A Hard Witching

by Jacqueline Baker

  He eased himself up, noticing how his shadow fell across her belly in a wide, dark stripe. He wondered how long he would have to stand there in order to leave the white shape of his body on her skin. He banged the empty bottle against his leg a couple of times. Lucy opened her eyes.

  “You want a drink?” he asked. “I could get something.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “see if you got any Tang.”

  Owen slammed through the screen door. His mother knelt on the kitchen floor in a halter top and the cut-off shorts she wore to work, trimming new strips of MACtac to line the cupboards—yellow with green dots a shade lighter than Lucy’s swimsuit. She was wearing the belt he hated, the one with her name stitched on the back, Lillie. He had one, too, in a box somewhere in the basement. Owen. Like it meant something. It was too small now. He’d picked them both out that year they’d gone together to the Stampede in Medicine Hat. He’d ridden on the carousel and on a pony, a brown one with big white patches that made him think of continents. And then she’d taken him on the Ferris wheel, and the wheel had stopped when they were almost right at the top, and he was amazed that even from way up there he could still smell red candied apples, like cinnamon, and popcorn and hotdogs (and mustard, he was sure he could smell mustard), and he wondered whether he just thought he could smell it because he knew it was all there, hamburgers and pizza and fat pink wads of cotton candy, and before he knew it the wheel had started, and they were at the bottom again, and his mother was holding the bar back so he could climb out, and he realized with dismay that he’d never even looked at the city. How about a corn dog? his mother said then. But he wasn’t hungry. So they splurged—that’s what his mother said—and bought the belts. Owen picked them out and stood watching while a man with an electric tool like a drill etched their names on the leather. He wished now he’d chosen something else. He wished his mother would not wear hers anymore, but he could not tell her this.

  “Shush,” she said as he stood in the kitchen doorway, though he had not said anything, “I just put the baby down.” She leaned back on her haunches and frowned at him. “Owen. Where’s your shirt?”

  “I been in the shade,” he said, trying not to look at the loose flesh of her belly over the shorts.

  “Still.” She put down the scissors. “Sun goes right through leaves, right through to your skin. You’ll get sunstroke. Or skin cancer. Do you want that, skin cancer?”

  Owen did not want skin cancer. He wished she would not say those things. He crossed the narrow kitchen and reached for two plain bar glasses from the shelf, then exchanged them for tall, clear mugs ringed with yellow sunflowers. He looked back at his mother. Would she say something about that?

  “Dinner’ll be ready soon,” she said. Owen looked at the clock. It was after three. “Take some crackers if you’re hungry,” she added, “but use a paper plate, not the good patterned ones.”

  Owen took two pitchers from the refrigerator, poured both mugs almost full of Tang and filled the Windex bottle with cold water.

  “Who’s that for?” his mother asked, standing up and, almost in one motion, leaning into a chair. “Oh, my back. Sweetie, come and rub right here. Who’s the Tang for?”

  Owen dug his thumbs under his mother’s shoulder blades. He could tell by her voice she was having a bad day. That was what she called them, her bad days.

  “Just a friend.”

  “What friend?”

  “Lucy.”

  “Lucy Satterley?” She frowned over her shoulder. “Lower, sweetie.”

  He shifted his hands down his mother’s back, noticed a pinched red welt where the elastic of her top dug into her flesh. There seemed to be a lot of people his mother didn’t want him to talk to. He hoped she would not say he couldn’t talk to Lucy.

  “You’d think I was eighty the way my back hurts. That’s what a pregnancy’ll do to you. That and worse. A bit to the right. The right.”

  Owen shifted his hands again, noticed some dirt under his fingernails, not much.

  “With you, I couldn’t hardly do nothing. Just lie around all day. Watch TV. Sometimes I’d do the hide-a-words, but …” She waved her hand.

  Through the screen door, they could hear a dog begin to bark down the alley. Fletcher’s dog, Boone. She never barked as if she was angry or excited. She just barked. It was something to do. Owen knew it would likely last all afternoon, perfectly measured, like the ticking of a clock.

  Owen’s mother raised her head, pushed her hair back from her forehead.

  “Damn dog,” she said.

  Owen paused to flex his fingers.

  “What did you say Lucy Satterley’s doing here? Did her mom send her?”

  “No,” Owen said. “I was just talking to her. Over the wall.”

  “Oh.” She straightened her shoulders, rolled her neck. “That’s enough, sweetie. Those Satterleys,” she said. “June borrowed my good cake pan last spring.” She picked a piece of dried grass from Owen’s pants. “Probably never see that again.” She stood, rolling the grass between her fingertips. “Owen,” she said after a moment, “how old is Lucy anyway?” Owen took the plastic ice cube tray from the freezer, twisted it and pried out the cubes with his fingers.

  “Must be in junior high now,” she said. She stood there at the sink, lips pursed as if calculating. “Is she in junior high, Owen?”

  “I dunno.” He plunked two cubes in each glass and returned the tray to the freezer.

  “Owen …” she said.

  Owen paused, one hand on the freezer.

  “You should put the ice in first,” she said. “You splashed all over the counter.” She stared at him a moment, then turned away, sighed. “Looks like rain.” She tapped her fingernails on the counter, staring out the screen door.

  It was what she always said. It was what everyone said. It would look as if rain was coming, but the clouds would just slide by. “Probably not,” Owen said.

  “No.” She smiled a little. “Probably not.”

  Past her, he could see the roof of the school and beyond that, the tall black peak of St. Joseph’s. He wondered whether Lucy had waited. His mother sighed again and knelt down by the MACtac. He could feel her watching as he filled a plate with graham crackers.

  “You should put that on a tray, Owen,” she said. “There’s one in that box of kitchen stuff downstairs. The first one, I think, the big one.”

  He did not want a tray, but he was not willing to say this. He wanted to get back outside. What if she’d already gone into her house? It would be cloudy soon. She wouldn’t stay out when it was cloudy.

  Halfway down the stairs, Owen heard the baby howl. Would he have to stay in now? To help out? He pulled the string on the overhead bulb, poked around in the cardboard boxes in the corner, considering the possibility of mice, spiders. The floor creaked under his mother’s weight above him, under the weight of the baby. He’d held it once. It weighed a lot, for something that size.

  At the bottom of the second box, he found an old Pepsi-Cola tray, probably from the bar, too. It reminded him of last winter, when he’d had the flu. He’d spent nearly a week stretched out on the chesterfield in the front room, reading comic books while his mother brought him glass after glass of flat ginger ale on that tray. That had been a good week, in spite of the flu. Owen closed the box and headed for the stairs. As always when leaving the basement, he kept the light on, unwilling to turn his back on a darkened room.

  Owen eased himself across the wall. Lucy had rolled onto her stomach and leaned on one elbow, looking at the Sears catalogue, her swimsuit straps dangling down over the pinkish tops of her arms.

  “About time.” Her face looked red and swollen from the heat. “What are you wearing those pants for? Aren’t you godawful hot?”

  He set the tray down carefully on the grass. She took one of the mugs and flipped a page in the catalogue. When he didn’t answer, she looked up at him. “What you got to wear pants for?”

  “Skin cancer,” he said, befo
re he could stop himself.

  “You got skin cancer?”

  He rubbed his palms on his pants. “Maybe.”

  “That’ll kill ya, you know.”

  “I know.”

  She let the catalogue fall shut.

  “I had a cousin died last summer,” she said. “Brain aneurysm. Popped off in the middle of the night and nobody knew nothing about it. Ten years old. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Found her in the morning and it looked like she was sleeping.” Lucy took a bite of graham cracker and added ominously, “Only she wasn’t.” She paused to brush crumbs from her lips. “Maybe you got a brain aneurysm.”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t.”

  “You better hope not.” She reached for another cracker. “You better hope it’s not a brain aneurysm. They get you in your sleep. Just like that. You might have one. You wouldn’t know it if you did, and then one night—” She snapped her fingers again.

  “I don’t have an aneurysm,” Owen said irritably, poking at the ice cubes in his glass.

  “How do you know?”

  “My mom would know. She’d know.”

  “She’d know it when she found you laid out stone-cold dead in the morning, that’s what.” Lucy finished the crackers and closed her eyes, resting her head on her folded arms. Owen could see fine bits of graham cracker stuck to the sweat above her lip.

  His mother would know. Of course she would. Even with the baby. She’d know. He thought about what she’d said as he was leaving: “You tell that Lucy Satterley—” Then she’d shaken her head, jiggled the baby against her chest. “Remind Lucy her mother has my good baking pan.” She wouldn’t let something like that happen to him, something like an aneurysm. But he did not want to talk to Lucy about his mother. He did not want to talk about her at all. He thought of what they said sometimes at school, chanting it during recess but quietly so the teachers wouldn’t hear, Lillie Gower ain’t no flower. It was stupid. And it wasn’t the worst thing they said, not by far. But it made him angry anyway. Lucy would never say that. Or would she?

  He looked up at the sky, at the fat clouds moving heavily. Soon they would be right overtop of them.

  “My mom wants her baking pan,” he blurted.

  “What?”

  “My mom wants her baking pan.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes.” He stuck out his chin. “She’s baking a cake.” He sat up straight and added, “Not for the baby.”

  “I thought you said she wasn’t home.”

  Lucy clucked her tongue against her teeth and sat up, the top of her swimsuit dipping low across her chest, the skin there mapped with the creases of the silver blanket. Owen stared at the white rim of flesh. It was the prettiest thing. Like the inside of a seashell.

  “What are you looking at?” she demanded. “You little perv.” She didn’t move to pull the straps up.

  “I’m not a perv.”

  “Yes, you are. Perv.” She smirked, leaning forward. “Snatch.”

  Owen stood up, brushed the grass from his knees and pulled his shirt on. The sun had made him dizzy, and he wobbled a bit as he bent for the tray.

  “I’m not finished yet,” Lucy said, grabbing her mug. She tilted her head back and drained the mug, exposing the sweat-streaky white flesh of her neck and chest. Letting her top slip down so he could see the smooth tops of her breasts. He looked quickly away.

  “Thanks,” she said as she handed him the mug, sucking on an ice cube wedged in the corner of her mouth. “Perv.”

  II

  Lucy’d seen Lillie Gower’s kid straddling the wall long before he’d finally jumped down and come over. She’d known it was just a matter of time; he’d sat there every day this week. She hadn’t seen him around much since they’d moved in last fall, wouldn’t have known him from Adam if she’d passed him on the street. But she knew Lillie. Everybody did. The kid had her build, real small-boned. And that hair, not quite blond, not quite brown. Sort of cardboard-coloured.

  She looked back at him through the sliding glass doors. He stood in the middle of the yard, hands jammed deep in the pockets of those ridiculous pants. Who would dress their kid like that in this heat? He turned toward the house then, shading his eyes, and she stepped away from the doors. Maybe she shouldn’t have done that, flashed him that way. It wasn’t really like her. There was just something about the way he’d kept gawking, thinking she didn’t even notice. Something sly.

  Still, with a mother like that, the kid was bound to be a little weird. A cocktail waitress, at her age, in those skimpy shorts, two kids later. Who was she kidding? She must be at least thirty. No, was she that old? She didn’t really look it, not in the face, not really. It was hard to tell. Lucy had seen her up close only that one time, in the alley outside the bar. And it had been dark, with just the yellow bulb over the back door. And Lucy had drunk the beer that Rick’s cousin had snuck out for him under his jacket. When she thinks about that night, she can still taste the beer. Awful. It had made her eyes water. But she’d drunk it anyway, tried to guzzle it to make it go down fast. And Rick had grabbed her, laughing, falling against her into the wall. And the cousin, laughing, too, cracking open another beer. This one’s on Lillie.

  Bullshit, Rick had said, you’re full of shit.

  I’m not shitting you, man.

  Shit, Rick said, shaking his head. So what’re you doing here?

  And the cousin grinned, stepping back into the bar, Rick laughing.

  And she had laughed, too, though she hadn’t found anything particularly funny, and she remembered there was glass under her shoes, she could hear it crunching, and she was scared it might punch right through her runners into her foot. She’d heard about that, about people stepping on rusty nails or dirty glass, so she’d pushed Rick backwards a little, just to get away from it. She didn’t know why he got so mad then, shoving her back up against the wall. She’d knocked her head on the bricks, but it hadn’t hurt, not really. And for a minute she’d thought it was all right, of course it was, this was just Rick. Only she was crying. She was dizzy and crying and her sweater was off and tangled somewhere down in the dirt. She was freezing, with glass under her feet and all that yellow light like stars falling, and then Lillie was right there, trashy Lillie Gower who wore her shorts too short and her hair too big. Her face was up against Lucy’s, so close Lucy could smell her gum, peppermint, and Rick was running down the alley with his cousin. Lillie was draping the sweater across Lucy’s chest, saying, You okay, sweetie, you okay? over and over, her face soft in that light and shifting, like sand.

  And that’s when she’d been sick. Lillie had her by the shoulder, saying, Stay here, I’ll get you some water. Stay right here. And she had slipped into the door below the yellow bulb, a blast of laughter and music blowing out behind her. Before she could come back, Lucy’d wiped her chin with her sweater and run down the alley toward home, tripping against the ruts, wondering if Rick would be there waiting for her, half hoping he would be. He wasn’t, though. She hadn’t seen him since, except that one afternoon down at Boyle’s. But he was paying for a Coke and didn’t see her walk by.

  She’d almost expected Lillie to show up, too, the next day, maybe say something to her mother. She hadn’t, of course—they weren’t friends or anything, her mother and Lillie. Anyway, Lillie Gower wasn’t anybody to be afraid of.

  And now here was her kid, leering at Lucy in the backyard.

  She pulled the blinds shut and headed for the kitchen. It was freezing. Her mother must be home, pumping the air conditioning again. The house was never the right temperature, cold in the summer, hot in the winter. She grabbed her dad’s old gardening cardigan from a hook by the back door and pulled it on over her swimsuit.

  “Mom,” she shouted. “Lillie Gower wants her cake pan.” She could hear the low hum of a radio on somewhere above. “Mom!” she hollered up the dim stairs. And waited.

  “For Jesus’ sake,” she grumbled, banging up the carpeted steps i
n her bare feet. She’d catch hell for that; there was probably grass all over them. “Mom,” she said, swinging open her mother’s bedroom door, “Lillie Gower wants her cake pan.”

  Her mother was sitting in an armchair by the window, looking out at the backyard, a romance novel spine-up on her leg. “Yes,” she said, turning around, “I heard.”

  Lucy pulled the cardigan across her stomach. Had her mother been sitting by the window the whole time? She fingered the ribbon on top of her head.

  Her mother sat with her legs crossed, the pale blue house-wrap she always wore on Sundays draped neatly to her ankles. She stared at Lucy, then clicked off the radio that was playing softly on the nightstand.

  Lucy rubbed her arms. “Does it have to be forty below in here?”

  “Is that Owen down there?” her mother asked, turning back to the window. Lucy shifted her feet. Well, so what? She hadn’t really done anything. Besides, her mother should take care of her own problems. She noticed the glass tumbler beside the radio, empty.

  Her mother rose then and stepped into the adjoining bathroom, closing the door. Lucy crossed the room quietly, sniffed the empty glass. Water or vodka, she couldn’t tell for sure. She tilted the glass back to her mouth. Water. She set it carefully back down over its wet ring.

  In the yard below, Owen had moved into the shade, sitting with his shirt on, the Pepsi tray balanced on his knees, staring up at the sky, motionless. Beyond the yard, she could see the highway and then the yellow glint of the Sand Hills. Looking just as they always did, rising up in gentle ridges from the horizon like the backs of whales. She hadn’t ever noticed that they looked closer in winter. And how did he know all that stuff anyway? Probably he’d made it up.

  Her mother came back in a loose white sundress.

  “I’m sure I returned that.”

  “What?”

  “That cake pan. I’m sure I returned it ages ago.”

  Lucy stretched the cardigan down over her thighs. Jesus, it was freezing. “What’d you borrow a cake pan of Lillie Gower’s for anyway?”