The Witch

I so remember that balmy day in late summer when I first met Essie. She came walking down my street under the lush overhang of the tree tunnel as I always thought of my street, carrying a book. She had an abundance of the blackest hair I had ever seen all tied up with a purple ribbon. Although she was still almost a block away, her voice seemed to float through the air, “Hi! My name is Essie.”

I was taken with her. That simple. I not only liked her immediately – I wanted to be just like her.

“Would you be my friend?” She said. I nodded. “Then, here, sign my friend book.” Somehow, in a moment, she was standing right before me. And she handed over a huge black book with a leather cover hard with age and with thin crackly pages. A quill pen attached to the binding by a velvet ribbon was wedged on a page in the middle of the book. I quickly took it and signed my name.

By the way, reader, my name is Susannah. I was going through a hard summer back then. Something had happened in the spring when I was chosen to be the manager of our school’s fashion show. A girl who showed the best workmanship and design in her 9th grade sewing project was always chosen. It was easy for me because, you see, I had grown up in a family of seamstresses and had been designing and sewing since I was 7 years old. My aunt Katy was a fashion designer and her label was sought after – even in fashion magazines. She had, as my mother and others often described, as “the touch.” Everything she touched turned to absolute perfection. She could walk into a room and move an object and all of a sudden the room seemed complete – calibrated almost – perfectly in place. But her sewing was absolutely amazing. I would put my drawing of the dress I wanted to wear to the dance on her drawing board in her beautiful studio on Monday and it would be hanging there waiting for me on Friday and it would fit perfectly and be the absolute color that I had chosen in my head.

So, back to the fashion show ordeal. You can see that I was going to win that year over anyone who had just learned how to sew. Maybe it could be thought to be unfair in a way but the point is: I had already been named the top student in academics and had gone to the state competition in piano. These awards sound like I’m bragging but really they were not ones that the “in” crowd ever competed for. The popular girls headed by a girl named Dorthea were cheerleaders, prom queens, or …. Fashion show Manager. That’s right, I had stepped over the boundaries into their realm and they were enraged. From then on, I was not invited to any end-of-year parties or picnics that they held and they were the only ones who did. They even formed a “Susannah hater’s club” and wrote insults all over my locker at school. One of my best friends, Kay, even refused to walk with me to school at first for fear of being jeered out by these popular girls and their friends. I cried all of the time. My mother tried to console me by telling me that they would get over it. Maybe so, but I didn’t think that I would.

All of my family went out of their way to make me feel better. My other aunt – Maggie – was known all over town as the best cook. She could whip up the absolute most delicious dish in the blink of an eye – AND in ANY quantity. It was uncanny! Serious! Once when I was a little girl, me and my cousins were playing tea party when Aunt Maggie came into the kitchen and baked 3 small pies instantly. I remember because mine was lemon meringue – my favorite. They were tiny pies with tiny meringues – perfect. Another time much later, she stopped by just as my mom’s best friend, June, from high school arrived with her family unexpectedly. Aunt Maggie simply went into the kitchen and within a short time, laid the table with plates and silver, and served the most delicious meal in all of the right proportions and it was to die for. She even remembered to make June’s portion without the ingredient that she was allergic to. We hadn’t even seen June for 5 years! Aunt Maggie was like that. She just knew. Whereas Aunt Katy had “the touch” for design and sewing – Aunt Maggie had “the touch” for cooking. During that summer, Aunt Maggie made me all kinds of treats and whether I was at her house with my cousins or at church or hanging out at home, Aunt Maggie always had a glass of nectar all iced up with sliced oranges for me. We all called her special iced tea, nectar, because, as my dad used to say: “It is the drink of the Gods!”

All three sisters could cook and sew like artists but each had their own specialty. Of the three sisters, my mom had been the tom boy in the family. She could play almost any game with vigor and skill and she was very hard to beat. My friends loved her and were always challenging her to a new game.

As a girl, she had been on a traveling girls’ softball team as a pitcher. Stories go that she had a mean arm and once it was reported in the paper that balls left her hand like “white lightening.” My uncle always teased her and called her white lightening. But she was good at most sports. She and my dad loved to go to the park early morning just before the sun was up in the summer and play tennis before he went to his filling station to work the rest of the day. They slammed the ball back and forth and daddy really had to work to get the best of her. She also loved to play golf, bowl, and well…..almost everything that was competitive. In just regular life, she was very quiet – almost shy and a very good wife and mother. Me? As I said before, I could sew and design well for my age. Later, I learned how to cook. But my special gift, if you want to call it that, was that I could play the piano. I loved it and I spent hours playing it. In fact, my parents loved to hear me play so much that I could get out of all chores, including drying the dishes, by just sitting down and playing the piano for them. My dad would push back the recliner, close his eyes and hum along. “Pure enchantment,” he would murmur. “Pure enchantment.” Music rolled off my fingers effortlessly, but there was one piece that was all mine. I had sat down one afternoon and it just almost played itself. That was the one that daddy called Enchantment. I always wanted to please my mother by being good at softball but every time I got up to bat, my teammates would groan. Later, my sister came along and she was good so it all worked out. We all seemed to have our own thing.

Well, all that summer, I was taunted relentlessly by Dorthea and her gang. They toilet papered my yard, called me on the phone singing some stupid song, and wrote stuff on my sidewalk. I had quit crying except once in a while. The thing was, I have friends – very good ones who stuck by me, but both of them were either gone or busy. Sandy, a short curly-headed prankster type was gone to her grandparent’s farm for the summer, Judy had to babysit her brother’s baby and Kay, whom, I had relegated to spot 27 on my friend list, vacillated between me and Dorthea and her gang and once in a while would “do me a favor” and call me up. So the summer seemed to stretch forever. I was and still am a people-person and living without friends made the days very lonely for me. Just when I thought I would pop my cork, Essie came into my life. The sun came out. Birds starting singing. A rainbow……well not really, but you get what I mean.

Essie and I became very best friends immediately. She and her mom, Loreena, had moved into Miss Clara’s house down on the corner after she died in the spring. Miss Clara had been a kind little lady who had never married and had retired years before as a kindergarten teacher. It was so wonderful to visit her because her home was filled with knickknacks and overstuffed chairs. Her checkered curtains were always pulled back to let the sun in and her canary whistled the most cheerful tune all day long. Miss Clara would let me play her beautiful old grand piano whenever I visited. Sometimes she would ask me to play my special piece, Enchantment and of course I would. Then we would sit on her settee and eat soft and delicious sugar cookies and drink iced tea in the summer and hot tea with lemon in the winter. Her yard was filled with flowers of all species and swarming with butterflies. In the spring, about the time I was chosen manager of the fashion show, Miss Clara suddenly died. I heard the neighbor who found her say to another neighbor, “If you asked me, she died of fright – you should have seen her – eyes bugged out and her hair, well that was the weirdest part – it was standing on end.

In the paper, it just said that she died of “natural causes”. After all, Miss Clara was 82 years old. Her one sister came and sold her house leaving all of her things inside. Yeah, that summer was not just a little bad….it was really, really bad. But now, Miss Clara’s house was filled up again and so was my life.

It wasn’t long before Essie invited me over to meet her mother. It was the same house but so different. For one thing, all of the flowers were gone and replaced with rocks and there were no butterflies anywhere. Inside, it was amazing. The doors were hanging with crystal beads that made a tinkling sound almost like distant voices. Bamboo shades covered the windows giving the rooms a dusky look. Huge ferns and ceiling fans seemed to whisper. A large green parrot sat on a perch where the canary used to hang in his cage and would squawk “Get out” whenever I walked up. The carpets had been pulled up and stacked outside leaving the wooden floors to creak when you walked across it. Even with these small sounds, the place seemed very quiet.

I remember the first time I ever saw Loreena. She came whishing through the beaded curtains from somewhere in the back of the house. Her long red hair was thick and unruly and bound up with cords. A long gauzy skirt swirled about her ankles topped by a billowing blouse and about a million beaded chains. Long feathered earrings dangled from her pierced ears and her face – WOW. It is hard to describe. Her eyes appeared to be yellow – serious! She had cat eyes with heavy made up eyes and cheeks. Gold and jeweled rings filled every finger and she danced around the room with a long taper lighting zillions of candles. Her voice was breathy and sweet and her teeth were the only white objects in the room. She seemed overjoyed to meet me and took my hands in hers and drew me over to the table. “Let me get a good look at you my sweet,” she said.

She looked me over top to bottom even turning me about. “Aw Essie….she is absolutely perfect!”

“Perfect for what,” I asked her.

“Perfect for Essie,” she replied.

“Come, come Helia, you must meet Susannah.” And in walked a huge gray cat who made circles around me before stopping and staring up at me. Her eyes were brilliant green.

“Ohhh, she likes you too!”

“Sit here by me, my sweet and have some tea, won’t you?” Sitting there in the darkened room surrounded by the sounds and watching the flicker of the candle on the table was terrifying and it was wonderful. I sipped the pungent tea – bitter – but somehow good – and knew at once that mom would disapprove of the whole setup. For one thing, only trashy girls had pierced ears according to her! As the afternoon wore on, it was like being in a dream – everything seemed so unreal. I was startled out of my reverie when out of the cosmos came my mother’s voice calling me to dinner. One rule at our house: Don’t be late for dinner.

Later, my mom questioned me about Essie’s family and I told her all about it….. with some deviations from the truth of course. I knew if she knew the whole story, there was a chance – a good one - that she would block me from going back. It was hard to do because I am a lousy liar and especially to my mom. I felt so badly about it that I couldn’t sleep. But finally it came to me right before my alarm rang, that what I needed was something that was just mine – after all, I was starting high school in a few weeks. And feeling good about that, I jumped out of bed and got ready for school. That, I guess, was my first step towards what was to come.

Although, I invited Essie to my house a lot, very soon, it just seemed like we were spending more time at hers. One afternoon, Loreena showed me her beautiful Tarot cards. She let me shuffle them and feel them in my hands and then she laid them out on the table and just from “reading what the cards were telling her, she began to tell me things about myself stretching clear back to the day I was born. I was absolutely shocked by the whole thing. I whispered to Essie, “Is your mom a witch?”

“Oh, yes,” she whispered back. It was our little joke.

Summer skidded to a stop and it was time to go back to school. Sandy and Judy were back and I couldn’t wait to introduce them to Essie and her mom. “But I thought there were four of you”, her mother said when I presented my friends to her.

“Oh, you must mean Kay,” I said. She’s been gone for a while, I lied. How did she know about Kay, I wondered. I probably mentioned her sometime, I guessed.

“Oh well, no matter, come, have some tea my sweets.” And with that we all sipped the bitter tea and talked the afternoon away. Occasionally the parrot would squawk, “Get out!” And we would squeal with laughter and keep on with our little tea party.

Kay eventually caved in and with much apology, joined us and we were all a happy group again. But not for long. One night I was awakened by the blast of sirens. Mom and Dad and I and the baby stood in our pajamas on our front porch watching the flames reaching clear to the clouds downtown beyond our neighborhood. The frantic efforts of the firemen weren’t enough and Kay’s father’s little hardware store burned clear to the ground. After that, Kay’s mom had to go back to work so Kay had to stay home and babysit after school. It was very sad plus now Kay couldn’t join us.

But we all walked to school on the first day with our arms looped through the others. All of us except Essie because she was home-schooled. But we all rushed straight to her house when school let out to bring her up on all the latest gossip. The biggest news was about Dorthea and her two little toadies. On the first day of school, as I walked into English class, I heard Dorthea say, Well, isn’t this just great – Miss Wormy (short for bookworm) is in here with us!” I dropped my eyes like I always did.

Just then from the back of the room, a boy jeered, “Look who’s talkin – Miss Zit Face herself!” I raised my head and looked to see who he was talking about. Dorthea and her gang were absolutely covered with sores of all shapes and colors all over their faces. Dorthea flung herself sobbing out of the room. Her two friends would have done the same but Miss Thomas gave them the stare and they sat back down. All day people were laughing about this but I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sorry. After school when I told the story to everyone around Loreena’s table while we were sipping our tea, she let out the loudest cackle – it got us all to laughing. “It serves them right!” she said. And suddenly I felt the same way.

School and our routine of running over to Essies seemed to go about the same everyday. Sandy was chosen to be on the cheer squad so she had to go to practice and Judy’s mom started making her do her homework first so they both only came once in a while. As for me, I was having trouble keeping my mind on my school work and my parents were not happy when they found out a parent-teacher conference that my grades had dropped off horribly. “What is the matter with you?” My mother demanded, on the walk home. “Have you lost your marbles? You have always been a straight A student. And what about Kayettes? You couldn’t wait to be a part of that. Your dad and I spent a lot of the money for that uniform?” Kayettes was a special group of girls who cheered with the cheerleaders and got to go to all of the out of town games on the bus. “What about it? I thought. It’s stupid.

“No more socializing after school young lady” My father said. “Oh, and by the way, your piano recital is coming up and I haven’t heard you play in weeks. What has happened to you?”

To tell the truth, I couldn’t tell you. I just felt different about things. The piano had always been the love of my life. One day while at Essies, I noticed that Miss Clara’s piano had been shoved in the little sitting room through some double doors and covered with a blanket. This little room had always been a special treat to visit when Miss Clara lived here because it was filled with music boxes and crystal sun catchers. The rainbow colors were always ablaze in there – magical. But now, the shades were drawn, the sun catchers were piled in the corner and who knows where the music boxes were stored? I crept into the room when Essie and her mom were in the back of the house doing something and carefully pulled back the cover on the old Steinway and touched the beautiful mahogany surface. “STOP THAT, STOP THAT NOW!!!!” Loreena screeched so shrilly that I felt as if I had been stabbed with a dagger.

“Whaaaa??? I stammered in total fright.

“GET AWAY FROM THAT FILTHY THING NOW!” I backed away and when I bumped into the wall, I started and scuttled back into the front room. With that she flung herself around causing the rustling of her skirts to extinguish all of the candles and then disappeared through the tinkling beaded curtains. It almost seemed as if the beads crashing together were screaming. The parrot squawked, “GET OUT, GET OUT!”

Essie took my arm and steered me toward the porch whispering softly in my ear, “Mom hates music so badly that she tried to burn that piano when we first moved in, but for some reason, it just won’t burn. You better go now. See you tomorrow.” I was shaken pretty badly and after that, I tried to do everything like Essie so that I would still belong. I also didn’t much want to touch my piano and it wasn’t long before I was taken off of the accompanist list at school.

Things were going badly at home. My parents hardly spoke to me at the dinner table – even my dog Mattie shied away from me with her tail between her legs. Once I even heard her whine and saw her shake from under a chair as if I would ever hurt her!! I knew it was all my fault, but I couldn’t seem to make it right. Once I awoke from a bad dream and thought I heard Essie’s voice begging me to come over. But, I just laid there staring at the ceiling. The next morning, I woke up late and rushed in to science class right before the bell. Mr. Stone was passing out the exam – egad! I had forgotten all about it. I hated science right then and I hated Mr. Stone. He was downright mean to me and I had complained loud and clear to Loreena and Essie. At the end of the week, Mr. Stone asked me to stay after class. He beckoned me to come up to his desk and in a stern voice said, “Susannah, you are failing this class. You have not handed in your assignments, you have not completed your lab book, and now you have failed the exam. I am sure your parents are going to be so ashamed of you!” And with that he stuck my text in the file cabinet beside his desk and slammed the door with a bang. “Now, get out – I can’t stand the sight of you right now!”

All of the way home, I tried to think of how to explain my failure to my parents. I brought it up when I stopped by Essies. Loreena was outraged, “What do you mean – your failure? This is all Mr. Stone’s fault – he should have been better at teaching it!!!” She’s right, I thought. He is a terrible teacher! And with that I had another cup of tea. My parents did not agree with me however. My mom went right to the phone and dialed the school. But she got a busy signal. There had been an explosion in the science lab. Mr. Stone had been seriously injured and the whole room was gutted. The odd thing was – nothing else in the building was hurt. My dreams that night were soon nightmares. In my dreams, Miss Clara kept trying to tell me something but I couldn’t hear her over a whirl of beaded curtains.

On Monday, we had a substitute science teacher, Miss Omen. She was short and plump with a little bow mouth. “Good morning students, she said. “I am sorry to report that your teacher will not be back this semester if ever and also that all of your papers as well as the grade book have been destroyed. So, we will have to start over from scratch!” As horrible as it was about Mr. Stone, I couldn’t help but be happy about starting over.

Halloween was coming. Our whole neighborhood was covered in jack o’lanterns.

Essie announced that she was having a Halloween party and that all of us were invited to come. Judy and Sandy and I were too old to go trick or treating but we planned to walk around with our little brothers and sisters and mooch some treats along the way just the same. We had not seen much of each other all semester which was very odd. I kind of wondered if they had heard about my grades. All of the parents on the block got into the holiday spirit wearing costumes and getting together. It was so much fun! Essie and Loreena kept me guessing about all of the secret and scary things that they were planning. There was now a big black pot in the middle of the living room. It sat on a pedestal over a burner like a cauldron. Everthing was draped in black and even the candles were black. “Stop in early and get a preview,” Essie said with a wink. So I did.

Something was different about the house, I remember thinking back. When I walked up to the door to ring the bell, I was whooshed into the room. I mean it, that’s what it felt like. And dark – the room was pitch dark. All of the candles lit at once and the fire under the pot snorted into flame. And suddenly, there they were. Their faces seemed to float on air but I could soon see their silk clothing when my eyes became adjusted to the dark. Their voices seemed to come from miles away. “Susssssannnnnnnahhhhhhh, welcome to our coven, my sweeeeet.

We have been waiting just for you. Here, take my hand and touch the crystal ball.” Mesmerized, I put my hand in hers and saw that she was guiding it towards one of Miss Clara’s large crystals that was sitting on the table. Just as my hand fingers brushed the glass, the front door slammed open and a powerful force knocked Loreena backwards and bent the flames of the candles over.

“GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!” Mom? Was that my mom? She sort of sounded like mom and she sort of looked like mom. She stood at the door, her hair standing straight out from her head, the gown that she had on blew back as though from a strong powerful wind. Her eyes were enflamed – they almost darted out of her head like darts. Behind her stood two other beings……my aunts!!!

While I was trying to get my thoughts to make sense, a voice that sounded like it was miles behind me screeched, “OH NO BERTIE. SHE BELONGS TO ME NOW.” And with that a cold silver light was cast straight at my mother.

“Stop! I shouted, but my voice was lost in the din. What followed was something I will never forget for out of my mother’s hand shot a ball of ice blue fire just like white lightening. It struck Loreena in the neck throwing her back hard against the wall.

“You call yourself a witch?” my mom said with a sarcasm that cut to the bone. “You make real witches ashamed that you were ever born!” Loreena tried to hide behind Essie but to my amazement, Essie was no longer Essie. She was an old hag with green skin and a black pointed hat. Mom shouted, “Get out of my way Esmeralda! Your little creepy toad is not worth saving. She reached her arm back and threw another firebolt straight at Essie but Essie batted it away and in one blink of an eye, she grabbed me by my hair and thrust my face toward the cauldron full of boiling tea.

“Leave us Bertie or your little girlie will be a worted toad forever and ever.”

“Magpie – now!” My mother spoke over her shoulder and Aunt Maggie was suddenly in front of the cauldron, a tinkle of bells, and the tea turned to nectar.

“Go ahead Esmeralda – have a taste, or are you afraid,” smiled Aunt Maggie.

A rustle of skirts and Loreena ran for the beaded curtain.

Again, my mother spoke with authority. “Katydid, Now!” And my aunt Katy pointed her needle finger and the beaded curtain wrapped themselves around Loreena – around and around, tighter and tighter until the beads popped off and only the strings bound her tight. “What have we here and what do I hear? Asked Aunt Katy and she pointed her needle finger again and a blue light drifted over and around all of the beaded curtains and people began to emerge from out of the light.

I was so amazed at what had happened that I had not been watching Esmeralda. I turned to find my mother contorted over a blade of light coming from Essy’s hand. An evil laugh filled the room, a stench followed that stuck in my throat and burned my eyes. My mother was trying to tell me something. I was frozen – please, please……. And then I heard her in my mind, and I raced into the little room, threw back the blanket and started playing. Enchantment! The music soared around the room. Essie and Loreena were hardened into stones. The bamboo curtains zipped up and the evening light came in the windows. The parrot turned into Miss Clara who turned to me and said in her sweet little voice, “I told you to get out but you just wouldn’t.” The cat, Helia, turned into the canary. My mother swept the room with her lightening and all of the people began to cheer. Aunt Maggie turned to the crowd and pointed to Esmeralda and Loreena. “I really hate to spoil a good nector, but……here goes.” The crowd dropped them into the pot and the liquid was poured down the drain. Their screams echoed through the pipes and then all was silent.

“Don’t worry about them Bertie, I will take care of everything. And Susannah, come and play my piano anytime you wish.”

I looked at my mom and my aunts and we walked out of the door. By the time we reached the sidewalk, they were back to normal and I was beginning to wonder if I had actually seen what I thought I did. Now, I wondered about all of the times that my mom always seemed to show up at the right time. What about the time when the dog was chasing me and stopped snarling and started whining. What about….

“Hey, we better step on it – we don’t want to be late for dinner!” And my mother put her arm around my shoulder and we hurried home. After all, it was Halloween- the scariest night of the year!

Remember my sweets, everything isn’t what it seems……..evil exists so beware. Heh Heh! Indeed it does…..but Good Magic is always close by.