MICAH’S PURPOSE

By Leap Taylor

CHAPTER ONE

       I can vividly recall what it felt like in my mother’s womb.  Even then, I knew that the viscid warmth and pampering darkness of my beginning was an act of the supernatural. Where others may have been pushed from their mother’s womb, I sprang forth like a frog from a gator’s mouth.  Springing and wriggling myself toward something that I knew assuredly awaited.  I knew these things even then. Of course, being fully aware of the peculiarity of these early memories, I accept that most people would find them difficult to believe.  But in truth, I am very much unlike most people and therefore care very little for what they believe – especially as it pertains to me. 

I. Am. Unlike anything you’ve ever known.  In fact, in my lifetime, there have only been three others like me that existed.  My grandmother, my mother and a distant cousin - twice removed.  As well, we all looked the same; not identically, but generally.  Snow white hair (since birth), caramel skin and almond shaped eyes the color of flaming sapphires.  Actually, to be more precise, my eyes are not like the vibrant blue hues of my kin, but rather like the grays of inbred wisdom.  Or maybe translucent would be a better description, for on a clear day you can see straight through to my very soul, with evolving moods displaying the greens of envy or the ambers of rage.  A lover once cited them as being the color of his glass doorknob when the sun shone on its perfect place, kaleidoscoping with brilliant and varying color. Though his motives in delivering such a compliment were purely self-serving, I still derive great pleasure from this remark.  Especially on days when I feel as though people are smirking and glaring at my appearance, as opposed to silently appreciating my different brand of beauty.

My name is Micah.  Much like the color of my eyes, my name was decided upon before my birth.  It was prophesied by Gwaltney Shay, an otherworldly clairvoyant, that I be named such. Oddly enough, my little town of Low Glover, Virginia was a haven for all varieties of root-workers, shamans, and hedgewitches.  Yet and still, Gwaltney Shay remained an ever present mystery to most.  Several days after I was conceived, Shay saw my mother walking toward home alongside the red dirt paths and low hanging branches of the 100 year-old forgotten colony of trees that rested a mere stone’s throw from our backdoor.   Shay, oftentimes sleeping in the underbrush of those trees, popped out of the bush like an erratic jack-in-the-box (consequently startling my poor mother to near death), and grandly announced that Emmy, my mother, was “soona be heavy widda baby girl”.  Then she reached down and grabbed a fistful of red dirt, poured it into my mother’s hand, and told her to hold it tightly while the old woman looked up and called to the heavens.  Seconds later, even before my embryo began to take full form, Shay chose my name and thusly sealed my fate.  “Call her Micah. That’s the name that chose her!”  Now to understand how mere names translate to fate, you must first recognize that names are not merely words that we use to identify ourselves, one from another.  No, no…instead they are guidelines that map our character and standing.  Even in the bible, when someone’s fate changed, their name changed – and so it is with life.  This is my belief.

My name sounds like a whisper.  M i c a h.   M y- k u h.  This would explain why I have spent so much of my life keeping secrets.  Furthermore, my name is biblical. It profoundly means “One who is like God”.  My mother had no idea of the name’s heft when she agreed to it, instead only loving the sound that it made as it left her full lips. And while I am quite certain that this issue of names and destinies could continue on effortlessly at best, I think it is now time to push past the minutia and give you the real meat of the matter.

I. Am. Not an ordinary woman.  On the contrary, I was uniquely born into this world with abundant gifts and talents.  I have memories of my birth, yet I did not begin to speak until I was four, talking in complete sentences and using pronouns and adjectives correctly. I was a dunce in school and failed math and science horribly, yet classmates were amazed at how I could call snails out of the ground and butterflies to my fingertips.  Animals listened to the sound of my voice and obeyed, yet Ellis Moore, my fourth grade crush, knew not that I existed.  Today, I stand before you a sinner, yet I can heal a dying man with my touch and quote parts of the bible that I’ve never read.  I can speak in languages that I’ve never learned (because every utterance that has ever existed lives on the inside of me) and I can tell a stranger what his tomorrow holds. And my mother, and her mother as well, are exactly the same.  The best that I can describe it is to simply say that we are naturally and inherently blessed with the gifts of the supernatural.  Yet, though both of my mothers are gifted, my anointing is far superior in both spectrum and strength. Contrarily, my cousin’s gifts are quietly abysmal when compared to mine.  Her powers are limited to visions (of which she dreams) and foliage (of which she grows).  She can make trees grow by looking at them - not vegetable roots or cotton plants or grape vines. Just trees and idle shrubbery. She is ridiculous.

Please excuse my pompous habit of making light of her God-given gifts, but she is an absolutely wretched creature. In truth, I haven’t seen her in decades and can easily forget that she exists altogether. Sad really.  Especially considering that she is one of only three people on this planet that can ever truly understand the struggles that come with living such an abnormal existence.

I. Am. Human…but I have rarely felt that way. Not necessarily immortal, just not completely human.  My mother once told me that she often felt the same way; that the feeling would pass and I would soon begin to understand that I was actually more human than most.  “We are the truest definition of humanity” she’d say.  “The way God originally intended it to be.”  Yet I have matured many times over since those conversations, have performed miracles that have shaken the foundations of this earth, and still innately feel that I’ve done nothing more than scratch the surface of what “God originally intended”.  Barely dipped my toe into the ocean of my potential, or merely inked the quill in writing the narrative of my life’s adventures. So, in my heartfelt attempt to do the latter, please allow this storied woman an audience of interest as I begin at the beginning. 

My name is Micah Young (no middle name) and I am a manifested miracle of God.  My mother, Emmy, was nineteen years old when I was born, and only fifteen years old when she gave birth to my brother Zephaniah (Shay, to my knowledge, had no hand in naming him; the biblical reference is simply coincidental).  But as grueling as one might imagine teenage parenting to be, she did it with discipline and grace.  She always stood tall.  Even as my father died from a bullet to his temple at the precise moment that I took my first breath, she stood.  She stood up and screamed with all the vibrato of a classically trained mezzo soprano, of which she was certainly not.  The doctor dived and slid across the shiny linoleum floor to catch me as I freefell from my mother’s womb, while everyone else stared in wonderment at how this woman could get out of the stirrups so quickly and give birth standing up.  Give birth to a baby who appeared to be crawling out of her, no less. But there she remained…standing. Standing was all that she could do, for she knew, as well as I, that Ness Young - my father - was dead. We both cried uninterruptedly for three days straight. 

An urban truth that finds itself being daily resuscitated into the mouths of many is this: He that lives by the sword will surely die by the sword.  My father consciously chose the life that he lived. He was a sincere hellion and my mother knew it as fact from the moment that she met him.  She knew that he was a walking, cussing, gambling, street thug hustler who gave little regard for anyone but himself, yet she allowed herself to love him because she thought that she could save him.  Not the way most women save their thugs, mind you.  But instead, by literally causing death to shrivel up within itself and die whenever it came too close to him.  For example, someone once stabbed my father in his back over a drunken disagreement one night, but luckily my mother was there when it happened.  Luckily, yes, for while everyone else scattered like little insects trying to flee the violent scene, my mother ran towards my father’s crouched body with intent and purpose within every movement of her sinewy frame.  She naively yanked the knife out of his flesh, and - even while dad cussed her to high hell – she began to run her anointed hands meticulously over the wound until the blood had stopped its insistent flow, his insides were repaired, and the ragged ripped skin had been completely mended. Until that very moment, he had been unaware of my mother’s gifts. Even on that night, rather than confront the inexplicable, he chose to ignore the miracle that she offered, never asking her to explain what happened, what she did, nor how she did it.  Instead, he settled silently into the house with my mother and Zephaniah for several days, and then – as street rules mandated - he went back out to avenge his attack. Never once mentioning the miraculous healing that overcame him. Never once thanking my mother for killing death on his behalf.  And my mother truly loved him for everything that he was, because it was assuredly everything that she could never be.  Reckless, careless, fearless.  And oftentimes heartless. 

Ness was a broad shouldered man with grand hands and hard feet.  But even despite his ruffian ways, he had a slow temper.  The problem was that there was no median.  No in-between.  He was either happy or hateful, silent or thunderous, a lover or a killer.  Indeed, you could cop a foul attitude with him and he would smile fabulously and try to smooth your ruffled feathers, but if you still ranted and raved one second longer than he thought was necessary - without warning - he would put a knife through your eye.  End of story.  Absolutely no middle ground. 

When it came to my mother and Zeph, you didn’t even get the initial attempts at civility.  Ness Young was extremely sensitive about his woman and his son, and anyone who knew him understood that those two entities were completely off limits. My mother certainly didn’t make matters easier by standing over six feet tall, flat-footed and with shoulders slouched. Or by pacing her blue-eyed, white haired, cocoa-skinned self up and down the street, looking for Ness at all ungodly hours of the midnight morning. For obvious reasons, she was a walking enigma to most settlers in my little town.  Truth be told, most people were scared to death of her.  Even amongst the spell casters and the snake boilers, she and my grandmother were so unlike anything else that had ever existed there.  And though she secretly reveled in her spiritual gifts, she loathed her physical differences.  She tried on countless occasions to dye her hair (black, brown, red, blonde, and even a few combinations of the four), but it never worked.  When she rinsed the dye, her hair was still the color of shaved ice, shining even more in defiance.  Then at one desperate interval, she took a pair of shaving shears and skinned herself bald from the forehead to the nape of the neck.  Amusingly, it grew back to its original below-the-shoulder length within three weeks.  And as a result of this and many other miraculous occurrences, everyone in the vicinity maintained their distance. 

Well, everyone except Yinessa Young.  “Ness” was not only intrigued by her, but he was completely obsessed with the danger of her.  Who was this womanchild who could make grown men cross to the other side of the street when she approached?  He felt it his responsibility to uncover her mysteries.  And in so doing, that 19-year-old thug fell in love with the living contradiction of naiveté and wisdom that was my 14-year-old mother.  My grandmother, Boot, never even saw it coming until the result of that love began to show its sixth month of pregnancy.  Boot!  This woman had visions of spiritual wars, and foretold tragedies to come, but she wallowed in complete ignorance when it came to her own child sprouting seed.  When my mother’s condition was discovered, grandma Boot became so furious that you could no longer see the pupils of her eyes, which vanished and were replaced by two white almond-shaped slits of roaring fury.  And she yelled so loudly that she made our stoic, century old Victorian house shake from its very foundation.  I’m told that she did the same thing when her husband died, except only then, her wailing caused all of the upstairs stained-glass windows to shatter.  The ironic thing is that Boot knew the exact day that my grandfather was going to die before she ever agreed to marry him.  The gift of prophecy is SO overrated. 

Ness Young, however, came as a complete surprise to her.  Boot had seen him around the neighborhood, and knew him to be the problematic thug that he was.  Yet he was always nice to her; cordial even.  She knew very little about him, except that he was not originally from the neighborhood like the other young men.  She did not know his mother or father, nor did she know where he came from.  No one really knew.  He just seemed to appear one day.  And precisely for that reason, my grandmother never encouraged conversation with him.  According to her spiritual philosophy, demons appeared and then disappeared without a moment’s notice.  My father’s emergence reminded her entirely too much of this “truth” and therefore she instantly cast him into her perceived den of devils.  My argument however, was that angels materialized quite the same way.  Her instant retort was one of simplicity. 

“Angels, my dear, form themselves as average creatures.  They don’t command attention, nor do they cause horrible scenes.  They do their work quietly and then return as softly as they arrived.  Demons, on the other hand, march in parades beating tambourines and showing all their colors. They flaunt their earthly beauty because it’s all that they have, and they leave a trail of death and destruction in their wake.” 

Of course, it did not help that Ness was as handsome as they came and stood several inches above most of the men in the neighborhood, thereby commanding attention wherever he went.  The ladies loved him, and the men openly feared (and secretly despised) him.  The saints prayed for his conversion, and the remaining citizens in the neighborhood wanted nothing more than to stay out of his way.  Regardless of your rank in our little society, you definitely knew that Ness Young existed.  This reality added firmness to my grandmother’s belief of his devilish substance.  Yet, strangely, she wasn’t bothered by him.  Initially I thought that it was because she knew that if things ever came to blows, she could wrap her chubby fingers around his heart and squeeze it into submission without ever being in his physical presence.  Understand that we, the gifted ones, have that capability as well.  However, I later came to understand that her fearlessness came from knowing the exact moment that my father would lose his life – with herself having nothing to do with the circumstances.  She knew precisely how long she had to tolerate him.  But even then, she held no clue as to how embedded in her life he would inevitably become.  When all was revealed, it took the strength of Emmy and four stout church ladies to hold ole’ Boot under a proper form of physical restraint.  And when Ness finally showed up on the doorstep, hat-in-hand and head bowed low in capitulation, Boot took the initial stance of tigerish attack.  But it was the unfailing love in my mother’s eyes that kept Ness from taking his last breath on that day.  That, coupled with the fact that my grandmother understood the unspoken laws that came with this gift.  She knew that she could not, in contempt, interrupt the natural progression of this world by killing him before his time.  Save a life, possibly – if the spirits gave permission. Take a life, definitely not. And even more realistically, Boot knew that if she attempted to take Ness’s life, my mother would immediately breathe it right back into him. 

Though my mom never married my dad, both Zephaniah and I were given his name. Zeph, of course, remembers him.  Remembers his walk, and how his skin always smelled of bergamot.  Remembers his perfect teeth, and the scar under his bottom lip.  These are the only memories that he can impart on me.  But I can remember Ness too.  I remember the expression on his face as we passed one another from death to life. 

Due to blissful ignorance, I never missed having a father around.  You have to know what you’re missing in order to miss it.  At that time, there were only two kids in the neighborhood that lived with both parents - and I wasn’t a friend to either of them.  As a matter of fact, one of them was horribly cruel to me (but that puts her in the back of a long line of many).  So not having a dad was never an issue, until I encountered my first bully.  The first of many to come. 

The little boy was mean and had a mammoth-sized gap between his two front teeth.  He made a habit of trying to spit on me by expelling saliva through that gap at a rapid fire pace.  It was like trying to dodge a mucus-filled machine gun. Such a hateful child!  And though Zephaniah was big enough to render any bully powerless, he hated fighting as much as Ness loved it. Truth be told, he was a pacifist for the very same reason that my father was a bully.  They both desired control.  It’s just that Ness wielded it over others, while Zeph exerted it over himself.  My brother was also very fearful of becoming like my father, so he would only intervene in my attacks when he absolutely had to –and he often despised me for it. 

I can recall standing on the corner one afternoon waiting to cross the street, my little hand placed firmly inside of Zeph’s larger one.  We were returning home after a two hour romp at the neighborhood playground, when a drunk man in his thirties approached us and put his nasty finger in my brother’s face.

“You Ness’ boy ain’t cha?  Nigga, if I was half da bitch’cha daddy was, I would take a knife to yo throat right now!  You see this!” The man opened his collar to reveal a four-inch keloid that ran the length of his neck.  “Yo punk-ass daddy did this.”

The man roared these words mere inches away from Zeph’s face.  Every time he opened his mouth to shout another obscenity, spit laced with hard liquor flew everywhere.  And then he got even closer to Zeph, poking his boney finger in my brother’s chest, and began to threaten him with a merciless retaliation as a result of my father’s actions. Seconds later, he simply walked away, just as quickly as he had come.

I can remember that day as if it were yesterday.  Zeph had just turned 10 years-old, and he peed on himself right there on that street.  Even after that swine left, we stood on the corner for what seemed like hours before my brother let go of my hand and crossed the street, damning Ness to hell as he walked toward home. Hating our father for having the audacity to die, leaving us defenseless in dealing with the ramifications of his senseless actions.

Zeph wasn’t born like me.  He possessed no gifts or talents to speak of, and on the contrary, was a bit of a patsy.  Sure, he could put pencil to paper and draw the most beautiful pictures, or read books with the voracious appetite of a brilliant scholar, but that was about it.  His only unusual endowment was his abnormally large size, for at age 10, he was often mistaken for a licensed teenager. But save for height and girth, he was normal. However, on that particular day…the day of the evil man… Zeph became very much aware that I was NOT normal.  That was the first time that he bore witness to my abilities. That was the day that I, at the age of six, used my powers for the first time on a human being.  I don’t even think that I realized what I was doing at the time. But I understood that something glorious lived on the inside of me, and the thought excited me in ways unimaginable.  

I remember watching Zeph wimper away with pee stains on his secondhand corduroys.  I remember him looking back from several yards away, calling for me to quickly join him across the street so that we could return home.  I remember him threatening to leave me if I didn’t hastily do as he said.  Then the fun began.  I remember boldly turning my back to Zeph and walking – no, running in the direction towards that evil man.  I didn’t see him, so I kept running, looking around every corner and through every breezeway between buildings, until finally I saw him.  Crouched down near the vacant bus stop, scouring the ground for any unused portions of snuffed cigarettes that he could find.  As my eyes began to sparkle with excitement, I swiftly ran over to him, and in all of my childhood rage and indignation, screamed at the top of my lungs, “You stupid dummy!!  You ugly pee-pee head!”    

The few people who were within earshot of this unfolding drama stopped what they were doing and stared at the spectacle that I was making of myself, but I didn’t care.  I wanted to spit on this man the way the gap-tooth kid had done to me countless times.  I had absolutely no fear in me at that moment.   

“Micah, what are…..” Zeph stopped mid-sentence and abruptly in his tracks when he reached the corner and saw exactly who I was confronting.  I only allowed myself to look at him for a split second before returning my attention to the man.  But even in that small interval of time, I saw the distressed appearance on Zeph’s face.  He was wrestling with the notion of leaving me to deal with the mess that I was creating for myself, or intervening and risking the possibility of getting pummeled by the drunkard.  I saw the contemplation, but only the split instant before he barreled across the street and threw himself between me and the man.  

“What the hell!?…  If ya’ll don’t get'on way from here, I’ma kick yo’ ass all up and down this street.”  The drunk yelled this as he swayed back and forth, unbalanced as he tried to get up from his crouched position. 

“You will do no such thing Jimmy!  You better leave those kids alone before I come out there with my baseball bat!”  Mr. Cleary, the nice man who owned the corner convenience store, stood in the doorway of his ghetto enterprise with his chest puffed out and his hands on his hips, ready to wage war on our behalf.  At that moment, he looked just like Superman to me, with his steely gaze fixed on the criminal while the shirttails of his plaid, button-up blew loosely in the afternoon breeze.  That was the moment that Jimmy turned his full attention toward Mr. Cleary, and I seized the opportunity to do damage.    

With his gaze diverted, I pushed Zeph out of my way and kicked Jimmy firmly in the groin.  Kicked him hard, you hear me!  But the amazing thing was not that a six-year old, white-haired, black girl kicked a grown man in the balls, in the middle of day, in the middle of the week.  No, what was amazing was that immediately after my foot left Jimmy’s crotch, he fell to his knees in agony, and then proceeded to pee on himself.  Not voluntarily, but by my will.  I wanted him to suffer the same shame that he had inflicted upon my brother.  And he peed for almost one hour straight.  He cried and yelled and screamed.  He ran and fell and rolled on the ground.  But he did not stop peeing.   

When Zeph grabbed my hand and ran towards home, I chanced a quick look back at Jimmy just in time to see the growing crowd of concerned chaos descend. “Somebody call the ambulance!... Get him to the hospital!... What the hell happened?!”    

Zeph and I stared at Jimmy on that street for only a matter of minutes before we ran home, but by nightfall, the whole neighborhood knew of his uncontrolled urination.  Odd, however, that no one thought it necessary to mention the little white haired girl who - all facts considered - instigated the whole thing.  The story that circulated around the neighborhood went something like this: -“Chiile…Mr. Cleary said he was gonna beat Jimmy with a bat if he didn’t get from out fron’tis store.  But when Jimmy turned to leave, his drunk ass trips and falls to the ground.   Then, low and behold, he just starts to peeing all ova’ errything.”  This!  This is the absurd story that was allowed free passage into everyone’s conversation.  Not one person mentioned my role in the incident. Then again, the truth in this instance was certainly far stranger than fiction, so it was certainly for the best.  

By the time the ambulance arrived, Jimmy was laid out on the ground unconscious, but still peeing.  The paramedics, the bus driver, Mr. Cleary….not one could firmly understand what they were witnessing, and all remained confounded.   

Safely back home, Zeph stared at me in silence for the rest of the evening.  When he wasn’t silent, he was softly whispering “Did you do that to him?  How did you do that?  Tell me. What did you do?”  

My mother and grandmother would occasionally look at us both, but neither said a word.  They exchanged several glances at one another however.  Both instinctively knowing that something serious was afoot.  Both wondering if indeed the time had come for them to begin examining my every action and reaction for any and all potential signs that would prove prevalence of their gene.  They were never worried about Zeph, because only females had been carriers of this gift.  No one could explain why this was, just as no one could aptly explain what this was.  But since my birth, my physical appearance was partial confirmation to my mothers that their abilities had not skipped a generation.  Yet neither spoke of it.  Instead, they just quietly watched and waited for the slightest bit of anything.  Something that would reveal to them what they already knew to be certain. And as I sat there on the couch that night, eating fried banana chips and drinking iced tea, the smug look on my face was the evidence needed to validate their worst fear….or greatest joy, depending on your perspective. 

“But Boot, she’s only six.”

“I know, I know. But I guarantee you that she’s discovered herself.”

“But she’s only SIX! How are we supposed to control something like that?  How old was I?”

“Oh, I reckon you was ‘bout twelve. Thirteen maybe. But that’s no kin to this situation.”

I could see Boot fiddling with the ends of her frayed hair.  She would take a few long, white strands and twirl them around her forefinger as she looked up at the ceiling fan. Her breath was easy, her heartbeat in tune with the swing of her rocking chair.  My mom, however, was sitting at the edge of the couch cushion looking like a snowflake in fire. 

“What do you mean, Boot?  Ssh-sh-she’s six-years old.  You were eighteen, I was thirteen, but she’s SIX. How is that not relevant?”  Emmy was starting to visibly shake. 

Boot stopped rocking, finger mid-twirl, and slowly said “The girl will recognize her gifts when the good Lord decides the time is right.  And if He gave’ em to her, well then that means that she must be ready to handle’ em.  And there’s absolutely nothing that you nor I can do to change it.”  This last part she said in the barest of whispers.  From my crouched position on the stairwell, peeking from behind the banister, I could hardly hear her. But I saw her lips moving and was able to make out her words.  Though I had no idea as to the specifics of their conversation, I was well aware that they were referring to me.  Therefore I refused to move from that spot until….

“Girl…I know you betta get from behinst’ that banister and stop eavesdropping on grown folks conversations.” The interesting thing was that Boot did not yell these words at me, but instead slowly spit them out evenly in my direction.  She didn’t even miss a beat in the rock of her chair or the twirl of her hair, and barely looked my way. But I shot from those stairs like someone had lit a flame to my behind. 

“Come here baby. Me and Boot wanna talk to you a little bit.”  My mom had the softest and most tender voice. Reason being that she wanted her voice to make-up for the gentleness and approachability that her physical presence lacked. 

I walked into the room and sat in the middle of our navy blue couch, and I listened.  I listened as my mothers informed me that they were aware that I had recognized my gifts.  And I listened as they rambled on about destiny and purpose and fate. Being thankful and grateful and humble. Being brave, yet cautious and responsible. How my abilities would increase as I matured.  That no one knew of our hereditary superiority, though many rumors of our presence existed. Fiction novels and movies and comic books.  Research studies and scientific seminars.  Blah, blah, blah.  Actually, all of this was discussed in the first thirty minutes. At the start of minute thirty-one, I lost interest and began to stare intently at the dirt underneath my fingernails.

Obviously my mothers noticed my lack of interest (and also remembered that I was a six year-old with the attention span of a backwoods gnat) because they immediately changed their approach and let ME ask the questions. And, as always, they were patient in catering to my childish repartee:

-“No, we’re not mutants.” 

-“No you can’t fly, and yes you have to go to school tomorrow.”

-“Yes.  Me, Boot and your cousin Rosa.” 

-“No, I don’t know why we are like this. We’re different, but that makes us special.” 

-“No, Zeph can’t do what we do.” 

-“Yes…. we’ll have to tell him soon.  Very soon.”

Over the course of their remaining years, Boot and Emmy would consistently attempt to throw arrows of clarity and wisdom at the dragons of my confusion.  They recognized the danger of ignorance as it pertained to our talents, and though they had few answers to definitively explain our existence, they encouraged me to press towards my own answers each and every day.  But no matter how often I tried to fill that elusive hole of nescience, or bridge the gap between my confusion and my comprehension, more questions continued to abound.

Like the time I requested that Emmy tell me more about my grandmother Avery.  More specifically, I wanted to know how she died.  I was eight years old at the time, and had a strong desire to know more about her, even her death. I knew that she was gifted like us, but had died when Boot was a little girl, so I wanted to know how she made her transition.  Was she killed?  Did she die in child-birth?  The questions persisted, and I was at an age where I needed answers. 

In truth, it may be worth mentioning that I first brought this question to Boot.  It was the first time that I learned to never ask Boot a question more than once.  If she hears the question, and then looks at you without answering, it means that you have no real need to know the information and should therefore mind your business. 

I asked Boot once.  No response.  Then twice.  All I got was a look.  A look that I clearly should have paid closer attention to.  “Boot, do you hear me?” I asked a third time.  “I asked you how your mother died?”  The word “died” flew from my lips and hit the floor with a hard thud as Boot slapped the last syllable of the sentence off my lips.

“Ask it again here!!!  Say it one more time and I promise to slap the color off you.  You ain’t grown, child!!  You AIN’T GROWN!  And if you talk to me like that again, I’m gon show you the difference between you and me.  You hear me?!  Now say something else!” 

I don’t know if the house shook because of Boots gut-wrenching baritone, or if I shook uncontrollably because of her explosive slap.  Regardless, I was stunned into pitiful silence.  I never asked Boot that question again.  I was, as you might assume, quite reluctant to ask her anything about anything after that.  It seemed the only questions that Boot would readily entertain were ones that pertained to our gifts.  She would adequately answer any question that I could concoct, as long as it centered on our capabilities.  But it clearly appeared that I needed to proceed with caution regarding all other inquisitions.

Therefore, it was through my mom that I learned the details of Grandma Avery’s death. 

“Micah, you have to understand that your Grandma Avery was not a very kind woman.  She was actually mean as the devil.  She had gifts too, but she rarely used them.  And when she did, it was always to get back at someone who wronged her in some way or another.  I’ve heard so many stories about that woman that it’s hard to tell what is truth from what is tale.”

“Stories like what, ma?” I was not only interested in her death, but her life as well.  I wanted to be able to identify my unique traits as possible originations from her.  Like the way that I primitively growled at people when their stupidity frustrated me.  Or the way that I ate my cookies by taking small continuous bites around the rim, until all that remained was a nickel size piece from the center that I normally threw away.  My mom never did those bizarre things, nor did Boot.  But maybe I got them from Grandma Avery.

“Like how she set her sister Ava’s house on fire because she wouldn’t let her borrow a pair of church shoes.  Or how she used to collect hammers and keep them in a bucket by the front door so she could hurl’em at unwanted guests whenever they approached the house.  You know there was even a rumor going around that Boot killed her.  They said that Boot was abused as a little girl and killed her momma cause she didn’t want to get beat no more.  But that’s not the truth.”

“Then what is the truth?  How’d she die?”

“Gwaltney Shay told me that she died from a heart attack.  Said that the very night she died, she killed a woman in Dansbury, South Carolina, which is about twenty miles from where Boot grew up.  The woman was named Laverne something-or-another, and she had an affair with Avery’s husband, Stout.  

Now, Stout wasn’t your biological granddaddy.  He was Boot’s stepfather, but he took care of her as if she was his own.  Boot's real daddy drowned in a river shortly after she was born, so she never knew him. But Stout raised her up from a little thing and treated her real nice from what I understand.  Spoiled her rotten.  Unfortunately, he also ran around town cheating on Avery every chance he got.  Soon, word got back to Avery that this Laverne lady had birthed a baby boy, and had given him Stout’s name.  But sadly, the baby died a few days after being born.  The way Shay tells it, the ghost of that baby would cry and wakeup Avery every morning at 3:07 am sharp.  Some say it was because Avery used her powers to kill the baby, but we don’t know for sure.  

Anyway, a few weeks after the baby died, Avery and Stout got into a huge fight.  He bolted out of the house in the middle of a horrible summer storm and got a tree knocked down on him.  When they found him, he was screaming for someone to get his wife - but Avery was nowhere to be found and Stout bled to death while he was underneath that tree.  Either way you look at it, it appeared that Avery was being haunted by her own ills.”

The more I learned about Grandma Avery, the less I liked her.  The less I identified with her and the more I wanted to deny that her blood coursed through my veins.  I wanted eating habits and vices, and instead I got evil eccentricities and murder.

“Well, a few days after Stout was buried, Avery woke up at 3:07 am as usual.  But this time, she got out of bed, got dressed and walked the entire distance to Dansbury, all the while smoking cigarette after cigarette.  Her destination was Laverne's house, and when she arrived, she walked straight through the front gate, stomped on Laverne's barking dog, knocked on the woman’s door, and when Laverne answered, Avery blew cigarette smoke in her face and walked away.  Before she could walk back out the gate, Laverne fell dead on her front porch with her eyeballs oozing out of her head.”

“Eewww Ma!!!  That’s nasty!”

“You said that you wanted to know.  I’m just telling you what happened.  If you don’t want to hear the rest, then I won’t tell you.”

“But you still haven’t told me how Avery died.  You just told me how she killed the Laverne lady!!”

“Well, do you want me to continue or not?”  My mom raised a quizzical eyebrow at me and amusingly awaited my response.

“Just tell me how Grandma Avery died.  That’s all I want to know.”

“Well, after she left Dansbury and began walking back home, she started to have chest pains.  By the time she reached her front door, she collapsed – right in the doorway.  Shay and Boot were sitting in the house at the kitchen table when it happened.  Shay told me that Boot, who was only thirteen at the time, just looked at her mother lying on the floor.  She didn’t get up from the table or anything. She just kinda stared at her body on the ground, waiting to see what would happen if she did nothing.”

“You mean Boot didn’t try to save her?  She didn’t use her gifts?”

“Micah, your grandmother didn’t even know she had gifts until she was almost eighteen years-old.  Grandma Avery never told her anything about them.  Boot knew her mom was strange, but she just thought her mother was a backwoods country witch.  Everybody thought Avery was a witch, and it was only after she died that Boot found out different.   

It was Boot's Aunt Ava that explained everything to her.  She and her husband took Boot and raised her up with the rest of their own children after Avery died.  Aunt Ava did her best to explain the gift, but even she didn’t know the full details.  See, neither she nor her mother had ever been gifted.  It had only been Avery, and another great-grandmother named Pearl a few generations back. They were the only ones that had been blessed with this supernatural ability. ”

I had seen that name before.  “Pearl.  Is that who Boot is named after?”  No one ever called Boot by her given name, but I saw her scribble “Pearl Lola Jessup” on the name line of her bible once.  And then she put her late husband’s name, James Jessup, in another column, followed by Emmy, Zephaniah and me.

“Yes it is.  I didn’t even know you knew Boot’s real name.  It’s Pearl Lola.  Remember that, okay.”

“Is that it?”  I asked the question while staring off into the distance in my effort to digest everything that my mom had just revealed to me. “Is that the end of the story of how Grandma Avery died?”  I silently prayed that it was.  My potential kindred spirit had quickly become the source of my nightmares.  Avery WAS mean as the devil, and I wanted no parts of her.

“Yeah, that’s about it.  She died in the doorway of her house from a heart attack.  The only reason Boot got up from the table was to close the door.  She got a quilt off the bed, laid it on her mother, and then walked a half mile to the next house to tell her neighbor that her mother had died.”

“Wow.  You mean she didn’t cry or nothing?”

“I’m sure she cried later. Poor thing, losing her momma and her stepdaddy within days of one another.  She was probably in shock, but Gwaltney Shay never saw her shed a tear.  I believe that something may have went down between Boot and Grandma Avery, but I don’t know what it was.  I’ve heard that Avery killed Boot’s real father…the one who drowned in the river.  Then again, I heard that Avery was the reason the tree fell on Stout to begin with….and Boot loved herself some Stout.  Whatever it was, Boot never really cared much for her mother and she rarely talks about her.  

And if she ever gets around to telling you about the natural laws of this world, and how we have to be sure to use them in concert with our gifts, she’ll probably tell you that the reason Avery died so suddenly was because she misused the gifts that God gave her.  You can’t take a life that God created and expect that you will suffer no consequences as a result.  You better remember that.  Now tell me what I just said.”  Emmy would sometimes quiz me by making me repeat her instructions.

“You said that….um….I can’t hurt nobody with my powers.”

“Exactly! But it’s not just with your powers, baby. You shouldn’t hurt anyone period.  With or without your gifts.”

I can now clearly recall the moment that I allowed that warning to flow like vaporized mist through one ear, and out the other.  I also remember that my quest to learn more about Avery resulted only in additional seeds of unanswered questions being planted in the garden of my mind.

After my initial conversation with my mothers following the drunk Jimmy situation, I wearily laid my head to rest that night.  I began to think as only a six-year old could, of all the wonderful ways that I would utilize my gifts.  First, make mincemeat of that German Shepard that viciously barked at me and Zeph every morning as we walked to school.  Second, make that gap-toothed kid pee on himself like the drunk man.  Thirdly…well, there was really no reason to think beyond those first two important points of interest.  Nor could I if I chose to….not with the sounds of heavy sobbing coming from Zeph’s side of the room.  He was crying in his sleep again.

Actually, it was more like whimpering.  But when I sat up in my bed and whispered his name, he quieted down.  He didn’t wake-up, because he went right back to snoring (as loudly as a grown man, mind you), but at least he stopped crying.

My poor brother. One Zephaniah Yinessa Young. Given the privileged curse of his father’s name.  Privileged, because very few children in our neighborhood knew their fathers, let alone had license to use his name. But cursed because everyone in our neighborhood knew of our father, and hated his name.  And Zeph had this particular burden to bear for the duration of his earthly life. 

“Don’t worry Zeph. I’ll protect you forever okay.”  I whispered the words to him in the dark, knowing that he was still sleeping and completely unaware of my promise.  But his participation in my pledge was of no relevance. I meant what I said. I was determined to assist Zephaniah in fighting off the demons of his daily existence.  A battle that I think he fought mostly in his sleep. 

Tonight was a good night, because he was just whimpering. But other nights, he would kick and scream.  A few times, he had even fallen to the floor. But I preferred either of those to the nights when he wept from his soul.  To this day, I’ve never heard anything like it.  Well, actually I have.  Once.  It was when I came across a group of guys street-fighting their dogs.  One would think that the pitiful yelping sound the dogs made when they were bitten was hard enough to bear. But even worse was the sound they made when their masters would hit them with baseball bats if they backed away from the fight. It wasn’t even a hard hit – more like a firm tap.  But it seemed to affect them more than the vicious attack of their opponent. They made this sound when they realized they had no refuge. If voice were given to the internal battle of angry hopelessness, it would sound like that dogfight.  But even more, like Zeph’s weeping.

Yes, poor Zeph indeed. As I reflected on the countless occasions that saw my brother being persecuted for the actions of others (myself included), I resolved to do something about it.  I made up in my mind that I was going to look after him and make sure that he was never mistreated.  And after the episode with drunk Jimmy, I was quite confident in my abilities to adequately handle any ordeal that came my way.

At that moment, I remembered feeling relieved that I had found a reason for being gifted.  No “save the world” mentality existed at that early stage of my development.  I was quite content to just deal with the basics of life.  My brother and my mothers - that’s all that mattered.

But in hindsight, that moment - at age six - was the first and last time that I ever felt at peace with my lot in life.  It was also the last time that I ever viewed life so simply.