Cattywampus

by Ash Van Otterloo

  But on pure-perfect mornings like this, Delpha sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a dad to fix the toilets. Or take her out for waffles at the diner on Saturdays, like Katybird’s dad sometimes did. She tried to picture a home like that, and a hollow ache settled in her chest. For the second time in as many days, Delpha banished the featherbrained thought. Naw.

  Why was she so feely these days? Probably, Delpha reasoned, she was just grieving her grandma. Maybe when she got her spells right, she could bippity-boppity-boo their leaky plumbing into behaving. For now, Delpha would pee in the woods.

  After slipping out the back door for a quick trip behind an oak tree, Delpha washed her hands and whistled as the old drip coffee machine sputtered and warbled. She ate a banana and scrambled an egg. Wrapping both hands around a steaming mug, she kicked the screen door to the front porch open with her boot.

  “Mornin’.”

  Delpha’s gaze swiveled to the porch swing. Her mother sat humming to herself as she shelled dried peas into a metal bowl. She didn’t look up. If it had been anyone else sitting there, Delpha could have remained cool as a cucumber. But since it was her mother, Delpha had the unnerving notion her carving knife was shining through the pocket of her denim shorts, giving away her secret intentions of carving another wand.

  “Nice out, innit?” Delpha mumbled. She sipped her coffee and tried to look casual, but her eyes kept falling to the toes of her boots. Snap out of it! You look guilty as a fox, Delpha chided herself. She forced her shoulders to hang loosely, then tore her eyes away from the floorboards.

  “Bit airish. Not bad, though. Spring’s a-comin’, and soon it’ll be warm enough to get out in the garden. Good, too. I’m ’bout out of mullein and yarrow.” Creak, creak, creak. The swing picked up speed, and Mama’s voice sing-talked against the rhythm. “Noticed the old shed disappeared last night. Ain’t been returned yet. Bit upsettin’.”

  Delpha’s eyes flew wide at the mention of the woodshed. She managed to keep her mouth shut, but only just. Snatching a glance at her mother, she bit the inside of her cheek as guilt flooded her. Her goose was cooked. Then came a creeping dread. She’d hidden the spellbook inside the shed! Her breath caught at the realization: If the shed’s gone, the book’s gone, too.

  Clink, clink. Peas landed in the bottom of Mama’s bowl. “I’d guess it burned down, but there ain’t no ashes,” Mama continued. “The stack-stones were gone, too, with big ol’ square tracks cuttin’ right through the weeds, plumb into the woods. Almost like it went walkin’ off by itself.”

  A vague, fuzzy hope seeped into Delpha’s thoughts. Maybe the wand—and the spells she’d cast with it—hadn’t been worthless after all. Had she somehow moved the shed? Heartbeat in her throat, Delpha blew on her coffee and decided to play innocent as a baby bird. “Wonder what happened? Think someone stole it?”

  Mama gave her a sharp look. “Ohhhh, now I don’t know. There’s no tire marks, and it’s a big thing to carry off. If someone’s playin’ a joke, it’s a bad one.”

  The rocking chair creaked faster, and Mama’s eyes flashed. Delpha finally noticed the frost that edged Mama’s words. She knows it was me, Delpha thought, stomach dropping. This chitchat was the calm before the storm. Peas shot into the metal bowl like bullets. PLUNK, PLUNK, PLUNK.

  “If we were in the old witchin’ days, I’d almost say it was a conjure gone bad. Maybe a conjure done by a young’un without any practice. But I don’t need to worry about that, ’cause no child of mine is fool enough to mess with nonsense like that.”

  Delpha had to cough out the lie stuck in her throat. “No, ma’am.”

  “Any child of mine knows magic is a shortcut right off a cliff. Conjure can’t ever replace hard work and common sense. It’s poison.” Mama’s winter-sky eyes pierced Delpha from under her halo of dark curls. Mama never accused Delpha outright unless she knew she had the right to. But once she did know, there was always heck to pay. Mama usually brought down the hammer so hard over every piddly thing, she’d practically forged Delpha’s independent streak into steel. Delpha was a model citizen at home, then spent most of her time hiking through the woods just to avoid having to deal with Mama’s sharp-eyed scrutiny. And now, Delpha had gone and broken the McGills’ first commandment, Thou Shalt Not Do Magic. So why weren’t the sparks flyin’? She can’t tell if I did it or not, Delpha realized.

  “Maybe … it’s the Hearns messin’ around with magic.”

  “Hearns never had that sort’a magic. Back in the day, though, when both families were playin’ at being witches, some McGills were puppet makers. They could make things move by themselves that ain’t s’posed to. Rocks and trees. Sheds, too, I reckon. But spells like that could get a body killed. That doesn’t sound too smart now, does it, baby?”

  Mama’s troubled eyes darted back and forth, studying Delpha’s face. This unsettled Delpha. Her mother always knew things, and she especially always knew when Delpha was lying. But now Mama was looking at Delpha like she was trying to decide if Delpha was a rotten pea or not. Delpha felt a flush creep straight to the roots of her hair, and part of her wanted to tell Mama the truth. This was more than her mama had ever discussed magic in Delpha’s life, and Delpha was hungry for more. But telling would mean her mother putting a torch to her plans, and they’d both keep plodding through life, shabby and small.

  Delpha said the only thing she could. “No, ma’am.” She twisted her braid, digging her toe into a souring porch rail, then blurted, “Before she died, Mamaw told me you used’ta have healing magic. Don’t see how that could hurt anyone. Seems like you could even get paid for it.”

  Mama’s face hardened as she hesitated. She stared at Delpha for a long moment, then gazed out at the trees.

  “First off, folks around here wouldn’t trust it, even if it helped ’em. And they’d be right not to. Did I ever tell you what happened after that Hearn boy broke my sister’s heart?”

  “Yes, mama.”

  When mama’s sister—a weather witch—was sixteen, she’d accidentally made the creek swell above the banks in a fit of sadness, and her younger brother had drowned. Mama’s sister had died, too, after she’d jumped in and tried to save him. Delpha knew the story well.

  “Did you know I tried using my healing magic to bring them back? When it wouldn’t work, my daddy had to pry me away before I drained myself dead trying. Magic is a lie, Delpha. If somethin’ seems too good to be true, it prob’ly is, and some things can’t be undone. Your mamaw never was the same again, rest her soul. She was swamped with grief.”

  Delpha swallowed hard. She’d known her mama’s siblings had passed on, but she hadn’t known all that. This was the most Mama had ever said about magic, besides Don’t do it. Mama’s eyes pleaded with her. Delpha half expected Mama to tear into her, to outright accuse her of magic and forbid her from leaving her room. She don’t want it to be true. She wants to believe I didn’t. Delpha steeled herself against the guilt. She couldn’t give up magic now, not when she’d only just found it.

  Shrugging, Delpha flashed a puzzled smile. “Why you tellin’ me this? You ain’t ever gonna catch me messin’ with that garbage, Mama.”

  “Good.” Mama exhaled and relaxed her shoulders, then turned her attention back to the peas, her copper ring flashing as she fished out the last of the stems. Business as usual. She shifted to stand. “Reckon I’d better go call the sheriff and let him know about the stolen shed, then. I’ll be doing prenatals in the downstairs office until two o’clock, and then I’ve got to go do rounds. There’s soup in the fridge.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Think I’ll go hiking before it gets too hot.”

  “Don’t go too far.”

  “No, ma’am.” Delpha set her coffee cup on the porch rail meekly, avoiding eye contact. As soon as the screen door closed behind Mama, Delpha shot off the porch and into the woods, the ground a blur beneath her boots.

  Cold wind whistled past Delpha’s ears as she ran, making them ache deep inside,
but she barely noticed. She followed a trail of crushed leaves and broken branches through the woods for several minutes, her body taut and alert. Like Mama had said, there were square-shaped tracks in the softer bits of earth, just the size of the shed’s four-legged stacked-stone foundation. Her hands shook from the shock of lying right to Mama’s face, never mind the nausea she felt at the thought of her secret being discovered. But after a while, as she ran farther into the forest, an ember of pride flickered inside her. Could Delpha really be a puppet maker? A tiny smile tugged at her mouth. It had a nice ring to it.

  Still, Delpha hadn’t meant to make the outhouse go running off. She’d only meant for it to be a quiet place to keep her secrets safe. The spell hadn’t gone right, not at all under her control. This started her witch-hood off on the total wrong foot. Her mouth bunched up like a cat’s behind, and she growled under her breath. Now she’d have to catch the stupid thing, and then figure out how to get her wand out of it.

  And the precious heirloom spellbook.

  Delpha wiped sweat away and doubled her pace. No one else in Howler’s Hollow (besides the Hearns, of course) even knew magic like Delpha’s still existed. Both families would be in deep trouble if folks noticed Delpha’s shed lumbering through the woods. Folks would get curious, then downright suspicious. They’d meddle and ask questions. Worry snowballed inside Delpha, until her heart seemed to skip every other beat.

  Folks in the Hollow were touchier about magic than most, ever since the days of the Hearn and McGill witch feuds. Even though the stories were more faded than the McGills’ wallpaper, their bones remembered, Mamaw’d always said.

  Just last month, in the school cafeteria, she’d overheard a boy brag how his youth group had torched all their Ouija boards, old copies of Harry Potter, and their kid sisters’ Monster High dolls in a bonfire. All this to denounce the “dangerous influence of witchcraft.” The story had made Delpha’s neck hair stand on end. She didn’t like to think how folks might interpret her setting a whole shed loose with magic.

  She had to catch up to it. Spurred on by excitement and fear in equal parts, Delpha gripped her side and ran harder through the woods.

  KATY SLOUCHED AGAINST THE KITCHEN COUNTER and nibbled on a Pop-Tart, hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands to hide any magical eruption from her family. She had managed to convince her mother she’d accidentally broken her bedroom window trying to chase Fatso off the curtains with a broomstick. It hadn’t been hard—Mama hated Fatso.

  When Mama looked up from making pancakes for Katy’s little brother, Caleb, Katy tried to look appropriately remorseful over the broken glass.

  “Don’t worry ’bout it, baby girl,” Mama sighed, glancing at her watch. She leaned forward and spoke soft, coaxing words to a row of orchids on the windowsill, the soft blue haze of her stalk magic flowing over them from her fingers as she opened the blinds. The flowers perked and bloomed. “You can make it up to me by finishing these pancakes. An’ teach Caleb his ASL vocabulary words, too. I’m runnin’ further behind than a tick chasin’ a greyhound. Gotta get my face on.” Mama’s hands flew in sign language as she talked until both sets of words garbled when she clicked open a handheld mirror and carefully applied ruby-red lipstick.

  Keeping her hands mostly covered with her sleeves, Katybird flipped the pancake and frowned at its sad, anemic color. She tossed an oven mitt at six-year-old Caleb to get his attention. Spikey-haired Caleb, who sat on top of the kitchen table like a barbarian, stuck his tongue out at her. Katybird tapped a two-fingered “V” against her opposite index finger, signing the word “vocabulary” to him. Caleb, who was deaf from birth, signed back, “No way.”

  Katy shrugged. She would have been forced to uncover her hands, anyway, to teach Caleb his three new words for school. Not good, since her hands had already glowed twice since she’d woken. Katy suspected her anxiety was making the pent-up magic worse, so when she’d gotten dressed, she’d opted for her black hoodie instead of her more see-through white one. She didn’t want a repeat of yesterday. Anyway, Caleb’s vocabulary was already huge for his age.

  “These pancakes look awful,” Katy muttered to herself as she fumbled the spatula through her sleeve-mitts. “And I hate cookin’.”

  Mama walked toward Caleb, transplanting him from table to chair with a single parental movement. “First pancakes are always weird,” she chirped, and signed, kissing Caleb’s forehead and leaving a mark.

  When his mother’s back was turned, Caleb sprouted an impish grin and signed to Katybird, “First kids are weird, too.”

  Katy narrowed her eyes in mock anger, then pressed her lips together to quash a smile. Play-fighting was a welcome distraction. It was all affectionate posturing, since both would gladly kick in the kneecaps of anyone who looked at the other one funny. Katy slapped the pitiful cakes onto a plate, drenched them in syrup, and then slid them in front of her brother, sweetly. He stuck out his tongue again.

  Katy’s mother pushed a bobby pin into her strawberry-colored twist of hair, completing her friendly-museum-guide look, then took a sip from her sweating glass of iced tea. “I gotta be at the museum all day again. Nanny and Papaw are fixin’ to clean the place top to bottom for the Spring Fling tourists tomorrow. City folks just love the mountains in April.”

  Katybird detected a request buried somewhere in that speech. She slurped some orange juice, then guessed, “You need me to keep an eye on Caleb? Can we stay home?”

  Mama squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll be there for a while, so you’ll have to come, too. You’re such a good girl.” She heaved a happy sigh and cupped a hand under Katy’s chin. “There’s only one Katybird like my Katybird. If we do good this weekend, there’s twenty dollars in it for you—how’s that sound?”

  Katy nodded without protest, mostly because her grandparents would be there, too. Every Saturday, the old couple scuttled around the museum with bottles of Windex, making sure bored city kids kept their grimy hands off the glass, vacuuming dust off hanging patchwork quilts and pottery, and generally being nosey toward anyone who “wasn’t from ’round these parts.”

  Katybird’s job was keeping Caleb busy and stopping him from drawing private parts on the murals of Scotch-Irish immigrants with his crayons. Babysitting would give Katybird time to brood about her magic next to the museum’s well-stocked candy counter.

  “I’m bringing Podge!” Katy gathered her pet and herded her brother to the car. They rode in silence, gazing out the window as her mother drove the familiar winding slopes to the museum. Other than emerald rhododendrons and pine trees, the colors of spring were still timid splashes here and there. Caleb kicked the back of Katy’s seat in time to the occasional sight of electric-yellow forsythia or snowy patches of bloodroot.

  Once there, Katybird let Podge curl in his bed in the break room, then settled on a bench behind the rustic welcome counter. Waving for Caleb’s attention, she signed, “I can do more jumping jacks than you!”

  Caleb, who was fiercely competitive, immediately started jumping, his little arms and legs flailing while his brow furrowed in concentration. Katy giggled.

  Katybird used this ploy often. The trick was to let him go first, then, once it was her turn, do one less jumping jack than he’d managed. Then she’d flop onto the floor in exaggerated defeat while Caleb danced around gloating. Last time, he’d stopped at around eighty-six. The game usually bought her ten minutes of peace.

  Katybird tucked her knees under her chin and covertly fished a bag of jelly beans she’d swiped from storage out of a drawer. A happy mood called for lime-flavored beans, thoughtful times needed root beer, and anger demanded cinnamon. Today’s flavor was chocolate pudding, the flavor of soul-sucking misery. She commenced her brooding.

  Why hadn’t the forest spirits talked to her? Katy darkly mused that maybe she’d managed to break the centuries-old “walk, stalk, talk” Hearn magic cycle by inserting a pathetic “balk” into the pattern. Her belly churned, and she popped another candy to soothe it.
A voice crept into her head like a cold front sliding its way down the mountain into the valley, turning her insides to ice. It was the voice of Doubt, her nonstop, clingy sidekick.

  You know why it didn’t work.

  Katybird’s hands trembled as she signed applause to Caleb. “Shut up,” she whispered to the hateful voice in her mind. Maybe I’m really powerful, and that’s why my magic is being difficult, she thought. Katy’s heartbeat slowed as she rolled the idea around for a moment. Maybe bigger magic took more practice. Or maybe she needed to be a grown lady for her brand of conjure to pay her heed. She bit her lip, revisiting one of her least favorite memories from two years before.

  Katybird shuddered as she recalled the crinkly, uncomfortable paper covering of the medical exam table and the sterile smell of the doctor’s office. The place had felt about as hospitable as a bed of skunk-infested stinging nettles outside a funeral parlor. A monotone specialist had announced to Katy’s mother that Katy was “androgen insensitive,” meaning she had XY chromosomes like most boys, but that nature had knitted her body up using a more traditionally female pattern. That hadn’t phased Katy much. She was a girl. That’s all she cared about. According to the doctor, she also had a pair of internal testes (the doohickeys that made all that testosterone her body didn’t use). No biggie. Katybird had yawned and swung her heels over the exam table, itching to go home. That is, anyway, until the doctor plopped this doozie into the middle of the room:

  “We recommend surgery to remove her internal testes, in case they cause trouble later. When shall we schedule the operation?” The fancy doctors in coats had asked the question nice and easy-like, as if they wanted to know whether Katy’s mama wanted pickles on a burger.