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The Magnolia Returns

By Eden Royce

 

The Magnolia blooms out of nowhere at any time of year it chooses, bringing its dilapidated wooden slats and rickety front steps to a neighborhood that somehow believes it has always been there. The butcher shop itself is well-worn, looking like it has seen better days: peeling seafoam green paint on salt-blasted boards, the once-vivid red front door now a faded smear like lipstick after an ardent lover’s attention.

Once it arrives, the locals begin to talk about visiting. They have always talked of the things they miss in life, and more often than not, it’s the food, the ingredients. Depending on when and where the Magnolia appears, either the supermarkets don’t stock the items the locals crave — the chicken feet, the pig tails, jowl, and ear — or these once-reviled parts of the animal have become so popular with the wealthy, it’s impossible for the poor to attain them.

Make no mistake, the Magnolia knows it’s the poor that have made these ingredients desirable and popular. It’s the poor who have had to do so much with so little: food, care, recognition. Understandable that the poor wish to have acclaim and thus shared their techniques and recipes with those of means, who only stole and warped and erased, shoving any chance for others to prosper into airless crawlspaces, to be forgotten by all but each other.

But the Magnolia believes in chances.

Even so, it does not deliver. You must go and ask for what you want or need. Then it gives what you request, sometimes a little more. Rarely does it give less.

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Fish heads: Old man Johnson made his way to the Magnolia with difficulty. He could deal with the pain of getting out of bed, standing too long, sitting too long, laying down too long. It was losing his entire sight that he preferred not to contend with. He had no real family left, only the married ladies in the neighborhood who checked in on him once their kids went to school, offering to hang his laundry with theirs or bring him some hot food from the pots simmering on their stoves.

Most times, he accepted with a dip of his head and a “Thankya, ma’am”, even though he remembered them married ladies when they was babies around the courtyards, with skinned and ashy knees and hair unraveling from carefully oiled and twisted ponytails. They was grown now and he was old. Still, he gave them what he had: some money from his Army pension check and his words of wisdom when they requested them.

One evening, a neighbor lady asked if she could get him anything from The Magnolia, and he wondered why he hadn’t gone there before. He hadn’t thought of the place in years, since he was a little boy and his father took him when the daily catch hadn’t been enough to feed the family. They didn’t have money, but there always seemed to be enough for plenny meals once they went within those rickety walls.

Johnson shook his peppery head and told her he would go himself, but in the morning when he had his good strength. And go he did, when the sun came up, Johnson was dressing in his not-quite-Sunday suit and hat, leaning on his cane, hoofing it down the asphalt. It was slow going but he would get there in plenny time. He’d see to that. The early morning hours were easy on his eyes, before the sun started glaring, and after the hazy, dim confusion of nighttime. Halfway there, the road changed from paved to dirt, and Johnson remembered that he forgot to bring a bag. That was alright, though, all would be provided.

In the scrub alongside the road, something rustled, a squirrel or a possum, but he was in no shape to catch it. Way back when, he woulda trapped it, brought it home, and made his daddy proud to see his son contributing to the family. Shaky, but determined, he pushed on. Soon enough, he reached the bend in Charleston’s neck and saw the building standing alone in the middle of a patch of green but sparse grass. It waited patiently, and Johnson felt welcomed. It looked ’zactly like he dreamed. Or maybe it was remembered. It had been a long time ago now. Paint flecks wedged in his palm when he gripped the banister, leaning on it to support his insubstantial weight. He’d been strapping once, not tall or big, but sturdy. No-one else was around at the moment, and he wondered what time the place started doing business. Was he too early?

The once-red door creaked open on a gust of wind, and Johnson could smell the sea. It called to him in his father’s voice. Raymond! Son, get in here. Looka all this catch, yuh. We gone eat good on today! Tears welled in his eyes as he ascended the steps, shuffling toward the door, and it opened further as his hand closed around the brass doorknob.

A bag waited for him on the counter. He felt around for it to be sure, and to lean his weight against something after the trip. Fish heads, whiting, porgy, even a trout or two. Their eyes shimmering and clear, gills pinky red. His mama used to handle the catch they got back in the day, and after she had scaled and gutted it, she would dredge it in seasoned cornmeal and fry it whole. Crisp tails shattered in his mouth when he bit into them, and the flesh inside would be tender and mouth-watering. He’d avoided the heads back then, as the eyes would go white when cooked, and the sight unsettled him as a boy. As he grew older, the sight of his own eyes clouding over disturbed him more. Tonight, he could cook these up until the eyes whitened, then eat them with relish. Then, as had happened to his father before him, his eyes would change, grow round and flat, until they glistened with a rainbow sheen as clean as his driveway after a hard rain. He pressed his hand to his chest in anticipation of seeing the neighbor ladies moseying up the path to his door again. Then he touched the display counter’s cool glass, full of cuts of meat, fowl, and fish he had not seen since he was that little boy at his daddy’s side.

“It’s a long way back,” he said, “Please for a lil piece of somethin’ to sweeten my mouth for the journey?”

Breath-hot wind passed over old man Johnson, and while he may not have known it, that was the Magnolia being delighted with his request. Usually, it knew what customers wanted, but it enjoyed being outright asked in a considerate way, so how could it say no?

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Hog jowl: Someone had put da mout’ on Rita Evans, jawin’ on about her, tellin’ lies. Now, she had an idea who, but it was hard to prove when a person had lay tricks on you, unless they came straight out and admitted it, which this person had not. Cowardice. It would have been better if this person had just come to her about their grievance was so they could have maybe worked it out or at least promised to go their separate ways. But since they would not, Rita went to the Magnolia.

Her grandmother had told her about the Magnolia when she was a child, and she had not believed that the story was real. Only now that she was an adult and needed help, did she remember that some places came to you exactly when you needed them.

She parked on the dirt lot. There were no other cars so she hesitated, staring at the building. It was not impressive. In her child’s mind at age six or seven when she’d heard the story, she had imagined a grand place. Somewhere fancy and expensive with luxuries she could never begin to grasp. This place looked like every weatherbeaten shack in any old island town. Abandoned and alone. Exactly like how she felt right before that man had approached her and started talkin’ his talk. It had felt so good to be noticed and appreciated, Rita had ate all his sweet words right on up.

How was she supposed to know that man was taken by another woman? Lord, he had played single so well, it had never occurred to her that anything else could be true. Long phone calls, leisurely dinners, spending the night at her place — of course she’d thought he was free. That the two of them were starting something together.

It wasn’t until the day she’d gone up to Summerville for the Sweet Tea Festival, and decided to do her shopping before heading back to Charleston. He’d been at the supermarket, hugging up on a pretty brown woman who must have been his wife. Rita had stared at them in shock. He must have felt her gaze, and turned to see her, his grin falling. While he tried to sidle away, his wife had seen, and dragged him to another aisle by his collar, berating him with her full voice. Rita had left the store without buying anything, whispers and sucked teeth at her back, and had instead driven home through a downpour of tears, to pick at a bowl of buttered rice for dinner.

News of the scene traveled to Charleston, fast as lightning, and the whispers followed suit. Shame washed over Rita in never-ceasing waves. Her head hung most days, others it was on a swivel, quick to turn from accusatory eyes. It was enough to make her regret ever meeting that man, and consider joining the nuns. But they only wanted you if you was Catholic, and she couldn’t bear one more rejection.

Then when the mout’ kicked in, everything got much worse.

She began drying up. Her face, once so oily that face powder only worked a few hours at a time, grew dusty with whitened ash no oil could combat. Her scalp shed in breakfast cereal-sized flakes, pockmarked with holes. Every inch of her body was sore, so irritated she could not sleep. Her lady parts were unbearable. Nothing helped, not liquid glycerin soap, not cocoa butter rubbed into her shower-damp skin, not the lotion from the doctor. If she hadn’t had a church sister tell her that his wife was a root woman, Rita might have thought she had some incurable disease.

Rita didn’t even feel lonely anymore, those comments about her character, like the drying husk her body was becoming, stayed with her every moment. She just wanted to feel comfortable in her skin once more.

At her church sister’s advice, Rita visited the Magnolia, stepping inside to find a cool, moist temperature. She stood in the center of the room, looking around and scratching welts on her arm, before she approached the counter. Rita leaned against the glass, its icy coolness sinking into the cracked skin on her face, eliciting a deep sigh at the brief respite. Lord, it felt so good. When she lifted her head, a package wrapped in peach-colored butcher’s paper lay on the countertop. Parting the paper, she glanced at the hog head.

Her gramma used to make pork cheeks, hog maws, jowl bacon. She had loved the jelly-like meat, butter-soft fat, the crisp skin on the ears. Pig face, she had called it as a child. No one ate like that anymore. But the fat called to her, and she smiled through peeling lips, refolded the paper and took it home. Later, she would return and leave a donation on the counter in payment. It was a sin to be ungrateful.

Hours later, Rita set a single place at her dining room table. Silverware, good plate and bowl, cloth napkin. Sweet tea in a wine glass. She lit a candle despite the heat. It didn’t matter any longer who was jawin’ about her, as she ate the soft, jiggly meat under the crisp, salted skin. Melting fat sank into fluffy white rice and she scooped up a little of the spicy pot likker from her collard greens to go with each succulent spoonful. The mout’ put on her was fading, melting away like the rich layer of succulent grease, basting her skin, filling her cracks. As Rita ate, her desire for that so-called man — even her desire to be loved by someone — reduced, running away from her like rendered fat, and she understood for perhaps the first time in her life that alone did not always mean lonely. Sometimes it meant peace.

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Chicken Feet: Shan sucked his teeth. This was stupid, ’cause ain’t no way this was the place. The place Sookie from down the street say she got a miracle? Couldn’t be here. Plus, only Jesus did miracles and why would He be here in this rundown shack in the middle of no place on this dusty ol’ road?

Now Shan was dusty too, on account of running from them Porter kids who always chased him. No matter how he tried to run, them Porters always caught up somehow; shoving and punching and tearing clothes. And for what? Shan lifted his glasses, wiped the sweat off his nose. Just cause they liked to beat his ass. Short, fat, and four-eyed — he was slow. What chance did he have? Them Porter kids, even the sister, were faster, taller. Shan thought he was smart enough to avoid them, but they always found him whenever he and Moze left school or whatever route home they took.

He and Moze were best friends and next-door neighbors, and they took their beatings together. Moze wasn’t fat like him — the opposite, ackshully — because he’d been real sick as a baby and still couldn’t gain weight or breathe exactly right sometimes. Shan’d learned to curl up and protect Moze’s inhaler in a side pocket under one of his fat rolls to keep the Porters from stealing it and draining all the medicine. He shook off the thought, and got back to now, running his eyes over the place. It looked like he did, roughed up, torn down — how was it supposed to help anybody?

But Sookie was doing better since her visit to the Magnolia, wasn’t she? She had a real job now, so she didn’t babysit him no more. Ten was too old to get babysat anyway. Sookie got a little place of her own too, he’d heard. Even her husband’s court case was dropped ’cause they found the real thief. So, this place must do something.

Shan had told his friend that with a name like Moses, he should be the one to go into the Magnolia to save them both. But Moze had shook his head, sucked on the inhaler.

“Naw, that’s you. You got the instinct to get the right thing.”

He couldn’t let Moze down.

What should he get to be safe? To be free of the Porters? Shan wanted him and Moze to have a life like the kids on TV whose problems were small; tests they didn’t study for and accidentally grabbing the wrong bookbag and finding a body in the woods when you were with friends who knew how to handle the situation. Shan had one friend, and he’d let Moze run off in the opposite direction from him, so he could sneak away and find the Magnolia. After some searching, and stumbling over a ratty old sleeping bag shoved under some wild azalea bushes, he’d found the place. Now that he was here, he had to take advantage of it.

Shan glanced around, then took the steps up to the door, pushing down on each leg to aid his ascent. He peeked inside the cracked-open door, then crept inside. Once inside, a cool breeze guided him over to a circular wooden table, two chairs nestled underneath.

When Moze entered the Magnolia some ten minutes later, panting and sweating and covered in dirt, the boy’s eyes widened. Shan waved him over. “Hey! Looka what we got!”

The soup was steaming hot, a golden broth full of carrot and celery and roasted onion. Something strange floated at the top; a brown, swollen branch-like thing. Shan pulled it out with scraped fingers, held it aloft, then shoved it in his mouth.

Moze cried out, “What’s that?”

“I don’t know — just eat it!”

“Uhn . . .”

“It’s why we came here, shoot!” Shan’s round face softened after the hard words. “They got you good, huh?”

Moze touched his cheek, where it would soon purple under the brown, becoming a tender, achy bruise. He blinked, glanced at Shan’s glasses, foggy with steam, then sat down. The boys set to eating their soup. Soft sounds drifted around Shan: squirrels in the surrounding woods chittering at each other before dashing into crisp, rustling leaves, bubbling liquid in pots, old music like his gramma used to play on records when she was alive. Gramma used to say it was only right to use everything the chicken got if you was gone kill it, from the head to the feet, and he had forgotten how much he missed her.

Before long, both bowls of soup were empty and they returned them to the empty counter. It had been good. There was no adult, no owner, no way to get behind the counter and wash up the dishes they’d dirtied.

“Thank you,” they squawked as one, practiced in their togetherness.

The Magnolia watched as the boys left, each one bounding down the steps, arms flapping as they ran around the hard packed dirt, chasing each other and shouting at full volume, their scrabbling feet quick and confident in the loose rocks, before taking off toward home. Young ones found it harder to interact. While their pain was just as intense as it was for those older, they took longer to despair. They had smaller, thinner webs of reference, and believed that older ones did not understand their troubles. They also had little control over the foods they ate, with little ability to create dishes from given ingredients. However, the Magnolia had seen and heard the cries of pain, anger, and frustration and while it did not do it often, it knew how to cook.

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Ox heart: No one loved Gennavive. Now that her parents were gone, it wasn’t only an exaggeration, it was true. From the cover of the woods, Gen had watched the old man, the boys, and the young woman all go inside the Magnolia and emerge changed in ways she’d never thought possible. Gen wanted change too, but . . .

She’d spent her adult life looking for love, all her teen years too, since she started growing up and filling out. It was only a burden to her to be honest, having some looks. Her desperation grew, wanting someone to be there for her in a way that relations shouldn’t be. Her heart had felt so large, full to bursting with the need to care, to adore. Wide open chambers rushing with the blood of life, felt cavernous and empty, pulsing with desire.

It made her too willing, too desperate. It was the worst catch-22, to want love so badly that it disgusts anyone who might have been interested. Longing looks across crowded dance floors where she’d spent the night manning an empty table in the darkest corner against the wall, nursing a watery Cuba Libre. She’d rounded up all her courage and asked a man to dance once, but he’d looked her up and down, then said he was busy.

She’d taken classes, received an amateur artist grant to paint, and even won a watercolor landscape competition. It had gotten her nowhere closer to love. She’d had plenty of physical encounters, though. Quick, uncomfortable, unsatisfying ones, that left her emptier than before. She’d cried more than once too, deep welling sobs; the only thing besides sex that made her exhausted enough to sleep. Art helped sometimes — going to remote locations with only her paints and chalks to keep her company —  but it was bittersweet to know that all those early accolades had amounted to naught.

When people knew what you wanted, they tended to keep it from you, or you from it. No amount of freely giving would ever be enough for a person who felt entitled to what you have and was determined to take it. Trusting the wrong person, like she had, could lead to losing everything. Her business, her home, and her good name. Sometimes, she thought it’d taken her mind too, but she’d clung on with jagged fingernails. Had her a little tent and a sleeping bag that she only used when the nights got too cool, and a jackknife to protect her and her paints, but nobody hardly came this far out. She’d seen the building come, choose a place, settle in. Like her, it didn’t look like much, and also like her, it gave. She wondered if it was for the same reasons.

Slowly, she approached. Like a wild animal, she thought. Then, she chuckled, wondering which of them was the wild one. Perhaps both. The package under her arm felt awkward, cumbersome, but she managed it. No one should ask for help without offering something in return for it, if they were able. A kind word, a story, advice, something. It was ingrained in her by her parents that you never come to anyone’s place wit’ your hand swingin’. You brought what you could.

Even though she could see no person around, a sensation of life lay inside the building, a presence she could not exactly grasp, but recognized as a sort of kindred.

Gen put the brown-paper-wrapped package on the counter. “It’s for you,” she whispered, touching the gift with chapped hands. They were a shame to behold and she shoved them away, deep in her torn pockets. “You oughta have a little piece of give-back, I think.”

The Magnolia didn’t respond. People tended to give in thanks, but never before receiving help.

“I’ll-I’ll open it up.” Gen tore the wrapping away, the brown paper dragging on her rough skin. “It’s one a my paintings. Watercolor. I used to sell them down at the market for a while until they changed the laws. Used to make good money too, until —”

She cleared her throat of the memories, then rambled on. “See? It’s you. I liked how you looked and well . . . it’s yours.” She turned the canvas around to face the counter, and the empty black door beyond.

For the first time, the Magnolia saw itself.

Saw itself as something more than what others called a worn-down shack, a wreck of a thing that at least had something to provide. In the eyes of this artist in the woods, there were its weather-beaten boards, lovingly rendered in hues of bluish-gray, front steps that needed careful navigation, a once-red door thrown wide in welcome. There was something new in the corner of its window: a small sign that read, OPEN.

Grateful — no, touched — the Magnolia searched Gen for a need that it could fill. It found only one, and was more than willing to accommodate. For the first time, it lifted its counter, removing the barrier between the heart of itself and the person within its walls. Gen smiled, her heart growing larger and wider and deeper, thudding like a stampede of hooves pounding the earth.

That day, Gen and the Magnolia became one. The butcher shop that had fed others because no one had fed it, and the woman who no one had loved because she wasn’t what they’d wanted.

They travel together now, Gen and the Magnolia. The Magnolia boasts a fresh coat of paint on its sand and salt-blasted boards, and its inner walls are adorned with stunning landscape paintings of the places they have visited together.

One day, they may bloom into your town, the butcher shop and the woman it loves, and offer ingredients regular supermarkets do not always have to make food that will restore something to you. Or perhaps restore you to yourself. Visit them, if you have a need. Just know that the Magnolia and Gen will not seem new to you. It will be as if they had always been there.

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Host Commentary

Before we get into it, a small note on a passing piece of news: HOLY PALADINS AND PISSANTS WE WON THE IGNYTE AWARD LAST WEEK! We’ve been the bridesmaid every year since the inaugural awards, losing out to—and let’s be fair—some incredible compatriots in Levar Burton Reads, Khoreo, Nightlight and Black Women Are Scary, so to be among their number now as Outstanding Fiction Podcast is… well, bigger than words. There’s a lot of stress and effort and hard work goes into making this castle fly as high as it can, and it is a labour of love for so many of us, a voluntary burden of deadlines that we suffer because the outcome is, well all this: a chance to make the world a little better through stories, both the short-term hope and love and laughter and, we hope, the long-term with a little extra weight leaning on that moral arc we hear so much about. A little more compassion in the world, a little more empathy and understanding. And as I record these words I am utterly and absolutely alone, of course, I have to be for recording lest Eric’s head explode with the effort of cutting out all the background noise, so to be reminded, like this, that you are all really out there, really are listening and really do appreciate it—well, from all of us, Devin and Wanini and Eleanor and Shingai and Kaitlyn and Eric and everyone on slush—thank you, so, so much.

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…aaaaand welcome back. That was “The Magnolia Returns” by Eden Royce,, and if you enjoyed that then there is a whole butcher’s store worth of audio treats in stock for you. Eden’s been here thrice before: 533, The Choking Kind; 494, Folk; and 477, Crickets Sing for Naomi, which was rerun as a Tale from the Vaults for 624. She’s also got two stories at Pseudopod, and as ever you can find all these in a matter of seconds by clicking on her name in this story’s website post—as well as, so it happens, her narrations for us, too. If that’s still not enough, then her website edenroyce.com has information and links to her novellas and collections, including her newest out LITERALLY TODAY, Psychopomp and Circumstance, a “Southern Gothic fantasy about a contentious funeral and the young woman defying her family to plan it”. Happy book birthday, Eden!

For “The Magnolia Returns”, Eden sent us these notes: There was a butcher shop in my neighborhood when I was growing up called The Magnolia, and it sold cuts of meat that the stores didn’t – mostly the cuts that were considered too “low end” for supermarkets. I loved going there with my mom and seeing all that was available, and helping make the selections. Once the supermarkets started selling those supposedly “lower end” cuts of meat, it eventually put The Magnolia out of business. I miss that place of local food and community and this story is my way of hoping it’s out there, somewhere, still being appreciated for what it has to offer.

Thank you, Eden, for the story and that background. I am at somewhat of a disadvantage when it comes to discussing this story—and I’m afraid I’m about to fuel a long-standing internet stereotype here, sorry—by virtue of being British. Yes, haha, our food is weird and bland. It’s less about that, though, and more that food feels less of a community thing here than in other cultures, I think: maybe we still share photos of the VE Day street parties because that’s the last time some of our streets had a party. Sure, we’ll have friends over for a barbecue in summer, but not on the level that Australia and parts of the US would; we’ll put out a buffet for a christening and a funeral, but beyond that it doesn’t anchor our social activities, our communities, in the way that, say, the pub does.

Maybe that’s the weather, maybe that’s something in the national character, I don’t know, maybe it’s not even any of this and it’s just me, growing up in a household that valued cost and convenience in meals over taste and joy, and everyone around me was enjoying secret pot lucks and hidden local shops full of delights.

But what I do know about is the power of smell and taste to transport you through time like nothing else does. Thanks to the Explain Like I’m Five subreddit, I’ve just learned that this is because the olfactory bulb—the bundle of neurons responsible for smell—is directly connected to the amygdala and the hippocampus, which are the parts responsible for emotions and memory respectively. By contrast, all our other senses go through the thalamus first, so smell is literally wired in differently as a sense—and may well have evolved before our brains even did, because it’s that important to survival; certainly it’s the only fully developed sense a foetus has in the womb. In a very real sense, then, smell is the oldest and rawest of all our senses, short-circuited straight into our emotions and memories: and what are we, as a self, if not our emotions and memories?

Newborns recognise their mothers by scent, and pregnancy and childbirth rewire the mother’s brain to forge the maternal bond. Smell is our first sense of home, of safe. It underpins a feeling of security and acceptance like nothing else ever could. And what is food, cooking, but a deliberate exercise in smell? Pinch your nose while you eat and you’ll only get the broadest strokes of sweet or bitter: it’s smell that truly gives us taste. It’s smell that helps us bond over moments, infuse our time together with emotion, and if it’s smell that does that, then it’s also food, and cooking, and shared meals. We need the calorific and nutritional content of food to survive, but we need the experience of food to live.