Cotter reports that Lola fell down the stairs. Was in a little coma. Better now.
New clients are supposed to leave a note at the P.O., but Lola just showed up one day, drenched. “I heard of you from my friend.” The mender brought her inside, gave her a towel, inspected the red smear on her forearm.
“Is it going to scar?”
“Yes,” said the mender. She pressed fresh-bruised leaves of houseleek to the damaged skin, waited, blinked at Lola’s breasts, those plump puddings, then wrapped the arm with a poultice of leek juice and lard. “How did this happen?”
“It was stupid,” said Lola. “I was making dinner and I caught my arm on a hot pan.”
Her husband also snapped her finger bone. Left a six-colored bruise on her jaw.
Two more warts on Clementine’s fig.
Clementine says, “This is kind of extremely humiliating?”
“Just a body doing what it does.”
“But they’re so nasty.”
“Lots of people get them,” says the mender, and she holds a compress of crushed, wet lupine seeds against the vulva. White lupine is also good for bringing down blood—a missed period, a uterus unhappily full—and for calling worms to the surface of the skin. Summers, the mender burns its seeds in stone cups to fend off gnats.
“Stick out your tongue.”
Scalloped at the edges, as usual.
“Still eating pizza?”
Clementine cutely scrunches her mouth. “Not that much.”
“Stop all dairy. Too much dampness in you.”
“Hey, would you ever consider waxing your eyebrows?”
“Why?”
“I mean, not that you need to, because big brows are making a comeback, but a friend of mine at Snippity Doo Dah does great sugar waxes, if you ever—”
“No,” says the mender. If she has such a friend, why not deal with the two-inch hair dangling from that mole? It is a misfit hair, discordant with her bleached curls and fake nails.
The mender spoons a mash of mugwort and ginger into Clementine’s belly button; lays a fresh slice of ginger across the mash; holds a burning moxa stick over the ginger until she complains of the heat; and tapes the belly button with two Band-Aids to keep the mash in place for a day at least, better two.
Clementine pulls her shirt down. “Thanks for all your help, Gin.” Takes small white boxes from her backpack. “Hope you like fried rice and garlic shrimp. Don’t worry, it’s not customer leftovers—”
“I’m not worried,” says the mender.
Or hungry enough for Chinese food. Once Clementine is gone she drizzles half a slice of brown bread with sesame oil. Every Thursday Cotter leaves a loaf he baked himself, wrapped in a towel, on her cabin step.
Some supermarket breads are made with human hair dissolved in acid, part of a dough conditioner that accelerates industrial processing. The mender does not eat bread from the supermarket, and she has her own supply of hair, which instead of dissolving in acid she grinds into her mixtures. She keeps head hair in a separate box from pubic, as they’re good for different things—pubic has more iron, head more magnesium and selenium. The mender’s supply came from one person and is dwindling.
Long red head hairs can be used in mixtures. Brown pubic hairs can be used. But there are some hairs that can’t be. The stray whiskers under the arms; the little breath of brown on the upper lip. Those hairs are iced onto the skin of the body in the freezer.
What does the girl’s hair taste like, her shining flat dark hair? The girl doesn’t slick or shellac it. Long enough to get caught in her satchel strap, the mender noticed when she saw her come through the blue school doors, the girl had to tug and rearrange, she was annoyed for a second, a flip of heat on her cheeks, then she forgot her hair, the mender saw, because she was looking for someone, but the someone wasn’t among the burst of kids. The girl kept walking, alone, and the mender almost followed.
The brown bread is dry, because today is Tuesday.
Aunt Temple died on a Tuesday, eight winters ago.
Before Temple, when her mother forgot to buy food, the mender cooked ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise into a hot crust.
Before Temple, she put herself to bed.
Before Temple, she took a lot of aspirin, because regular doctors were too expensive and the ER staff knew the mender’s mother only too well.
Before Temple, she had never been to the movies.
She had those wild red braids and wore billowy purple pants and wasn’t married. She laughed in a shrieky way. Her shop was named after a witch who lived in Massachusetts three centuries ago. The people of Newville called Temple a witch too, but they didn’t mean it the same way they mean it about the mender.
When she was young, Goody Hallett loved a pirate who forsook her. Legend has it she killed their baby on the night of its birth, suffocated the thing in a barn, then was imprisoned and lost her mind and lured ships to crash on the Cape Cod rocks. In truth, said Temple, she gave the child in secret to a farmer’s wife. The wife kept a diary, which preserved the fact.
The baby is the mender’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.
The innermost chamber of her left ear notices powderpost beetles scratching in the roof joists, laying their eggs in the seams of the wood.
“Never forget,” said Temple, “that you descend from Black Sam Bellamy and Maria Hallett.”
But the mender would never tie a lantern to a whale. Like sailors and fishermen, she hates to swim.