Walkin' Over Medicine

L.F.S.

1

I Saw a Shadow Leave Me

His business was dread. People came to him in dread, whispered in dread, wept and pleaded in dread. And dread was what he counseled.

Singly they found their way to his door, wrapped each in a shroud stitched with anger, yearning, pride, vengeance, loneliness, misery, defeat, and hunger. They asked for the simplest of things: love, health, and money. Make him love me. Tell me what this dream means. Help me get rid of this woman. Make my mother give me back my clothes. Stop my left hand from shaking. Keep my baby’s ghost off the stove. Break so-and-so’s fix. To all of these requests he addressed himself. His practice was to do what he was bid—not to suggest to a party that perhaps the request was unfair, mean, or hopeless.

—Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Summer 1982. A hot and sultry evening in South Carolina, that time of day that is charmingly called dusk-dark, and Jacie Burnes was impatiently waiting until full-dark. There would be no moon until after midnight; a good night for another attempt to escape. Her last chance; she knew that. She had seen the Devil in her husband’s reddened eyes again that morning; knew he intended to kill her this time. She sat in the growing darkness, praying. At last it was time and she woke the four boys who were old enough to walk, shushing them the while. She was careful to let baby Sheela and toddler Rashad sleep; she would have to carry them. If all went well they would not wake during the long walk over the fields to the home of a neighbor. There, God willing, she would be able to use the telephone to call the shelter for battered women whose flier she had seen in a grocery store. If she could just reach her own family in Georgia she would be able to figure out something to do, she thought; some way to get so far away that Big Joe would never be able to find them. So far away that even the magical power of his roots would not work. She picked up the babies and set out walking rapidly across the soybean rows, the bigger children giggling at this adventure.

It is a number of weeks later in Michigan and more than 800 miles away from those soybean rows. There’s a woman in Room B that I think you’d enjoy talking to, said the director of the pediatric clinic She says her husband kept her a prisoner for 15 years with a curse! I walked in and saw Jacie Burnes and her brood for the first time; they seemed to fill the small examining room. Jacie was a tall and powerful looking woman, the dark skin of her face crisscrossed with dozens of small scars. At first glimpse the scars seemed to be patterned in X’s, but a closer look showed that the marks were random. I was to learn later that they were the result of battles with her husband over the years of their stormy marriage. At six feet two inches she could usually hold her own when they fought, she said, even though her husband was six feet five and sometimes seemed to be possessed. But she couldn’t always stay awake, she went on, and when she was sleeping he had the habit of hitting her in the face with bottles. The scars had been made by broken glass. She was glad to finally meet someone in Michigan who knew about roots, she said. She needed to talk it out.

The family had arrived in Lansing in early September, and the children who were old enough were soon settled in school. She had rented a large and dilapidated house only a block or so from the clinic and was a regular visitor in seeking health care for her family. Indeed, in the next few months she quickly learned to use the network of social agencies for which she and her children were eligible. It was a very long time, however, before the emotional scars of the past years began to dissipate. She was terrified if anyone so much as spoke the words South Carolina, for example, fearing that their very mention might somehow allow her husband to locate her and the children. And she continued to have difficulty sleeping and to suffer nightmares long after a psychiatric social worker told her she ought to be over it This is not meant to suggest that Jacie was a weak woman; quite the contrary. The fact that she had survived her ordeal at all was a measure of her strength. And the fact that her husband had been able to keep her isolated in that cabin in the country was in part a measure of his strength and his powerful personality. More importantly, perhaps, his control over her illustrated the depth of her belief in magical practices. He had kept her there by working roots (a regional term for sorcery).

She had been born 35 years earlier on one of the Sea Islands of coastal Georgia. Her mother had been an unmarried 15-year-old whose own mother had put her out of the house in her displeasure at the pregnancy; the newborn Jacie was given to her father’s mother to raise. She always knew who her mother was, however, as both families had lived in the area for a long time. In later years her own mother wanted her back but her aunt refused to give her up:

I was raised by my daddy’s mother and his sister and his brother. In the house when I was a kid was [also] my grandmother’s great-grandchild by her daughter. My uncle, the one who helped raise me, he went overseas to shrimp-fish in order to have money to send back to us. To British Guiana. He said he was gonna make sure that I get out of school; provide for me along with my cousin, my aunt’s daughter’s little boy. We was the only two kids in the house. It was a pretty nice environment.

I grew up in an environment that they didn’t keep nothin’ from me; my grandmother used to tell me things. I knew who my mother was, I knew who my father was; that was a town that wasn’t nothin’ but family. Surrounded by those islands. One of those islands what where our root started from, you see; then everybody spreaded out from South to North. My mother, I knew who she was and she knew who I was. But there was a hassle when I was comin’ up ‘bout who should take care of me and who shouldn’t, you know, because of the fact that my mother wanted me back. And my aunt refused to give, you know, me back to her. But I survived it, I survived it.

Jacie’s fear of roots and rootwork was a part of her heritage. She had heard stories of friends and relatives who had been victims of such practices from childhood, and they had made an indelible impression on the little girl. No one in her family doubted that there were individuals with unusual abilities, abilities that could be used to do good or harm to others. Indeed, it was believed that she herself might have special powers; there was a question as to whether she had been born with the veil. And as a child she had experiences that told her it must be true:

Roots. That’s the same thing as voodoo; I was raised up to call it roots. African tribes learn it. Black magic and voodoo and all this; it’s the same thing. Now, some people have it psychologically, like God gave them the gift to know things. Like if somebody’s tryin’ to do [something to] you, [they’ll] tell you if somethin’s wrong. It’s really psychological. I, myself would have little visions. Now, you hear people say you born with a veil over your eyes and stuff like that, O.K.? I, myself have that! My grandmother says that I was, you know. And my mother, she say it weren’t nothin’ but fat. I laugh about it today, but really, I knew when my father was gonna die; I saw this happenin’, you know. I knew when my baby sister was gonna die; I knew that. I couldn’t ‘splain it, I was so young. And when this was actually happenin’ to me, I didn’t know [what it was].

Her mother had married and had other children and these half-siblings were reared in a separate household. The first of her little visions was a chilling episode in which she saw the imminent death of a new baby girl born to her mother. Jacie and her grandmother were visiting the family when it happened:

First time, it was my baby sister. And my baby sister had pneumonia, contact pneumonia. They took her to the hospital. And she fall off the sofa on top of that, and why they took her to the hospital was not because of the pneumonia but because she fell off the sofa. And she hit her head on the sofa. My brother and my sister was takin’ care of her, and she fell off the sofa and hit her head. And that night we were around there and my grandmother, she enticed my mother to go ahead and get my stepfather to take the baby to the hospital. She’d cried since she fell and hit her head and wouldn’t stop, and my grandmother tried everything and she still wouldn’t stop. And I thought somethin’ was wrong, too, and I tried to talk to her and tell her. I think I was in the fourth grade. And I tried to tell her. I tried to tell my grandmother there was somethin’ wrong, there was somethin’ wrong. Let’s get her to the doctor, that’s what I kept sayin’.

The infant was hospitalized for a single day and then the family was called and told to come and take her home:

They didn’t tell her the baby was gonna die; they just told her to take her home. They brought her home and put her in her crib. And so that night my grandmother and my aunt and all of us were waitin’ around, and my other cousins. And we looked at her, and when I looked I saw a halo over her head! She was a beautiful baby. I saw a halo over her head and I knew God wanted her, you know. And I walked around and I was cryin’ and I tried to shield, you know, what I saw and what I felt from people—’cause I was afraid and there was this chill. I really saw this little old golden halo over her head, and I knew she was gonna die. And my grandmother went over and looked and said, Oh, Mary, look, I don’t think she’s breathin’. It wasn’t five minutes since I saw that halo.

After such an experience how could she doubt that things can happen that are beyond natural explanation?

She had no reason to doubt that individuals could be born with special powers, then. It was the use of these powers that differentiated those who possessed them; good people used their abilities to help others without expecting payment. The root doctors used them to enrich themselves:

If something bad is going to happen, definitely I know it. When I was comin’ up I heard people used to say things, [like] was I born with a veil over my face? My grandmother, she said she wasn’t too sure, so I asked my mother. My mother say, "Yeah, but a lot of fat," all across my face. [Laughs] But I think my aunt, I remember, she tell me that she pretty sure that I did have a veil over my face, y’know. Some people use it for good, some people for bad. The only way you know, [is if] that child grow up and she talk out about things.

Good or bad, right! Because some people who take money for this, I don’t think that’s right, neither. They take money to tell you, y’know. They call ’em root people; those people are the ones who accept money for their gift, you see, and I don’t think that’s fair. ‘Cause if they know things about things that’re gonna happen, about sumpin’ gonna happen to this person before it happen, O.K. Then they oughta help this person to stop things afore it happen. There is some people that believe in God so strongly [and] loves this gift; they’ll just tell you these things for free. All those things that you wanta know!

These experiences, coupled with the fearful tales she heard about the victims of sorcery from her elders, implanted the deep fear of being injured by magic that would allow her husband to control her in later years. One story in particular seems to be important in shaping her belief about the possibility of damaging someone with magic. She certainly had no reason to doubt that it was true; after all, it had happened to her own beloved grandmother. A jealous woman had paid a root doctor to work sorcery on the grandmother but had died without divulging the name of the practitioner she had visited; without this information it would be difficult to have the evil reversed. Nor could ordinary doctors help:

Doctors can’t do nothin’ for it, y’know. O.K., for instance, I know this story; that my grandmother was rooted by a woman over her own husband. My grandmother’s husband, my stepgrandfather. And this lady had did sumpin’ to her so she had a sore on her leg, you see, and this sore didn’t never heal! And she went to the doctor, she went different places, and they couldn’t do nothin’ for her! It was a open sore, open through the wall [of her leg]. So she decided to go to a root man, and this man told her that somebody had put a root on her. ‘Cause that’s the only thing that he could tell was wrong with her. But the person that put the root on had died so she never could get the information from that lady to find out who did it. Which root doctor did it, which root person was workin’ the root. ‘Cause that person that workin’ the root can take it off you, the only person can take it off you. ‘Cause every root person don’t know the different remedies from another root person.

So this man, this other root man, just took a hunch of tellin’ grandmother what to do, you know; what to use. And he gave my grandmother some kind of special salve. What it was I don’t know; he gave her sumpin’ to rub on it, keep puttin’ on it, bathin’ in it. And she did it. And sho ‘nuff, right before everybody’s eyes a snake crawled out of it. And they say it was a snake; whether it was a baby snake, big snake, I don’t know. I remember this story when I was little, and I couldn’t forget it. Couldn’t get it out of my mind, every time somebody mention roots to me. She said it crawl outa her sore, crawled outa that opening that was in her leg, crawl right clean outa there. And they killed it. They was hittin’ at it and it just disappear, just like black magic, like voodoo or whatever.

People just don’t know the power that black magic have, or root have because of the fact it just unbelievable. You have to see it to believe it, you see. They say it just crawled out and that sore just healed up, it just closed, right then and there. It had me just really afraid of it; that was the hold my husband had on me, that was really the hold on me. Because that’s why the power over me was so strong, because of the fact that I had this fear of root itself personally. ‘Cause of the stories I used to hear from my grandparents about root and so I was afraid of it.

The 19-year-old Jacie did not set out to marry a man who would terrorize her, of course. She saw a tall, handsome, and personable man, and she was quickly in love. Her family had also liked him, though her mother thought that a five-year age difference made him a little too mature for her daughter. Still, there seemed to be no real obstacles to a marriage. He was brainy, Jacie later reflected; able to hide his true nature when it was in his interest to do so. So the wedding took place and afterward Joe moved his bride to a remote cabin in the woods of his native South Carolina, 30 miles from the nearest town. It was not long before he revealed himself to be so insanely jealous that he forbade her to have anything to do with anyone. There was no telephone; she was cut off from her family; she was not allowed to make new friends. She was utterly alone.

She found herself living with a man filled with rage and frustration, and she struggled to find an explanation for his changed behavior. He had a hatred of women that now seemed to include her, and as he told her stories of his childhood, she decided that the key to his jealous rages lay in his past. There had been one elderly man who had had a particularly malignant effect on the little boy her husband had been, she felt, and had been instrumental in shaping negative views about the female gender that were only now being fully expressed. It helped some to think that there was a reason for it all, and although she was unhappy, she also believed strongly in her marital vows. She had suffered when small as the given-away child of an illegitimate union and had always dreamed of having a family of her own; her dream was now threatened but she was determined not to give it up easily. Besides, she thought it was her duty to try and help her husband overcome his problems:

I thought I should hang in there, talk to him, tell him to go ahead and see a psychiatrist or get some kind of help. ‘Cause I think what’s wrong with my husband was embedded in him when he was small, really. ‘Cause he used to tell me stories how this man, this real old man, used to tell him stories when he was comin’ up. Stories about how Black women was treated during slavery and stuff like that, y’know. And a whole lot of things I thought was wrong for a young kid, especially a little boy, to be hearin’ and knowin’ about. And what they should do when they get up and be a man; all these kinds of things.

But it stuck with my husband real strong, I pretty sure. ‘Cause when I did have a chance to talk to his mother, his mother was extremely afraid of him. And his father. When I did meet them, they told me something was really wrong psychologically. His father is dead, and his mother suffers from asthma real bad, y’know. But she stays outa his way because I think she’s really afraid of him.

She obviously saw the old man’s stories to Joe during his formative years in a negative light. Even more striking to me, however, was the physical abuse that the little boy had endured at the hands of his mother. Jacie herself did not discount the importance of this aspect of his experience, though she did not necessarily view it as abuse. Instead she saw it as a mother’s understandable efforts to control a willful and disobedient child. She believed it was the combination of maternal beatings, the old man’s stories of sexual domination of women, and the early loss of the grandmother who was the one loving woman in his life that made the adult Joe hate the world. Her husband’s ability to be brainy enough to hide his true nature when he chose also had roots in his childhood, she felt. The boy knew he had to depend on his mother for a period of time, that is, but as soon as he was old enough to be independent his true nature was revealed. And his true nature was that of a man who despised women:

She used to tell me stories about how when he’s small she used to have to beat him two or three times a day, four or five times a day, somethin’ like that, you know. ‘Cause he was really a rough child to deal with; she couldn’t cope with him, y’know. And I was just shocked from the things that she said was goin’ on. Like he’d run away and not come back [when he was] young, just four or five or six, and stuff like that. And hang around listenin’ to this old man talk, and stuff like that. And those things are embedded in kids’ minds when they’re real young.

I think all those bad things came back on him that he would relive; that they came smashin’ down on him. And he was tryin’ to get away from ’em and he couldn’t get away from ’em and they was all smashin’ down on him. Because his own sister and mother told me that when he left home at 17 he went up North and he was a pimp; he had prostitutes and stuff like that. So I add those things together [and look at] who he is, and psychologically he didn’t trust women. He didn’t have no kind of respect for ’em.

The beatings were not successful in getting young Joe to behave, however, and finally the mother devised a punishment that even Jacie described as being dramatic. Still, she viewed the intervention of a grandmother not as rescue but as a form of spoiling the boy. It was the death of this woman that set the child on his path away from God, she thought. Away from God and toward the Devil and the working of roots. For the rest of his life he would control women, not the other way around:

Now whether it was dislike for his mother [I don’t know], now the only dramatic thing that I heard she did to him when he was comin’ up back in the woods was tie him to a tree in the hot sun. ‘Cause she couldn’t control him. She said she was tryin’ all kinds of punishment, y’know, to stop him! And she did do this; tie him in the yard to a tree in the sun without givin’ him food or water. Must be all that day. In the sun.

And the person that got him away from there that he was so crazy about was his grandmother. One of his grandmothers came, his father’s mother, used to baby him up. And carry him on her back to church and stuff like that. So she got him away from there. She untied him, told ’em to get him down from there. To him that was his savior! The only righteous person in the world!

Oh, don’t mention God to him, he’d go off! He say, "God takes the good peoples away, good people away." So he told me back then that his grandmother was good and God took her away. Why didn’t He take his mother? And that tore him up psychologically bad; he said that God don’t do nothin’ but take good people away. I think he was sumpin’ like nine, eight or nine or ten years old, sumpin’ like that, when his grandmother died. And it hit him pretty strong. I think it really did hit him. And by her spoilin’ him, dramatically spoilin’ him, when she died it was over. Life was over.

I think he made some kind of vow. God told him he had to cling to his mother a little bit, ‘cause that’s the only one he had left. And so he didn’t show all those things he was feelin’ towards his mother, he just held ’em inside. So he got up to this age that he become a young man, to fool with women, run around with women, he just took things psychologically out with those women!

And now she was one of those women. Her belief that it was her duty to try and change him must have been further strengthened by the fact that it seemed her only hope. She could not leave if she wanted to, he told her. He had gone to a root man for a charm that would keep her there. The isolation continued. Sometime in the first year of her marriage some of her family came to visit but she dared not complain; he had warned her that if she was not careful about what she said he would kill them all. During their stay he was cold and silent but his hostility toward them was made evident. He pointedly left a cocked gun by the door and whenever one of them went to the outdoor privy he picked it up and accompanied them, silently waiting outside until they emerged. During one of these brief absences her mother asked why she did not leave him? But she told her mother that Joe was using roots against her and that he would not hesitate to use them against her loved ones as well. The visit was cut short and was not repeated. Now, in fact, most of her family were even afraid to write to her. She spent her days alone.

Before long she was pregnant with her first child but even that made no difference; she was not allowed to go to the clinic in town for prenatal care. But after much pleading Joe did relent and allow her grandmother to come for the birth:

My grandmother did come there, I finally got her, through a letter, to come. Everybody in my family was afraid of him. Everybody who knew he was foolin’ with roots was afraid of him. My grandmother only [would come to help me]. She probably was afraid of him but she tried to stick by me, and came durin’ the time I had my son. It was kind of a nervous period for her, also. But my mother is dramatically scared of him, y’know. She didn’t even want to write no letters to me, because she was scared he was gonna put root on her handwritin’. Anything of yours they can use, anything. Clothing, writin’, as long as it’s yours, y’know. My mother thought that he could do that to her definitely, so she was dramatically afraid of him. He used it to try to make me hate my whole family. I didn’t have nobody to correspond with me. I was in a mess; I was really in a mess.

The birth of Little Joe had been difficult, and the grandmother had warned Jacie’s husband that Jacie should see a doctor if there were more babies. Perhaps she hoped that Jacie would be able to get help from a doctor or nurse if she was allowed to see them. More babies did follow, but Joe drove Jacie into town to the clinic and sat outside in the car waiting for her, shotgun in his lap. He warned her not to tell anybody anything; if she did he would blow her head off. And if he killed her the sheriff knew better than to mess with him; he would never spend a day in jail. She knew that that was true; he had been jailed on several occasions for assaulting others and always came home the next day, laughing. So she said not a word. And if the clinic personnel noticed the cuts and bruises they did not mention them; everybody knew Big Joe Burnes had a temper. Nobody wanted to mess with him.

The years passed and the isolation continued. Every morning before leaving, Big Joe would remind her of the roots that held her there and she made no attempts to leave. Who would help her? Where would she go with all the babies? And she could not be sure that he was really gone even in the daytime; sometimes she would look out of a window and see him slipping from tree to tree in the woods behind the cabin, his shotgun in his hand. Time passed and the older children began to go to school and were picked up by a schoolbus, leaving her at home with the little ones. Only a rare trip to town to buy supplies or school clothes for the children broke the monotony. It was on one of these occasions that she saw the flier for the shelter for battered women and committed the telephone number to memory. She did not expect to use it. But every life must have some glimmer of hope.

The only other bright spot was the occasional letter from a cousin in Michigan who, perhaps because of the great distance, was not afraid of Jacie’s husband. Perhaps because she did not fear him he, in fact, seemed to fear her: Perhaps her courage came from using roots of her own! On one memorable occasion his own belief in magic worked to Jacie’s advantage, in fact, when a small package from the Michigan cousin arrived addressed to her. She was allowed to open it and did so to find a Bible and an accompanying note telling her to persevere; God would surely help her sooner or later. Because of his hatred of religion Jacie was sure that her husband would throw the Bible away, but he was afraid to touch it. The cousin would have expected him to throw it out, he said, but he was not that stupid. He knew that she had had it rooted. So Jacie was allowed to keep it and found consolation in the hours spent in reading Scriptures.

But her fear of roots continued. Roots worked through handwriting, through photographs, through personal possessions, in food or drink. Only if she saw her husband give a child food or a sip of a drink did Jacie dare to take anything from him; he had never tried to harm them:

Everything was just comin’ to him so easy, and I was in a mess. And I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ [but] takin’ care of my people, tryin’ to make him happy. And ever’thing was comin’ to me in a bad way and I just wondered what was goin’ on! It really affected me pretty bad, but I kept my head together ‘cause I didn’t drink. If I took a beer it would be there in a can; I wouldn’t take nothin’ from him that was open, y’know, unless I saw him give a sip to one of the kids. It can be done like that also, sumpin’ you take from someone to eat or drink. Really, that was a thing that I really worried about; takin’ things from him that was open. And most of the time I were locked in the house.

She was not simply a passive prisoner, however. She had fought back over the years and on a number of occasions had made plans to kill him to earn her release. But she was never able to bring herself to do so and it was this, finally, that convinced her that he had magical power over her. Otherwise why could she not shoot him dead when she had the opportunity? Why couldn’t she cut his throat when she stood over his sleeping form, knife in hand? Surely no court would have convicted her! It must be roots. Or diabolical forces at work:

I tried to kill him several times, and he had the nerve to tell me that I couldn’t hurt him, y’know. That he had fixed my pictures. My grandmother sent me some pictures of me that was taken when I was in high school. And he say he took ’em and he had ’em fixed. And he believed in roots strongly; ‘ever’body in South Carolina mostly believes in roots strongly. It was a total shock to me. See, I wasn’t afraid of nobody, and I wasn’t totally afraid of my husband at all until he mentioned this root to me. And that started it. Because I had fears completely, dramatically, about roots.

When I saw that I couldn’t even cut him when he was asleep or shoot him when he was standin’ around and he had a gun around, then I knew that there was sumpin’. I had a gun when he was asleep; I had a knife right over his throat several times, more than one time. So I think that’s why he took a power and worked it stronger. ’Cause he knew I was on the verge of killin’ the first chance I got. And so any of those times he would come after me when I was asleep and hit me before I even open my eyes, or when I would have ahold of one of my babies, he would come in and I think that he was just possessed, like really with the Devil. He was really possessed. Like his eyes would change and turn red and all those kind of things.

And even then he was afraid that I might try to get away and the root might not work and he locked me in the house. And I didn’t have no friends; this was way back in the woods. And he dared anybody to come out there! The whole town, two small towns were afraid of him. This went on for years after years after years; I just couldn’t count the years.

Years after years after years. In fact she had been married for more than ten years and had just had her fifth child when she made the first attempt to escape. After all of this time filled with the fear and the violence and the loneliness what did it take, finally, to empower her to try? It was another of her little visions. She knew from her childhood experience that when she saw someone’s death that it soon occurred—but this time the vision was of her own death. She was sleeping when there appeared before her a woman with a sad face, silently weeping. She woke up and she knew that the woman was herself, crying over her impending death. She realized that she had to take action.

A day or so later she talked Big Joe into leaving the keys to the car, something he had rarely done. School would soon start, she said, and the older children needed new shoes. He cursed but threw the keys at her; she could take the children and buy them shoes but that was all she was to do in town. And he would know if she did anything else and he would make her very sorry. After he left for work in his truck she quickly packed up all the children and drove away. But a neighbor woman who was sitting on her front porch saw her speed by with the car loaded with children and belongings, went inside and called Big Joe and told him. He in turn called the sheriff and told him that Jacie was kidnapping the children, then ran to his truck and followed her. She was almost at the county line when he overtook her and ran her off the road. The sheriff arrived soon after and despite her protestations suggested that she go home where she belonged; he could not look her in the eye when she begged him to help her. So she told him that her blood would be on his conscience when the inevitable happened, then helplessly drove back to her prison in the woods.

What about the weeping woman in the vision? Did it mean that she was doomed? A few days later there arrived a letter from Michigan, informing her that a beloved cousin of about her own age had recently died. It was obviously this cousin, not herself, who had been the woman in the vision. So life went on and her life resumed its customary pattern. Only now Big Joe watched her more closely than ever and she knew that she would never again be able to get the keys to the car. In a few months she was pregnant again, and with a sixth infant due she stopped thinking about trying to get away. It seemed hopeless. But when the new baby was only two months old she decided to try again. She learned that the old root doctor whom Big Joe had always patronized had died. At first she was even more depressed at this news; she had always heard that if this happened the hex could never be reversed. But then she recalled that her grandmother had been cured by a second root doctor after the death of the first; perhaps what really happened was a weakening of the hex at the death of the practitioner who had caused it. Perhaps she had a chance after all if she was able to go before Big Joe found another worker!

Still, the consequences of the old man’s death might have remained purely speculative but for one other fact—her husband’s behavior had become so extreme that she knew he would soon kill her anyway. She had nothing to lose by trying to get away. He had always been violent and had struck her many times in the past; she had known that this would continue. But in the past he had hit her only with his fists or with the bottles that he smashed in her face when she was sleeping. Her face and body were scarred from some of these beatings and she had suffered at least one more dramatic injury, a cracked jaw from a blow from his fist. But recently he had begun striking her with objects so large that she knew that his intent was murder; she was only alive because God was protecting her with a physical shield:

What made me leave this time? The thing really was he was getting worse, really worse. He took a beam that hold houses, what hold houses up, and hit me across my back. And see, God put a shield around me. Oh, he done hit me with a gunbarrel and it bent; a rifle of cast steel, it bent. On my arm. It bent, it just bent. And across my shoulders, it just bent. I knew then that God was protecting me.

She interpreted this divine intervention to mean that God was giving her another chance to get away. And after all, God helps those who help themselves. She knew that she did not have much time; there was no possibility of formulating an elaborate plan. She would have to take her children and simply walk away. She did not tell them what they were going to do, fearing that one of them might let something slip to their father. Instead she anxiously waited through the hot August nights for that time when the moon would be only a sliver. The darkness would make their four-mile journey across the fields more difficult, but she did not dare lead her brood down the road. That would mean passing the house of the woman who had spied on them the first time. What if the woman was sitting on her porch and heard the baby cry? No, they would have to walk.

The fateful day came and Jacie knew that she had to pretend that it was like any other day in their lives. She gave her husband his breakfast, silently listened to his abuse, and calmly told him goodbye. It was a Saturday and she prayed that he would follow his usual pattern and stay in town drinking and gambling until late. The hours passed slowly until it was time to give the children their supper; she fed them more than usual as she was not sure when they would eat again. She bathed them and put them to bed, then sat and waited through the long summer evening. It was dark, finally, and she woke the older children. They must be very quiet, she whispered; they were going to play a game. Jacie picked up the still-sleeping littlest ones and quietly told Little Joe, tall and strong for his 12 years, to carry his four-year-old brother. The other two children followed behind, giggling at this strange and unexpected adventure. They stepped off the porch and began to walk across the fields.

The trip seemed endless. At first she jumped each time a small animal rustled through the vegetation but nothing happened; there was no outcry from an outraged Joe. So they kept on walking slowly, slowly; she and Little Joe burdened down with the smallest children, the other two stumbling over the rows in the dark. It was close to dawn when they finally arrived at the small house that was their destination. Jacie knew that the family who lived here were God-fearing people and hoped that they would allow her to use the telephone. She admonished the tired children to be quiet and knocked on the door. Her knock was answered by the man of the house. She explained her plight and he only nodded; everyone knew about Big Joe Burnes and his temper. He gestured toward the phone while his wife quickly prepared a meal for the sleepy children.

Jacie had memorized the number of the shelter for battered women and made her call. She gave directions to the house and said that it would be necessary to come quickly; her good samaritans would be in danger themselves if anyone saw her and her children there. Before long two cars pulled up into the yard and with a quick God bless you, for their hosts, Jacie and the children were driven away. The first part of the journey was over. They stayed two or three days at the shelter. Jacie had called her family as soon as possible but it would be a day or so before anyone could come to get them. This time was almost the worst of all, she said later; although the women at the shelter insisted that they were safe she was fearful that her husband would somehow learn their whereabouts. What if someone had seen them crossing the fields that night? What if Big Joe had gone to the home of the couple who had helped her and threatened them into telling what they knew? What if his knowledge of roots somehow led him to her? But the time passed and at last a call came; her family was waiting for them in a shopping mall just over the county line. She and the children were hidden in a car and an old truck and driven there without incident. She got out of the car and for the first time in years she saw some of her own kin; she had never expected to see anyone she loved again.

The immense power that her fear of her husband’s magical control had over her life is dramatically illustrated by what happened next. The children clambered into the waiting van, and she climbed quietly in behind them. Her mother, her sister, and her brother hugged her and then excitedly began questioning her about the escape. How had it happened? How had she managed it? Did she think that Big Joe was on their trail? But she was unable to speak, overwhelmed by the emotions that she was feeling. And especially by what she was seeing. Finally her mother asked why she did not respond to their questions—and what was it she was looking at in such a strange way? Quite literally she was watching the personification of the hex leave her body where it had held dominion for so many years:

I got in the van and I was just choked up, I couldn’t say nothin’. I saw my mother and my sister and my brother and they was talkin’ down to me, and askin’ questions, and I couldn’t say nothin’. Let me tell you, after all those years. And I looked that way and my mother, she said, What you lookin’ at—don’t you hear me talkin’ to you? My mother was talkin’ to me.

I saw a shadow leave me, went down those steps, stopped, and looked back like this at me and went off. And that shadow went off, tall-built shadow that left me, and it went off that step and disappeared into thin air. I started talkin’. Didn’t stop. I done stayed up all that night, talkin’.

As the tall shadow stopped to look back at her before it stepped off the van it nodded to her once, as if to say goodbye. I had goosebumps, listening—what was the shadow, I asked? "It was that root, that voodoo, that hex!" And now it was gone.

They quickly drove to the family home in Georgia where the other members of the clan greeted the newcomers excitedly; none had ever expected to see Jacie again. Although she was greatly relieved to be out of South Carolina at last, Jacie continued to be uneasy. Big Joe would expect her to go home, she thought. And it would not be long before he came to get them. Obviously she would have to take the children and go. Her family did not demur; they too, were afraid of what Big Joe might do to them in retaliation for helping her escape. Again it was the cousin from Michigan who offered a helping hand; she was not afraid of Jacie’s husband. Why not bring the children to Lansing? It was decided. Bus tickets were purchased and soon Jacie and her children were on their way North.

The first weeks in Lansing were spent in finding a place to live, seeking out health care so that the children could have their school physicals, and entering the older ones in school. After that Jacie did some things for herself, a luxury after the long years of isolation. She was an extremely intelligent woman who had been so long deprived any sort of intellectual stimulation that she was anxious to catch up with all she had missed. She obtained a library card and read avidly, began a journal describing her past experiences, and tried her hand at writing poetry. She looked forward to taking a course herself at the local community college. As time passed with no word from Joe she began finally to relax a bit; perhaps he would not come after them after all. Perhaps they were finally safe.

A year or so passed. The children were brought to the clinic regularly for checkups and when they suffered minor illnesses. But as Little Joe entered adolescence she began to be concerned about his behavior. She still had a good deal of control over the babies and the smaller children,