by Douglas Rees
There is another thing about covens that you need to know if you do not know it already: No guys.
This is not a sexist thing. It’s that guys don’t have the same level of psychic development as girls and women. I mean, sure, there are guy witches. And you get the occasional wizard. But did you ever see a wizard in a Circle of Thirteen? Not if those witches know what they’re doing. It’s like a battery with a weak cell.
And I think guys are distracting to somebody who needs to develop all her powers. The thing to do, if you are a witch, is to develop those powers, then use them to get the guys you want. Not that that is a problem in Jurupa. The guys at Richard Milhous Nixon Union High School are to die from. If they had a Stupid Contest, they would need a whole truckload of first prizes.
So the first advice on being a witch is: Find twelve more girls who want to be one. The second advice is: No guys, no matter how cute they are. Especially if they are cute. But it doesn’t matter because the rule is still: No guys.
And that brings me to the next advice on being a witch.
If you are going to be a witch and develop your powers, you need to spend a lot of time alone. The best place to be alone is up on the roof.
Even before I became a witch, I liked to climb up on top of the house. But because the top of the house is the best place in the world to be, I was not supposed to be up there. Because it’s dangerous. But it was not dangerous to me because I move like a cat. I would climb up the trellis where the bougainvillea grew and just like a little kitten scamper up to the peak. I got scratches and earwigs from the bougainvillea, but that was okay. I was up on the roof.
I almost never did my roof thing when BD was home, only when Mommy Angel was. Because BD would get really T. Rex about it, but Mommy Angel just kind of wished I wouldn’t.
HERE IS THE DIFFERENCE
BD: Susan, get the hell down off the roof NOW. I don’t want you breaking the seal on it.
I come down.
The End
MA: Susan, darling, what are you doing up there?
ME: Nothing.
MA: Then come down and do it on the ground.
ME: I can’t. It’s roof nothing.
MA: I’m afraid you’ll fall and hurt yourself.
ME: More people hurt themselves on the ground than on the roof.
MA: Susan, would you like to go shopping?
ME: After I’m done up here.
Mommy Angel sighs and goes away.
The End
Up there on my roof, I could see the Ridges, which are low mountains that run along the east side of San Francisco Bay. They are gray in winter, green in spring, and golden the rest of the year. There are oak trees on them, which are green or blue, depending on how they are feeling. And on days when the clouds just touch the tops of the peaks and lie across the sky flat as a ceiling, you can see centaurs on the Ridges if you look. Never any other time.
From the other side of the roof you can see the Santa Cruz Mountains. They are real mountains, not just ridges. When the sun goes down behind them, they look like an old castle wall keeping you safe. When the fog comes in off the ocean, it builds up behind them and looks like a silent waterfall hanging in the sky. Then the sun goes down, and the waterfall flows in and covers up the stars. It is only regular clouds when it gets to my roof, but it is still way beautiful.
Plus, if you are smoking, and don’t want The Rentz to know, the roof is a good place to do it.
And after I became a witch the roof was an even better place to be because it is closer to the moon, and the moon is very important to witches. That’s what Jennifer said.
Jennifer was my friend. My best and only friend in seventh grade, which was where we met. And eighth grade. And she was the first witch I’d ever seen.
Jennifer always wore black and had long dangly earrings, three in one ear and four in the other. When she moved her head, she jingled, sort of. She never talked to anybody unless they talked to her first. Then what she usually said was, “No.”
I never said anything to her. But I thought she was neat. Because she always acted like she knew something you didn’t. Something you would really want to know if you knew what it was you didn’t know that she did. I would have liked to talk to her, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make her say, “No.”
Then we got teamed to do a country report, along with three other kids. Just in case it is a hundred years from now and you don’t know what a country report is, I will explain. You get a country, which in this case was Brazil, and everybody has to do a part of the report. I got Way of Life. Jennifer got Government and Economy.
So we were sitting around in our study group trying to decide how to do the report, and Jennifer said, “I’m not doing Government and Economy. I’m doing Way of Life. Deal with it.”
Kevin, who is our group’s leader because he’s the biggest suck-up of the five of us, says, “You can’t do what you want. You have to do what the group decides.”
“You have to do what the group decides,” Jennifer says. “I’m doing Way of Life.”
I don’t care what part of the report I do. I don’t want to do any of it. But here’s a chance to talk to Jennifer. So after our meeting, which does not decide anything, I go up to her and I say, “Why do you want to do my stuff?”
“I don’t,” Jennifer says. “But Way of Life includes religion.”
“You can’t have my stuff,” I say. “Not unless you tell me why.”
And Jennifer won’t say anything.
But after school I asked her again and she sighed and said, “It’s personal. But if I tell you, will you promise to let me have Way of Life?”
“Okay,” I say.
“There’s this religion in Brazil. It’s based on voodoo and practically everybody’s into it. I want to know more about it. Anyway, that’s why I want to do Way of Life.”
“You’re into voodoo?” I say. I don’t know what that is. I’ve only heard it’s some kind of magical stuff.
“Not yet,” Jennifer says. “Maybe someday I’ll go down there and study it. Right now I’m just into the Craft.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Witchcraft,” Jennifer says.
And then she starts to tell me that the Craft is really just the old religion that got pushed underground. She says she’s been a witch for about a year, and she’s really lucky because her name is magikal. Jennifer means “the white bow” in an ancient language that nobody speaks now, and that the white bow is the crescent moon, and the crescent moon is really the hunting bow of the Goddess, and that witchcraft is really the worship of her. And that is the coolest thing I have ever heard about a name.
“I wonder what my name means,” I say.
“You should know,” Jennifer says. “Names are part of your power. Want to go look it up?”
And we go to the library and Jennifer shows me this book with everybody’s name in it, and it turns out that Susan means “lily.” Which is lame, because I am not a lily.
But she says, “It’s cool. You can make up your own name when you’re ready. That’s allowed. In fact, it’s the best way.”
“Did you make up yours?” I ask.
“No,” says Jennifer. “I was one of the lucky ones. I got the right name when I was born. But until you discover your true name you can be Lily in rituals.”
“What rituals?” I say.
“Want to come to one?” she says, and tells me that there’s a new moon this Friday night and do I want to come over to welcome it?
Of course I want to come over and welcome the new moon. So I ask if I can go over to Jennifer’s and hang out Friday night.
It’s no problem for The Rentz. BD isn’t home, and Mommy Angel is happy about it. Because she thinks I must be happy. Which I am, kind of. But still. No reason for her to go off like a Japanese anime kitty on happy crackers.
She’s reading one of her favorite books, the APEX! catalog, which is full of stuff nobody needs and on
ly people who own their own computer companies can afford. I tell her I want to go visit my friend, Jennifer. She looks up from the page with the Twin Stainless Steel Maximilian Style Suits of Armor, Perfect for Your Foyer on it, and her eyes light up. She even closes the catalog.
“Oh, it’s so good you’re beginning to make friends,” she says. “High school can be such a drag. I hated it. Go, go, go. Have a wonderful, wonderful time, my darling, and come home happy.”
I mean, jeez.
Being happy is very important to Mommy Angel. If someone is not happy, it must be time to go shopping. Mommy Angel goes shopping a lot.
She used to be a nightclub singer. She worked in these really tough places where she had to do songs about love and the moon and love and the stars and love and forever. Then she married BD and stopped working. She still sings, though. Around the house and stuff. I think she wants to crawl into the songs and live in them.
So, anyway, I get to go to Jennifer’s.
Jennifer lives close by, but in an apartment, not a house. She’s alone when I get there because Jennifer lives with just her mother, and her mother’s out. So she’s got her altar out in the middle of the living room, and she lets me light the candles and she lights the incense and it is all really cool.
“The New Moon is the best time to ask for something you want,” Jennifer says. “Because it’s going to be spending the next two weeks growing. So you’re more likely to get it.”
“What are we doing this ritual for?” I ask.
“For gold,” Jennifer says. “My mom and I need more money. So this is a ritual for gold.”
And we say a chant that Jennifer has copied out of a book called The Witche’s Formulary of Magick. And the candlelight is beautiful and the incense smells like roses and I feel like I’m doing something real and powerful. And best of all, I’m doing it with Jennifer.
After that, we did a lot of rituals. Some of them were blessings and to honor the moon or the seasons and stuff like that. The rest were charms and spells for gold.
I never had a friend like Jennifer before.
I loved doing the stuff and I loved learning it. And Jennifer said I was really good at it.
She said, “You know, Lily, you might be better than me at this stuff in a few years. You really get the universe’s attention sometimes. I can feel it.”
Sometimes she would do stuff for other people, as a secret favor, and I would help. Never to other people. Because of the Rule of Three. Whatever bad thing you put on somebody else, you will get back three times as much. That’s white magick for you.
I could feel the universe getting bigger and deeper for me.
Then the worst happened. The gold spells worked. Jennifer’s mother got engaged to this guy and he gave her this big gold ring. Then they all moved to Kansas City because he’d gotten this great job there. And they got married.
No more Jennifer.
I guess she still misses me. I hear from her once in a while. But there’s not much about the Craft in her e-mails. They’re mostly about how great her new dad is, or how Kansas City isn’t as lame as the name makes you think. She even knows some other witches.
“Kansas City isn’t really in Kansas,” she texted me a month after she got there. “It’s in Missouri. This dislocation gives it an eldritch quality, which draws the Powers. I am gaining strength here. Also, there are more fountains in Kansas City than any place but Rome. TTFN.”
Swell.
But I am furious at the universe for answering our charms and spells in such a sneaky way. The universe was selfish to take Jennifer away from me.
What good is a universe if you can’t trust it?
3
BD AND ME
THIS CHAPTER IS MORE ABOUT ME. But in a way it is advice, too.
Back in the days before I met Jennifer, BD and I did compute. I was Daddy’s little girl, if you can believe that. I thought he was wonderful and he thought I was right. The fact that he was around maybe six hours a day, tops, just made him more special to me. And when there was that take-your-daughter-to-work-day thing every year, I didn’t mind that he never asked me. I just had Mommy Angel drive me over to his business. Because I knew that he was too busy to remember. Then I would sit in the smoky dark and eat ice cream with him all day.
And Mommy Angel thought everything was wonderful, which in a way it was, so she was happy. And if there was a mommy thing to do, she did it with me. I was even in Brownies for a year, and Mommy Angel was my troop leader. She had the uniform and everything. Actually, she had three uniforms. That was her version of Be Prepared.
And when I needed help with my homework, she got me a tutor.
I asked her why she didn’t just help me, but she explained: “Oh, honey, I am just not smart enough for all the things you’re learning. I mean, thank heaven you have your father’s mind, but there’s no point in me trying to teach you math. I want you to get the best education there is.”
And she got some guy with a PhD to explain prealgebra to me, which is why I am good at algebra.
It was like my whole life came out of a catalog. But that was cool. They were good catalogs.
But after Jennifer and the universe happened, I began to suspect that these people who said they were my parents were actually a couple of aliens from Planet Clueless, and that my real parents were aboard the mother ship somewhere having horrible probes put into them.
Because how could my real parents be so dumb/mean about everything that had started to matter so much to me? But that is the fact. And to prove it, here is the day I learned it.
I had set up an altar in my room, and I was doing spells to get the universe to bring Jennifer back. One day when I was burning some bread to try to get this demon to do me a favor, and BD had stopped at the house to change his shirt, he smelled the smell coming from my room and followed it, and opened my door without even knocking.
HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED
BD: What is going on, Susan?
ME: A ritual. Close the door.
And he did, but he was still on the same side of it I was.
BD: Susan, what are you doing?
ME: I told you. Now go away. This is my room.
And he came over to my altar and saw my stuff and got all bent out of shape.
BD: Susan, is this witchcraft? It is, isn’t it?
And he actually knocked everything onto the floor.
ME: Stop it!
BD: No, you stop it. You’re stopping it right now. I don’t know where you got these ideas, but you will not do these things in this house. Good Lord, Susan, don’t you know this nonsense is completely irrational?
(Right. Like sitting in front of a bunch of computers sucking on tobacco until you fall over from a heart attack is rational.)
BD: It’s primitive.
(Right. Like kicking a plate of burning bread onto the floor isn’t primitive.)
BD: It’s stupid!
(Unlike intelligently sitting in front of computer screens eating ice cream until—never mind. Just look back up the page.)
BD: And you will not be involved in it.
(Hello? BD? Guess what? There’s religious freedom in this country. Maybe you didn’t get that memo.)
BD: The human race has struggled for centuries to get beyond these lies, and here you are sucking up this junk like the scientific revolution never happened. What’s wrong with you?
I am so mad that I want to hit him. But I get control of myself, sort of, and without crying I say:
ME: Daddy, what do you believe in?
BD: Never mind about me.
ME: What do you believe in?
BD: Lots of things.
ME: Like what?
He thinks this one over for a while. Then he says:
BD: I believe in really good software.
ME: Everybody believes in software.
BD: Then everybody’s right.
ME: I mean, do you believe in God or the Goddess, or anything?
BD: I do
n’t know. And neither does anybody else.
ME: Well, I believe in this.
BD: Then get over it. Now.
And he stomps out of my room and goes off to work.
HERE IS WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Mommy Angel is downstairs pretending she doesn’t hear anything. Just like she pretended she didn’t smell my incense all the times I burned some. After BD leaves, I go downstairs and see her in her favorite place in the living room. She is looking through catalogs for more stuff to buy. She is also singing. It is one of the songs she always sings when she is looking through catalogs.