THE RIVER STREET WITCH
Dominik Parisien
I’m taking my plate to the sink when the crumbs on it grow big. I know looking too long is bad, that that’s when the magic comes, but I can’t help it. One step I’m thinking of Bobby pushing me in the schoolyard, of Becca smiling while she watches, of Chrissy laughing, and the next step the crumbs are big as pebbles, big as baseballs, bigger than the dinner plate. I try to get to the counter but it’s too late, the plate goes smash and plate bits go everywhere and the crumbs get small again and roll under the stove.
“Lucy, what the hell?” Mommy shouts, coming into the kitchen.
“The crumbs got big!” I say.
“What?”
“I’m sorry! I made the crumbs too big and I couldn’t hold the plate. I didn’t mean to!” I know from Mommy’s face I shouldn’t talk about the magic, that magic makes her angry, but I say it because it’s true and Mommy always wants the truth.
“Goddamn it, Lucy!” This was one of the good plates, for when Grams and Grumps come over, but she took them out anyway because the kids hurt me again at school and she doesn’t like when they hurt me. Mommy gets down to pick up the pieces, but she doesn’t know about the crumbs under the stove, so I say, “Mommy, I—” and she says, “Just go to your room, Lucy.” But this is important: the breadcrumbs might get big again, and if they get too big the stove might break and Mommy won’t be able to make spaghetti anymore, so I say, “You can’t leave the breadcrumbs under the stove!”
Even though it’s true, Mommy looks at me angry and screams, “Go to your fucking room, Lucy!” so I run to my room and I cry all the way there because I know that if we die hungry it will be because of me and the magic.
In bed, I tell Glover about the breadcrumbs, about my predicament, which is when you have a problem, and he looks at me with his big teddy bear eyes. I know he’s trying to help, but it doesn’t work. The magic is too strong today, and even Glover is getting big. Pretty soon my bedposts are far, far away, my ceiling goes all the way up to space, and Glover’s eyes look like stars. I’m so small I have to crawl on his leg so I can sit on the ruffles of his stomach, like a baby kangaroo.
Downstairs, Mommy is talking to Daddy on the phone about the breadcrumbs, telling him, “I can’t deal with this shit alone.” I know magic is what makes them fight, and if I could stop it I would and Daddy could live with us again, but I can’t, so now he has to stay with his friend, Delilah.
“Yes, it’s still the same Dick principal, you’d know that if you—” Daddy once said Dick is Mr. Gardner’s first name. Mommy was angry when he explained that, because kids aren’t supposed to know a principal’s first name, especially if it’s Dick. If I was a boy and my name was Dick I wouldn’t want kids saying it, even if I wasn’t an adult, because it’s stupid. I know Mommy doesn’t think so because she’s telling Daddy “—not stupid, Vince – doesn’t need private schoo—”
I know private means something not for kids, but sometimes the magic makes words bigger when they come out of Mommy’s mouth, and I can hear them from my room even when I’m not supposed to.
“I am not a witch, I am not a witch,” I say, burying my face into Glover’s huge leg. It isn’t true, though. I am a witch. The River Street Witch, which I guess is what happens when you’re the only witch who lives on River Street. But sometimes I don’t want to be. Nobody likes witches, not the other kids in school, not even Mommy or Daddy. Magic leads to misunderstandings, which is when people don’t believe in something but it’s true and you aren’t allowed to say that.
“I’ll go into the kitchen when Mommy falls asleep,” I tell Glover, “and then get the breadcrumbs out from under the stove.” I don’t really sleep so waiting is easy. I don’t tell Glover the rest of my plan, how I want to bring the breadcrumbs back to my room and put them in my fishbowl and feed them to Matt. Magic is like science, you need to experiment, and experiments are complicated. Glover is a teddy, and teddies understand better than most people, so obviously he already knows what I want to do. I’ve already tried staring at the tiny Matt in the fishbowl over and over, but Matt hasn’t changed size yet. Maybe if he eats the breadcrumbs I made grow he’ll grow big again too. I know Matt wants to go outside the fishbowl, but if I let him out he’ll run, and he is so, so small, and someone will squish him and no one will even know, and he’ll be gone forever because of my magic. So, he has to stay in the fishbowl for now.
I really should stop calling it a fishbowl. Words are important. The fishbowl is a terrarium, which is what you call a place to hide tiny animals and people and help them grow. Matt must be lonely in the terrarium. The army men toys I put in there are way bigger than he is, and he doesn’t kick them anymore, or scream or hug them. He mostly just sits with his head down.
I need to make Matt big again. Like the breadcrumbs, I didn’t mean to change him. I used to walk behind Matt on the way home from school, but Mommy doesn’t let me walk home alone anymore since Matt came to live in my terrarium.
I liked the back of Matt’s head, the way the top of his backpack rubbed against his hair and left a spot like an upside-down horseshoe. I was looking at that spot too long, and that’s how the magic snuck up and shrunk him. Matt’s head became as small as an egg, and I couldn’t see it over his backpack. I was so scared for Matt –he’s nice and lets me walk behind him and doesn’t make fun of me – so I looked somewhere else when he turned the corner near the little wood by the school. When I turned the corner, there was only his backpack. I screamed Help help even though I didn’t want anyone to see, and in the bushes I saw an old man with long hair and a beard like a broken bird’s nest go deeper into the woods. I just know he saw the magic and got scared and ran. It took me a long time to find Matt, he was so tiny. I thought bugs might eat him. I was crying when Mr. Bleacher found me later with the backpack and still little Matt hidden in my lunchbox.
It’s so hard not talking about Matt. Mommy says only adults get to keep secrets, that kids can’t because they make you grow old really fast if you don’t say them. Not talking about Matt hasn’t made me skip any grades yet, but it does make me feel like Grumps when he says the ceiling pushes down on him when he walks. I always thought that was funny, but I think it’s true, and if I can’t fix Matt soon I’ll look like Grams and Grumps by summer.
I wish I could tell Mommy or Daddy, tell Matt’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, so they wouldn’t need to worry. Tell Bobby and Becca and Chrissy so maybe they would leave me alone. But I can’t. I know they’d all be angry because I can’t make Matt big again. That’s why I didn’t tell the policeman how it really happened, because he would ask the Woods Man and then they would put me in jail for my magic.
But maybe everything will be fine, maybe the breadcrumbs will help Matt get back to normal. Getting them will be easy. I’m small enough now to crawl under the stove and get the breadcrumbs. Even if Mommy gets up she won’t see me.
I don’t always want to be a witch, but sometimes it helps to do what you need to do.
“It’s just the goddamn Alice in Wonderland Sin Drum,” Mommy screams from Mr. Gardner’s office. I was supposed to stay in the office with her, but Mr. Gardner told me to wait on the chair outside. His secretary, Miss Reynolds, sits next to me at her desk and she coughs twice really loudly. I think she might have a bad cold and maybe I should sit somewhere else.
“…Todd’s Sin Drum, Mrs. Demarco.”
Sin Drum isn’t what it sounds like, it isn’t a bad drum, it’s just what Mommy calls the magic. Our music teacher, Mrs. Lodge, probably wouldn’t like it, but I don’t think she knows. Mr. Gardner always says Todd’s Sin Drum, because Todd has a Sin Drum too, but I don’t know Todd. Mommy gets angry when I ask if I can meet him and says Todd is just the doctor who made Alice in Wonderland Sin Drum, but the doctors I know aren’t witches so I know she’s lying. Mommy hates lying, but she hates magic more, so that’s why I’m sure Todd is a witch too. She doesn’t want us to play because it could
make the magic stronger. Mommy doesn’t understand how lonely it is being a witch. But someday I know I’ll meet Todd and we’ll talk about our magic and be witch friends. I’ll show him my Alice in Wonderland book. I know Todd will like it. Mommy and Daddy and Mr. Gardner like to say my magic is like Alice’s, that it’s just in my head and in a book, that it isn’t real, but they’re wrong. Alice eats cookies and drinks juice and that’s what makes her big and small. Alice isn’t a witch, like me or like Todd. But I still like the book. Even if there’s fake stuff in it like disappearing cats and rabbits in clothes and mean cards, at least there’s real magic around Alice.
“Mrs. Demarco, Lucy’s condition coupled with her learning difficulties—”
“Here, Lucy,” Miss Reynolds says, giving me one of the hard yellow candies from her desk. Everybody knows those candies are for secretaries and teachers, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to keep it for Mr. Gardner so I hold it in my hand just in case.
“—fact that your daughter found Matthew’s backpack only helps connect her to the boy’s disappearance in the children’s minds. The combination is making Lucy an easy target for students to—”
The candy feels sticky in my hand. Matt didn’t grow back to normal with the breadcrumbs. If he was here he could sit on the candy and get stuck there.
“The candy is for you, dear,” Miss Reynolds says. I smile at her and put the candy in my mouth. Because the candy is for adults it tastes like it’s made from bigger lemons and it makes my cheeks feel like magic is making them smaller.
“—lucky she’s in the other room. Lucy, grab your bag, we’re going home! And give me your fucking superintendent’s number!”
Houses fly by the car window, and I don’t know if it’s the magic shoving them away from Mommy’s anger, or if Mommy’s foot is cramped and she can’t pull it off the pedal. The day too is magicked, I think. The magic made it smaller because I still had gym and math class, but here we are in the car.
“Piece of shit pompous prick of a—” Mommy says to the steering wheel. Sometimes Mommy goes outside into the car at night and screams. She thinks I don’t see her but I do. I know the car sometimes helps Mommy like Glover helps me. The car has a name but I don’t know it. I think it only talks to Mommy, which is fine. Mommies need special friends too. So do cars, I guess, and they probably only like people who can drive them. So, I give Mommy and the car some time together. I only say something when I see the dog crossing the street in front of us. It’s a big dog, off its leash, and it looks like those dogs that pull sleds in the North.
“Mommy.”
She and the car are still talking and they don’t see the dog, which isn’t surprising because the dog is now the size of our neighbour’s fluffy Pomeranian. Or because the car is the size of a big truck.
So I say, “Mommy,” again, but louder. Mommy isn’t paying attention, I can tell because she doesn’t realize how high above the street we’re driving. I guess that means the dog should be fine, but you never know with magic.
Then: “MOMMY!”
Mommy turns her head my way and shouts: “WHAT?”
“THE DOG!” but it’s too late, too late, the monster truck car is already driving over the spot where the tiny dog was crossing. Mommy makes the car stop, and the car screams in a high-pitched voice. The car is scared, like me. It didn’t like getting big, or maybe it’s afraid for the dog too. Maybe getting back to regular size made the car’s pipes and oil and understuff squeeze the dog in its insides and it’s all my fault. I pet the glovebox in front of me and whisper, “Everything will be okay, car.” It has to be.
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit,” Mommy says, climbing out of the car. I unbuckle my seatbelt – I’m supposed to sit in the back but I think the car likes having me in the front, so Mommy lets me – and I get out too. Mommy looks under the front of the car, and a stranger runs over and shouts. I don’t want to look, but then I don’t have to. Next to my shoe is the tiny dog, wagging its tail. Witches shouldn’t cry, but I’m so happy I cry a little anyway. I bend down, pick the dog up between my fingers, and put it in my pocket. The dog’s voice is so small I can’t tell if it’s barking or some other sounds, but I don’t want to leave it in the street. The magic doesn’t always work the way I want it to, and right now the dog isn’t getting big again.
“Goddamn it!” Mommy says, maybe to me or to the stranger still shouting at her. “There’s nothing there.”
“Sorry,” I tell her. “I thought there was a big dog.” I know Mommy only wants the truth, but today is a day where truth won’t be good for Mommy. Like on days I want ice cream, but my tummy growls and I know eating it will only hurt so I don’t. I let Mommy sit me back in the car and listen to her shout, even though it isn’t night and I’m in the car with her.
It’s for the best. Mommy doesn’t like dogs.
I call the dog Gulliver. Gulliver looks happy to come out of my pocket, and I’m glad Gulliver wasn’t squished by the car or by my pocket. A better name for him might be Lilliputian, like in another book Mommy showed me where people are small but they don’t have the magic like me. Lilliputian is a nice name, but it’s too long, and Lilli is a girl’s name, and I think this dog is a boy, so I call him Gulliver. Gulliver is probably somebody’s dog, but they wanted a big dog and Gulliver is small now, so I’ll keep him until he gets big again.
I put Gulliver in the terrarium with Matt. Gulliver jumps around when he sees Matt, which is good. Matt seems happy – he keeps hugging the dog and shaking. Maybe Gulliver is Matt’s dog, and he’s been looking for Matt since Matt’s been gone. I think he is. The magic has done a good thing, bringing boy and dog together. I give them cracker bits from my school snack and I put a few drops of water in the bottle cap that works like a little pond. I can’t give them fruit because flies will come and take Matt away.
“Now there are two of them,” I tell Glover, leaning on the bed. Downstairs, Mommy is talking to Samantha at the doctor’s office. Samantha is Mommy’s best friend and Mommy calls her a lot.
“What – vacation? Lucy needs to see him now. Are you the goddamn doctor? Then why do – Okay, okay, I’m sorry Samantha. I just don’t know what to do – yeah, still Alice in Wonderland Sin Drum—”
“I need to fix this, but I don’t know how. Help me, Glover. Tell me what to do.” But he just watches Matt and Gulliver. “You’re useless!” I say, but I don’t mean it. He does so much for me. But he can’t do magic. What I need is another witch. What I need is Todd, and Glover already knows that because he’s a teddy. So, I just hold him tight while Mommy shouts and cries downstairs.
Donny’s mommy runs next to our car in her bathrobe, even though bathrobes are for inside where no one can see you. In their house, Donny looks at us from the window. He’s all wrapped up in blankets. I guess he isn’t going to school today and that’s fine, I don’t really like Donny.
“They found Matt,” she says looking at me, and my fingers make fists and my nails dig into my pants. That can’t be true. Nobody is allowed in my room! I want to scream. Only Mommy and Daddy can go in and Matt is so small they never see him!
“In the woods,” she says, and I’m shaking. Someone thinks they found Matt, but they haven’t. He was in the fishbowl this morning. They’ve just found something else. “He’s…he’s dea—”
“Don’t say it!” Mommy screams.
I try to grab Mommy by the wrist but she puts her hands on her mouth and makes a whine like Gulliver. Donny’s mommy bumps their heads together and they say things to each other that aren’t words but are trying to be words.
Now I want to say, Matt is just in my terrarium, even if I will go to prison for magic, even if Mommy will hate me, because I don’t want her to sound like that. I want Mr. and Mrs. Rogers to know Matt isn’t really gone. Even if I can’t fix him. But I can’t. They will misunderstand because I’m a witch, because of the magic. So Mommy keeps crying and Donny’s mommy cries and I cry and it’s so stupid because Matt isn’t even g
one, he’s in my room, in my terrarium, with a dog called Gulliver.
“I…I need to take Lucy to school.”
I almost scream, No, Mommy, leave me with Matt! I need to try other experiments, try something, anything.
“What? You can’t seriously—”
“I can’t do this to her. She…she needs this, she needs to be there. Some of the kids blame her. She can’t be away when they announce it. If she runs from this it’ll only be worse.”
But Mommy is wrong. I’m the witch who made Matt small, who keeps him in her room, who makes people think Matt is gone. How will I lie to everyone when they’ll think he’s gone for real? The secret will make me so old. My hands are all wet from crying, and my fingers look like when I get out of the bath, or like Grams’ and Grumps’s hands. I want to say, Look at my hands, Mommy. By tomorrow I will be too old for school!
Mrs. Drummond calls math arithmetic, and every day she writes out the word on the chalkboard so we can learn it. Arithmetic. I hate it. It makes me think of asthma, which Bobby has, and then I sit in class and all I can hear is Bobby’s scary asthma breathing, even though he isn’t breathing like that. Sometimes I look at the word and it gets so big it pushes all the other words and numbers off the board, and all I see is Arithmetic.
I don’t want to think about numbers. A week is seven days. Two weeks is another seven days, and seven plus seven is fourteen. Matt’s been in my terrarium for more than fourteen days. And now Mommy and Donny’s mommy think Matt is gone forever, and soon everyone will think that too unless I do something.
On my desk, my right hand is too big, at least two times bigger than my left hand. I don’t want the other kids to see, so I put my face in my hands and lick my palm, because it helps sometimes. There’s salt in my mouth now, from the rocks I was playing with in the schoolyard. I want to think just about the salt, to not let the magic come, but it isn’t working.
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