Page 4 of Hearts Held
“What ya gonna do?” Bobby asks as he begins kicking gravel with his oxfords.
I take a long inhale, allowing it to coat my throat as I hold in the smoke, then all at once I let it out, gazing at my brother.
“Ya, know. I hate when ya do that. You look like a bloody dragon and it’s creepy as fuck,” he retorts with complete seriousness in his tone and stance.
I crack half a smile. “I’ll go talk to her. In the meantime, you really should switch your oxfords out forproper shoes when coming to the stables. You’re gonna get dust all over those nice shoes.”
Bobby places his hands atop his hips in a mocking fashion. “Propah shoes for the horse stables. You should really hear yourself sometimes, acting like your-ah fine gentleman, when ya know we’re savage gypsies at heart.”
I cock an eyebrow at him. “I’m not buying you another bloody pair of oxfords. Now go be a loon someplace else.” Shaking my head I retreat to change my clothes and head to Baba’s, hearing Bobby’s cackled voice say, “Love you, ya grumpy arse!”
The welcoming sight of Baba’s grass-roofed hut comes into view as I come over the embankment. Her hut is close to the sea, where she says she feels closer to theancestors.As I approach, I spy her chanting in front of the large fire pit in front of her hut. Her hut isapproximately two hundred square feet, made of logs and a roof covered in long grass. Small flowers sprout across the roof and the hut sits atop a smaller hill overlooking the passage down to the sea. The two huts adjacent to hers are identical, though one is for the housing of ancestors and the other houses any guests. The gravel crunches below me as I get closer towards her short, four-foot, five inch stature. She’s grasping her Loki-embellished poplar cane as her other hand waves a small grass doll around the fire. I shake my head as I realize my Baba has created a sacrifice doll of someone. Then it takes me a second to realize—Robert mentioned Baba took some of mum’s hair. I press my fingers into my temples as I try to gain her attention, “Baba, we need to speak.”
She continues dancing in her older, hobbled fashion, singing Norse mixed with gypsy folk song of some kind.
This woman has created her own merger of religions, for Christ’s sake, and I will never get used to it.
“Baba!”I shout.
Her head begrudgingly turns my way as she perches both hands atop her cane, the god Loki staring me down as I get ready to scold my grandmother for attacking her own daughter.
Alas, the words don’t come. I can’t chastise the woman that basically raised me.
“Yes, my dear?” she asks in her sweet Nordic accent, as her eyes rest on me. One eye is golden and the other is a deep blue. Her eyelids are permanently tattooed with black eyeliner. Her hair is braided, half up and half down, and cascades down her back with waves of gray strands. She wears seven golden-cuffed Viking relic jewels that are tightly woven within the strands of her braids. I realize she is clutching the worship doll within the grasp of her cane, as her robes gently sway with the wind.
“Baba, did you attack Mum?”
She huffs in my direction as she rolls her eyes toward the gods. “You know, she will always have it coming. Your mama is pure evil.EvilI tell you!” She points an arthritic finger my way.
I approach her with pleading, outstretched hands. “Baba, she is your own daughter, why do you insist she is evil? She birthed us. Me. For crying out loud, are my brothers and I evil as well?” I cross my arms, surveying her lot to ensure she doesn’t need any upkeep, or bodies hidden. One day I arrived to find she had gutted a largewild boar to sacrifice to the gods; it had to have been close to nine stone.
She places the small doll in a wooden chest upon her carved bench as she gently explains, “You and a few of your brothers are not evil because you contain your father’s spirit, though I cannot say much for the others. They are dumb hogs.”
I stare at her in bewilderment. “Baba!”
She places one finger in the air to “hush” me. “Oi! As for your brothers, you know of the dwellings and dealings they keep! I can see their spirits! I knew your mama was evil the moment she killed her twin in the womb! She has always been evil,pure evil, and you all refuse to see it, my heart.”
“Don’t you think making a sacrifice doll of her is a wee bit evil?” I state, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“It’s not a sacrifice doll, deary. Bless, you need to culture yourself more with our practices! It is a spirit doll of her. I was asking the gods to watch her and occasionally curse her, but not sacrifice. If I was going to sacrifice her…” Baba adds as she pulls out another doll, with long raven hair and in a purple dress, and throws it into the roaring fire. As the fire roars, I throw my forearm toshield my face as the flames engulf the sky. “Then I would do that!” Baba begins to speak in her Norse-gypsy chants as she waves her cane in the direction of the fire.
“Baba. Who was that?” I try to calmly ask, though I feel awful for whoever pissed off my Baba so badly as to be thrown as a sacrificial doll.
“Why doyoucare? You don’t believe in my crazy old antics anyway…hmm?” She huffs my way and then continues her chanting.
“I swear, woman, you are scarier than the devil himself.” I place my arms across my chest and notice the fire turns a brighter shade of red.
“I’m friends with the devil, we have tea every Tuesday, my heart. Plus, it is a problem I have solved foryou, someone you’ll want to be rid of for the future.” Before I can interrogate her on the poor soul she condemned, she finishes her chant, then motions for me to follow her into the hut. “Come, I tried to drop off a package to you before your mother came nagging and bitching at me.”
“So that’s why you attacked her? Because she spoke to you?” I say gruffly.
Baba inhales dramatically. “No, Iattacked her because she forgets her place. She was drunkenly bitching at me like the gremlin she is. I didn’t even retort back! You should be proud I held back this silver tongue!” Baba points her arthritic finger at her tiny tongue perched in her mouth. “I stood there, as she berated me, nagged, complained, then she started waving her finger toward me face, getting real bold. So, when she got close enough I snatched her grubby hair and plucked it from her skull, ever so slightly!”
“No retort back, but instead you take a fistful of hair?” I question, raising one eyebrow as we enter the lavender-and-eucalyptus-scented hut. Though small on the outside, it appears cozy yet vast on the inside with the vaulted ceiling.
“Goodness! The dramatics, Everett. It wasn’t a fistful. It was only a handful.”
“Baba, that’s the same thing.”
