by E. M. Moore
Being blessed with excellent memory, I could remember things back to when I was four. I could recall the only and exact time my mom and I ever discussed Dad being dead.
I sat at a desk in my pre-K class at Elm Street Elementary, head propped up, fingers tracing lines my pencil had made all day. The eraser-left-behinds were all piled up neatly in the pencil catch at the top of the tan desk.
I pushed some off the edge of the desk and peered over, watching them collect on the floor. Nothing. I bore a hole into my mother’s back. Still talking to Miss Marty. Not even a glance my way.
So, I pushed another pile right near the edge and looked up again. Mom made wide circles with her hands and laughed that big, annoying laugh. I pushed the pile off.
Nothing again. I made yet another pile of red squiggles and held my finger at the ready. Miss Marty laughed this time. My mother only smirked. It was the ‘I don’t really care to pay attention’ smile I’d become used to. The one I found when showing Mom I caught a butterfly with the net they gave me at school. Or the one I found when I showed my mom the blue star on my crayon drawing of our house, with Mom and me, holding hands in the front, both with a bushel of pink flowers.
Rita Dawson walked in, smiling up at her own mother. She skipped to the desk next to mine dragging her mother behind her, the woman’s heels clicking rapidly against the tiled floor.
The woman smiled and laughed too, looking down at her daughter in tawny curls and a flowered jumper.
“Mommy, look!” Rita sat.
The chair scraped against the floor reminding me of school days when Miss Marty would clap, clap and we’d all scramble over. Except this was just one chair.
“And I have all kinds of pencils and crayons. And look! I made this drawing of us!” Her eager hands forced the paper with the crayon markings in front of her mom’s face.
Rita’s mommy cupped her hand around Rita’s chubby cheeks and kissed them. “Honey.” Her mother twisted and held up the drawing to a man. “Our little girl made a family portrait of us. We’ll have to hang it on the fridge.”
The man smiled down at the picture. “Well, of course we’ll have to. Right next to the others.”
I stared hard through the filmy white of the paper, able to see the picture in reverse. A child, a woman, and a man.
I pushed the rest of the eraser garbage off the edge of the desk.
“Mommy,” I said to Cici after I was called from the desk and we left. “Rita has a mommy and a daddy.”
Mom pulled down the sun visor in the car and two lights illuminated her face. She brushed her fingers under her eyes and sighed. “Uh huh.”
I kicked the back of the passenger seat, making a white scuffmark across the black leather. “Where’s my daddy?”
“I told you before. He’s d— in heaven.” She scrunched up her hair and mouth in the mirror and applied more pink color to her lips.
I kicked the leather again, right next to the other white mark. “But what happened to him?”
Mom locked eyes with me through the mirror. They were hard, icy like an evil queen. “His heart. Now, I’m not going to talk about him anymore so if that’s what you want, you can stop talking too.”
My little body swelled and my chest got bigger and bigger until it got too big and too hard to keep in anymore. And the tears burst through and the cries poured out until I got smaller and smaller and wrapped my arms around myself, pretending they belonged to a man I’d never seen. And would never see.
***
“I can’t believe you haven’t read the whole thing yet.” Drake picked up the journal that lay between us on the bed. “Don’t you want to know what it says?”
I shrugged. Reading my father’s words would make him real. Something my mom tried very hard to make him not be.
“Well, this is crazy. I mean, if my grandfather told me my father left a journal, I’d…” He threw his hands up in the air, along with the journal. “I just don’t get it.”
“You knew your father,” I said, grabbing the book from him when he started to undo the clasp. “You’d know everything he’d written anyway.”
Drake put his hand on top of my retreating one. “You could know yours too.”
“Isn’t that what you’re here for?” I tried to smile. It fell heavy on my face.
“That’s what you’re here for."
My heart sighed, dropping into my stomach. This could be a dream come true…or a nightmare.
I held the journal with both hands, heart somehow beating in a steady rhythm, but with a pounding force of nerves behind it—like a heavy battering ram threatening my ribcage.
Boom, another second—boom, another—boom.
My fingers felt enormous as they worked at the clasp, like a child working at his shoes. It took three tries for my shaking hands to pull the strap tight enough to draw the bronzed spire from the hole. Drake’s eyes were all over me, covering me as his body leaned in to fill the space between us.
My fingers wandered over the writing on the cover. David, 1995.
“I was one, you know, when my dad died.” My fingers lingered on the letters, waiting for a reason. To stop, to start, for everything.
“And I was two.” Drake shrugged. “Open the damn book Sarah.”
I cracked the journal, fast, like removing a Band-Aid. And there it was. His words, his writing. I tried to ignore the similar slope of his writing.
To get emotional over this would be embarrassing. I couldn’t help it though. I wrote like my dad. I wanted to throw open the window, stick my head out and yell, I write like my dad! I found out today that I write like my dad. My words are like his, and his are like mine.
It was stupid, but the hot tears came anyway and rested in the corners of my eyes.
“This is about you,” Drake said.
He pulled the journal from my hands and read aloud. His voice in awe, but steady. I was grateful. I needed someone to make things real. Apparently, Cici and Dad were trying to get me to walk and apparently, I was ‘so beautiful, just like her mother’.
Huh? The boom—boom—boom ended with a stuttering jerk. The rollercoaster ride stopped abruptly. Like my mother?
“You mean they liked each other?”
I tore the journal back from Drake and his wiry smile and started flipping through page after page of endearing notes of me…and Mom.
We went to the park and Cici and Sar’s eyes gleamed with excitement. Cici took her on the big slide., and I came home to a mess in the kitchen today, flour all over the place and on my pretty princesses'.
I looked up from the pages, completely dumbstruck, mouth wide and the journal lying limp in my hands.
Drake laughed. “You’re shocked your parents liked each other? You know where babies come from, don’t you?”
I nodded, mind whirring with pictures of a loving Cici with a baby girl. With me. It was something I’d never seen before. Something I never thought I would see. And something I was sure I would never read about. “I’m just completely…I just always thought…”
Drake smiled and took the journal again. He read ahead as I processed my mother being anything other than a conceited bitch.
“Hey, Rose is in this one!” He brought the journal closer to his face and flipped back a page. “Auntie Rose called today. She didn't sound much like herself. Very cryptic. I’m going to drive up to Adams to check on her. Something about the town…I’m thinking it might be time to put her in senior living. My heart would break to do it, but with the baby, I don’t have enough time to take care of her too. I’ll have to see when I get there. Cici and Baby Sarah are going to spend some 'bonding time’ as Ci puts it.”
Ci? A cute, endearing name used for my mo—
He held the book out to me. “That’s really weird. Rose has always been so with it. I can’t believe your dad would have thought that sixteen years ago.”
I flipped through a couple more pages, reading snippets here and there of his travels to Virginia. “Oh my God,”
I screamed. “He came during Settler's Days too!”
Drake scooted next to me so we could read together, his arm around my back. I tracked my finger under the line as I read aloud, “I can’t believe how I’ve missed it here. The festival, as usual, all fun and games and Auntie Rose is dragging me to everything. And when I say dragging, I mean, us running together to gobble it all up. I think she may have just needed the company. Seems as spry as ever.” I giggled and threw the journal up in the air. “He likes this stuff. He loved it here.”
“I told you you couldn’t live in Adams and not like this stuff.”
I grabbed Drake by the shirt and pulled him close, crushing my lips against his. A few seconds later, I realized what I was doing and pulled away.
Why do I keep doing that? I needed to pull myself together. Just because I was happy about my dad, didn’t mean I had to kiss Drake. Just because I was sad about my dad, didn’t mean I needed to kiss Drake. Why did everything I feel lead me to kissing Drake?
I cleared my throat and grabbed the journal again. “Thank you for making me open this.”
I forced myself to meet his eyes. The tan of his cheeks turned pink. He leaned down again, eyes closing.
I backed away and held out a hand to his chest. I’d brought this on myself, kept bringing it on myself, but it needed to stop. “Please...don’t."
His head jerked up and away, his eyes flashing to my face and then down to the quilt on the bed. “Why?”
“You know, as well as me, this isn’t a good idea.”
He waved me away. “Yeah. No big deal. I like you and I just thought…but—What’s so bad about it?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” I reached for his hand and then yanked it back. It probably wasn’t a good idea to make physical contact with a guy when you were about to tell him you didn’t want to make physical contact anymore. “I live in Florida. You live in Virginia. For starters.”
I caught some of the hair that tickled my cheek and tucked it around my ear. Without looking at him, I opened the journal again to stop from talking and to try to stop Drake from saying anything else. I stared at words, not reading anything, just seeing Drake’s closing eyes and pink cheeks, feeling the way he brushed his fingers down my back earlier.
I shut my eyes tight and then opened them again. This time, thoughts cleared. I could focus on words and a symbol drawn into the book at the bottom of the page caught my attention. It appeared to be a bolt of lightning with a circle around it.
Drake shifted on the bed and I couldn’t keep my mind, and eyes, from going back to him, to his hurt face he covered up with shrugs and waves of his hand.
“But we’re both here right now.”
I didn’t respond.
***
Drake’s truck bounced along an old farming trail that weaved through the forest. Pink and orange wisps of clouds hung in the dusk sky. I sat in the passenger seat staring up at the beautiful expanse of colors, thinking of Dad and ignoring Drake’s friends in the back.
Pete and a couple others messed around in the bed of the truck. They talked loud, exclaiming, How lucky is Drake to get the only hot chick? and Do you think they’ve done anything yet?
I squirmed in the seat, wishing I hadn’t agreed to come to this Wiccan meeting. Drake insisted though. He said there would be a party afterward, and of course, that my dad would’ve gone if he were here.
The real reason I agreed to the party, even though I half suspected Drake lied about my dad coming to these things, was for my dad. I’d finally made it to a place where he belonged. I felt as if he sat next to me, moved me forward when all I really wanted to do was turn around.
When I was little, Mom went through a phase where she absolutely believed in all this metaphysical stuff. Tarot cards, psychics; you name it, she did it. She burned through tons of money to ‘cleanse her soul’ and ‘get in touch with nature’. Blah, blah, blah.
A few years ago, Cici dragged me along with her for bonding and thought it would be fun to get a dual reading. I tried to play along until the tarot reader pulled out the death card on me. The woman swore it didn’t mean anything, but I was done. Had enough. No more supernatural crap. It freaked me out.
Except when that crap made me feel like Dad was with me apparently. Maybe he’d smile at me like I imagined when I was younger, or tell me things would be alright, even good, maybe.
A bump in the road tossed me back to reality. Looking out the windshield, the trees had grown sparse and a vacant green area loomed a little ways in the distance. A few people stood in the clearing and others in long cloaks with their hoods up, sat in a circle. Candles flickered in the breeze, the flame bending low, bowing to the hooded party.
“Tell me again why you guys do this?” I asked, partly because I wanted to know and partly to drown out my name being thrown around back and forth behind us.
Drake couldn’t be that deaf. He looked relieved to hear me talk, or maybe because I didn’t react to what his friends were talking about. “Adams just really embraces its……culture.”
Drake parked his truck next to a rusted-out old Jeep. The truck bounced as Pete and the guys jumped out of the bed.
“I thought the settlers left to get away from witchcraft.”
“They did. It followed them.” He smirked and pulled his ball cap down. “Weren’t you paying attention last night?”
I jumped out of the truck and met Drake around front. “Yes. I just don’t understand why, if people were all afraid of witches here, do witches come around now?”
“Why are they attracted to Salem?” Drake shrugged. “I just think Wiccans are drawn to here. It’s a part of their history and ours. And listen,” Drake said, putting his arm around me, “sorry about my friends’ conversation back there."
I smiled. “Whatever do you mean?”
He shook his head and laughed. “Come on.”
He walked toward the group. Marlene was there, she immediately gave me a dirty look and started whispering to her friend.
“Looks like we’re the talk of the town,” Drake whispered.
He seemed back to normal after our conversation from earlier today. It was almost as if it didn’t happen.
The cloaked group stood and one of the figures began to speak. I couldn’t see which one talked, since half had their backs to me and the others’ heads were bent so low their hoods covered their mouths. “We will start the meeting by doing the drawing of the circle.” The voice young, feminine, and powerful. “And then you will all be invited into it.”
My jaw dropped. “What? You said we were going to a meeting, not that we’d have to participate in it.”
“Just…go with it,” Drake said. “It's fun.”
A soaked, dead weight sloshed around in the pit of my stomach like that time I’d ate a whole bag of Swedish fish at Cynthia Cramer’s thirteenth birthday party.
One of the cloaked figures held a candle high in the air and brought it down to light another. “That’s the high priestess,” Drake whispered into my ear.
“I call upon the guardians of the east to keep watch over all who enter this circle. Let all who enter do so in perfect love and perfect trust.” She kept moving, lighting different colored candles at the south, west, and north points. "The circle is cast.”
The robed figures lined up beside her and she said something to each one that I couldn’t hear. I shuffled behind Drake, watching everyone walk around the circle as they entered.
Drake’s turn came and I realized I had no idea what to say. I moved closer to hear, practically crawling up his backside, but their exchange was already finished.
“How do you enter this circle?” the high priestess asked. I could see now the girl was petite, with dark choppy hair that ended at her chin.
“Umm…”
The girl smiled and I thought I heard her giggle. “Do you enter in perfect love and perfect trust?” she asked, peaking her eyebrow with a sly smile.
“Yes.”
She motioned fo
r me to step in and follow behind Drake. I wanted to yell at him for not telling me what to say, but yelling while entering a Wiccan circle probably wasn’t the right time.
The high priestess moved to the center. Everyone stared as she lowered her hood. “We gather together on this, the celebration of our coven and its freedom to practice magic without fear. We gather together to honor the memory of those that we have lost to ignorance.”
Her voice was a melody of rhythm. The wind, candles, everything seemed to move at her pace, her pitch.
“We gather together to unite our friendships and welcome new ones.”
The melodic voice poured into me, sprouting goosebumps and tingling my limbs as my brain lost all sense of worry and inhibition. It felt almost as if I were transported back to the sixties and became some stoner hippie without a care in the world.
I liked it.
“I call upon the goddess Isis in your many forms…”
I lurched forward as if a pressure on my shoulders shoved me. I tried to resist, digging my feet in the ground, attempting to step backward.
All over my body, tingling flesh weighted me forward as if a thousand hands were forcing me to move. Beside and behind me, no one touched me. No one was even that close except for Drake.
I looked around the circle and no one even noticed what was happening. They stared straight ahead at the one who formed the circle.
I tried to kneel, to fall on purpose like the first time I went skiing and couldn’t stop. My muscles wouldn’t obey. They moved forward another step. I shut my eyes and concentrated, forcing myself back, digging deep into my core and willing my body to move.
Finally, it did.
Two steps in reverse and I was back into the circle. Drake was again to my right, staring straight ahead, still watching the girl, never even noticing what just happened.
I urged in a few uneasy breaths. The hooded witches stared at the ground. As I watched them, one by one, they looked into my eyes and lowered their hoods.
Their eyes rolled into the filmy white behind. Two moon spheres on each witch stared straight at me.
A glowing red emanated from deep within them, like a warning beacon through dense fog.