nodded her head in agreement and then folded her arms around her swollen belly and began to sway.
“Sit down, Coraline, before you fall over,” Sadie warned. “You remember how she die?”
“Who?”
“That old whore.”
Coraline eased herself into a nearby chair, dropped her head into her hands, and forced her mind to look back. “I think she was stabbed to death.”
“So she died by the blade? You sure? You gotta be sure now.”
Coraline pounded her fists against her temples. “Yeah, someone cut her throat.” Her eyes swung to her daughter’s complacent expression and back to Sadie’s well-lined face. “You gonna be able to pull that whore outta my child?”
Sadie chewed on her ragged bottom lip. “Every tramp soul is different. Some stronger than others.” She glanced at Doll who was looking up at the ceiling, her eyes intent on something. Sadie slowly followed her line of vision, but there was nothing to see but wooden planks and cobwebs. She brought her palms together in a resounding clap.
Both Doll and Coraline jumped at the sound.
“Look at me, child,” Sadie gently demanded. She leaned over and brought her nose within millimeters of Doll’s, caught her roughly by the chin, and said, “Esther, Esther, we gonna get you outta this child and send you straight to hell where you belong!”
Doll held the old woman’s gaze, skinned back her lips, and spat, “And I’ma take you with me, witch!”
Coraline shrieked and Sadie lurched back.
“Ooh, Esther,” Sadie sneered as she walked a wide circle around Doll. “When I’m through with you, you gonna be sorry you were ever born!” And then to Coraline, “You go along home now let me do what I need to do.”
The old woman moved to the door and pulled it open. A sheath of daylight sliced across the floor and the multicolored glass canisters and jugs shelved along the back wall.
“Come back for her in the morning.”
Coraline scrambled out the door.
When Coraline returned the next day, Sadie handed her a sealed jar filled with murky water.
“Esther in here?” Coraline asked, holding the jar at arm’s length.
“Her spirit,” Sadie said.
“Well, what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Dig a hole as deep as you can, pour the water in it, and then cover it up.”
Coraline eyed the jar for a minute and then looked over at Doll who was sitting at the table, nibbling on a biscuit.
“She look well enough,” Coraline said to Sadie, and then cocked her head and addressed Doll: “How you feelin’?”
Doll glanced up from her biscuit. Her lips were covered in crumbs. “Fine, ma’am,” she responded in her five-year-old voice.
“Come on now, you can take that biscuit to go.”
Doll jumped out the chair and moved across the floor toward her mother. Coraline’s eyebrows arched with concern—Doll’s legs were crisscrossed with bright red switch marks.
“Y-you beat her?”
Sadie narrowed her eyes and grabbed hold of her slim hipbones. “I ain’t beat her—I beat the whore inside her.”
Doll moved to her mother’s side and took her hand. Mother and daughter’s fingers entwined and a familiarity surged through Coraline’s veins.
“Remember now,” Sadie warned, “that hole gotta be deep. Dig all the way to China if you have to.”
Dearest, you cannot bury a soul! Souls are light, darkness, and air. Coraline found this out the hard way, when five years after she buried the jar and thought that she had rid her daughter and the world of Esther and malice, Esther reappeared, stronger and more spiteful than ever.
Coraline had spent most of the day in the yard, boiling, scrubbing, and hanging sheets. Doll helped some, but she was clumsy and easily distracted. Three separate times she’d lost her grip on a freshly washed sheet, and all of the hard work went sloshing down to the dusty ground.
Coraline sucked her teeth in anger. “Girl, you causing me double work!” She sent Doll off with a vicious wave of her hand. “Take your brother with you.”
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“That you are,” Coraline hissed as she crumpled the sheet into a ball and dropped it back into the pot of hot, soapy water.
Hours later, Coraline entered the house in search of salve to apply to her chafed red hands. Her mood was low, but soared when she heard the joyous laughter of her children seeping from her bedroom. A favorite hiding place for brother and sister was beneath Coraline’s double-sized bed.
Her sore hands forgotten, a mischievous smile lit on Coraline’s lips when she tiptoed into the room, raised one corner of the mattress, and peered down through the jungle of coiled bedsprings.
“Gotcha!”
But she was the one who got a surprise.
Doll’s bloomers were down at her ankles and the hem of her dress was gathered around her neck. Conner, her five-year-old brother, had an index and middle finger inside of Doll’s pussy.
The same two fingers he slipped into his mouth at night and sucked until dawn. The two fingers he stroked Coraline’s cheek with and used to spoon up and eat cake batter.
Coraline went deaf and dumb with rage. She would have preferred blindness—death even—to block out the vision before her.
When Conner saw the shocked and angry look on his mother’s face, he withdrew his fingers and they came out slick with Doll’s nectar.
Coraline snapped, toppling the mattress and the bed onto its side, then pounced on Doll and wrapped her hands around the child’s throat.
Conner ran from the house and into the road, where he stood frantically waving his arms and shrieking, “Help! Help!”
A neighbor, who had been sitting on his porch rolling tobacco, stood up and called to the boy, “What’s wrong?”
“My mama is killing my sister!” Conner screamed back before sticking his fingers in his mouth.
Yes, those two fingers.
Sadie was dead, and it was the best for everyone really, because her particular type of magic would have been useless in that situation.
So, Coraline took Doll to the reverend.
“You
