by N. A. Cash
Every night before I went to bed, Pap would come in after Mam read me a story to kiss me on my forehead and tell me I was his little girl. Of course, by the time I became a teenager, I no longer considered myself to be “little” but I understood what I meant to him. It was this thought that plagued my mind as I went to bed after he left.
The next week flew by in a blur as my mom drifted around the house, touching the ghosts left by my father. I vaguely remembered Aunt Vern coming by, helping us to pack. Aunt Vern, to me, had always been the scary aunt. Despite her extraordinarily tall and lanky body, which would be the envy of any model, she always wore too many layers of frumpy clothes. Her lean face was framed with simple wire glasses that sat on a thin nose. Her bright hazel eyes pierced your soul. When she spoke to me, it was always in crisp tones and short sentences, more like commands barked from a drill sergeant than a loving aunt. When she spoke to Mam, however, her voice dropped to barely a whisper. She and Mam were always close. They shared some secret connection I could never figure out; something drew them to each other like sisters who shared a womb together, even though they were five years apart.
I recall when Aunt Vern and I piled up all our stuff into her old station wagon. The car lacked three of its four hubcaps and had weird claw-like marks across the chipped paint on one side. The odor inside resembled a light musk; it was both revolting and intoxicating at the same time. When the time came for Mam to approach the car, Aunt Vern ordered me to stay by the door to hold it open while she went inside to fetch Mam. When they both emerged from the building, Mam was covered with a heavy coat, despite the stifling summer heat, and an oversized straw hat shielding most of her face. Aunt Vern guided her to the car as I got the feeling Mam’s eyes were closed the entire time. She stuffed her and the coat into the back door of the wagon and snapped her fingers to indicate I should get into the passenger side next to her. I remember I would have given anything to be in the back seat with my nose pressed in a book, ignoring the sights and sounds and the terrible dread of what was to come coupled with the loss of my father. Unfortunately, I felt this was going to be a long trip.
CHAPTER FOUR
I slept during most of the travel to our new home, being rocked by the rhythmic sway of uneven tires on hot asphalt. For the first part of the journey, I tried to stay awake, memorizing street names and numbers, as if to leave mental breadcrumbs so I could find my way back home. After passing through what felt like countless visions of tar and green fields, and being lulled in and out of consciousness by the oscillating car, I felt as if I glided down a dark hole with just enough light to illuminate the space around me. I drifted into a deep abyss of dreamless sleep.
The abrupt stopping of the car lurched me back into consciousness. I opened my eyes to see a simple wooden cottage lying ahead. The one-story structure stood partially covered in damp green moss. The windows were caked with dirt, and tall fingers of grass crept up the side of the building. Although the structure looked like it hadn’t been used or occupied in ages, I didn’t see any rust on the door’s hinges as we approached. The outer screen entry still resolutely held in place and didn’t make a sound as Aunt Vern inserted her key and swung it open. She held firmly onto Mam’s elbow as she guided her inside the outdoor porch. We approached the second door, which I assumed to be the main opening to the inner cottage. This structure also appeared untouched and firm. Aunt Vern pulled out a second key and inserted it in the lock.
When the access swung open, the inside of the cottage emitted warm, stale air. There was a peculiar, yet familiar, spiced scent which poured out after the initial musk. It smelled like cinnamon apples at Thanksgiving. The scent wasn’t overwhelming, but brought back memories of dinners shared by my small family during happier times. Those memories now felt like an eternity ago.
We walked into the house and Aunt Vern flipped a close-by light switch. The room illuminated with a myriad of soft glowing lights popping on one at a time around the room. The space was comfortably furnished with oversized couches and blankets that looked as though they could wrap you up and keep you warm for a thousand winters. The rest of the furniture was wooden, old and rustic, but homely. The walls contained small frames of country scenes, mostly containing rivers and forests.
As I walked around, I noticed several small trinkets on the tables in the shape of hand-carved wooden animals. Being the curious person that I was, I reached out and touched one. I felt stunned when the wood glowed softly with a melodic vibration underneath my fingertips. I snatched my hand back and stared at the object, wondering if I had felt what I thought I felt, or if I had hallucinated. Aunt Vern’s tall shadow fell across me and I realized she had seen my reaction.
“Don’t worry child, you’ll get used to it.” This was the first time she spoke to me in a tone other than commanding authority. I felt slightly taken aback when I gazed up at her and saw the inviting radiance of light cast over her features, softening them and making her appear almost personable. The hint of a smile played at the edges of her lips. She turned to where she deposited my mother on a couch and lightly touched her forehead. As I passed by to get our things out of the car, I could almost hear her whisper to my mother, “We’re home now. It’s going to get better.”
Aunt Vern enrolled me in a small middle school just outside of the forest near the boundary of the city limits. Every morning, she would drop me off at the edge of the trees where I would have to wait for a solitary school bus to pick me up.
The first time I stepped onto the bus, I felt every eye stare at me. I felt awkward as I’m sure every new student does. No one spoke a word to me. It seemed as if everyone shied away. When I found an empty seat in the back of the bus, the young girl who sat in the adjacent seat moved closer to the window as if I had some contagious disease. It felt like she was trying her hardest to be polite but wanted to jump out of the window away from me at the same time. Once I sat, I pulled out a book and began to read, ignoring the practically inaudible whispers stirring around me. I’m sure I heard the word “witch” passed around a few times. I engaged myself in my book to block out the sounds for rest of the drive.
When we arrived at school, I waited until all of the other students were off the bus before I left. I observed many young people my age strolling around, some leaning lazily against trees, some basking in the bright sunlight sitting in the middle of the lawns flanked each side of the main walkway. I kept my head down and quickly walked to the main entrance door.
As I entered the building, I examined the main hallway. On the wall to my left, there hung a bulletin board that held various announcements speaking to cheerleading and band practices, drama auditions, where to find lost and found items, and basic rules of the school. I strolled over to inspect some of the activities, imagining what it would be like to join a club or extracurricular activity of some sort. There was a plastic hanging wall file that contained maps of the layout of the school. I grabbed one and was studying it when the first bell sounded.
I fumbled around to find my first class based on the schedule in the packet Aunt Vern had received from the school and arrived about five minutes after the second bell. I grabbed onto the strap of my backpack, pushed the thin wooden door in and paused. The chattering abruptly stopped as every eye turned towards me. This caused the teacher, who was writing on the board, to turn towards me. She gave a slight jump as she saw me. An uncertain smile spread across her face as she corrected herself and walked over.
“Class,” she said, “this is Karma Patel. Please welcome her.” I paused, confused as to how she would know my name. She placed a hand on my back as she gently pushed me towards an empty seat at the back of the class. As I walked through, several persons turned to their counterparts and whispered. I kept my head down, focusing on my feet as I walked to the seat and slipped in. I took out my notebook and stared at the teacher, focusing solely on her.
The first day and following days of school passed by in a slow, grudging manner. The whispers continued to cl
oak my footsteps as I passed, and it felt as if people slid to the other side of hallways as I approached. In each class, the teacher would give me those same uncertain smiles at the beginning of class but avoid me throughout. After the first week, I got used to it.
Because my peers avoided me, I figured I wasn’t going to win Miss Popularity, so I passed the time focusing on my schoolwork and reading. During lunchtime, I found myself either sitting under a solitary tree on the other side of the track field or in a bathroom stall.
On one particular occasion, as I sat reading in an empty bathroom stall during lunch, I heard several excited footsteps of girls streaming into the bathroom, all of them speaking in a hyper-chittery way that way teenage girls had mastered. One of them, Marva, whom I knew from one of my classes, commanded the conversation.
“You know, I heard her mom’s gone crazy since her father left.”
“I heard that too!” piped Chery, a ditzy blonde girl who had an overdeveloped physique for her age, but an underdeveloped brain that hadn’t quite caught up.
“I heard her mom and her aunt practice spells up there in their cottage when they’re home alone,” murmured a dark-haired girl I had identified as Bes, who always wore dark clothing favored by fashionable gothic bands.
“Oooo, really?” questioned Chery, eager to hear more.
Marva cleared her throat, eager to not let Bes have the attention of the group. “Yes. My mom came home one day and said she saw her aunt in the local store buying some peculiar items, like chickens’ feet and some rare herbs a couple of weeks ago. I mean, like, who buys that stuff if they aren’t practicing witchcraft?”
I could hear Chery’s squeal of delight, as if she caught a twittering bird in her throat. When she spoke, it sounded as if she had just eaten the bird. “I bet they’re teaching her how to become some master witch!”
I figured I had enough of the scuttlebutt spilling from these girls. I put my book in my bag, not bothering to mute the sounds and made a loud crashing noise with the door as I threw it open. The three girls, startled, jumped back towards the sinks as if I had teleported into the bathroom. It was the first time I recall glaring intensely at anyone in the school with my most intimidating dual-colored stare. I could see the blood drain out of each of their faces as they got a full look into my eyes. The three of them backed out of the bathroom door, almost tripping on one another as they clumsily scrambled through the space. When I caught sight of myself in the mirror, I stood shocked to see my own appearance. My skin glowed and my eyes sparkled like an amber and an emerald. My face flushed and my hands were balled into fists. My hair seemed to stand with electricity like a wild animal who had been caged and released. I almost scared myself. I shook my head to clear it and splashed some water on my face. I walked out of the bathroom and decided the rest of the day was going to suck, so I slipped out of a side exit to the school and walked home.
CHAPTER FIVE
I never suspected I was different, and my home life never confirmed there was anything different about me. During the first year after our move, Mam and Aunt Vern passed the time away on the porch, sometimes sitting in silence, sometimes speaking in those quiet and hushed tones. When they did interact with me, it was in the living room playing board games or in the kitchen cooking mysterious and flavor-filled exotic meals while they reminisced about their childhood.
Mam first invited me in the kitchen to watch them cook when I was about thirteen. We had been in the house for almost two years. She was starting to look like herself again and even more vibrant than before. She still refused to leave the house, but she did smile more, especially when she and Aunt Vern swapped stories about their childhood and the mischief they used to get into. Aunt Vern was less like a dictator when she was with Mam. She became human, softer, more playful, and fun.
It was around this time the atmosphere felt more like a home. I would come home from school to find them in the kitchen experimenting with various recipes with unusual ingredients. Normally, I would get a chance to taste what they were making, except for a few things Mam would sternly warn me with a glint in her eye that it would turn me into a bullfrog if I tasted it. For some reason, despite her mischievous nature, I always believed her.
I spent my first and second high school years returning home after school to find those two concocting recipes. Sometimes, they would perch me at the edge of the old marble kitchen table with the seriousness of my college lab professors as they went through the various ingredients, what each one was used for and the benefits (or calamities) of each herb. At other times, we would laugh as we made a full mess of the kitchen trying some new television network recipe I would find online to experiment with.
On one such occasion, during my high school sophomore year, Mam, Aunt Vern, and I were in the kitchen trying to wrangle together a recipe for a new super chocolate cake recipe I found. The recipe required the regular ingredients: flour, eggs, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, buttermilk, and the like. We were just out of one box of cocoa when Aunt Vern sent me to the pantry at the back of the kitchen to rummage for another one. She said she thought she had some stored there. I walked over and threw open the doors. Since it was a walk-in space, I stepped inside and swept by hand above me through the darkness to find the old chain from the light switch which was attached to the bulb in the ceiling. When I found it, I pulled on the chain and heard a soft click. The small area immediately brightened with a gentle glow from the yellowing bulb. I read titles on the wide variety of mismatched items stored in there.
“Hmm, flour, sugar, baking powder, cream of tartar,” I began reading out loud. As I rummaged, a small brown box marked “Cocoa” caught my eye near the far end of the shelf. I walked over and reached up to the third shelf it was stored on. While attempting this, I accidently knocked over another object contained in the shape of a tin can. Despite my attempt to grab it, the container seemed to spill over in slow motion. I watched in horror as it crashed to the ground with a loud thud.
“Everything ok in there?” Aunt Vern’s stern voice startled me, causing me to spin around quickly to see if she had discovered my folly.
“Yes, Aunt Vern. It’s alright. I’ll be right out.” I tried to keep my voice calm as I swung back towards the mess I made.
On the floor before me, spilling out of the box, was a glittery, grainy type substance. At first glance, I thought the look of it was because of the way the light irradiated the substance. I dropped to my hands and knees and frantically tried to scoop up the material. The grains felt fine as powder as they slipped through my fingertips. The aroma reminded me of night jasmine in full bloom. As I stared at it longer, some of the fine particles drifted into my nose, causing me to emit a short sneeze. Worried I might be discovered, I searched around to see if I could find a flat piece of paper to assist with controlling the flow of the substance. I found one on the bottom shelf and worked to shovel the material back into the box.
I dumped the last of the stuff into the can and was about to place the lid back on it when I stared at it again. I became temporarily mesmerized by how beautiful it was and by the deep sultry aroma. The sound of footsteps coming closer to the pantry door snapped me out of my temporary trance, and I quickly replaced the lid and placed the can back to the empty spot on the shelf and grabbed the box of cocoa. Mam’s concerned face appeared in the doorway.
“You okay, honey?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said as I clutched the cocoa box to my chest and raced past her out of the pantry into the kitchen. “Now, where were we?”
Later that night, as I settled into bed and fell into a quiet subconscious state, my mind returned to the spellbinding substance in the can. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, various images played across my closed eyelids. I saw myself sitting in the middle of an open, wide grassy field. The sun was glorious, a cool gentle breeze blew, and the grass smelled freshly cut. I felt glorious, being enveloped with such a sense of peace and calm, like nothing could disturb the day. I closed my eyes
temporarily to fully engage in the feeling when, suddenly, a heaviness clouded the air. As I opened my eyes, the atmosphere felt as if all of the cleanness was being sucked away. I began hyperventilating as I stared into the formerly bright blue sky which was now being crowded with rolling deep-grey clouds. A sudden quip of wind began to roar around me, sounding like waves crashing against my ears. I pressed my hands to my ears and squeezed my eyes shut to block out the sudden swelling of terror that filled my soul. The last thing I remembered was losing consciousness and sinking deep into a pitch blackness.
CHAPTER SIX
I was awakened by the cool sensation of a soft, moist terrycloth on my forehead. Basking in the residue of terror from the dream, I was afraid to open my eyes until I felt a little shake and my name being called. As I pried one eye open, I saw the concerned faces of Mam and Aunt Vern gazing at me. They were smiling. Confused, I opened the other eye and peered at them. The room slowly came into focus. I was lying on a plump cushion in a room in what I assumed to be Aunt Vern’s room (considering I never went in there).
My eyes darted around, my curiosity getting the better of my former fear. The room was more comfortable than I would have previously imagined. It had an easy glow to it, the light being cast around the room by traditional lamps fixed in strategic places on the four walls. She had several elaborate tapestries posted around the room. There was a hefty four-poster bed in the center of the room and authentic wooden furniture in calculated places. The room wasn’t cluttered but cozy and comfortable—not what I expected as a reflection of Aunt Vern’s personality.