Witch Baby

by Francesca Lia Block

  Wind chimes hung like glass leaves from the porch, and the rosebush Ping had planted bloomed different colored roses on Valentine’s, Ping’s and Raphael’s birthdays—one rose for each year. Now there were white roses for Ping. Inside, the bungalow was like a miniature rain forest. Valentine’s wood carvings of birds and ebony people peered out among the ferns and small potted trees. Ping’s shimmering green weavings were draped from the ceiling. Witch Baby sat in the Jah-Love rain forest bungalow watching Ping with her bird-of-paradise hair, kohl-lined eyes, coral lips, batik sarong skirt and jade dragon pendants, sewing a sapphire blue Chinese silk shirt for Valentine.

  “Baby Jah-Love,” Ping Chong sang. “Why are you so sad? Once I was sad like you. And then I met Valentine in a rain forest in Jamaica. He appeared out of the green mist. I had been dreaming of him and wishing for him forever. When I met Valentine I wasn’t afraid anymore. I knew that my soul would always have a reflection and an echo and that even if we were apart—and we were for a while in the beginning—I finally knew what my soul looked and sounded like. I would have that forever, like a mirror or an echoing canyon.”

  Ping stopped, seeing Witch Baby’s eyes. She knew Witch Baby was thinking about Raphael.

  “Sometimes our Jah-Love friends fool us,” she said. “We think we’ve found them and then they’re just not the one. They look right and sound right and play the right instrument, even, but they’re just not who we are looking for. I thought I found Valentine three times before I really did. And then there he was in the forest, like a tree that had turned into a man.”

  Witch Baby wanted to ask Ping how to find her Jah-Love angel. She knew Raphael was not him, even though Raphael had the right eyes and smile and name. She knew how he looked—the angel in her dream—but she didn’t know how to find him. Should she roller-skate through the streets in the evenings when the streetlights flicker on? Should she stow away to Jamaica on a cruise ship and search for him in the rain forests and along the beaches? Would he come to her? Was he waiting, dreaming of her in the same way she waited and dreamed? Witch Baby thought that if anyone could help, it would be Ping, with her quick, small hands that could create dresses out of anything and make hair look like bunches of flowers or garlands of serpents, cables to heaven. But Witch Baby didn’t know how to ask.

  “Wishes are the best way,” said a deep voice. It was the voice of Valentine Jah-Love. He had been building a set for Los Diablos and had come home to eat a lunch of noodles and coconut milk shakes with Ping.

  Valentine sat beside Ping, circling her with his sleek arm, and grinned down at Witch Baby. “Wish on everything. Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And stars of course, first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground. Birthday candles. Baby teeth.”

  Valentine showed his teeth, which were bright as candles. Then he got up and slipped the sapphire silk shirt over his dark shoulders.

  “Even if you get your wish, there are usually complications. I wished for Ping Chong, but I didn’t know we’d have so many problems in the world, from our families and even the ones we thought were our friends, just because my skin is dark and she is the color of certain lilies. But still you must wish.” He looked at Ping. “I think Witch Baby might just find her angel on the set of Los Diablos,” he said, pulling a tiny pink Thunderbird out of his trouser pocket. It came rolling toward Witch Baby through the tunnel Valentine made with his hand.

  Niña Bruja

  On the set of Los Diablos, My Secret Agent Lover Man and Weetzie sat in their canvas chairs, watching a group of dark children gathered in a circle around a glowing blue ball. Valentine was putting some finishing touches on a hut he had built. Ping was painting some actors glossy blue. Dirk and Duck were in the office making phone calls and looking at photos.

  Witch Baby went to the set of Los Diablos to hide costumes, break light bulbs and throw pebbles at everyone. That was when she saw Angel Juan Perez for the first time.

  But it wasn’t really the first time. Witch Baby had dreamed about Angel Juan before she ever saw him. He had been the dark angel boy in her dream.

  When the real Angel Juan saw Witch Baby watching him from behind My Secret Agent Lover Man’s director’s chair, he did the same thing that the dream Angel Juan had done—he stretched out his arms and opened his hands. She sent Valentine’s pink Thunderbird rolling toward his feet and ran away.

  “Niña Bruja!” Angel Juan called. “I’ve heard about you. Come back here!”

  But she was already gone.

  The next day Witch Baby watched Angel Juan on the set again. Coyote was covering Angel Juan’s face with blue shavings from the sacred ball. They sat in the dark and Angel Juan’s blue face glowed.

  When the scene was over, Angel Juan found Witch Baby hiding behind My Secret Agent Lover Man’s chair again.

  “Come with me, Niña Bruja,” he said, holding out his hand.

  Witch Baby crossed her arms on her chest and stuck out her chin. Angel Juan shrugged, but when he skateboarded away she followed him on her roller skates. Soon they were rolling along side by side on the way to the cottage.

  They climbed up a jacaranda tree in the garden and sat in the branches until their hair was covered with purple blossoms; climbed down and slithered through the mud, pretending to be seeds. They sprayed each other with the hose, and the water caught sunlight so that they were rinsed in showers of liquid rainbows. In the house they ate banana and peanut butter sandwiches, put on music and pretended to surf on Witch Baby’s bed under the newspaper clippings.

  “Where are you from, Angel Juan?” Witch Baby asked.

  “Mexico.”

  Witch Baby had seen sugar skulls and candelabras in the shapes of doves, angels and trees. She had seen white dresses embroidered with gardens, and she had seen paintings of a dark woman with parrots and flowers and blood and one eyebrow. She liked tortillas with butter melting in the fold almost as much as candy, and she liked hot days and hibiscus flowers, mariachi bands and especially, now, Angel Juan.

  Angels in Mexico might all have black hair, Witch Baby thought. I might belong there.

  “What’s it like?” she asked, thinking of rose-covered saints and fountains.

  “Where I’m from it’s poor. Little kids sit on the street asking for change. Some of them sing songs and play guitars they’ve made themselves, or they sell rainbow wish bracelets. There are old ladies too—just sitting in the dirt. People come from your country with lots of money and fancy clothes. They go down to the bars, shoot tequila and go back up to buy things. It’s crazy to see them leaving with their paper flowers and candles and blankets and stuff, like we have something they need, when most of us don’t even have a place to sleep or food to eat. Maybe they just want to come see how we live to feel better about their lives, or maybe they’re missing something else that we have. But you’re different.” He stared at Witch Baby. “Where did you come from?”

  Witch Baby shrugged.

  “Niña Bruja! Witch Baby! Cherokee and Raphael told me about you. What a crazy name! Why do they call you that? I don’t think you’re witchy at all.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Who are your parents?”

  Witch Baby shrugged again. She thought Angel Juan’s eyes were like night houses because of the windows shining in them.

  He sat watching her for a long time. Then he looked up at her wall with the newspaper clippings and said, “You need to find out. That would help. I bet you wouldn’t need all these stories on your wall if you knew who you were.”

  Witch Baby took out her camera and looked at Angel Juan through the lens. “Can I?” she asked.

  “Sure. Then I’ve got to go.” Angel Juan winked at the camera and slid out the window. “Adios, Baby.”

  But Angel Juan came back. He and Witch Baby sat in the branches of the tree, whistling and chirping like birds. They went int
o the shed and he played My Secret Agent Lover Man’s bass while Witch Baby jammed on the drums she hadn’t touched for so long. Fireworks went off inside of her. Their lights came out through her eyes and shone on Angel Juan.

  How could I not play? she wondered.

  “They should call you Bongo Baby,” Angel Juan said. “What does it feel like?”

  “All the feelings that fly around in me like bats come together, hang upside down by their toes, fold up their wings, and stop flapping and there’s just the music. No bat feelings. But sometimes the bats flap around so much that I can’t play at all.”

  “Don’t let them,” said Angel Juan. “Never stop playing.”

  They made up songs like “Tijuana Surf,” “Witch Baby Wiggle,” and “Rocket Angel,” and sometimes they put on music and danced—holding hands, jumping up and down, hiphopping, shimmying, spinning and swimming the air. They went to the tiny apartment where Angel Juan lived with his parents, Gabriela and Marquez Perez, and his brothers and sisters—Angel Miguel, Angel Pedro, Angelina and Serafina—and played basketball until it got dark, then went inside for fresh tortillas and salsa. The apartment was full of the lace doilies Gabriela crocheted. They looked like pressed roses covered with frost, like shadows or webs or clouds. Hanging on the walls and stacked on the floor were the picture frames that Marquez made. Some were simple wood, others were painted with blue roses and gold leaves; there were elaborately carved ones with angels at the four corners. Angel Juan and his brothers and sisters had drawn pictures to put in some of the frames, but most were empty. Everyone in the Perez family liked to hold the frames up around their faces and pretend to be different paintings. The first time Witch Baby came over and held up a frame, Angel Juan’s brothers and sisters laughed in their high bird voices. They squealed at her hair and her name and her toes, but they always laughed at everyone and everything, including themselves, so she laughed too.

  “Take our picture, Niña Bruja!” they chirped from inside one of Marquez’s frames when they saw her camera.

  The pictures of Angel Juan were always just a dark blur.

  “Why do you move so fast?” she asked him. “You are even faster than I am.”

  “I’m always running away. Come on!” He took Witch Baby’s hand and they flew down the street.

  They flew. It felt like that. It was like having an angel for your best friend. An angel with black, black electric hair. It didn’t even matter to Witch Baby that she didn’t know who she was. At night she put pictures of an Angel Juan blur on her wall before she fell asleep.

  Weetzie smiled when she saw the pictures. “Witch Baby is in love,” she told My Secret Agent Lover Man. “Maybe she’ll stop being obsessed with all those accidents and disasters, all that misery. It’s too much for anyone, especially a child.”

  “Witchy plus Angel Juan!” Cherokee sang from inside her tepee. “Witch hasn’t put up one scary picture for two weeks.”

  Witch Baby ignored Cherokee. She was wearing a T-shirt Angel Juan had given to her. Gabriela Perez had embroidered it with rows of tiny animals and it smelled like Angel Juan—like fresh, warm cornmeal and butter. The smell wrapped around Witch Baby as she drifted to sleep.

  “My pain is ugly, Angel Juan. I feel like I have so much ugly pain,” says Witch Baby in a dream.

  “Everyone does,” Angel Juan says. “My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”

  Witch Baby and Angel Juan made gardens of worlds. They were Gypsies and Indians, flamenco dancers and fauns. They were magicians, tightrope walkers, clowns, lions and elephants—a whole circus. They spun My Secret Agent Lover Man’s globe lamp and went wherever their fingers landed.

  “We live in a globe house.”

  “Our house is a globe.”

  “I am a Sphinx.”

  “I am a bullfighter who sets the bulls free.”

  “I am an African drummer dancing with a drum that is bigger than I am.”

  “I am a Hawaiian surfer with wreaths of leaves on my head and ankles.”

  “I am a dancing goddess with lots of arms.”

  “I am a Buddha.”

  “I am a painter from Mexico with parrots on my shoulders and a necklace of roses.”

  And then one day Angel Juan wasn’t on the set of Los Diablos, where Witch Baby always met him.

  Somehow she knew right away that something was wrong. She hurled herself past Dirk and Duck’s trailer, among the children Ping was painting, under the radiant blue archways that Valentine was building. The whole set and everyone on it seemed to pulse with blue, the blue of fear, the blue of sorrow.

  “Angel Juan!” Witch Baby called. She jumped up and down at Valentine’s feet. “Have you seen Angel Juan?”

  Valentine shook his head.

  “Angel Juan!” cried Witch Baby, tugging at Ping’s sarong.

  “I haven’t seen him today, Baby Love,” said Ping.

  Dirk and Duck opened the door of their trailer. They didn’t know where Angel Juan was either.

  My Secret Agent Lover Man was directing the scene in which Coyote was dying of radiation in a candle-lit room. Witch Baby pulled on the leg of My Secret Agent Lover Man’s baggy trousers with her teeth.

  “Cut!” he said.

  Coyote sat up and opened his eyes.

  My Secret Agent Lover Man scowled. “I’m busy now, Witch Baby. This is a very important scene. What do you want?”

  “Angel Juan!”

  “Angel Juan didn’t come to the set today. I don’t know where he is.”

  Witch Baby put on her skates and rolled away from the blue faces and archways as fast as she could. When she got to the Perez apartment, she felt as if a necklace of thorns had suddenly wrapped around her, pricking into her flesh.

  Angel Juan was not there.

  Angel Miguel, Angel Pedro, Angelina and Serafina were not playing basketball in the driveway. There weren’t any baking smells coming from Gabriela’s kitchen and there was no sound of Marquez’s hammering. There was only a “For Rent” sign on the front lawn.

  “Angel Juan!”

  Witch Baby pressed her face against a window. The apartment was dark, with a few frames and doilies scattered on the floor, as if the Perez family had left in a hurry.

  “I’m always running away,” Angel Juan had said. Witch Baby heard his voice in her head as she skated home, stumbling into fences and tearing her skin on thorns.

  Weetzie was talking on the phone and biting her fingernails when Witch Baby got there.

  “Witch Baby!” she called, hanging up. “Come here, honey-honey!” She followed Witch Baby into her room and sat beside her on the bed while Witch Baby pulled off her roller skates.

  “Where is Angel Juan?” Witch Baby demanded. On her wall the pictures of Angel Juan were all running away—blurs of black hair and white teeth.

  Weetzie held out her arms to Witch Baby.

  “Where is Angel Juan?”

  “I just got a call from My Secret Agent Lover Man. He found out that the immigration officers were looking for the Perez family because they weren’t supposed to be here anymore. They went back to Mexico.”

  Witch Baby leaped off the bed and out the window.

  She wanted to run and run forever, until she reached the border. She imagined it as an endless row of dark angel children with wish bracelets in their hands and thorns around their necks, sitting in the dirt and singing behind barbed wire.

  My Secret

  Witch Baby was crying. Witch babies never cry, snapped a voice inside, but she couldn’t stop. Angel Juan had been gone for two days.

  Weetzie had never seen Witch Baby cry before and went to hug her, but Witch Baby curled up like a snail in the corner of the bed, burying her face in the embroidered animal T-shirt Angel Juan had given her. It hardly smelled like him anymore. Wee
tzie saw that the tears streaking Witch Baby’s face were the same color as her eyes.

  “Come on,” Weetzie said, scooping her up.

  Because Witch Baby was limp from the tears and the effort of trying to find Angel Juan in the T-shirt, her kicks and kitten bites did not prevent Weetzie from carrying her into the pink bedroom.

  My Secret Agent Lover Man was in bed, reading the paper. He had never seen Witch Baby cry before either.

  “What is it?” he asked gently, moving aside so Weetzie and Witch Baby could sit on the warm place. He reached out to stroke Witch Baby’s tangles, but she shrank away from him, baring her teeth and clinging to the T-shirt.

  “She wants to understand about Angel Juan,” Weetzie said. “I thought you could explain.”

  My Secret Agent Lover Man scratched his chin.

  “The Perez family came here to work, to make beautiful things. But our government says they don’t belong here and sent them back again. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m sorry, Witch Baby. I wish there was something I could do. Maybe with my movies, at least.”

  “Angel Juan belongs anywhere he is,” Witch Baby said. “Because he knows who he is.”

  “He is lucky then,” said My Secret Agent Lover Man. “And he will be okay.”

  “Will I see him again?” Witch Baby whispered.

  “I don’t know, Baby. There are barbed wire fences and high walls to keep the Perez family and lots of other people from coming here.”

  Witch Baby crawled under the bed and began to cry loud sobs that shook the mattress. She felt like a drum being beaten from the inside.

  My Secret Agent Lover Man got down on his hands and knees and tried to reach for her, but she was too far under the bed. She looked at him through a glaze of amethyst tears.

  “Who am I?” she asked, clutching Angel Juan’s T-shirt to her chest. “I need to know. You tell me.”