A Trick of the Light

“Not just a stick. It’s a prayer stick.”

“So I probably shouldn’t beat the crap out of the critic for the Ottawa Star with it,” Clara said, following Myrna out of the bookshop.

“Perhaps not. And don’t beat yourself with it either.”

“What makes it a prayer stick?”

“It’s a prayer stick because I say it is,” Myrna said.

Dominique was coming down du Moulin and they waved to each other.

“Wait a second.” Clara veered off to speak to Ruth, still sitting on the bench. “We’re going into the back garden. Want to join us?”

Ruth looked at Clara holding the stick, then at Myrna with the cigar made of dried sage and sweetgrass.

“You’re not going to do one of those profane witch ritual things are you?”

“We certainly are,” said Myrna from behind Clara.

“Count me in.” Ruth struggled to her feet.

The police were gone. The garden was empty. No one to even stand watch over the place where a life was lost. Where a life was taken. The yellow “crime scene” tape fluttered and circled part of the lawn grass and one of the perennial beds.

“I’ve always thought this garden was a crime,” said Ruth.

“You have to admit, it’s gotten better since Myrna started helping,” said Clara.

Ruth turned to Myrna. “So that’s who you are. I’ve been wondering. You’re the gardener.”

“I’d plant you,” said Myrna, “if you weren’t a toxic waste site.”

Ruth laughed. “Touché.”

“Is this where the body was found?” Dominique asked, pointing to the circle.

“No, the tape is part of Clara’s garden design,” snapped Ruth.

“Bitch,” said Myrna.

“Witch,” said Ruth.

They were beginning to like each other, Clara could see.

“Do you think we should cross it?” asked Myrna. She hadn’t expected the yellow tape.

“No,” said Ruth, batting the tape down with her cane and stepping over it. She turned back to the others. “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

“Except it’s very hot,” said Clara to Dominique.

“And there’s a shark in it,” said Dominique.

The three women joined Ruth. If anyone could contaminate a site it was Ruth, and the damage was probably already done. Besides, they were there to decontaminate it.

“So what do we do?” Dominique asked as Clara planted the prayer stick into the flower bed beside where Lillian’s body was found.

“We’re going to do a ritual,” Myrna explained. “It’s called smudging. We light this,” Myrna held up the dried herbs, “and then we walk around the garden with it.”

Ruth was staring at the cigar of herbs. “Freud might have a little something to say about your ritual.”

“Sometimes a smudge stick is just a smudge stick,” said Clara.

“Why’re we doing this?” Dominique asked. This was clearly a side to her neighbors she hadn’t seen before and it didn’t seem an improvement.

“To get rid of the bad spirits,” said Myrna. It did, when said so baldly, sound a little unlikely. But Myrna believed it, with all her considerable heart.

Dominique turned to Ruth. “Well, I guess you’re screwed.”

There was a pause and then Ruth snorted in laughter. Hearing that Clara wondered whether turning into Ruth Zardo would be such a bad thing.

“First, we form a circle,” said Myrna. And they did. Myrna lit the sage and sweetgrass and walked from Clara to Dominique to Ruth, wafting the perfumed smoke over each woman. For protection, for peace.

Clara inhaled and closed her eyes as the soft smoke swirled around her for a moment. Taking, said Myrna, all their negative energy. The bad spirits, outside and in. Absorbing them. And making room for healing.

Then they walked around the garden, not just the dreadful place Lillian had died, but the entire garden. They took turns drifting smoke into the trees, into the babbling Rivière Bella Bella, into the roses and peonies and black-centered irises.

And finally they ended at the beginning. At the yellow tape. The hole in the garden where a life had disappeared.

“Now here’s a good one,” Ruth quoted one of her own poems as she stared at the spot.

“You’re lying on your deathbed.

You have one hour to live.

Who is it, exactly, you have needed

all these years to forgive?”

Myrna pulled bright ribbons from her pocket and gave one to each of them saying, “We tie our ribbon to the prayer stick and send out good thoughts.”

They glanced at Ruth, waiting for the cynical comment. But none came. Dominique went first, fastening her pink ribbon to the gnarled stick.

Myrna went next, tying her purple ribbon and closing her eyes briefly to think good thoughts.

“Won’t be the first time I’ve tied one on,” Ruth admitted with a smile. Then she fastened her red ribbon, pausing to rest her veined hand on the prayer stick, like a cane, and look to the sky.

Listening.

But there was only the sound of bees. Bumbling.

Finally, Clara tied on her green ribbon, knowing she should think kind thoughts of Lillian. Something, something. She searched inside, peering into dark corners, opening doors closed for years. Trying to find one nice thing to say about Lillian.