by Ruth Chew
“Maybe she’s with Wispy,” Jean said.
The two girls went down to the laundry room. Wispy was leaning against the washing machine. The blue bristles were covered with spiderwebs. The jay was perched on one foot on the handle of Mrs. Perkins’ scraggly old broom. Beryl was nibbling what was left of a brownie.
Amy glared at her. “Mother left that for my lunch,” she said. “I was going to share it with you.”
The bird chirped something. She swallowed the last crumb and flew up the basement stairs.
Amy took a rag from the box. She used it to wipe the spiderwebs from the little broom.
The girls went to the cleaner on Church Avenue for Amy’s skirt. It was in a big plastic bag.
“Look, Jean, this is the button I told you about.” Amy felt the button through the plastic.
“The one Wispy found?” Jean asked.
Amy nodded. She hung the plastic bag over her arm, but she kept feeling the button.
On the way home they had to pass the bakery shop. Jean sniffed the air. She stopped to look at a gooey chocolate cake in the bakery window. “Wouldn’t Beryl love to get her beak in that,” she said.
“I’d like to see her stuck in it.” Amy was still rubbing the button.
At that moment there was a shriek from the woman behind the counter in the bakery. Now Amy and Jean saw that a bird was flying round and round in the shop. The bird banged into the plate glass window and fell, head-downward, into the sticky chocolate icing on the cake. The bird’s feet stuck up in the air. Her blue feathers were coated with chocolate, and she couldn’t fly.
“Amy!” Jean said. “That looks like Beryl!”
The woman behind the counter was yelling, “Somebody get it out of there.” But the other people in the shop just crowded around to look at the bird. Amy handed the skirt to Jean. She ran into the bakery and pushed her way between the people to grab the bird and pull her out of the cake.
“I’ll wash the icing off her,” Amy told the woman behind the counter. She took the bird out of the shop and started home. Jean came after her.
Once inside her house Amy went to the kitchen sink to rinse the bluejay. “Hang the skirt in my closet, Jean,” she said.
When all the chocolate had been scrubbed from her feathers, Beryl hopped onto the drainboard. She stretched her wings and flapped them to get the water off. Then, without even a nod of thanks to Amy, she flew out of the kitchen.
Jean was just coming back into the room. She ducked as the bird whizzed past. “Where’s Beryl going?”
“To find some more mischief, I guess.” Amy dried her hands. “Come on out in the yard, Jean. Beryl doesn’t want to be with us.”
Amy stood on the swing and grabbed the chains. Jean sat on the seat and held on to Amy’s legs. This way they could swing at the same time.
Jean was pumping hard to get the swing up in the air when both girls heard a sound from Amy’s bedroom window. They looked up. Someone was pushing up the screen.
Amy couldn’t believe her eyes. A small figure in a long blue dress and a pointed hat came flying out the window on a broom.
“It must be Beryl!” Jean whispered.
The little blue witch waved her hand at Amy and Jean. Then she tipped the broom handle back and flew high over the peach tree. The girls watched until she was only a blue speck in the sky. And then she was gone.
“What do you think happened, Amy?” Jean asked.
“I don’t know anything except that Wispy is gone,” Amy said.
Jean was afraid that Amy was going to cry. She changed the subject. “It’s hot, Amy. Let’s get into our bathing suits.”
When Amy’s mother came home she found them splashing under the garden hose.
“Where’s the broom, Amy?” Mrs. Perkins asked. “Your room needs sweeping.”
“Isn’t it in the laundry room?” Amy asked.
“No, there’s only that silly little blue one you play with,” her mother said. “Well, never mind. I’ll use that.”
Amy felt her heart jump. “Jean,” she said. “No wonder Wispy didn’t say goodbye. She’s still here!”
Jean was thinking. “We should have known,” she said slowly. “Beryl was riding a broom that flew with its bristles down.”
Amy laughed. “Mother always said our old broom was just what a witch would want. Beryl must have enchanted it somehow.”
Mrs. Perkins came out into the back yard. She was holding the little blue broom in one hand and Amy’s blue skirt in the other.
“It’s about time I bought a new broom,” she said. “Take your pet, Amy.” She handed Amy the broom. “Oh, and don’t expect to wear this skirt for a while. Look. The cleaner lost the button.”
Amy looked at the skirt. It was still in the plastic bag. Near where the button should have been, a raggedy little hole had been torn in the plastic.
“I think I’ll just have to sew a plain white button on it.” Mrs. Perkins took the skirt back into the house.
Amy stroked the little broom. Wispy rubbed against her shoulder.
“Now we know everything,” Amy said.
“What do you mean?” Jean asked.
Amy grinned. “Beryl found her magic charm.”
Excerpt copyright © 1969 by Ruth Chew. Published by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
“Now don’t let any stranger into the house, Mary Jane,” said Mrs. Brooks. “I’m going to the supermarket. If the doorbell rings, look through the peep hole first to see who is there. If it’s someone you don’t know, don’t open the door. And don’t get into mischief while I’m gone.”
Mary Jane watched her mother walk down the tree-lined Brooklyn street. As soon as Mrs. Brooks turned the corner, Mary Jane ran upstairs.
Today she would have plenty of time to go through all the things on her mother’s dressing table. Mary Jane wouldn’t dare touch them when her mother was around. But now she could even pick them up and try them out. There were so many things—tiny nail scissors, jars of face cream, a pink satin ribbon, three lipsticks, a big box of bath powder, an eyebrow pencil, a magnifying mirror, and—right in the middle, sparkling like a big jewel—a new bottle of perfume. It was called “Mischief.”
Mary Jane twisted the stopper and slowly pulled it out of the bottle. At once the room was filled with a strange, exciting smell.
The doorbell rang. Mary Jane ran downstairs, and was about to open the door. Then she remembered what her mother had said. “Before you open the door, look through the peep hole.” But the peep hole was high up on the door. So she went to get a dining room chair to stand on. The doorbell rang again.
Mary Jane was pushing the chair against the door when the brass door knocker banged loudly. Whoever was outside must be very impatient, Mary Jane thought. She climbed up on the chair. The door knocker banged again.
A harsh voice screamed, “Is anybody home?”
Mary Jane put one eye to the peep hole and looked out. On the doorstep stood a short fat woman wearing a tall pointed hat. She had a vacuum cleaner with her, the kind that looks like a large jug. A skinny black cat with big yellow eyes and a ragged tail sat on top of the vacuum cleaner. And the hose to the vacuum cleaner was coiled around the fat woman’s neck like a big snake.
Mary Jane tried to make her voice sound deep and growly. “Who are you?”
“I want to show you a vacuum cleaner,” said the woman. She seemed to be trying to make her voice low and sweet, but it sounded like a scratchy whisper. “It’s a lovely vacuum cleaner. I will clean your house for you.”
She looked so funny standing there in her long black dress and her pointy hat that Mary Jane could not help teasing. “You can’t fool me,” she said in the same deep voice. “You are a wicked witch! Go away!”
With a loud click Mary Jane shut the peep hole. Then, ever so quietly, she opened it again and looked out. She saw the short fat woman shake her fist, stamp her foot, and then sit down on the vacuum cleaner. The woman held the meta
l wand in front of her and shouted, “Home, James!”
The vacuum cleaner rose into the air with the witch. Mary Jane jumped off the chair and opened the door. She saw the witch sail higher and higher, over the treetops, higher than the apartment building on the corner. Mary Jane watched until the witch sailed away out of sight.
“Meow.” It was the thin black cat, sitting sadly on the doorstep.
The witch must have forgotten her cat, thought Mary Jane, or perhaps she is trying to trick me.
“Meow,” said the cat again. Then, to Mary Jane’s surprise, it said, “I’m hungry.”
Mary Jane couldn’t help feeling sorry for the skinny cat. “There’s some tuna fish left over from lunch,” she said. “Would you like that?”
“I don’t know,” said the cat. “I’ve never had fish. All the witch feeds me is toads—when she remembers to feed me at all. And she has a pot of witch’s brew that she thinks is delicious, but I can’t stand it.”
“What’s your name, cat?”
“The witch calls me ‘Hey, you!’ ”
“Oh, you poor thing!” cried Mary Jane, and she scooped up the cat. It was so light! Mary Jane could feel all the bones under the scraggly fur. She carried the cat into the house and shut the door.
Mary Jane fed the cat in the kitchen. The cat ate the tuna fish hungrily but daintily. Then she drank a bowl full of milk. When she had finished she washed her face, smoothed her whiskers, and licked herself all over.
Soon the black fur was smooth and shining. “You need a ribbon! There is a pink satin one that came on Mother’s perfume.”
Mary Jane carried the cat upstairs to her mother’s bedroom and tied the ribbon in a bow around the cat’s neck. “Just see yourself, cat.” Mary Jane put her on the dressing table in front of the mirror.
The cat looked at herself with pride. “The witch would hardly know me.”
“Tell me about the witch,” begged Mary Jane. “What was she doing here?”
“It’s Wednesday, and she’s a Wednesday Witch.”
“What’s a Wednesday Witch?”
“Her magic is at its best on Wednesday. The rest of the week she works on her spells. On Wednesday she comes out of her cave and looks for mischief. She said she smelled mischief on your street today.”
“Oh,” said Mary Jane. “I’d better put Mother’s perfume away.” She put the stopper in the bottle and put the bottle in its place. She was none too soon.
Mary Jane heard the sound of a key in the front door. She picked up the cat and ran downstairs. Her mother came puffing into the house with two large bags of groceries.
When Mrs. Brooks saw the cat, she put the bags on the floor. “Mary Jane, I’ve told you not to bring cats into the house. Take it back where it belongs.”
Mary Jane watched her mother put away the groceries. She was glad to see three new cans of tuna fish.
Mary Jane’s mother was folding the empty grocery bags. “Oh, dear, I’ll never get the house tidy before your father comes home. Here, put the bags away.”
“I can’t take the cat back, Mother.” Mary Jane took the bags. “It’s a witch’s cat. She flew away on a vacuum cleaner, and left the cat here.”
“Vacuum cleaner!” said Mary Jane’s mother. “Mary Jane, could you vacuum the rug?”
While Mary Jane went to get the vacuum cleaner, Mrs. Brooks went into the living room with a dustcloth, and the cat followed her. Mrs. Brooks was about to dust a vase when she saw the cat jump to the mantelpiece and walk softly to the tall silver candlestick beside the clock. The cat dusted it carefully with her tail and swished away the dust around it.
Moving to the clock she dusted that too. She gave a few expert flicks of her tail to the candlestick on the other side of the clock and leaped to the bookcase to dust a little china lady and a glass bowl. Mrs. Brooks put down the vase. The cat walked over to it, swished her tail up and around the vase, and jumped to the floor. Then she looked at Mary Jane’s mother with big sad eyes.
Dusting was not something Mrs. Brooks enjoyed. This cat seemed to love it. For a long time Mary Jane’s mother just stood there. At last she said, “Are you sure that cat doesn’t belong to anyone?”
By this time Mary Jane was running the vacuum cleaner. She had to shout to make herself heard over the sound of the motor. “Oh, she belongs to the witch.”
Mrs. Brooks turned off the vacuum cleaner. “Mary Jane, I’ve told you so many times not to make up stories. Does the cat have a name?”
“The witch calls her ‘Hey, you!’ ”
After a moment’s thought Mary Jane’s mother announced, “I’m going to call her ‘Cinders’ because she does the work like Cinderella. Poor thing, she is much too thin.”