As the sun fell, Helene passed out mirrors to the four of them, compacts that had been swiped from mothers or from counters at the mall. They wiped off the paint from their faces, and Almond and Morrow made off first while the other two girls lagged behind.
“Tell me something good,” Salter asked Helene, grabbing the girl’s hand and entwining it with her own in her pocket.
Helene hummed, then told her about how one day their parents were going to die, as all parents must, and they would leave behind their houses. The two of them would live in the house, alone, together. They would dig up the ground in the yard until they hit the hidden water in the soil. Frogs would move there, and try to kiss them with their slimy lips. The two of them would pluck a frog and bring it to their faces, stick out their tongues, and whack them into walls. Each night, they would dine on frog legs. And it would be good until they too passed, and then the wood would grow around them and bury them inside, wrapped up around one another. Helene, more than the rest of them, had goodness inside of her, and could express it in a manner the other girls had lost, or a skill they had never been born with. Salter took comfort in that goodness, though she never voiced how afraid she was that it might all be only wishes.
* * *
Salter lived in a home of edges and sharp air. Daddy sat at the kitchen table, flipping pages in her thick library book. This, she knew, was a confrontation waiting release, and she reminded herself that she could not control him or what he would do, but said a prayer to the Bloody Mothers before her that she might walk away from it with little hurt this time.
“Interesting stuff,” Daddy said pleasantly. He smiled widely at her, and she focused on his rotting gums, hoping whatever sickness grew there festered to his heart. “This required reading at your school?”
She knew no answer would appease him, so she stared. When she was a child, when he was drinking and the alcohol made him bloodshot and wild and he would hit her, any noise of protest she made gave him pleasure. But her silence unnerved him, made him grasp for something to say. It also made him return to her, open hand whacking her face, over and over again through the hours of his rage, but she never squealed until she wanted it to end. It was worth the bruises, that small amount of unease she could cause.
He stood. “Underlining in your library books is a serious offense, girl. They charge you for that. Think we got money?” He handed her the book and pointed to a passage she’d starred in the margins. “Read that.”
Salter swallowed. “I need water. Throat’s dry.”
He filled a glass with water and gave her a sip before taking it back. “Don’t spill on the book. Now, read.”
“Depending on the version, Bloody Mary might be benevolent or malevolent, though in all versions she is an oracle of the future. Victorian women, obsessed with games of divination, chanted her name in a mirror to see the face of their future husband. It was there that, if the woman were to die before she married, she would see death’s head. Modern variations of her story indicate that her legend has soured. When she appears recently, she shows the penitent their deaths, and then leads them towards it. In all variations, she is covered in blood, indicating her own miserable fate.”
His paunch gut brushed up against her side, and she thought about those thick white lines that ran up and down his skin under his shirt, the ones that expanded like worms to his ever-increasing neck.
“We’ve all got miserable fates, girl.”
She saw his fist coming, and because she hated him, she did not close her eyes until he connected with her.
* * *
Salter awoke on an unfamiliar bed, her head heavy as brick, made worse by vulgar male voices laughing. She opened her eyes in stages, trying to get used to the light.
“Sleeping beauty graces us with her presence.” That was Daddy. He laughed at his own joke.
“Come now, John. This is a solemn event.” It took her a moment to place the other man. Harold Birch III, an old man from Daddy’s congregation who smelled like smoke and sugarcane. As soon as her memory placed him she felt the stench of him and groaned to hold in the bile.
“You’re right. Forgive me. Nerves, you know? You try to be a good father, and do what’s best for your kids. But they run wild, Harry. I can’t always be watching.”
Harold grumbled low in approval. “You’re not alone. Do you know how many parents say the same thing to me? You raise them up right but they turn left. Come, bow your head. Think about your sins, where you led your daughter astray. You read the good book to her, but it is not enough to read. You can’t put the Word on her tongue alone, but you must make sure it is in her heart, in her blood, or else she is left bare to corruption. She is young, and a girl. The devil desires them most of all because they are so willing, that is, unless we teach the path.”
Salter lifted her head. They were in a cheap motel room. She fingered the cigarette burns on the bedspread and saw cobwebs in the corner. In front of her was a large mirror facing the bed, and she almost screamed when she saw her face, half covered in bandages, red puffed skin at the edges.
Survive this, she told herself. Survive and you can do anything.
“Water, please” she whispered, afraid at the unfamiliar scratch in her tone.
Harold, his clean black suit, his bald head with the sick spots littering his skull and face, smiled at her, kindly, but all she could focus on were his teeth, unnaturally white for a man who smelled as he did. “My dear, our Lord went forty days and forty nights without a single drop in the desert. Can you not go a few hours in his grace?”
“Please,” she said again.
Daddy put his head in his hands. “See how she is?”
Harold patted Daddy on the shoulder. “Come now. You must be strong for your daughter. If your faith is weak, then you open up yourself.”
Harold handed Daddy a thick black book. He dug into his pocket and brought out a yellowed handkerchief. He wiped his forehead. “Let’s begin.”
The two men raised their hands over her body and began to read in unison.
* * *
They denied her water each time she asked, and as the hours drew forward she slipped in and out of consciousness, dreaming each time of drowning and being happy for such an end, and each time awoke to their raised voices and raised hands, burning when they lowered their hands to her feet and her head and her hips. No devil in my hips, she wanted to say, but there was not enough saliva to form the words. They sprinkled water on her in intervals, but though she left her mouth wide, none of it landed on her tongue. She tried to think of Helene, of all the goodness that Helene would talk about, tried to clasp onto the memory of her dreams, but the voices of the men interrupted her thoughts, pulled her back into their reality. The hours slithered.
* * *
She tried to speak, to tell them to stop, she would swear anything they wanted if only they would stop. They sat her up when she was unconscious too long and shook her head between their hands until she kept her eyes open. There was a mirror directly in front of her, and saw the bandage on the left side of her face, white around the edges and pink near the middle. The men moved their mouths and hands again, but they moved a rusted bucket to the foot of the bed. They held up the book of the mothers, of her witch ancestors, and they slathered top to bottom and side to side in oil. They made her watch as they lit a match near the side and dropped it in. It blazed up, blazed bright, and she felt the heat gnash against her body. Her own head floating above the flames.
She moved her lips to form salvation: Bloody Mother, Bloody Mother, Bloody Mother, for if ever there was a time of sacrifice and need, this was it. The movement cracked lips, but the sting kept her awake. And then, she saw herself change. The bandages on her face darkened from white to pink and then red goo, dripping downward across her face and then her body. It moved upward, sleeking through her hair, hot yet cool, a comfort. Blood. She knew a g
ift when she saw one, and almost laughed with the joy of being so beloved by her protector, the sublime fervor of knowing that all you believed was real. The blood coagulated and spun, red swirls, and then trailed itself into her nose and eyes. She tasted the cool iron and was sated. Her own eyes darkened before her until they were like nothing at all, containing nothing, and ever expanding outward in a flush of red. The blood is the life, all blood is life, and in herself she felt the power of the Bloody Mother.
Once, Salter had told Helene that the four of them had been born angry, and weaseled out from between their mother’s legs in full rage. It was not unusual, she’d said, as all girls are born that way, knowing from the moment they hit the outside air that they were in for a heavy dose of unfairness and pain. Most girls, though, their anger was tempered down by pretty things and kind parents and the need to hide it, because angry girls were beat up and beat down until they were made soft, like dough. Helene had laughed at her, kissed her brow and said she wasn’t angry, but Salter put her hand on the girl’s chest and felt the splutter of her heart, diminished rage, the kind that matched her own. And they’d slipped off their clothes and bit one another and intermingled their hands and legs, and Helene had admitted that yes, there was much to be angry about, but it was safer, wasn’t it, to be calm, to pretend at peace.
When the bald man and Daddy lowered their hands onto her body, and Daddy’s fingers inched towards her breast, she felt the familiar comfort of hate swell up in her, and she knew the Bloody Mother would accept nothing less than her at her most honest.
And so, she laughed. She laughed at these men and their Book and their God and all their false things, because the real was in her and it was everything and always and everywhere and…and…
Daddy dumped a cup of water over her head.
* * *
When hurt, the body desires a place of familiar comfort, and in this regard Salter had a body like any other. Keeping to dark roads and high grass, she crept her way into the nice part of town, where the girls with fathers who worked with their heads and not their hands called home. The well-lit, green part of town. She could not avoid the glares of the streetlamps, illuminating, making her bare in their light. Helene lived on the edges of this place, the strange divide between those with and those without. Her father, a mechanic who could smooth-talk, was promoted to manager at his shop, and her mother insisted on moving as close as they could to the pretty houses. For safety, of course, and because it was much nicer to wake up to clean than cracked.
Salter jumped the fence and almost fell on her way over, but she crept to the back end of the ranch house, the draped window of Helene’s room, light creeping out on the edges. Salter rapped her hand on the window quiet as she could, and soon Helene peered half her head around, then opened the window.
“What happened to you?” Helene asked, partial awe and partial horror coloring her words.
Salter climbed into the room and into Helene’s arms, and they knelt with one another, leaning against the bed. Helene stroked her hair and whispered coos and sympathy while Salter grit out the whole thing, detailing in the precise the feel of Daddy’s hands on her, and the low wretched sound of the bald man’s voice, the hours lost. She told of their eyes, their burning eyes, and how it seemed like she was nude before them, and how much they liked that. Helene rubbed the back of Salter’s head, and she cried too. Good things were like that, Salter thought, they cry even when they see shit things get sad.
“I saw her,” Salter said.
“Who did you see?”
“The Bloody Mother. She came to me. Helped me. I saw her.”
Helene’s hand stopped moving on her back, then slowly resumed. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said.
“Why would you be sorry about that?”
“What your father did.”
Salter grasped Helene’s hands and held them up to her cheeks. She kissed the knuckles, then the palm. “It don’t matter what he did. I’ve got you. And I’ve got the Bloody Mother.”
“Do you want me to tell you something good?”
“Yes.” Salter, desperate. “Yes.”
Helene pursed her lips to speak goodness, but the door to her room opened, and there stood Mary in a tank top and short-shorts, bedroom clothes, her hair gathered in a messy bun at the top of her head, and a bowl of steaming popcorn settled in the crook of her arm.
“What is she doing here?” Salter asked, pushing herself away from Helene.
“Sorry,” said Mary. “I, that is, I didn’t know that you …,” she gestured with one hand, then closed her mouth, seemingly having no idea what to say.
“She’s just staying the night,” Helene said, lingering on just, and Salter felt she should read something of importance into that word, but she felt that rage, the same that made her powerful not too long ago in the room with the men, now feel like sickness settling into her belly. She thought she might vomit.
Helene called her name, but Salter was already on her feet, climbing out the window and back into the dark night, remembering the lonely way back.
* * *
She sought out Morrow first, because Morrow would be the easiest to convince and the easiest to find. Morrow stayed out all night, but she loitered the same places, hung around the regular scenes. If not crouching near the dumpster behind the Quick Gas, she’d be walking the strip mall, waiting for an attendant to turn their heads, quick to snatch a small thing, quick to pocket and quick to run.
“The hell happened to you?” Morrow said.
“Dad-fuck.”
Morrow nodded. That said enough. The details of pain were unnecessary between them. For Morrow, it was “Bro-fuck”, and Salter knew about that boy’s wandering hands, lingering too low on a hug, insisting on lip-kisses when greeting, hand in Morrow’s short hair. Once, he’d put his dick in her, and she’d told her parents because she didn’t know any better, and they’d done the right thing and told him to get out, but within a month they’d let him back in, because he was first born and their only son, and after all, they had three other daughters, and didn’t you know how hard it was to be separated from that which you love? The girls had a plan once; Salter was going to get him alone, seduce him and then put her heel down on his balls, but he wouldn’t take the bait, and Helene, who could have seduced him, was too afraid of his hands.
“Call Almond. Tell her to meet us.”
Morrow pulled out the dollar she’d taken from Mary and went into the Quick Gas to make change. She came out and gave Salter a cigarette, then went to the payphone and dialed.
* * *
Almond was put out. “Are you sure it said we have to sacrifice something?”
The girls sat against the wall of the Witches Castle, foregoing the ritual of sharing goods. Morrow unwrapped the bandage from Salter’s face, grimaced, then sealed it back up. “It’ll scar,” she said.
“You can’t get anything if you don’t give anything,” Salter told her.
“What have we got except lip paint?” Almond asked.
Salter insisted, and though Morrow and Almond protested at first, they were wide-eyed when Salter told them about how she’d felt the Mother pull inside her, like a pregnancy, but like all pregnancies had to be nurtured, else it would rot away and be born without brains or eyes, a dumb wailing thing.
“What are you going to do with what the Bloody Mother gives you?” Almond said. “You have to do something.”
Morrow answered before Salter could speak. “I’m going to make it so I was never born.”
Almond and Salter looked at one another. “You’re going to kill yourself?”
Morrow kicked the ground and rolled her eyes. “No. I could do that right now just fine. But then I’d still have all the memories. Even after I’d be dead I’d have the memories. I don’t think those go away even after you die, and everyone would still remember me too. S
o I’m going to go back in time to when I wasn’t anything at all and make that sure I stay that way.”
Almond made to protest, but Salter cut her off. She understood the impulse to be nothing and remain nothing, had wished it herself many times when she saw the shit man who had helped in her creation and knew she was stuck with him in some manner because of his blood. She told Morrow that it was something they could do, once the Bloody Mother had blessed them, and she’d even combine her power to help her achieve it.
They went home as normal, the plan simmering beneath their skins. They agreed not to tell Helene, because Helene was, they all agreed, something like beautiful, and there was no reason to get beauty messed up in performance. They would tell her after and, if it worked, they would let her in on the next one, so that she too could be granted the benevolence of the Mother.
* * *
Almond was supposed to be the bait, but she had a gnat for a mother and had inherited that kind of memory, and so Salter ended up knocking on the door of Mary’s home. When there was no answer, she knocked again. Shuffling, and then a short woman opened the door and stuck her head out. “Yes?”
“Does Mary live here?”
The woman opened the door wide. “Oh, yes. Are you a friend of hers? Come in.”
“She’s in my math class,” Salter said.
“What happened to your face?”
“I fell.”
The house was fancy, but nothing nice enough to get pictured inside of a glossy. The walls had pictures of the family, mother—the woman who opened the door—and a father, a man with a moustache and a smile, and then Mary in various stages of age, from baby to girl with pink shorts and scuffed knees and now, mousy-faced, frizzed hair, beloved, beloved, beloved.
Magic for Unlucky Girls Page 15