by Douglas Rees
I don’t want diamonds. I don’t need pearls.
I just want to be somebody’s girl.
It is one of the ancient songs she used to sing in nightclubs. All her songs are ancient. But she has a great voice.
HERE IS WHAT WE SAID
ME: Do you believe in God or anything, Mom?
MA gives this big sigh and looks up with this fakey smile and says:
MA: That’s something everyone should decide for themselves, dear.
ME: Well, I decided for myself, and Big Daddy just trashed my room for it.
MA: Well, maybe you’re a little young to decide for yourself. You’re only fourteen.
ME: What have you decided for yourself?
MA: Oh, I don’t know.
ME: You’re thirty-eight. When are you going to be old enough to decide?
MA: Susan, how would you like to go shopping?
ME: No.
MA: I’ll buy you some new shoes.
ME: I don’t want any.
MA: How about a purse?
ME: How about a different father?
MA: Susan, you shouldn’t say things like that.
I stomp back upstairs and slam my door.
The End
But even though I was furious and hurt, and The Rentz had been completely unfair, I tried at first to make them see reason. I mean, I knew what the Craft recommended. Rule of Three. Return good for evil and it will come back to you threefold. I returned good for evil. And I used white magick to do it.
BD had a big contract he was trying to get, so I did seven different good-luck spells to help him. I put charms in his pockets when he was asleep, and sneaked a slide of a mandala into his PowerPoint presentation. I even recorded a ringer for his cell on the night before the big meeting. When it went off, my voice said, “O, Goddess, look with compassion on my Daddy as he tries to score this deal with LunaTech. May his bid be lowest and his technical support the most extensive, and may his software find favor in their sight.” Then I called during the meeting to make sure it went off.
Of course he got the contract. And he came home and he thanked me and the universe.
Yeah, right.
Or anyway, two out of three:
He GOT the contract.
He CAME home.
Then: He GROUNDED me for a week, TOOK AWAY my allowance for two weeks, and told me never to do anything like that again.
“Dammit, Susan, you have embarrassed me in front of my coworkers and my client,” he said. “What are you trying to do to me?”
“Help?” I said.
“How is it supposed to help me when a totally irrelevant slide appears in the middle of my presentation?” he hollered. “It threw off the whole sequence of my talk. And when the president of LunaTech asked me what it was, I didn’t know what to say. What was that damn thing anyway?”
“A symbol of wholeness,” I said.
“Well, it looked like a volleyball,” BD said. “And that thing you put on my cell. Thank God the client didn’t hear it. As it was, only Charlie and Ram heard it, and they both laughed so hard it almost broke up the meeting. So get this straight—no more spells. No more luck charms or whatever they are. No more witchcraft in this house—ever. Got it?”
“Speaking of getting things, you’re welcome,” I said.
“Welcome for what?” he said.
“Welcome for the contract,” I said.
And I was grounded for two weeks.
4
THE WITCHCRAFT WAR
THAT WAS THE START of the Witchcraft War.
I never tried to cast a spell in my house again. I did them at night in the backyard. Under the elm tree. And the moon would shine down through its leaves and touch my altar and the powers would be flowing up to it and down to me. And it wasn’t white magick anymore, either. Where BD was concerned, I was done with that. If he didn’t respect what I had done for him, maybe he would respect what I did to him.
I didn’t care about the Rule of Three. I wanted BD to have to admit that I was right and he was wrong. So I started casting spells for his car to break down and his business to lose money. None of them worked, but that was cool. I’d never worked the dark side before. I figured the universe would have to take a while to shift gears.
Meanwhile, until my skills got stronger, I did other things just to show my male and female alien housemates I wasn’t going to be their little girl anymore. I started calling Big Daddy Big Daddy and Mommy Angel Mommy Angel, which they hated. I also called them The Rentz, which they hated even more.
And I kept asking BD and MA the kinds of questions they didn’t want to answer. Little things like, “How come I can’t believe in something just because you don’t?” and “What happens when we die?” Which made Mommy Angel want to take me shopping a lot. Sometimes I’d let her. And I’d get another piercing and an earring to go with it. And green hair.
All of which made BD majorly mad at me. And made MA spend even more time with her catalogs. So I did more of it.
And when Mommy Angel said, “Oh, Susan, why can’t you be like you were?” I said, “Why can’t you let me be who I am now?”
She just sighed and went back to her catalogs and later I heard her singing real softly:
Oh, my baby, why can’t we
Be the way we used to be?
Back when things were soft and light?
Can’t it be that way tonight?
And I felt like I’d won a battle.
There was one time when things were a little bit different. For about two minutes. And only with BD. It was the time I said, “I think ghosts are true. I’ll bet there are ghosts all over the place and we just don’t see them because we have the lights on all the time.”
And BD said, “I used to wish I could believe in something like that. I really did. I even tried for a while. I read one of my sister’s stupid books about life after death or something. But it was garbage. There’s just no evidence.”
And I said, “There’s lots of evidence. There’s evidence for all kinds of things.”
“Not scientific evidence,” BD said.
“Well, how do you get scientific evidence without experiments?” I said. “What do you want, a haunted laboratory?”
“Yeah,” BD said.
“Okay, so you believe in science. I believe in witchcraft. Why can’t I believe what I want and you believe what you want?”
“Because I’m right,” BD said.
Which explained everything. Except how I got into this family.
Which is why I changed my name to Kestrel. Because a kestrel is a kind of hawk. It’s small and it bites and it scratches and it flies high up against the sun and from there it sees ten times better than anyone down on earth. Just like me. And since I couldn’t fly, I spent as much time as I could on the roof.
Which is where I was when BD had his heart attack.
I was sitting there with my weeds and my clouds when he drove up. He saw me and shouted at me to get down off the roof and stop smoking. Like Two Blocks Away and They Heard Every Word he shouted.
And I said, “Come on up, Big Daddy. I smoke your brand,” and waved the pack at him.
In our front yard we have a walnut tree very good for climbing and walnuts. I could reach the roof that way by climbing out along one long branch that pointed toward the house. Usually I took the bougainvillea, but the tree was just as good.
But if you’re forty years old and fat as a Before picture in a weight-loss ad, you shouldn’t climb trees.
But that is what Big Daddy did then. He climbed up the tree trying to get to the roof, and me.
His face was red as fire and his eyes were twitching, and even though he wasn’t halfway up the tree yet, I backed up all the way to the peak of the roof.
BD was trying to force himself into the crotch of the tree, grunting and panting, and staring at me, and all of a sudden he fell out.
I was so surprised I laughed. But I didn’t want to. And it wasn’t funny. Because he l
ay there on the ground going, “Oh, my God…” and grabbing at his chest.
So I screamed, “Mom!” and she didn’t come, and I screamed it again, and she didn’t come, and then I just screamed.
And BD sort of crawled to the front door and banged. And then I heard Mommy Angel let out a scream of her own, and in a few minutes I heard the sirens.
And the fire truck came and the ambulance came and the paramedics came and I got down and watched them take BD away on a stretcher with a white sheet over him and a mask on his face so he could breathe.
And I was more scared than I ever knew I could be.
And I swear I never cast any kind of spell for BD to have a heart attack. Never. The universe did that all on its own.
All this is why I know you cannot trust the universe and you have to be able to control it. And if that’s black magic, blesséd be.
5
THE TRUTH
I HAVE TO INTERRUPT THIS GRIMOIRE to write this chapter. I was going to show you how to do an inventory of magick, but that will have to wait.
Because The Rentz called tonight. Actually, it was Mommy Angel. She had her niciest voice on. If niceness was muscles, she’d be a lady wrestler instead of a singer.
HERE’S WHAT WE SAID
MA: Hello, Susan dear.
ME: Sorry, you must have the wrong number.
MA: Kestrel. Anyway, I’ve been trying and trying your cell phone, but I didn’t get any answer. Is there something the matter with it?
ME: Not as far as I know.
MA: Then did you get my messages?
ME: I don’t know. I turned it off.
MA: But why?
ME: I couldn’t think of anybody I wanted to talk to.
MA: Oh.
ME: What do you want?
MA: I want to know how you’re doing, of course.
ME: If you really want to know how I’m doing, bring me back home and see for yourself.
MA: We will, dear. Just as soon as your father’s heart is strong enough…. Are you and Alice getting along?
ME: Nobody here by that name.
MA: I meant Ariel.
ME: She’s okay, I guess. Okay?
MA (Sighing): Do you need anything for school?
ME: How about some teachers with brains?
MA: That’s not funny, Susan.
ME: I’m not joking, and my name’s not Susan.
MA: You haven’t asked me about your father.
ME: I haven’t asked you about anything.
MA: He’s been feeling much stronger.
ME: Ever since I left, right?
MA: Yes. That is, no, not really…Sus—Kestrel, could I please speak to Ali—Ariel?
ME: Can’t. She’s in the middle of a spell.
MA: A spell. What’s the matter with her? Didn’t you dial 911?
ME: Not that kind of spell, Mommy Angel. She’s casting a love spell for some geek who wants her husband back.
MA: Oh. Of course. I’m sorry, but ever since your father’s attack, all I can think of when I hear the word spell is—
ME: Whatever.
Then Aunt Ariel comes in from the garage. She’s sweaty. It’s hot in there. There’s some kind of sweet incense smell following her like a lovesick puppy, and she’s wearing a caftan with crescent moon pins stuck all over it. All different. There must be about three hundred. Aunt Ariel’s body has lots of space for decorations. She looks like a purple Milky Way.
AA: Who is that, Kestrel?
ME: My mom.
AA: How nice. Does she want to speak with me?
I hand her the phone and leave the room. From the living room I listen while I pretend to read my library book, The Witche’s Formulary of Magick. It is the one Jennifer used, and reading it is a little like being with her again. I am seriously considering stealing it from the library. But witches never steal.
AA: Oh, you’re not interrupting at all, Sandra. I’ve been working in the garage. I’m sweating like a horse. Glad to talk to you. Casting a love spell? That’s not quite how I’d put it. Our girl has quite an imagination, hasn’t she?… I think she’s settling in quite nicely…. Of course she dislikes school. What is there for her to like?… No, anyone who likes high school has a potentially severe personality disorder. Jocks and cheerleaders often never get over their glory years. It’s pathetic, really. We wouldn’t want that for her. But don’t worry; she’ll never be that kind…. Oh…the dress code thing is fine. Of course she wasn’t happy about it at first, but everything’s worked out now. (Dropping her voice) I think I’ve convinced her to give up smoking…. It was nothing. She’d just never considered all the consequences before. (Voice back up) She’s really wise for someone her age.
She’s got that right anyway.
AA: How’s my brother?… Good… Good. Yes, he will have to take better care of himself from now on. He should have started doing it years ago…. Maybe six months? No problem. She’s welcome here forever. What are family for? Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in, as Robert Frost said…. Don’t worry about it. You’ve got enough on your plate with Ted. No, believe me, it’s a pleasure…. Yes, I’ll get her. Kestrel.
I have to admit, I like the way she calls my name. Like she means it. Like she’s not thinking “Susan” when she says it. I go back in and take the phone.
When I pick it up, MA is humming. I know the tune and the words:
I wish we were together
In some cozy little room
Where the flicker from the fire
Chases all my fear and gloom.
MA: S—Kestrel, I am so pleased to talk with you and Ariel. It sounds like you’re fitting right in.
ME: That depends on who you talk to.
MA: And I’m so pleased you’re quitting smoking. You don’t know what a relief that is to me. Your father smoked for years and you see what it’s done to him.
ME: Well, I’ve just got a lot more respect for my aura than he ever had.
MA: Your what?
ME: My aura.
MA: Never mind…. And you’re getting along so well with Ariel.
ME: I am? Thanks for telling me.
MA: It seems so long since you left.
ME: Since you threw me out? It sure as hell does.
MA: Kestrel, dear, you know we don’t want you to talk like that.
ME: You don’t? Damn, I’m sorry.
MA: Darling, if you need anything, just call. Your father and I want you to be as comfortable as you can while you’re down there.
ME: Not everyone sees comfort as a goal.
MA: (Pause) I suppose that’s true…. Goodbye, darling. We’ll call again soon.
ME: Whatever.
Click.
The End
I put down the phone. Ariel puts her hand on it and says, “Blesséd be.”
I hate those words. So I say, “You lied to her.”
“No, I didn’t,” Ariel says like she’s all surprised.
I say, “I told her you were casting a spell, which was true. You came in and said, ‘Not exactly.’ That was a lie.”
“No,” Ariel says. “It might have been a lie if you had said it. You cast spells. I rarely do. What I try to do is to help the universe along in the channels it wants to go anyway. And that’s what I was doing in the garage. A spell is an attempt to control the universe.”
“Like the universe needs your help?” I say.
“Kestrel, did you ever see water flowing across dry ground?” Ariel says. “Did you ever notice how it will run along fine for a minute, and then stop, like it’s trying to decide which way to go next? And sometimes it even flows in more than one direction when it finally gets going again? Well, water isn’t the only thing that flows like that. And if I can help it to decide what to do, I will. And, yes, maybe the universe does need our help sometimes. After all, we’re part of it.”