. Tragic what happened to him, but I guess it’s no wonder his heart finally gave out, with all the smoking and drinking and carrying on.”

“Yes. Tragic.”

“Right before he died,” Hattie-May continued, “Joyce confided in me that she had a pest problem. She has a big field behind her house, same as you, I think?”

“I do not have a pest prob—”

“Well, dearie,” Hattie-May pressed on. “Pests were ruining her life. Just awful. She’d all but given up solving the problem. You see, she wanted them gone but didn’t want to use rat poison on account of how inhumane it is. Nasty stuff. She came to me for help.” I could hear the clink of a cup on table, the shuffle of feet. “I have just the thing to get rid of a pest painlessly. You know, I grow all kinds of plants in my greenhouse. Make all kinds of remedies.” There was a long pause, and I held my breath, waiting for them to continue. “Solve all kinds of problems.”

My heart raced.

Hattie-May, with her wiry white hair and love of floral housedresses, looked like anyone’s sweet mamaw. She made cakes and pies for shut-ins and sold home remedies for everything from gout to glaucoma. Pregnant women came and saw her for her knack of knowing a baby’s sex weeks before an ultrasound, and she gave away her all-natural nausea and pain remedy to anyone going through cancer treatment. Hattie-May had a heart for helping people.

My aunts both helped in all kinds of ways. Pests one of them, it seemed.

But no, I knew that Hattie-May wasn’t a killer just like I wasn’t a witch—not really. She couldn’t be. Witches knew spells, and killers made pancakes and sent their children off to school in the morning. I shook my head, forcing the thought away. I couldn’t think of Mama that way. Couldn’t blame her.

“Why are you telling me this?” Earline asked.

“I want you to know you have options, if you ever find yourself needing to get rid of a pest.”

There was a silence in the kitchen, the substantial kind that filled spaces and echoed over long distances. It pressed against me in my hiding spot. My aunt had secrets. Maybe I didn’t understand all of them, but maybe I knew more than I’d allowed myself to believe.

“Well, Earline.” The legs of Hattie-May’s chair scraped against the floor. “It was good talking with you, honey. But I’d best go find Milly and see what’s taking her so long in the greenhouse. Gotta find those glasses so I can pick up Frances from the library. You know she works over there as a tutor? Some of the kids she helps are older than her. Can you believe it? She’s such a bright girl.”