by Y G Maupin
“Mama, please. This is the best place for you to get better. I can’t do it by myself anymore,” Anesta had pleaded, whispering as she leaned in closer to kiss her Mother goodbye.
“But Anjolie will help you, Anesta! How can you be so cruel to do this to me? You are both cruel daughters and will have to answer to god when you see him! I know you want to have the house to yourself. You are just like him! You are just like Andre, trying to fornicate with every passing person and you want to do it in my home that is why you are ridding yourself of me, you are whores! Both of you!”
Anesta burst into tears and ran out of the room. The little ghost spirit of Anjolie just sat at her Mother's other side, and slid her little cold dead hand into her Mother’s as the sedatives took effect.
Anesta’s paternal grandparents died following New Years Eve, victims of a drunken hit and run. That was when the will was read and the large funeral home, one of two, the other being in Louisiana, was to be passed to their children, Anesta taking the place of their father since her Mother was too incapacitated to participate in business decisions. All those deaths and responsibilities had turned little Anesta into a grown and worn out woman by the age of twenty-seven. She had seen and counselled so many families through deaths and hard times, that grief no longer shocked or moved her. Any observer could have written it off as callous business acumen, but it was more of a general fatigue from death that had woven its way into her life from a young age.
Later that afternoon, between the second to last viewing, Anesta was stopped by the driver who covered for her cousins when they couldn’t pick up a body from homes or the hospital. Mr. McNulty was in his mid-fifties and covered in many different areas of the funeral home, a general jack of all death tradesman.
“Ms. Anesta, I just wanted to thank you for the tea you sent home for me last weekend. I really do appreciate it. Delia felt so much better that she was able to get out of bed and walk around a bit. I mean, I really do appreciate all that you have done for her,” he said, with a look of relief in his eyes.
Anesta smiled. “Anytime, Mr. McNulty. You just let me know when she runs out and I will get a batch of my special blend again for you.”
As she walked away to make sure her bag was ready to make a dash after the last group had left, Carter McNulty called out, “You know, it seemed almost like magic, as if a miracle, if it's not too bold to state. God saves his miracles and sends them out as they are needed,” he added wistfully.
“Nope. We prayed and prayed for it so much that we almost lost faith.” He searched the tile floor with tired eyes. But then he brightened up. “He must have sent us you to be our Angel, Ms. Anesta.” He smiled.
Anesta smiled back. “I’ll take that job,” she added. “There have to be perks to being employed by the Lord.” Walking away, Anesta smiled to herself and made a mental note to double check the herbs she had used, so that she could duplicate whatever it was she had made for Mrs. McNulty. Her calendula supply was running low.
Beryl cursed the speed of traffic. Her back up at the pharmacy was forty-five minutes late, sick kid, as if she cared and she had also forgotten her card keys to authorize federally monitored prescriptions, so she had to wait for her husband to drop them off, delaying Beryl from departure even further. Beryl cursed her new shoes that she thought were roomy enough when she tried them on and now threatened to cut off the circulation to the tops of her toes. Her pinky toes had been going numb off and on throughout the day and she had to go out into the store portion of her location and search for something comfortable to work in for the rest of the day. She cursed having to spend more money and getting a measly five percent discount on her purchase of the most hideous slides available, one size too large so she was slipping and sliding on the pharmacy floor. Beryl cursed the smart aleck girl that delivered her Chinese chicken salad and had forgotten her egg drop soup. She cursed the worthless diet that she had been struggling with for the last four days, that her other coworker had sworn helped her lose enough weight to get into her wedding dress last fall. Of course, that coworker immediately got pregnant and would be out on maternity leaving more work for Beryl to curse since they were perpetually short staffed and she hadn’t had a decent vacation in the three years that she had worked there.
Everyone else seemed to be coming and going on vacations and leaves and Beryl was there. Never going anywhere other than home or to her Wednesday night break from the real world. Taking a week off to move out of the home she had lived in for eight years with her lazy husband to move into her condo as a new divorcee did not count as a soul refreshing hiatus from work. It was a soul crushing mental test of her strength and resolve to move on after John, the lazy ex-husband, decided that they were better off not being married any longer. Beryl couldn’t agree more and they were divorced almost as quickly as they had been married.
Beryl seemed to do an awful lot of cursing throughout her day. From the moment she woke up and saw that she had gotten her period, heavy as always, to the moment she found her cat Mr. Bosley still had not come home for the third night in a row, she cursed and flung expletives as she went about her world. Down to two cats from three. She hated that she embodied the stereotype of the bitter divorced woman, cat owner with a weight problem, which put her at odds with all the young and lovely people in the world. Lovely and loved. Not her. She used to want to be loved. In those days she worked to keep a smile on her face, laughing at everyone’s jokes and quick to be a help to all. But then she found that people thought she was less intelligent for always smiling and many times the only reason her coworkers spoke to her was to get their shift covered or because they had messed something up. And because she had always been willing to fix things for others, they came to her more and more with other things they wanted to see if she would do. Dog sat, even though she disliked dogs. Go to marketing sales pitches, where she ended up buying products she didn’t need that didn’t work. She drew the line at babysitting, only because she truly didn’t have a way with kids, like many people assumed all women did. Beryl did not. She was a woman genetically. But personality wise, there wasn’t a way to describe her persona and attitude other than, nondescript.
It would have been a sadder story to say that she had once been a bright eyed ingenue that had had her heart broken and dreams dashed as she grew up on the world, but other than the façade she had presented in the past to be accepted by others, she had always been a little plain. She had been dull and uninterested and uninteresting to others, all the way back to toddler age. If one were to peruse her parents photo albums of little Beryl growing up in Arizona back in the 80’s, one would find photos where the most magnificent events could be surrounding her but Beryl would look sullen and disinterested. Sullen in a pink tutu at her recital, which her Mother insisted she continue with lessons way into junior high, furthering her oddness amongst the other girls that had left that baby childishness behind for Zumba classes or cheer. Pictures of Beryl at camp, holding a fish with more animation than she possessed. Her Senior Class photo, which one could almost say was as alluring as she would ever be in her high school years, the obligatory feather boa detail around the shoulder line that all the girl’s in her class were immortalized in. That photo shoot detail made Beryl look like a disgruntled heavy set ostrich.
Try as her mother did to instill grace and gentility into her awkward daughter, the unwilling participant rebuffed the attempts and stumbled through clog dancing, horseback riding and gymnastics. There had been four years of band, two of them as a color guard flag twirler, where she always managed to be about a second behind, herky jerking the flags into the other girls’ faces. She quit after one of the girls flew into a rage when Beryl’s flag wrapped around her during a complicated routine. The girl had tripped and tore her tight leotard right at her ass cheeks in front of the Junior Varsity football team. Beryl could care less and just walked off the field.
Beryl took a deep breath at the stop light and tried to let everything go. Tonight was a
night to relax and let the spirit and spirits surround her and lift her up from the drab and dinginess of the mire she felt stuck in. Her shoulders slumped as she thought about Mr. Bosley again. It wasn’t like him to not come home.
Normally he stayed inside with the girls, but ever since the earthquake that other morning he meowed and clawed at the door, until she just let him out so that she could continue her sleep. She hadn’t seen him since. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen any of the strays that frequented her neighborhood since that day. Well, she thought, maybe they found a better place to hunt mice? Which would be wonderful, since she hated going to take her trash out at night, there never failed to be some kind of rodent scurrying about outside her garage. Ugg, they gave her the creeps with their long tails and scratchy feet furtively moving about looking to sneak away with some leftovers from the overturned trash cans. Beryl would hurry back home and lock the doors making sure that none of them followed her inside, not that they ever had but in her mind she could just imagine the filthy rodents pushing their way past her, scrambling over her feet and settling themselves quickly into her home where she just knew she would struggle getting them out. She shuddered and made her way to T’s home outside the city limits. Ugg. The country. Now she KNEW that there were mice in the fields over there, but she pushed those thoughts away from her and concentrated on the event tonight. She was excited and nervous. Tonight, she would be casting the circle and invoking the four corners. It had been since last year at Lughnasa that she had been involved in the actual opening of a sabbat, even if it was a lesser one as well. Beryl did not care. She loved the spirituality and closeness she felt when she was part of a circle with her coven sisters. It was the only time she felt beautiful and like she belonged. The sun was due to set in less than two hours. In less than two hours, Beryl and all the other women in their small coven, would never be the same.
Sarah and Alice were also driving, but from the opposite side of the small town. They had been visiting other coven priestesses at an impromptu meeting in Dallas at a shop in Little Elm. They made it out to these gatherings as often as they were held, hearing what other covens were experiencing and meeting those that had the same interests. Most of the time, they were an excuse to gossip and share craft and recipes, since they shied away from calling them spells or potions, too rinky dink and contrived sounding. They didn’t see themselves as crones stirring a cauldron, even though they all owned cauldrons and some venerated the crone as one of the forms of the goddess in her incarnations. The people they met were a menagerie of normal and the strange, colorful and gothic in dress. Most open to new ideas although many held on to conservative ideas and values that were also found in wiccan and pagan beliefs. If it harms none, do as ye will, was the creed that some ascribed to, but not all. Some practiced left hand magic, others believed in dark arts, preferring to eschew the balance inherent in mostly all the belief systems. They rooted out the thrill seekers and others that were there out of curiosity, directing them to meetings that were safer for the neophyte and the established adherents.
“Wrong information in the weakest of resolves hurts us more than overzealous students of the craft,” murmured a priestess named Rachel. She was well into her sixties and her arms were heavily tattooed and dripping with silver bangles.
She adjusted her large black rimmed glasses. “Although we grow every year, it seems that we shrink as well during the summer months. Could it be that crafting is more of a cold weather hobby?” she smiled, crossing her legs and wiping imaginary dust from her skirt.
A few of the women and men gathered in an impromptu circle murmured and laughed gently.
“When a new supernatural film or tv show appears, I don’t know whether to thank or curse them for sending me the curious to the shop,” added a tall thin man with balding blond hair. “For one, the same questions over and over. Do they not do research?” he inquired, laughingly to the others around him. “But I can’t look a gift horse in the mouth when they are ready to spend. Let them ask all they want and explore as much as they like. My shop will accommodate them!” he laughed gently.
Sarah sat to the other side of the woman with bangles, as Alice found two plastic cups for the mead someone had generously donated for the gathering that day.
“Cakes and ale in the age of the gluten free diet! Goddess! The circles of the Venn diagram encompasses pagan and vegetarian in some instances making this accommodation at times meaningful and at other times, tiresome,” added another woman, coming into the circle to sit down next to Sarah.
Sarah smiled and raised her eyebrows at Alice, willing her to return to claim her seat. Alice waved her off as she spoke to Godfrey, who was visiting from Austin, which had an enormous Wiccan and pagan population. Sarah shrugged and waited for the meeting to start.
As they left two hours later, Sarah was pensive while Alice seemed preoccupied. “You know what Godfrey told me?” She jumped in as she maneuvered in the heavy traffic. “He said that while the interest in the craft increased, which is always a plus, the old timers seem to be dropping out of the scene,” Alice continued. “He said that most of them just decided that the group was growing too fast with people fascinated with the idea of witchcraft because of a movie or book they had read and not because of any personal calling.”
“Well that’s not fair, “Sarah murmured. “ We all find our ways to make it to the circle, even if it was a little boy and a fantasy school.”
Alice cocked her head to the side and shook it. “Yeah, that’s what I said, but he said it was more than just newbies. Godfrey ran into a longtime member at the movies and she said, now get this, that she felt something wicked was coming. Something larger than what any of us would be able to comprehend, and she was afraid of what would happen if their coven was under attack full of baby witches.” Alice’s eyes were wide open at the audacity of what she had reported, even still finding it to be as ludicrous and over the top as when she first heard it two hours earlier.
“Oh something’s coming all right, “Sarah said. “ And wicked or not, it doesn’t help anyone to be hiding under the bed when it shows up.”
Alice looked at her sharply. ”What?!”
Sarah unfolded her arms from where she had them laying across her chest. “You can’t tell me that you don’t feel that strange presence around us. It’s even stronger since that last earthquake.”
Shaking her head, “No ma’am. I’ve been salting the house and shop even more so at the doorways and I’ve considered bringing out a consultant. Something is happening, and frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t noticed and no one else at home has said anything.”
Alice was flabbergasted. She continued to drive but every once in a while she would turn to her partner and wrinkled her forehead in confusion. “Ok, and when exactly were you going to fill me in on this?”
Sarah exploded. “What the hell do you mean, Alice? How can you not tell? Just what in the hell is going on that you can’t sense the changes and heaviness in spirit all around us? I swear, I think you did too much coke in the 70’s because you have some brain fog going on strong, sister!” she huffed.
“Too much coke. Hmm. Ok. I see.” Alice lifted her shoulders and let them drop as she let out a sigh. “Is there something that I’m missing that you want to bring to my attention that totally reversed our personalities, because you know you’re supposed to be the calm and collected one, while I am the emotionally passionate firecracker?” Sarah turned to her and slowly rolled her eyes. “Well?”
Sarah inhaled slowly and let out a deep breath before she started. “I’m sorry, babe. It’s just that leaving these meetings sometimes seems to set me off emotionally from being around so much energy. “Sarah looked down. “It just feels weird and I believe Godfrey and that coven member. We are surrounded by newcomers, eager to learn, unsure of how to control their personal power or how to control their emotional reactions. People can get hurt even when they don’t mean to hurt others. Typically, as you know, they end
up hurting themselves.” Alice nodded as she thought of T and the heartbreaking tragedy from last fall.
“We need to stay strong and encourage all of them to work with a clear mind. We’ll talk again with them about our responsibilities and personal agreements that we are to work together and not so much with small projects thinking that they are harmless. In word and deed, we shall be freed,” she said, as she merged lanes. She grew thoughtful as she mused about the women she had grown to love these last few years. So young and full of energy. Their questions and challenges motivated her to study more as she encouraged them to research, read and document their work. Every single one of them, amazing and special in their own way.
Five
Last October, T had been at home after spending a weekend crying and arguing with Jackson. Jackson had taken her out that Friday to their special Italian restaurant where they had their first date. That first date, over a year ago, was several months in the making. They knew each other from High School and had dated and ran around in the same circles. But each thought the other was out of their league, and never dared to make the first move. It only came about after they ran into each other at the grocery store, where he was staring at a tomato that was still on the vine. T had walked up to him and just giggled at the perplexed look on Jackson's face.
“Let me guess, you’re not familiar with vegetables, much less how they grow,” she chuckled.
He feigned throwing it at her and she shrieked with laughter at the gesture.“No, it’s just that I’m working from an old family recipe that calls for tomatoes from the vine and I was hoping that this would be ok.” He leaned closer to show her a weathered three by five notecard, where a recipe was written in flowery script.
“Wow. You weren’t kidding with the old part.” She had smiled and pushed the dark strand of hair behind her ear. She had forgotten how cute Jackson Paget was. He smiled back at her. It was dazzling and she was instantly mesmerized by how beautiful his mouth looked as he spoke. She had no idea what he was saying at the time.