A Broom With a View

by Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  “Rosebud was a dear, dear friend to me,” Effie had proclaimed dramatically as she’d followed Liza all through the downstairs, trailing her as she turned on lights, lit candles, and set the music.

  “She belonged to every organization and club we have here in Morel and she was beloved by everyone,” she’d continued as she’d helped Liza slide the new clean sheet over the massage table. “You could always count on Rosebud to jump right in there and help out in whatever was needed. We’ve sorely missed her presence. Sorely.”

  This last part was said with emphasis and directed at Liza. She knew what Effie was saying to her: She was saying that her Nana Bud had done more than her fair share of the work and they were all likely worn out from picking up the slack her departure had caused.

  “Well, I would like to get involved,” Liza admitted.

  Effie pursed her lips and preened a little, the smug look of a woman who already knew she’d won.

  “I wanted to say, too, that you’ve done a wonderful job with this place,” she said, finally managing to take a breath and look around. “I need to come in and get some work done on my back.”

  “Just give me a call and I will work you in.”

  “I’d also like to say that we’re all very impressed with the fact that you hired local workers to get her up to shape.”

  Liza nodded. “Well, I wanted to try to keep it local if I could. Do my part, you know, for the local economy.”

  Effie laughed. “Oh, yes, that. Well, we’re all impressed that you didn’t just, you know.”

  Effie threw her hand up in the air and waved it around, making a little “whooshing” sound as she did so.

  Liza was amazed. Did everyone in town know what she was? How? At least she wouldn’t have to go around revealing it. One less thing to do.

  “So, may we expect you Monday evening?” And just like that, Effie was back on topic.

  The town’s most powerful woman barely reached Liza’s shoulders, had a bluish tint to her gray hair, and wore dangling little rhinestone-laced turkeys at her ears. And she was awfully persuasive.

  “I really just got moved in and haven’t had the chance to meet anyone yet,” Liza said, “or even get settled. This is really just a ‘soft opening’ here at the business. I’m still trying to feel my way around. So I’m not sure if I could give you as much time and energy as you need.”

  “Oh, phooey,” Effie scoffed, shaking her head so that the turkeys danced back and forth.

  It was then that Liza realized Effie’s cardigan and slacks continued the turkey theme. For some reason, that mesmerized her and momentarily got her off track.

  “You’re still a child,” Effie insisted as she leaned towards Liza and grabbed her by the shoulder. Her hand was bony but incredibly stronger than Liza would’ve thought. She had what felt like a vulture’s clutch on her and Liza wasn’t sure whether she should laugh or try to throw her off. “You’ve got tons of energy compared to us old folks! You’re still on your first legs.”

  “Not anymore,” Liza laughed. “I learned that yesterday. Ten years ago I could have ran up and down Main Street all day in the heels I wore. After an hour here I thought I was going to die from the pain. I’m not the spring chicken I used to be.”

  “You’d be the youngest one with us, but I don’t think that would bother someone like you,” Effie hedged, eyes drilling into Liza’s. “And the sad fact of the matter is, if we don’t start getting some of these young folks involved then when my generation goes there won’t be anyone to carry it on.”

  Liza nodded her head and tried not to wince as the other woman’s long fingernails dug into her skin.

  “Young people today, they don’t care like they used to. You can’t get these teenagers to do things in the community anymore. They want to be playing on their computers, talking to people in California or Japan when they don’t even know the person who lives next door,” Effie declared, her voice full of emotion. “Just breaks my heart, it does. Soon we’re not going to be a community anymore at all.”

  Whether she’d finally caved in from the guilt trip or the pain, Liza finally found herself agreeing to participate in everything Effie threw at her. She’d signed some forms, diligently copied meeting times into her tablet’s calendar app, and exchanged phone numbers.

  And by the time the little woman sailed regally through her door, Liza even found herself chair of a committee.

  She still wasn’t sure how that had happened.

  ***

  Liza Jane stood back and admired her new floors and the beautiful cherry shelves that lined the walls. She was itching to get started on the unpacking part but it was getting dark. She’d need to return the next day. So far she’d been doing treatments, but hadn’t yet unpacked her products and started pushing those yet.

  “I own a business, I own a business,” she sang as she danced around, her boots echoing on the floor and filling the empty room. Outside, the cars whizzed by, windows rolled down and speakers blaring everything from Hank Williams Sr. to Kanye West and Bill Monroe.

  Liza walked over to the one of the windows and placed her palm on the cool glass, careful not to leave any fingerprints or smudges; she’d just cleaned them. The streetlights were on and they cast a warm, rosy glow over the sidewalks. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine what downtown Kudzu looked like back in the 1960s and ‘70s, when the shops were full and the sidewalks busy. She was astute enough to know that those days were never coming back, but she hoped she could do her part to bring a little something to the town again.

  Her own brand of magic.

  “Careful Lizzie.”

  The voice, gruff and melodic, swept through the room.

  Liza could feel the hairs on the back of her arms stand at attention. The voice, laced with cigarettes and the occasional shot of rum, was deep enough it could’ve been a man’s. But it wasn’t.

  “Nana Bud?” Liza whispered and turned, expecting to see her grandmother standing a few feet from her.

  The room was empty and still, but the light streaking in through the windows shimmered just a little in the middle of the floor. She knew she wasn’t alone.

  “Watch,” came the voice again.

  Liza strained her eyes and focused them on the point in the floor where the light beams gathered and became something nearly solid. A thick wisp of smoke rose from the newly-laid floorboards and drifted upward, fanning out like a flower as it gathered in strength and opacity. Liza took several steps towards it, unafraid, and watched curiously as her heart pounded in her chest.

  Though she couldn’t see her grandmother, she could feel her sweet, steely strength. The vision that eventually formed was startling, to say the least: the blood seeping into the ground, the screaming, her own face…But now there was a woman as well, a woman she’d never seen before. The woman lay on the floor, her face red and puffy and streaked with tears. Black lines ran from her eyes where her mascara had bled. Her blood-red lipstick was smeared across her mouth. Her ratty old coat was torn and stained with something dark. It was hitched up above her legs and pooled around her waist, revealing red underwear and a soft belly that protruded over the loose elastic. The woman cried out for someone, Liza couldn’t make out the name, and then slumped back down to the ground.

  “What does it mean Nana Bud?” Liza asked, frustration growing inside of her. “What do you want me to do?”

  But the vision was already melting away. Liza knew the exact moment when her grandmother’s spirit left because she was suddenly standing alone again, a chill in the air, and a sadness in her heart.

  ***

  Since she was stuck in the house for the night with nothing to do, Liza Jane decided to make use of her time and organize her altar. Maybe try a little ritual. She’d already moved everything to her new room, after all; she just needed to organize.

  She’d made sure her altar box rode up front with her on the drive down, and had gone so far as to take it in the Charleston, West Virginia
hotel room with her. It contained some of her most precious items and she wasn’t about to let something happen to them.

  Now, as the sun sank down over the mountains, turning them a chalky blue in the twilight, she sat cross-legged on the old shag carpet in her “office” and carefully unpacked the items she’d spent years collecting.

  The altar cloth was one she’d made herself. It wasn’t going to win any contests (not that there were contests for such things) but she liked it. It had a Celtic triple moon on one side and a triquetra on the other and the cloth was a beautiful shade of hunter green on smooth silk. She’d done her best with the embroidery–something she’d done during the monotonous hours on a particularly boring trip she’d made with the pop opera group when they’d visited Kanas City. Back when she was still “allowed” to travel with them.

  She had three tall, thick white altar candles. She didn’t particularly need three of them, that’s just the way Kohl’s sold them in their January sale. She removed one from the box and placed it on the television stand and packed the other two in a shoebox. This, she placed on the shelf below.

  Next, she opened a different shoebox that held an assortment of tea candles and skinny little taper candles. Liza had them in all colors, from black to silver. There were several different candle holders to hold the tiny taper candles, too. They ranged from beautiful silver antique pieces she’d unearthed in flea markets and estate auctions to funky Art Deco style candle holders she’d picked up at Target.

  Liza Jane wasn’t a snob when it came to shopping; she was just as likely to buy something from K-Mart or the Dollar General as she was from Marshall Fields.

  Altar provisions were kind of a personal thing for witches. She’d never used a chalice or bowl or ritual bell, for instance. She did, however, have a little brass cauldron she used for mixing herbs and oils and cherished a handmade wand a friend had created for her. It was made of a beautiful piece of Dogwood.

  She’d always been drawn to the Goddess and tried to buy things with the feminine energy since they called to her. For that reason, she kept two statues of the Goddess on her altar and one in her living room. They helped keep her calm.

  “Well,” she admitted to an athame she unwrapped from purple tissue paper, “the Valium is also helping these days.”

  But the Goddess statues couldn’t hurt.

  She had one white ritual robe and two heavy cloaks (a winter-white one with rabbit fur and a deep burgundy for summer) and these she folded up and placed on a stool next to her altar. She’d never really been into the “costume” aspect of ritual work, although she knew some people who were.

  Liza was more of a “sky clad” person herself, although Mode had been slightly uncomfortable about having a wife who thought nothing of standing naked in the middle of the room, chanting and playing with fire.

  “For God’s sake Lizey,” he’d whispered on more than one occasion, “just don’t go outside like that and make sure the curtains are closed before you turn the lights back on. We have neighbors!”

  “Prude,” Liza muttered even now, still a little stung at the memory.

  She wondered how Colt Bluevine would feel about her wandering around the house naked…

  At least she wouldn’t have to worry about shocking the neighbors anymore.

  “Nobody here to see me outside naked but the skunks and the deer,” she said with glee, all but clapping her hands together.

  Then she was hit by another thought.

  “Do snakes come out at night? I’d better Google that…”

  Now that she had all those acres it seemed a shame to waste them and not try to garden something. She’d been good at that in the past and there were a few different herbs she liked to use in a few of her rituals. These she kept in little crocheted sachets and stored them on the shelf. They included mugwort, angelica root, devil’s root, and black cohosh. She also had a five-pound bag of beeswax pellets because, despite Mode’s insistence that it was easier to buy things rather than make them, she enjoyed creating her own candles.

  Crafting gave her something to do. She was a Pinterest fiend. In fact, she had a bumper sticker on the back of Christabel that proclaimed she’d #nailedit.

  When everything was arranged just the way she liked it, Liza got up and trotted down to the kitchen. There, she fetched a dark ceramic bowl and filled it with water. Carefully, she took it back upstairs and placed it on the floor in front of her. She then turned off the lights and used wooden matches to light first her altar candle and then three blue taper candles.

  The room was suddenly filled with dancing shadows and the sounds of small flames licking at the musty air. Thin slivers of black smoke rose slowly upwards, dissipating and disappearing before they reached the ceiling.

  Liza Jane peeled off her blue jeans, socks, and underwear and folded them neatly by the door. She then pulled off her sweater, trying not to get the fabric caught on her hoop earrings.

  She failed.

  Naked from the waist down and with her breasts jiggling against her chest she hopped around, blinded by the angora sweater as she tried in vain to free it from the sterling silver.

  “Damn it,” she cried, ruining the relaxed and cheerful mood she’d tried to create for herself.

  As hard as she might, she simply could not get it loose. It was either going to tear the fabric or rip her earring out.

  Not wanting either to happen (the sweater had cost $75; she was damned if she’d ruin it before she even got to wear it more than once), she finally gave up and spun a little verse. Suddenly, she could see again as the sweater was gently untangled and the piece of clothing was smoothly lifted over her head and held high in the air. Sighing in frustration, she reached up and pulled it down, as casually as she might pluck an apple from a tree.

  She hadn’t meant to use magic that early; every little bit she spent took something out of her, making the next attempt less effective. And she wanted what she was about to do to be as helpful as possible.

  With the candles burning brightly Liza lowered herself to the floor and crossed her legs. She placed the bowl of water inside her legs on the floor and situated the three blue candles around her. She then proceeded to offer a protective spell to the four corners of the room, encasing herself in their walls with a barrier of security.

  Gazing intently at the water, she spread her arms out beside her, palms up, and opened herself to the air to welcome in the energy that was slowly gathering around her. She could feel her own power intermingling with the influence of the house, the energy left over by her grandmother, and the vitality from the candle’s flames and colors. They were more than just symbols to her, after all; she derived strength from them. It didn’t always come on as quickly as it was that night, but she’d found that working in a new place always brought on a little more force, as she and it began learning about one another.

  Liza could feel her heart and mind opening; her chest swelled with happiness and potency and a slow smile spread across her face. With her eyes closed she offered up ancient words, as well as words of her own creation, and felt the air about her tremble.

  She could almost get lost in that sensation, in the feeling that there was something big and magical in the world around her and she was a major part of it.

  But she had business to attend to.

  Opening her eyes now, she bent slightly forward at the waist and gazed back down into the bowl of water. The once smooth surface was rippling now, making small waves, much like the air in the room. Downstairs the refrigerator hummed, her cell phone played a Bon Jovi tune that signified her sister’s call, and the microwave “pinged” (she’d forgotten to take out some noodles half an hour ago and now the darn thing wouldn’t let her forget).

  She blocked out all of these and focused only on what was before her.

  At first, there was nothing but blackness–the color of the bowl mixed with the mountain water. But then it began to change little by little. She could see herself standing over a table
, her hands shiny with oil. A woman was on her stomach on the table before her, her naked arms outstretched and a white sheet covering her lower half. Candlelight flickered.

  Next she saw a party. Live music and cowboy boots on a dance floor. The smell of hay. Laughter. The room spinning around and around. Liza Jane was dancing, the shoulders under her arms strong and muscled. Colt’s eyes gazed down upon her, a hint of mischief in them.

  Liza felt a warmth spread through her stomach, something that had nothing to do with her candle ritual but nevertheless an ancient ritual that men and women had known since the beginning of time.

  The scene suddenly changed, however, and became darker. Liza leaned closer to get a better view and then jumped backwards as the bowl filled with the scent of blood. She heard screaming, saw pain, and felt fear rising in her throat. A man lay on the ground, blood spilling from his mouth.

  And Liza stood over him.

  Chapter Five

  DAYBREAK WAS amazing–when that daybreak meant the first morning of your first official opening day at work in your fist official business, anyway.

  And ready just in time.

  Opening time was 9:00 am but she’d been there for two hours already, nervous and antsy. She’d had her “soft” opening already but this was the real deal. All her products were out and everything.

  Her first client would be there at 11:30 am and had booked a sixty-minute Reiki session. She had another one at 2:00 pm for a Swedish massage and then a facial at 3:00 pm.

  “Man,” she laughed, tossing her hair back and twirling around in a little circle. Little sparks of light flew out from under her feet and then rose into the air like dancing fireflies. She was already booking appointments for the upcoming weeks. “The ad I put in the paper must have really paid off!”

  In all actuality, it probably had more to do with the town’s sheer curiosity of her than anything else, but she wasn’t going to let her mind go there. She’d rather believe that the sore, well- paying residents of Kudzu Valley were just people who needed a good rub down.