toad witch 04 - aunt tilly were canning demons

by Christiana Miller

  Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and have a contingency plan. That’s the way of the modern-day witch.

  TO MY SURPRISE, it wasn’t Aunt Tillie who gave us a problem with airport security. It was me. I had to keep showing people my doctor’s note, allowing me to fly. And listening to the same bad pregnancy jokes and questions over and over again.

  No, I’m not having quadruplets. No, I’m not ten months pregnant. No, you can’t feel up my belly, but you can feel the shoe I’m about to shove up your ass if you touch me one more time.

  Maybe Gus should have done his little invisibility spell over my belly instead. By the time we stashed Aunt Tillie in the overhead and I had squeezed onto the tiny airline seat, and gotten seat belt extensions from the stewardess, I was thoroughly annoyed. And I couldn’t even have anything alcoholic to drink, because I was pregnant.

  Other than my attitude, the trip went as I had foreseen. Turbulence at takeoff, and again over the Southwestern states. And a hellishly small bathroom that must have been designed for skinny people only.

  My biggest fear soon became that I would get stuck on the toilet. I had read about that happening. I was thrilled when we finally landed and I could use a human-sized bathroom again.

  I OPENED the back door of the rental SUV, so I could slide my bags in, but Aunt Tillie’s container was buckled into the back seat. “I’ll put my bags in the trunk, then.”

  “There’s not enough room in the trunk for your bags,” Gus said, looking sheepish. “This SUV is smaller than ours.”

  “We’re not leaving my bags at the airport,” I said, annoyed. “I told you that you packed too much.”

  “Give me a minute, I’ll figure it out.” Gus handed me Aunt Tillie’s box, shoved my large bag onto the back seat, with my carry-on resting on top of it, then put Aunt Tillie on the floor.

  “You can’t put me down here. I’ll get car sick,” Aunt Tillie complained. “And if one of those bags falls, I’ll be done for.”

  Gus swore under his breath and gave me the box to hold.

  “You need a body to get car sick,” I said. “You just want to look out at the scenery.”

  Aunt Tillie gave a haughty sniff. “Wouldn’t you? I’ve been trapped in this stupid box since yesterday.”

  “I can hold your skull on my lap,” I said.

  “So I can be crushed between the airbag and your belly, when Speed Racer hits something? No, thank you.”

  Gus moved my bags to the floor, and safety-belted Aunt Tillie’s container in the back seat. “Is that better?”

  “This feels very precarious,” Aunt Tillie said. “And I still can’t see out the window.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Gus grunted, as he closed the door.

  “Where to now?” I asked, as I got in the front and buckled my seat belt.

  “Where else? Mama Lua’s,” Gus said, starting the engine. “Think of it as an adventure.”

  I made a face. “Right. Because that’s what I need in my life. More adventures.”

  “At least you can see out the windows. This is my first trip to Los Angeles and you know what I can see? Nothing. I need bigger eye holes in this box. Someone needs to get on that, right now. You know what causes car sickness? When your vision is partially blocked. That’s why it’s worse in the back seat.”

  I sighed, fished a pen out of my purse, and widened the eyeholes I had made for Aunt Tillie.

  I LOOKED out of the window, as Gus drove out of the airport. Los Angeles. The land of blazing sun, smoggy skies, skinny palm trees, unemployed actors, heatwaves that prepared you for a vacation in Hell, and a Starbucks on every corner.

  It’s funny—I was so freaked out about all the wilderness in Wisconsin when I moved there. But I had gotten used to being surrounded by nature. Now that I was back in L.A., all the cars and concrete, cramped buildings, strip malls and brown vegetation, made me feel claustrophobic and sad.

  Traffic was a nightmare, as usual. I was so tired, that when I closed my eyes for what was supposed to be a long blink, I wound up falling asleep for half an hour. Not that I missed anything. When I opened my eyes, we were still stuck on the 405, in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

  “About time you woke up, Miss Daisy. I’ve been loving the scintillating conversation. Really kept me awake while I was driving,” Gus said.

  I yawned. “Oh, hush. I’m sleeping for two.” I looked out at the traffic. “If I wasn’t pregnant, we could walk there faster.”

  Off on the shoulder of the road, a heavy-set woman was standing next to a guy who was changing her tire. She was wearing a tee-shirt that read, I’m Not Fat, I’m Anchored. Fending Off The Rapture.

  “When is the Rapture supposed to happen? Wasn’t it 2012? And before that, 1999? When is it now? 2021?” I asked.

  “I’m voting for today. That’ll be one way to improve traffic in Los Angeles. Can you imagine? All these drivers behind bodily transported to heaven? We could get to places so much faster.”

  “It would have to suck the cars up too, or we’d still be trapped on the 405.”

  “Good point. That would be hell on earth,” Gus said, taking the exit for the 101.

  “And you’re assuming we don’t get sucked up into the vortex,” I said.

  He gave me a look. “I think we’re safe.”

  “Did you ever think the Rapture could come and go out here, and traffic would pretty much remain the same?”

  Gus laughed. “The rest of America will be ghost towns and crickets, but we’ll still have a thriving porn industry.”

  “That’s Hollywood. Entertainment capital of the world,” I agreed.

  From the 101 we got on the 134, and took the Cahuenga exit into North Hollywood. At the bottom of the off-ramp, an interracial couple was begging for money. When they saw us, the woman flipped me off.

  “Are you kidding me? They’re still here?! And they still remember us?” I asked.

  WHEN I HAD LIVED in Los Angeles, after I lost my job and my unemployment had run out, Gus and I decided to try a little creative entrepreneurship.

  Gus had come over with groceries and a magazine that had an article about panhandlers, and how they can clear fifty thousand dollars a year, tax-free. So, we hit the streets. Literally. When we got there, there was no one begging on the corner of Cahuenga and the 101, and I was beyond broke, so we set up shop.

  As cars came down the off-ramp and stopped at the traffic light, Gus held up a cardboard sign: Single-Card Tarot Readings $1.00 as I approached the driver’s side windows with my tarot deck in hand. To my surprise, we actually did a brisk business. By late afternoon, our coffee can was crammed full of singles.

  I was just checking our booty, when I noticed a white man with dirty blonde hair, wearing a wifebeater, jeans and a massive belt buckle, and a black woman in a velvet jumpsuit and boots, approaching us.

  Without knowing why, I felt a sick sensation in the pit of my stomach. Gus must have noticed the shift in me, because he went into full alert mode, his eyes fixed on the couple.

  I forced myself not to look at them. If I appeared to be unaware, it was going to be easier to pull this off. Blocking their view with my body, I grabbed a huge handful of the bills out of the can and stuffed them into Gus’s bag. To cover my actions, I shouldered the bag, pulled out a tube of lip balm, stood up and swiped it over my dry lips. My heart thudded so loudly I was afraid everyone would hear it.

  “Get off my corner, bitch,” the man said. He was carrying a sign that read God helps those who help the less fortunate. Their clothing, up-close, was ragged and stained. But underneath the smudged-on dirt, you could see they had professionally streaked hair and partially reconstructed faces. Cosmetic dental work for the woman, what looked like an eye-lift and chin implant for the man. An oddly affluent homeless couple.

  This must be one lucrative street corner, I thought, as I dropped the lip balm back into Gus’s bag.

  Always the helpful one, Gus chimed in: “I don’t see your name on it.”


  The woman reached into her rucksack and I had a quick visual flash of the bag’s contents. Two packs of cigarettes, a cell phone, and a small-caliber gun. Probably a .22. That’s what was squeezing my stomach.

  “It’s okay, Gus,” I laid my hand on his arm. I turned back to the couple. “I’m sorry. We didn’t know this corner was taken.”

  “Damn skippy, bitch. Now get your skinny ass outta here,” the woman said.

  I gave Gus his bag, and as I bent to pick up the can with the cash, the man grabbed my arm. “Consider it a rent payment. And a piss poor one at that.”

  Gus glanced down at the can, surprised. All that was in there was a handful of singles and some change.

  “You want the can, keep it,” I said. “But get your fucking hands off of me, or I’ll scream for the cops.” The man let go.

  Gus shook his head. “This is so twisted and wrong.”

  I shot Gus a warning look. I couldn’t get the image of the gun out of my mind. “It’s okay. If it’s their corner, it’s their corner.” I turned to the woman. “Our mistake. It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re damn right.” The woman looked at me, suspicious, but I projected a calm, peaceful, stream into their minds. Cool water, quick-running, smooth-flowing, calm.

  As we walked away, the man seemed to want to stop us, to say something. But as quickly as the thought hit him, it seemed to flow out of his head. Finally, he gave up and turned back to the woman, who had already forgotten about us and was busy canvassing cars.

  Once we were out of earshot, Gus burst into a rant about fake homeless people who were giving real homeless people a bad name. Then he ended it with an assessment of my abilities as a con artist. “Where did you hide all the samolies, Ms. Slick?”

  I smiled and opened his man-bag. The sight of all that loose cash made him chuckle.

  “You really should think about a career as a thief. I especially loved how you made them forget about us.”

  “You noticed that, huh?”

  “How could I not? In the middle of the street, on a scorching hot day, all of a sudden, I could feel cold water rushing past me. I’ve been wanting to pee for the last fifteen minutes.” Gus laughed and shook his head. “I told you—you are one kick-ass witch when you wanna be.”

  “You are so bad for my ego. I keep hanging out with you and my head will need its own zip code.”

  “You’re just too modest, Missy.”

  If nothing else, we had made enough money to buy groceries for the week, so we headed over to the 99-cent store, where I was doing most of my grocery shopping.

  AND THERE THEY WERE, standing on the same corner, still begging, still with the same sign, still pissed off at us.

  The man looked like he had gotten cheek implants as well, and the woman’s face was immobile, as if she had been freshly botoxed.

  “We’re in a big, mucking vehicle this time. Want me to run them over?” Gus asked.

  “No, that wouldn’t be fair to the SUV. We can’t return a rental with dents.”

  “You worry too much,” Gus said.

  “Can you roll down your window?” I asked.

  He did and I snapped a photo of the couple on my phone. Just in case they decided to go after us, I wanted to have something to show the cops.

  “Did you just take my picture, white trash?” the woman yelled at me. “You give me that fucking phone right now.”

  She reached in her purse, probably for the gun. Gus flipped her off as the light turned green and he floored it, turning left on Cahuenga.

  “Fuck you, asshole!” we heard the man yell.

  “Stop stealing from actual homeless people, you douchebag,” Gus yelled back at him, as we drove away.

  As we turned down Moorpark, I asked Gus to turn on Vineland and drive past my old apartment. He obliged, but drew the line at stopping to see who might have moved in, after I moved out.

  As we drove past the wrought-iron gate, I felt a twang of homesickness.

  Gus put his arm on mine and squeezed. “Let it go.”

  I sighed. “I loved that place. It wasn’t perfect, but it was home.”

  “You have a new home now.”

  “And I’m not there, either,” I pointed out. “Do you think Lenny would let us move back in, just while we’re here, helping out Mama Lua?”

  “Not after I did the horizontal Macarena with Lenny’s boyfriend. Besides, we wouldn’t be able to afford it now, even if he decided to forgive my transgressions. Lenny remodeled and quadrupled the rent since you left. It was up to $2800 a month, last I heard. Who knows what it’s up to now.”

  Typical California. Insanely sky-high rents, mudslides, fires, earthquakes and a growing homeless population. As much as I loved the break from the hellishly long winter we were dealing with in Devil’s Point, I was already feeling homesick. I closed my eyes and told myself to snap out of it. This was temporary. It was just a working vacation, and then we’d go back home.

  Gus turned the radio on to a classic rock channel. When We Didn’t Start The Fire by Billy Joel ended, the DJs started bantering with each other.

  “Did you hear the latest in North Hollywood?” the male DJ asked. “There’s been a rabid fox sighting. Keep your small pets—”

  “—and chickens—”

  “—indoors. Why would anyone have chickens in North Hollywood?”

  “It’s the latest craze,” the female DJ said, “farm fresh eggs, yard to table.”

  “More like salmonella central waiting to happen.”

  “You do need to keep a clean coop.”

  “People these days can’t figure out how to pick up after their dogs, what are they going to do with backyard chickens?”

  “Maybe that’s why they have a rabid fox out there.”

  “This is why I don’t go to the Valley.”

  When I opened my eyes again, we were in front of the store. There was a sign on the door that said the Crooked Pantry was closed temporarily but would be reopening soon.

  Gus made a right turn, pulled up to the locked gate that lead to the back of the store, and parked. “Are you back in the land of the living? Do you want to get the gate? Or would you rather drive in?”

  “I’ll drive,” I said, yawning and handing him Mama Lua’s keys.

  He got out of the car, moved the dumpster out of the way, unlocked the oversized gate and slid it open. I switched sides, squeezed behind the steering wheel and slowly guided the SUV into Mama Lua’s back ritual area. As Gus locked the gate, I got out and looked around.

  Mama Lua had made an outdoor socialization area behind the indoor temple space, with sofas and cushy chairs and a fire pit. Although it was currently surrounded by a minefield of empty wine bottles and broken glass. Broken glass had even migrated into the ritual space. That was going to be fun to clean up.

  Halfway towards me, was a small alcove with a deity altar and a private meditation space. Closer to the gate, nestled by the trunk of an elaborate tree, was a larger altar that Mama Lua used for ancestral work.

  Behind the tree, there was a huge outdoor kitchen, with a full bar to the right, (complete with refrigerator). There was a huge farmhouse sink attached to the exterior wall of the store, and a long table for post-ritual food in the center of the kitchen. Behind the table, was the back entrance to the store, and to the left of the entrance, was a bathroom.

  Mama Lua must have farmed the chickens out to someone else to take care of, because the chickens, their coop and the cages were gone. Thank goodness. This place didn’t need anything else to add to the chaos. Everywhere I looked, it was filthy. There were dirty dishes in the sink, plates with rotting food on the table, and ants were crawling everywhere.

  I found a stash of paper plates and plastic cups under the bar, and a toaster oven and microwave on the counter behind the bar. But when I opened the microwave, a swarm of ants came pouring out. Fortunately, Gus was otherwise occupied, (in the bathroom), and didn’t hear me scream, or he’d never let me live it
down.

  Ugh. So much for the seal on the microwave. If it was loose enough for ants to get in, it couldn’t be safe for anyone to use. At the end of the bar, an industrial-sized washer and dryer were hooked up. I was surprised by all the outdoor appliances, and more than a little shocked that none of it had walked away, especially if people were breaking in to party back here.

  Guess that’s where Mama Lua’s fierce reputation came in handy. People may break in on a dare, or to have a safe place to sleep if she wasn’t here, but no one would be stupid enough to steal from Mama Lua. I had no doubt she would, (and could), unleash the wrath of Chango, the Orisha of thunder and lightning, on anyone who crossed her.

  “GUS, this place is disgusting. She can’t really live like this, can she?”

  “It just needs a little cleaning. It’ll be fine. Let’s check out the inside of the store,” he said. He walked out of the bathroom and unlocked the back door.

  When we walked in, it felt like a vise closing down around my head. “Ow! What the hell?”

  Gus turned to me. “You okay?”

  “How fucking hard did she ward the place? It’s like they’re squeezing my head. I have to get out of here.”

  “Hold on, let me see if I can help…”

  He started humming, a high, annoying frequency. Then, a lower one. Like he was humming some kind of song that only he knew.

  I felt the vise loosen up. I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath, until I noticed that I had started breathing again.

  “Sorry about that,” Gus said. “Mama Lua creates some kick-ass wards.”

  “No kidding. Are they gone?”

  “No, I just turned them down to half-volume.”

  “How in the world did you learn how to do that?”

  “She keys them to music. I learned the tune when I was working with her last summer and she had to loosen the wards for me. Just don’t ask me to take them down completely, because we never went over that.”