"Mrs. Paris is coming right away for some Nufem," Mama replied.
"Oh,'' I said, my fears eased.
Nufem was the name Mama had given to her secret herbal supplement to relieve women of the discomforts of the menopause. I knew only that she combined things like red raspberry, passionflower, black cohosh, wild yam, and some motherwort to create her remedy. I think she added some vitamin supplements as well. She had given it to the mayor's wife, who had heard about it from Mrs Zalkin, wife of the egg fanner who lived a few miles east of us, and now apparently Mrs. Paris, who was the wife of one of the biggest landlords in nearby Sandburg, had been talking to the mayor's wife.
Over the past year and a half. Mama had developed a number of customers far her herbal remedies and had even begun to supply herbal plants and products to a health food retail outlet in the bigger city of Middletown. She had begun this little business through her friend MI. Bogart, the owner of an estate jewelry and spiritual gem store where she had bought Noble and me our amulets. It kept us busy, me in particular, cultivating and growing her plants and herbs and helping her grind and mix ingredients.
Mama wasn't just selling these herbal remedies. however. She would offer the customers, people she called her clients, instructions about meditating and tuning in to a peaceful coexistence with the spiritual world of nature. More and more people seemed to be interested in such things. and Mama and I. who were usually thought unusual if not downright strange, had at least become positive in some people's eyes. I know it made Mama happier.
"I want you to take Baby Celeste up to the turret room and keep her quiet," she said.
It was what I always had to do whenever anyone came to our house -- hide Baby Celeste, occupy her so she made little noise and attracted nobody's attention. Nothing was more important than keeping her existence a secret.
As if she herself understood how important it was. Baby Celeste did not cry or complain whenever I had to hide her away. If anything, my taking her up to the turret room amused her and she always kept relatively quiet. She would gaze at all the old furnishings and antiques like someone lovingly looking at religious icons in a church. I was sure any other child would have been bored, but not Baby Celeste, Her patience amazed me. Mama, of course, was not surprised by Baby Celeste's behavior at all. She believed Baby Celeste was the true heir of all the family's spiritual powers.
-She'll be even greater than I am someday," Mama had told me.
"Don't just stand there looking stupid. Noble," she snapped at me now. "I told you. The woman is on her way here. She could be coming down the driveway any moment. Hurry!"
"Okay, Mama " I scooped up Baby Celeste
The gravity and criticality Mama had whenever she wanted Baby Celeste hidden away frightened me. I had nightmares of her being discovered and then taken from us for one reason or another. After all, what sort of people keep a baby hidden from the world? Where did the baby come from anyway? they'd wonder. Why was her hair being dyed? If I expressed my fear about this. Mama would shake her head at me as if I were too stupid to ever know anything.
"Don't you understand that they would never let that happen, Noble?" she asked. "I would have thought you did by now."
The they in our lives were the spiritual family members who hovered about our farm and home, in and out, watching over us always. I didn't disbelieve her. I had seen the way they looked at us and watched over us. warning Mama of things from time to time. The way Baby Celeste looked in the direction of a family soul, and the way her eyes grew small and interested, convinced me she had already crossed over Perhaps Mama was right about her. Perhaps she came directly from them and didn't need to cross. She was never away from them. Birth had simply been another doorway in the spiritual world for her and not as it was for the rest of us, a doorway to a lesser place, making it necessary for us to find our own way back.
"Up we go," I sang, and ascended the stairs.
Baby Celeste smiled at me and lay her head on my shoulder. I kissed her little forehead and brushed back her hair. How could anyone who saw us together not know instantly she was my child? Maybe Mama was afraid of that more than anything and that was why she grimaced whenever I did show Baby Celeste too much affection,
"You can love her, but as a brother would love a sister, as a sister," she would constantly remind me. Baby Celeste was truly locked away in the world Mama envisioned for us.
I wondered how being so confined, so isolated, would effect Baby Celeste. How long could it go on? When would it end? Or would it never end?
Rarely feeling the sunlight on her face, rarely smelling the aroma of spring flowers, hardly ever luxuriating in the soft touch of the breeze. Baby Celeste would surely be disadvantaged in ways I couldn't imagine.
And yet. when I sat with her in the turret and listened to Mama and her customer's muffled voices below, I realized how similar my plight was to my baby's. Wasn't I as trapped and shut away in the prison of Noble's identity? Rarely did I look out as I would if I were permitted to be myself. A woman's world was as distant to me as playing and being in daylight was to Baby Celeste.
"We're alike in so many ways, Celeste," I told her, whispered to her while we waited in the turret room.
She glanced at me, the tiny dimple in her cheek flashing like a small Christmas light as she tightened those sweet, small lips. Often when she looked at me or listened to me, she seemed so much older. She wore the face of someone who understood things far beyond her years. And then, an instant later, she was Baby Celeste again, laughing and giggling at the most insignificant little things.
A ray of sunshine trapped the floating dust and she marveled at the way the particles glittered. She reached out to touch them and then laughed and looked at me to see if I had the same wonder.
I smiled.
A long time ago so many things were fall of wonder for me. Stuck in the dark places
now, I closed my eyes. I lowered my head. I plodded along afraid of stepping too far to the left or too far to the right. Nothing frightened me as much as disappointing Mama. More often than ever these days, she made me feel it was only the three of us, floating on some raft in a sea of turmoil. We needed each other. Wt had to keep our world tightly guarded, behind tall, thick protective walls. It was only then that we would be safe.
Baby Celeste played quietly with one of her dolls while we waited. Shortly after Baby Celeste had been born. Mama had brought out the dolls Mr. Taylor Kates, the owner of the biggest lumber company in the community, had given to me. He had courted Mama after Daddy's death, and there was a time I thought he would become our new daddy, but he was killed in a terrible car accident when a drunken teenager in a truck rammed into him on his way home from our house. I had really begun to like him. too. Even Noble, who was resistant and angry about Daddy's passing, had started to accept him.
His death reinforced some of the rumors about Mama, especially because Mr. Kates's sister spread them. Back then she had people believing that anyone who got too close to us was in some sort of danger. Mama was beautiful and still striking. She could have had one man after another romancing her, but she didn't seem to mind our isolation. In fact, she welcomed it, especially after my supposed
kidnapping. Being a former schoolteacher, she continued my homeschooling. Back in those days. I could count on the fingers of one hand how many visitors we had a month, not considering our spiritual visitors, of course.
She played our piano at night, raised her herbs and vegetables, and walked the farm with her ancestors at her side. Before I had crossed over and could really see the spirits if only occasionally, I would watch her stroll with her head slightly bowed, nodding, pausing, and gesturing to someone standing beside her. I remember straining, studying the air, searching desperately for a vision. I so wanted to be like her to see what she saw, to hear what she heard.