JUNIPER TEA
Copyright to The Plaid Adder
Comments: plaidder@mindspring.com
It doesn't surprise
me any more to meet fringe people on trains. I'm not talking about lunatics; I
meet those on the streets. But the fringe people, the ones who hang on at the
outer edges of sanity, near the borders that we like to keep a distance from,
seem to like to take trains. Something about the way telephone lines and
peoples' backyards speed past the window as a cartoon must appeal to the fringe
mentality. I don't even want to know what makes them sit next to me.
On my first trip home
for Christmas break, I hadn't yet realized this was going to be a trend. The
girl who sat next to me was young, about seventeen, with a pleasant round face
and a lot of long black hair that kept falling into it. She wore a tie-dyed
T-shirt with such brilliant yellows and jewel blues and electric greens that
for a moment I wished that I liked the Grateful Dead's music enough to follow
them, so that I too could own such T-shirts instead of stealing them from my
brother. He was about to graduate from law school and wouldn't be needing them any more.
"I love your
tie-dye," I couldn't help saying.
She was pleased to be
addressed by a stranger. That should have been my first clue. "Thanks! I
got it in
She laughed. "I
see you've noticed the pentagram." She disentangled it from the peace
symbol and small pouch and held it up. It was a five-pointed star inscribed in
a circle, cast in some dull bronzelike metal. "Worried?"
"No, from what
my Satanist-anarchist pre-law friend tells me, Satanists wear theirs
upside-down, so you must be something else."
"Satanism is
bullshit! It's just a reaction against Christianity, turning it upside down and
doing everything backwards. A bunch of metal heads getting off on
perversion." She paused to stew in her outrage, then
asked, "How can an anarchist be pre-law?"
I sighed. "I
keep telling him that, but he won't listen. It's not a political thing with
him, really. It's just that carving an anarchy symbol into your arm with a
razor blade will get peoples' attention."
"Oh,
goddess," she muttered. "Is he really messed up?"
"We can't get
him to go for help, and our attempts to bring the help to him have
failed." I swallowed the dryness in my throat. "But what are you,
since you're not a Satanist?"
"I'm a
witch." She pushed the hair behind her ears and waited for my reaction.
"Cool," I
said. "Can you cast spells?"
Her eyes lit up. She
leaned toward me. "No, I can, but I don't. Whatever you do comes back to
you three times over, see, that's part of the creed."
"Then what do
you do, exactly?"
Silly
question. I learned more about goddess worship
and white witchcraft than I had ever wanted to know. "We don't believe in
the Devil at all, see, or in the Judeo-Christian type god. But there is a
mother force that's the source of all life, and that force can be contacted and channeled through
the magic arts."
Her eyes shone as she
spoke of the Magic Arts, as she filled my lap with crystals, dried stumps of
plants, amulets, and other paraphernalia. From her urgent tone and animated
face I guessed that she was starved for an audience. We were, after all, on the
Stamford Local, a suburban line that stops at all the settlements of people who
make enough money in
As she spread the
witches' newsletter out on my lap, I realized why I was beginning to like her.
She lifted each object, described each tenet and ritual, not with the zeal of
the missionary but the love of a worshipper, the joy and wonder of a believer
who doesn't care what you think.
And as it gradually
dawned on her that I wasn't laughing, or arguing, or suggesting that she seek
professional help, she smiled nervously and extended her hand. "I'm
Judith, by the way. But my spirit name is Juniper."
I had heard enough to
feel honored by the spirit name. "I'm Celia."
"That's pretty.
I hate Judith."
"Because
of Holofernes?"
"Who?"
"Holofernes.
I don't remember the story exactly, but somewhere in the Old Testament a woman
named Judith saves the Israelites by cutting off Holofernes' head."
She was intrigued.
"I'll bet my mother doesn't even know that. She probably just figured it
was a good, solid Jewish name."
"Is your family
religious?"
She laughed.
"Not until I became a witch they weren't. Our synagogue's so reform we
have a Christmas party. My mom suddenly started keeping Kosher this year. I'll
bet she went out and looked the rules up the day I started doing spells. Even
my big sister thinks she's flipped. And now poor little Andrew has to go to
Hebrew school. It's a mess."
She spoke sadly, but
with a certain pride. And I could understand her being simultaneously delighted
and sorry to have caused a mess. Considering the train we were on.
"Did you pick
Juniper because of the fairy tale?"
"What fairy
tale?"
"Good Lord,
woman, you have two names and you don't know the story behind either one?"
My amazement amused
her. "No. Tell me the story."
She settled back in
her seat with the content, expectant look of a child before a bedtime story.
It's not much of a bedtime story, really: the mother decapitates her stepson
and serves him to his unsuspecting father in a stew, and then the stepsister
Margery buries his bones under the juniper tree. But I told it anyway, and she
listened, eating up the description of the bird with the blood-red feathers and
flame-tipped wings that rises from the tree to avenge the little boy. And as I
realized that I too had been starved for an audience, I began weaving my own
details in, finally adding a coda after the bird drops
the millstone on the mother's head.
"...The bird
flew away, for his work was done; and though love is strong it is not as strong as spilt blood, not strong enough to keep the dead
with us. Margery never saw her brother's spirit again. But every Easter
when she put the lilies on the grave at the foot of the juniper tree, the
branches shuddered as the wind raked through them, and she heard all around her
the bird's wordless song."
Juniper applauded
vigorously, shaking her hair loose so that it swung across her face. She pushed
it impatiently back. "That's a great story. Are you a writer?"
"No."
"But you're such
a good storyteller."
"That's not
enough." I heard the bite in my voice, and saw her withdrawing. "I'm
sorry. I didn't mean to jump down your throat."
She was instantly
leaning toward me again. Lonely people learn to forgive quickly. "Does
your name have a story?"
"No, but it does
mean 'holy.' Hell of a name for an ex-Catholic."
In the ensuing
comparison of familial and religious backgrounds, we discovered that not only
did we both hate the Pope but we lived in towns that were carbon copies of each
other and about a ten-minute drive apart. "We should exchange phone
numbers!" she said, searching her pockets. "Then we can get together
and do stuff. I don't have a pen. Do you?"
When a crucial
decision is smuggled in among the banalities, as it sometimes is, it's easy to
miss the importance. But I have a strange sensitivity to what is urgent. And at
these moments, when it is in my power to either find the pen in my purse and
give a stranger the way into my world, or let the pen disappear into my purse
and let her fade away, unreachable and forgotten, my consciousness of how much
rides on a ballpoint pen can almost make me dizzy.
I found the pen. We
scribbled our phone numbers on the back of a canceled check. When she tore it in
half and handed me my part, I realized with a familiar apprehension that I had
signed a pact. I was a little frightened. After these decisions I can never
tell why they were important, or whether I have done the right thing.
My brother was
waiting in the car. His hair was cut short and combed, and he looked
comfortable in his thin-striped shirt and tie. He had also, I realized with a
sinking feeling, lost weight. My last hope was dashed when he turned a
clean-shaven face to me as I climbed in with my luggage. "Hi. How was your
trip?"
"Okay."
Hopefully, I added, "I met a witch."
"I'm not
surprised," he said. "That happens to you."
I let it drop and
glanced at the blank lobe where his earring usually was. "Mom make you take it out?"
He shook his head. "I
don't wear it any more. I just got sick of it."
I studied his face,
hoping to detect a hint of defiance, or even the dull consciousness of defeat,
but there was nothing in it but bored resentment of the clogged streets.
"How's Mom?"
"Tense."
"Shit." I
glanced at myself in the mirror. "Jim, did you have to do everything?
Couldn't you at least have forgotten to shave this morning? It's not
fair."
He shook his head.
"It's your turn. I got more than my share of shit."
As we walked up the
steps, I thought of crying out, "Et tu, Jimmy?" But the door opened,
and I had to hug my mother.
She must have just
had her hair done, because the layering was perfect. Her carefully, skillfully
made-up face rose above a brightly colored wool sweater and gray wool slacks.
My friends talk about how pretty she is and I must admit she does forty better
than I ever did twenty.
"Welcome home,
honey," she smiled. "How was your trip?" As I dragged my
suitcase into the kitchen, I saw her looking me up and down, and the shadow of
disappointment that crossed her face. With my shaggy long hair tied back in a
red ribbon, my huge sweater doing nothing to conceal the bulges about my hips
and midriff, and my worn jeans leading down to very sick-looking flats, I felt
shabby and unclean. I would have run to touch up my makeup if I had been
wearing any.
When I sat down
across the table from her, I could see that she was trying hard to ignore it. I
admired her desire for willpower even though I knew she wouldn't find it.
"So how was your first semester?"
I spun out a long
string of class descriptions, anecdotes, background information on friends,
roommate stories, and other trivia. Mom has always preferred style to content in
parent-child discussions. She seemed pleased enough as I reached the end, but I
felt the question fighting its way out.
"Any romantic
developments?" she finally blurted.
She didn't want to
know about the Satanist-anarchist, about the nights I had spent waking over his
unconscious form, listening for a choking noise. She didn't really want to hear
about the kisses that left the sour taste of cheap beer in my mouth, or the
night he decided to prove his devotion by carving my initials into his palm
with the point of his jackknife. And she especially didn't want to know how I
had finally ended it one night when I decided that whoever did take my
virginity had damn well better remember the experience the next morning.
"None
worth mentioning."
Her disappointment
was genuine. My mother would like me to have a boyfriend, then
she wouldn't worry so much. Hoping to deflect the lecture I smelled in the
wind, I asked, "Where's Dad?"
"He won't be
back until late, he has a client dinner. Listen, honey, I wish..."
I knew my lines for
the next scene as well as she knew hers, and there were no surprises. And after
I was done crying and confessing my sins, and she had put her merciful face on,
I was relieved to have got it behind me so early. She pulled over a one-year
planner and reeled off the list of things I had to do.
"The partners'
Christmas party is here this Friday, so you'll need a new dress for that. We
can take you to--" She looked at me "I don't know. We'll see. Grandma
Burstyn isn't coming until Thursday and I want to deliver the cookies before
the party so you're on your own this year. We've decorated the tree and
everything but I saved the manger scene for you. You have an appointment to get
your hair cut Friday morning at Cheveux with Amelia and an appointment at
eleven tomorrow with Dr. Stearon."
I had been trying to
stay calm, clenching my hands under the table, but this was too much.
"Why? It's my vacation!"
She dropped her voice
very low, as she always did at this point. "If something's wrong, we have
to know."
"But I hate
going to see him! It hurts!"
She must have heard
the fear and known it was real, because the angry set of her mouth softened and
she said with something deeper than worry, "I know it hurts, honey. But
you have to go."
If it weren't for
these moments, I could probably convince myself that I didn't really love her,
and that would make my life a lot easier. But sometimes I can see her life in
her eyes and know that I'm only part of it, that she was born into this desert
too and is doing her best. It would be easier if I didn't see what is hidden
from my brother, that this is the way she has to love
us and it is really not her fault.
"I'll go."
I dragged my suitcase up to my room.
I stopped on the
threshold, aghast. My mother had told me that she had redone my room as a guest
room, but I was still shocked. Mom's always loved pastels, but my vocal and
intense opposition had kept her in check until I left. A pure white comforter
covered the double bed, ending with a ruffle above the lavender carpet. The
curtains were lavender with white lace trim, and the walls were white with rows
of tiny lavender flowerbuds running from floor to ceiling between lavender
stripes. The lacy pillow shams at the head of the bed were also in the
flowerbud motif. With a sick apprehension, I tuned back a corner of the
comforter. The sheets matched the curtains.
"I don't match,
Mom," I shouted down the stairs. "I'd better go sleep in Jim's
room."
"Don't
complain," Jim replied, climbing the steps. "They redid mine in
peach."
I sat gingerly on the
edge of the bed. I was afraid to unpack, to put my stretched-out,
baggy-elbowed, faded and torn clothes into the drawers of the clean white
dresser that looked too delicate and gingerbread to actually hold anything. I
almost lay down, but it was the sort of bed you were afraid to put your shoes
on.
#
"Dr. Stearon
will be with you in a moment. Please remove all your clothing." The nurse
handed me two oversized pieces of paper toweling called "drape
sheets" with which I was supposed to cover my nakedness, and left the
examination room.
I disrobed, sat on
the table, and wondered what to do with the sheets. On my first visit over
Thanksgiving break I had tied on around my waist as a skirt and the other under
my arms as a sort of tube top, and Dr. Stearon had laughed at me. It was no
use, anyway; even the little tube top came apart during the breast exam. I lay
down and draped them over me.
Dr. Stearon was a
nondescript, balding middle-aged man who had perfected the art of making small
talk with naked women. I found it unnerving to discuss my classes in that
situation, but I suppose he thought it best to pretend nothing unusual was
going on. "Hi, Celia, how are you? How's college treating you?"
I answered in the
same conversational tone as he put on the latex glove and took out the
speculum. "Ready?"
The ceiling and walls
were stark white, unrelieved even by diplomas.
They didn't really need to
make it white,; they could have been just as clean if
they were painted blue, or something. And his lab coat could have been green,
or maybe raspberry. Maybe they don't make raspberry lab coats. But they could.
I was proud of
myself; I only yelled once. He dropped the tools on the tray with a metallic
clatter and the nurse whisked them off. "That's it, you're all done. Come
on into my office once you've dressed and we'll talk."
His office had been
done, unbelievably, in mint green, with framed Monet posters to match. I sat
down in a wooden chair with mint-green cushions and he began to explain.
"Nothing
abnormal on your pelvic, and the blood tests we took
last time show normal levels of estrogen. What you don't seem to have is a
normal FSH cycle..."
Follicle stimulating
hormone: that far I could follow. And I knew what it meant, too, before he got
there: I wasn't ovulating. Why, he couldn't tell me. At least, he didn't.
"What I'm going to do," he added, scribbling on a prescription pad,
"is put you on Provera, which will induce menstruation. Provera is really
progesterone, which is the hormone that--"
"I know, I just took my human biology final." He looked a bit
taken aback. "But why do I have to induce my period?"
He drew himself up a
little straighter in his chair. "If you don't menstruate regularly, you
run an increased risk of uterine cancer." I got quiet and attentive. He
handed me the prescription solemnly. "Take one tablet every day for ten
days. That'll bring on your period. It may be a little heavier than what you
were used to. Wait a month and repeat it. You want about a six-week cycle. Be
sure and make a follow-up appointment with the receptionist before you
go." I nodded. He showed me to the door. "Say hello to your mother
for me."
My mother had let me take
the car because I had insisted that I go alone. It was beginning to rain, that
cold gray December rain I hate for not being snow. I switched on the wipers and
watched them go back and forth. I had done fairly well in human bio; I knew
that progesterone didn't induce ovulation. I tried to keep my mind on how much
I'd save on birth control, if I ever needed birth control.
#
"Mom wants you
to set up the manger scene," Jim said the moment I walked in. "When
are you going to do the cookies?"
"Are you your
sister's keeper?" I snapped, just to see him roll his eyes. "Where's
Mom, anyway?"
"In
the dining room with the caterers. I wouldn't go in
there if I were you."
"When's Dad
coming home?"
"Not till late.
What's in the bag?"
"Prescription."
I dropped it on the table.
"For
what?"
"A
hassle. Where are you going?"
He snaked the car
keys out of the drawer in a single dextrous motion. "To
a land without caterers."
The box was already
open in the living room. I dusted off the miniature stable and scattered the
fake straw over its floor, to the accompaniment of muted dialogue from the next
room.
"...but not too
many, or they won't have room for the entree. The miniature sausages are
wonderful, but some of the guests don't eat meat, so maybe not so many bacon-based
things..."
I started with the
animals, as I did every year. Long after Jim lost interest in the little Santa
Clauses he used to set out on the mantelpiece, I continued to fight for the
manger scene. I didn't know why, looking down at the plastic figurines. It had
been a gift from my father to my mother before us, in the less affluent days.
The colors were gaudy, and the molded plastic was beginning to atrophy. But
when my mother tried, as she had been trying for years, to toss it in favor of
a white porcelain or carved wood set, I raised such a fuss that she let it
stay.
I liked the animals,
but my favorite was Mary because she had a blue hooded cape. It had faded to
sky blue, except in the creases around her shoulders where it was still the blue
of French stained glass and the sea under bright sunlight. I set her next to
the crib across from Joseph.
"...everyone
loved those chocolate mousse cups. But I don't know about the creampuff angel.
Could you do a reindeer or something instead?"
It had never occurred
to me before that Mary, kneeling in the straw with her hands clasped in prayer,
looked remarkably fit and well-groomed for a mother who had just given birth,
or that the figurine of the infant Jesus had the features and proportions of a
two-year-old. I stuffed the rest of the fake straw into the box and carried it
back to the attic.
The phone rang as I
came back down. I ran to answer it. "Hi, Juniper, what's up?"
"Hel--how did
you know it was me?"
Good question.
"No one else in this state would call me."
"But how'd you
know it was for you?"
"Because...that's
the way it rang. Haven't you ever done that, known it was for you by the way it
rang?"
She laughed. "So
you're telepathic. I can deal. You want to get together? I can't use the car, you'd have to come here."
"Sure. I can't
get out till tonight, there's a dayful of Christmas crap ahead of me."
"That's all
right. Whenever you can, I'll be here all day." She gave me directions and
we hung up. I went to make the cookies.
My grandmother
usually made them with me, pottering around spilling flour and squinting
through her bifocals at the recipe. It was a complicated process: there were
six kinds and our oven was temperamental and untrustworthy. My organizational
skills had developed as hers deteriorated, and we had gradually exchanged
roles. Now, rolling the dough alone, I knew finally how important the cookies
were and how sad she would be to have missed them. There was so little she
could do now that someone else was caring for her son with ruthless efficiency
and the grandchildren were old enough to be irritated. It is terrible to feel
useless, to wander silently through a strange house with nothing to do but
worry about the price of stamps. I stamped down the cookie cutters with one hand
and kneaded the sick lump in my stomach with the other, wishing I could have
waited for her.
I was just finishing
cleaning up after the sandtarts and was about to start on the peanut butter
cookies when my mother finished with the caterers. I heard them trooping out
the door long before she finally came into the kitchen, dressed for aerobics.
She made a noise that
sounded like a sigh as she sat down. The lines in her face were showing through
as they did at the end of the day. She took a cookie off the rack and munched
it, her expression becoming slightly more cheerful. "These are good. You
did a good job."
"Can I have the
car tonight? I don't care which one. I want to visit a friend."
"Who?"
I gave her a sketchy description,
leaving out the witchcraft.
"Well, I guess
you can use the Volvo. Your father won't be home until around eleven; they're
closing on something. You'll be home by then?" I nodded. She noticed the
paper bag. "What did Dr. Stearon say?"
"I'm not
ovulating. He doesn't know why but it's probably organic. That stuff is
supposed to give me my period so I don't get cancer."
"And you got it
filled today. Good. You're getting better about these things."
"Mom..."
I was standing behind
the counter with flour all over me and bits of dough in my hair. I felt
ridiculous, unfit for this discussion, but I said anyway, "That means I'm
sterile, doesn't it?"
She toyed with the
paper bag. "I don't think you have to worry about that now, honey. Maybe
it'll straighten itself out by the time you get married. And if not, there are
all kinds of things you can do. They'll probably be much better at in vitro
fertilization."
"But..."
She looked at her
watch and grabbed the Saab keys out of the drawer. "I'll be back soon,
honey, we'll talk about it later. Don't forget to take your medicine. It's
important. I don't want anything to happen to you."
I washed my hands, then took the brown vial out of the bag. I climbed the stairs, put away the other things I had bought at the
pharmacy, then went into the bathroom and swallowed the first chalky pill.
#
The house was
perfect. It was huge, with two rambling wings stretching out to the forest on
either side, commanding a hill that rose above a cul-de-sac. The driveway,
although I didn't know this, was on the other side of the hill, and there was
no path leading up from the cul-de-sac where I had parked, so I climbed the
slope of dead brown grass under the glare of the stained-glass windows in the
upper story. It was a pseudo-Tudor building with dark beams slanting across its
face under the windows, and when after a few minutes of circling I finally
found the driveway and front door, it was a solid piece of oak with a tiny iron
grille at the top for a window and an iron hand clutching an apple for a
knocker. Pleased to have found a Victorian haunted house in the middle of
American suburbia, I grasped the knocker. It didn't move. Disappointed, I rang
the doorbell.
A shortish, angular
woman with stiff, upstanding black hair and harsh lines about her mouth opened
the door. She was wearing a taupe silk pantsuit and some chunky turquoise and
silver jewelry. "Hello...I'm looking for Judith...?"
She smiled, though I
felt more as if she were showing her teeth than welcoming me. "Come in,
come in. I'm Ruth, Judith's mother." My spirits sank as I followed her
through a mauve and white living room whose
centerpiece was a gleaming glass-topped stainless-steel coffee table. I don't
know much about abstract art, but I could tell that the painting on the
wall-smudges of colors that went suspiciously well with the furniture--had been
expensive. The kitchen she stopped in had been done in black, down to the black
matte-finish microwave and black refrigerator with the little spot in the door
where you could get ice water. A bowling ball in a business suit was reading
the paper in one of the black metal chairs at the molded-plastic table.
"This is my husband Robert," Ruth said. He looked up and nodded
perfunctorily, then back to his paper as Ruth continued, "Celia is a
friend of Judith's."
He acknowledged this
with a sort of grunt, and she clicked her tongue angrily against her teeth.
"Judith's room is in the left wing as you go up the stairs. You'll find
it." She smiled again, nervously and with such obvious effort that I felt
uneasy, as if she knew of a terrible fate that awaited me at the top of the
steps.
They had installed
track lighting, so the hallway was not lit by candles in sconces between oil
paintings of ancestors, as it should have been. I reminded myself that no one
in
When I closed the
door behind me, the room was pitch dark, except for a glowing hollow made by
the five candles that stood at the corners of the chalk pentagram traced on the
hardwood floor. Each candle cast a flickering circle of light on the planks
below it, that lurched from ring to ellipse to squat
egg to long thin spear in the current I had set moving. At odd moments when a
flame leaped higher I caught a subliminal glimpse of something, a table leg or
bedspread or perhaps something else, a shape my own mind had thrown into the
darkness, something with sleek black fur stretched over huge, powerful muscles,
something gigantic and velvety black crouched beyond the edge of the circle. I
brushed the cobwebs off my arms, then remembered I was
wearing a long-sleeved sweater.
"Sit down,
Celia. I'm about to start." I couldn't tell whether Juniper was next to me
or on the either side of the room.
I squatted on the
floor. I heard a soft padding of bare feet, and Juniper stepped into the light.
Her hair was down but out of her face, and the candlelight glowed in her eyes.
Her shirt and long skirt could have been any color, but they looked black in
that light. As she walked slowly around the circle that bounded the pentagram,
she scattered a flaky brown substance that sputtered and sizzled in the candle
flames. The room began to smell faintly of incense as she chanted a low song in
a strange language. I watched her feet and the swishing hem of her skirt, which
were thrown into white relief by the candles, until she stepped into the center
of the pentagram.
"Mother of all
things," she began in a deadly serious tone, "your daughter comes to
you on behalf of a sister, Danielle."
I would certainly
have laughed, if it hadn't been for the candles. Since the points were
equidistant from her, she was equally lit from all angles, and from below. The
lower part of her skirt seemed translucent, and the undersides of her outstretched
arms, uplifted chin, her breasts an her neck were
traced in yellow light. The rules of vision had been inverted, and what usually
receded into shadow was painted luridly against the blackness into which the
familiar curves of waist, shoulder and forehead vanished. My mind wandered
easily from the words, but was held by the underworld figure in the center of
the star.
"One month from
today she joins her life with that of one of your sons." She brought her
hands together and the light glinted on a small metal object, a box or maybe a
picture frame. "Bless this charm, that through its power their union may
prosper and render back unto you the life you have given them." She knelt
and placed it in the center of the pentagram, then drew backwards and out of
sight. The candles burnt lower in silence.
Although I was
mentally snickering over the stilted language, I felt the hairs rising on the
backs of my arms. I looked up. Five rings of light were also wheeling on the
ceiling, a yellow pool with flecks of black darting in and out of it like dark
minnows. I didn't move, reluctant to spoil the patterns with a draft.
One by one, the
candles guttered and went out, leaving me in absolute darkness. If I held my
own breath, I could hear Juniper's from across the room, low and regular and
amplified by the silence.
There was a rustle, a
click, and the room blazed into view. When the glare refined itself into shapes
I saw Juniper kneeling on the floor, scraping at the wax droppings with a
butter knife.
"What do you think?"
she asked, glancing at me. "Does it lose something without the broomstick
and cauldron?"
"No," I
said, "but you need some help with the words."
I sat down on the
canopied bed. It must have come with the house, because it was the only piece
of furniture I'd seen so far that was dark and old. It was covered with thick
burgundy brocade, and tattered remnants of the same fabric hung from the top.
The only other furniture was a solid chest of drawers, mahogany or meant to
look like it, a rush-seated rocking chair, and a tall bookcase stuffed with
yellowed paperbacks, dilapidated hardcovers, and piles of loose paper. I tucked
my left foot under the knee of my extended right leg. She climbed up and lay
down next to me after replacing the rug over the pentagram. "For personal
petitions, you have to make them up yourself, and I'm not a poet."
"Your sister's
getting married, is that it?"
"To
a psychiatrist from
"I met your
parents."
"What do you
think?"
"They have
terrible taste in furniture."
Not tactful, I
realized as I said it, but she sat bolt upright and began agreeing with me.
"Isn't it nasty, what they've done to this great old house? You couldn't
pay a spider to build a cobweb in here. And my dad's allergic to cats. Along
with everything else the goddess ever made."
"She seemed
eager to make me welcome, though."
Juniper laughed.
"I don't have many friends in my age group. You're probably the only one
who's been over in a few years. And since you're so normal-looking, she'll want
to hold onto you for dear life."
Her smile was
nervous, almost shy, reminding me that she was still in high school. Her town
had its own counterculture, but it was based on the use of certain controlled
substances that Juniper had told me she wasn't into. I imagined who her friends
were, how far away most of them lived. Probably a lot of them were still
trailing the Grateful Dead from stadium to ticket line across the country.
"But really.
What did you think of the ceremony? I've never let a non-witch observe
one."
I told her about the
illusory feline thing I had seen and then dismissed. "You must be
sensitive," she said, excited. "Some people are really sensitive to
psychic energy--you must be one of them."
"I'm easily
suggestible, if that's what you mean," I said. "That's why tarot
readings work so well for me."
She jumped off the
bed and dug her tarot deck out of the bookcase. "I just got these. I'm
going to teach myself how to read them. I love the pictures." She spread
them out face down on the bed between us, tucking her hair behind her ears as
she leaned over them intently. "Pick a card, any card," she ordered
me. "Don't look at it." I didn't. "Now tell me what you think it
is."
"The Hanged
Man," I said.
She took the card and
turned it over. A pair of panicked eyes fixed on mine as she
turned it face up and showed me the Hanged Man, dangling by one foot
from the top of the frame with his hands behind his haloed head and his free
foot resting in the crook of his other knee.
I felt the hum of
electricity around me as she said, "I mean that as a joke. There are 64
cards in the at deck. Do you know what the odds of
your guessing right were?"
"One in
sixty-four," I said diffidently, trying to defuse her fear. I try not to
make too much out of these coincidences, they happen to me too often. I can't
explain why, for instance, I have an almost 100% record for predicting home
runs in baseball games, or why I scared the hell out of my psych-major roommate
by scoring way too high on the ESP test she was administering to everyone on
our hallway, so I try not to look for meaning in correct guesses.
"It's just
chance," I said. "I happen to have a special attachment to the Hanged
Man."
"Why?"
"Well, because
it's in The Wasteland, and because...well, look how I'm sitting."
She suddenly noticed
that my legs were laid out on the bed in the position of the Hanged Man's. I
laughed at her terrified expression and lay back with my hands behind my head.
"Stop it!" I sat up. "I bet you could be really psychic if you
learned how to channel this properly."
"Don't talk to me about channeling, my mother reads Shirley
Maclaine."
Juniper laughed. "She a New Age woman?"
"Well, not
really. She's Catholic."
Her eyes lit up and
she tapped me on the knee. "That's right. Tell me about midnight mass.
I've never been."
"It's not as
exciting as it sounds," I said. I told her, though, about the swinging
censer and the burnished crucifix, the candles on the altar, the
gold-embroidered copes and white robes, Latin chants coming out of mothballs,
trumpets and organs, hymns. I laid on the ritual details, figuring she'd enjoy
them. I could see the procession coming down the aisle, the preternaturally
solemn altar boys in their white gowns, and remembered there had been a time
when I really had seen kindly and clueless Father Connaught as a magician,
transfigured by the wonderful stole and the soaring music, who was going to
perform the alchemy that turned our prayers into the perfect love of a father
for his children, a father who had loved us so much that he gave up his only
son.
"It must be
beautiful," Juniper breathed.
I realized I must
have gotten carried away.
"And you believe
in it?"
I was beginning to
appreciate her talent for picking the hard questions. "It's a beautiful
ceremony, and it's a beautiful story. For a long time, that was enough. I used
to think all beautiful stories were true."
"How do you know
they're not?"
"Because
I learned to make them up myself. I could tell you a
hundred of them, probably even a thousand and one if my life depended on it.
But none of them are true. If you learn enough about language, it's like paint
or clay or silver or anything else; you can make some very pretty and
completely useless things with it."
"I think you're
wrong," she said, smiling through the wisps of hair that migrated back
from behind her ears. "I believe all beautiful stories. There's something
at the bottom of everything. Like the fairy tales about changelings."
"You don't
believe that fairies really steal babies, do you?"
She nodded. "I
doubt it. Particularly now that parents have discovered video cameras and are
documenting their offspring's every move. I know my mom kept an exhaustive baby
book on me and my brother; she'd have noticed if anyone pulled a switch."
She shook her head.
"Still, it happens. Who says the fairy child is visible? Say they just
slip a fairy soul into the child's body. Who'd know the difference?" I
laughed. "It happens. I'm a changeling. So are you." I began to
argue, but she cut me off. "You must be, or you wouldn't be here, up in a
creepy dark room with a lunatic who thinks she's a witch."
Something about the
tilt of her smile, or the line of her eyelashes over her eyes, almost stopped
my heart cold. I got that prickly feeling up my spine that I have felt at some
point with every one of my friends as he or she looks at me with that lopsided
smile of gratitude and says, "You're the only sane person I know." I
don't get this tingle of fear because I know it's true, but because I see them
looking back at me with my own face.
"All
right," I laughed. "So I'm a changeling. But it would break my
mother's heart if she found out."
"You can't let
that stand in your way." She was dead serious.
I glanced at my
watch. "Shit! I have to be home in five minutes. My dad's coming back and
I haven't seen him since I got home."
I started looking for
my car keys. She asked, quietly, "You get along with your dad?"
"Yeah,
pretty well. Better than with my mom. Probably because he's not around as much. Anyway, I want to
see him before he goes to bed."
"Good
night." She shook my hand, absurdly. I hugged her instead. She seemed
surprised, though not at all offended. "Have a safe trip. I think it's
supposed to snow soon."
I waved and started
down the stairway. I expected the house to echo, even though most of the floors
had been carpeted. It didn't, so the sounds from the kitchen were muted. I
wasn't used to that. In my dorm at college the hallways were tiled and the
stairs were bare; sound flew everywhere and we learned to fight behind closed
doors. So I had stopped suspecting muted sounds. It really wasn't my fault.
That was what I would
have said, if I had been able to speak at all, when I walked in the kitchen.
But I didn't understand it right away. I saw the hardback cookbook lying on the
floor with its pages crushed underneath it, and thought that was no way to
treat such a glossy thick book. It wasn't until I bent to pick it up that I saw
Ruth standing a few feet to its left, holding a hand to one side of her head,
and Robert standing across from her next to the bookshelf above the Cuisinart.
I straightened up
with the cookbook and glanced from one to the other, but whatever had just been
played out had left no trace in either expression. Both stared at me, as
frightened and uneasy as I was, until Ruth came to life and jerked her lips
upward over her teeth in a ghastly smile. "Are you leaving, Celia? Did you
two have a nice time?"
Except for the click
of my heels on the terracotta tile, there wasn't a sound as I crossed the floor
and replaced the book on the shelf. Robert didn't look at me, though I was two
feet away from him and could hear his angry, rasping breath. I looked back at
Ruth, who had gone white and was still covering one temple with a hand.
"Yes, I had a lovely time. Thank you for having me. I'll find my own way
out."
My legs shook a
little as I walked to the car. What could I have done? Something, I told
myself. Something besides pretend you didn't see anything. I remembered writing
a story in high school about a babysitter who discovers that the children she
sits for are being abused by their father. My English teacher spoke very highly
of the confrontation between the babysitter and the father. And she was right.
It was a beautiful story.
Everyone had gone to
bed when I got home; I can always tell from the kitchen. Even empty, if people
are about to come in or have just left, the kitchen isn't as...dark, somehow,
behind the yellow lights, as it is when the house is asleep.
I was angry about
missing my father, but since there was no reason to sit up in an empty house I
turned off the kitchen light and went up to Lavenderland to fall asleep.
#
In the dark, all I
saw was a fuzzy outline, but I knew it was my father. He must have come home
later than he'd planned. I had been closing in on sleep after half an hour of
staring at the ceiling and waiting for the wheels to stop spinning in my head.
I kept still, not committing myself to sleep or wakefulness, as he approached
timidly.
"Celia...?"
As long as I was
awake now, I might as well talk to him. "Hi, Dad."
"Hi, baby. How
was college?"
"It was
fun."
"Good. How's
vacation been?"
"Okay."
He sat down on the
edge of the bed. There was a long pause. Then he said, "Mom told me you
were upset about what the doctor said."
"Yeah," I
answered slowly. So he was going to console me. It would take a long time to convince
him that I was really all right, but I didn't want him going to bed worried.
"You can still
have children, you know. You can adopt. Or maybe when you get married there'll
be a cure for it."
I heard the same
slightly bewildered but earnest tone he used in all of our discussions. My
father is a great believer in explanations. According to him, you only need to
have a discussion once. This, of course, is a lie, but it makes him much easier
to deal with than my shrewder mother.
"I know, Dad.
I've thought a lot about it and it doesn't bother me so much any more."
"You
sure?"
It might have been
kinder to say no, and let him talk a little while longer. But I was suddenly
very tired and wanted to sleep. "Yeah. I'm sure.
But thanks for coming in."
He stood up sadly.
"How was your dinner out?" I asked.
He brightened.
"It was fun. We went to Lutece. Barth really seemed to enjoy it. I like
the food there. But I think next time I'll bring him to that little Japanese
place where they make you sit on the floor."
"That'll be
fun," I said. "Goodnight, Dad."
"Goodnight,
baby. Sweet dreams."
#
I knew the child was
mine. I had no memory of how I had conceived or delivered it, but wasn't the
least bit curious about either event. It lay on a pile of straw in the
bassinet, very tiny and wrinkled. My mother say in a
rocking chair nearby. She stood and picked up my baby, holding it to her chest.
"I'll take care of it, honey. I've done this before." She began
nursing it. I left.
When I came back, my
mother was gone and the baby was in the bassinet. Through the huge bay window
at the front I could see the ocean crashing on black jagged hulks of granite
under a leaden overcast sky. A seagull screamed up toward the window, then
veered off.
I cried out when I
looked back at the baby. It had turned blue and its limbs were shrunken and
withered. My mother was shaking her head at me. "You haven't been taking
care of it. I knew this would happen. Give it to me."
"No," I
said. "You made it turn blue. It's my baby." I lifted it and started
nursing it. Its limbs filled out and it cooed happily, but even after it was
done and smiling at me it was still blue.
"You see?"
my mother said. "You can't do it right. Let me."
I turned to see
Juniper behind me with a candle in each hand. "It's still blue,
Juniper," I said.
She shook her head.
"It'll always be blue. All your children will come out that way."
"But I don't
want to have blue children."
"You can't help
it." She lifted her left foot to the crook of her right knee. "You
have to. Otherwise the pink children will have no one to play with."
I looked at my
mother, but she had turned into a tree. Another flaming seagull shot toward me
from the sky, but this time it smashed through the window and the dream
shattered into fragments of orange and blue.
#
Ringed in mascara and
eyeliner, my eyes looked foreign, and the skin on my face felt synthetic when I
touched it. My hair, moussed to stay out of my face, was stiff. I decided that
I looked horrible in white, and specifically in white lace-trimmed dresses with
puffed sleeves and sweetheart necklines. Jim passed the hall mirror and stopped
to inspect his ear. “Can you see the hole?”
“Of
course not. It’s closed by now. Relax.”
“You look pretty. A regular ice princess.”
“Fuck you. Mom bought
this dress. It’s not my fault.”
“Or mine either.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just
edgy.”
“Christ.” He went to
help my grandmother down the stairs.
She had been crushed about
the cookies, and though my father had taken her out to dinner in the city she
was still sad, and that make her weaker. She leaned all of her slight weight on
Jim’s arm. I wondered how often she bothered to make herself a meal in her
apartment in
I thanked her for the
compliment through gritted teeth. My mother walked in, adjusting her earrings.
“They should start coming soon. You look nice, Celia.” She pushed a stray wisp
of hair out of my face, and I felt a slight tremor in her fingers. It had never
occurred to me before to wonder whether she really enjoyed these things. She
kissed me lightly on the cheek and ran to see how the caterers were
doing.
The doorbell rang. I
opened it, remembered to smile, and let the first couple in.
"Hello,
merry Christmas, Celia,” they chorused. I responded
in kind, wondering who they were, and trotted upstairs with their coats.
I had been taking
coats at my mother’s parties for years, long before they were catered. With the
arrival of the caterers my brother had been relieved of his function as
bartender, but I was kept on as coat-checker, a job for which I received only
strained facial muscles, tired legs, and the dubious honor of seeing more mink
coats in one place than most people ever do.
All the guests
remembered me, which was disturbing as I remembered roughly a quarter of them.
I tended to remember the men, who all looked the same, by their wives, and a
lot of them ha changed wives since last year. I could always spot second wives;
they were younger, smiled more nervously, and wore newer, flashier jewelry.
After a half-hour or
so there was a lull, and I thought I had finished. Just as I was bracing myself
for the worst part of the ordeal—entering the living room and telling seventy
people whose names I had forgotten how well my first semester of college had
gone—the doorbell rang again. I scampered past two platter-wielding caterers to
answer it, wondering as I saw the female silhouette outside the door why
someone had sent his wife on ahead. When I opened it I realized it was Emily,
the firm’s only woman partner.
“Hi,
Celia. Merry Christmas.” She gave me her
coat. “Am I late?”
“Not really. You’ll
wish you’d been later soon enough.” She laughed. When Emily made partner a few
years earlier, my father had invited her out to dinner with our family, and she
and I had got along well ever since. I liked her because she was younger than
the others, and talked about things none of the others would have mentioned in
front of the boss’s daughter.
When I got back after
dumping off her coat she was still at the foot of the stairs, looking in at the
living room.
“Is something wrong?”
Her chin was
quivering and through the thin sleeves of her silk dress I could see the
muscles of her arms tensing and relaxing.
She turned to me with
unsettling bright eyes. “Is there somewhere I can go and have a cigarette?”
“You can smoke in the
den, everyone—“
“No, I mean alone.”
I hesitated, and she
said, “I’ll go outside. Yes, that’s—“
“You can use my
room,” I said. “I’ll just open the window afterwards. Come on.”
She followed me in
and stood in the middle of the lavender carpet, glancing guiltily around. “You
can sit on the bed, you won’t hurt the comforter.”
“I’m just looking for
an ashtray.”
I took a little clay
saucer with a unicorn’s head painted on it off my bookcase and gave it to her.
“I made this ten years ago at day camp. I’m glad someone’s finally using it.”
She kicked off her
heels and tucked her legs underneath her as she sat on my bed and lit up. “This
is really nice of you. You don’t smoke, do you?”
“No, but I’m not
psycho about other people smoking.”
Which is wrong, because I’m too sensitive to smells, and I hate the
smell of cigarette smoke the most, especially that stale odor that hangs after
a smoker leaves a room. I couldn’t believe I was encouraging this woman to
pollute my bedroom.
“Where’s your
husband?”
Emily blew out an
angry stream of smoke. “He wouldn’t come. He hates these things. It’s
understandable. I hate his business functions too.”
“But this is a
party,” I said cheerfully. “We have little tiny sausages wrapped in bacon on
sticks and little dabs of chocolate mousse in milk chocolate cups. In my eyes,
that makes up for a lot.”
“I’m on a diet.” She
tapped the ashes into the saucer right on the unicorn’s nose. “So my last
motivation for liking this season is gone.”
She smoked in
silence. I couldn’t believe she was dieting. She had started out thin and had
lost at least ten pounds since I first met her. Over the years I had seen her
change, abandon one by one what she must have come to see as her mistakes: her
long hair, her exotic jangling jewelry, her bright blouses and shorter skirts.
Now, with her short hair styled back from her face to show off the small pearl
earrings with diamond chips, a hiss of smoke issuing from between her coral
lips, she looked so polished and perfect that I would almost have been
frightened of her if the stocking feet hadn’t added a comic touch to the
portrait. “So what’s up with you?”
I sighed. “Not much
that’s cocktail conversation.”
Her eyes glinted
feverishly as they turned on me. “No, of course not.
You’re in college. But what’s really going on?”
“Well, let’s see…I’ve
semi-dated a friend of mine who worships the devil and tattoos himself for
evening entertainment, I’ve just discovered that I was left in the cradle by
fairies, and I can’t have children.”
“How do you know you
can’t have children?” I explained. “Do you want children?”
I fell unhappily
silent, wishing I hadn’t told her. She nodded and stubbed out her cigarette.
“Of course you don’t want them now, and maybe not ever. But you’d like to have
the choice, wouldn’t you?” She left the butt in the ashtray and lay back on my bed, stretching her arms and legs, a black
angel figure in the snow. “Don’t worry, Celia, you’re not the only one. It
hardly bothers you at all, after a while. I can’t have children either.”
“What’s the matter
with your insides?”
“Nothing.
But I still can’t have children.”
She sat up,
stretching. “You’re lucky, actually. You’ll never have to worry. And the worst
decision you’ll have to make has already been made for you.” She put her shoes
back on. “I’d better go put in my appearance. Thanks. I feel much better.” She
opened the door. “You coming down?”
I shook my head. She
disappeared.
I emptied the
ashtray, shut the door, and opened all the windows. It was snowing, and a few
stray flakes blew in to settle on my hair. I hugged my knees to my chest as the
wind chilled the room. Even after the stale smell of smoke had been scoured
out, I huddled in the center of my bed, a ball of white on a white field, while
the cold stung water into my eyes.
Jim was a little
surprised when he opened the door and saw me hunched up on my bed with snow
dripping off the ends of my hair.
“Phone for you,” was
all he said.
I stood and adjusted
my dress, stockings and face.
“It’s the Antichrist
Wanna-Be.”
I swore inwardly
never, ever to tell Jim anything about my personal life again. “I don’t want to
talk to him.”
“I already told him
you were home.”
“So tell him you were
wrong.”
“You want me to lie?”
He sounded shocked.
“Thank you,
born-again Boy Scout.” I walked past him. “Tell me you never asked me to lie
for you.”
“That was different.”
“Oh,
of course.” I sat on the pile of fur coats and
picked up the phone in my parents’ bedroom. “Hello?”
“Hello, Celia.” At
least he wasn’t slurring. “Is there a party going on?”
“It’s my parents’
party. What’s up?”
“I miss you.”
“Did it not work out
with Amy?”
He shifted into his
Greek tragedy voice. “That has nothing to do with it. I don’t care about her or
any of those other blond boring people. None of them really care about me.
That’s why I miss you.”
He was worse than
drunk; he was depressed.
“Of course they care
about you. Amy wrote you all those long letters.” So what if they were in pink
ink with little hearts dotting the I’s.
“But she doesn’t
understand me. I told her about that night at the lake and she just laughed.”
I shivered,
remembering. Arlon was a strong boy; I’m surprised we didn’t both end up
floating on the surface. “Demonic possession is not something high schoolers
are ready to deal with, no matter how mature they might look.”
“You really think I
was possessed?”
Nothing has ever
irritated me as much as the eagerness in his voice at that moment did. “Yes,
Arlon, but I doubt it was by the Lord of the Flies.”
“What, then?”
I didn’t understand
why he loved to rehash what was one of the worst nights of my young life. But
whenever he felt low, he brought up the night he had run screaming out to the
edge of the pier and let me stop him from throwing himself in. I suppose I may
really have saved his life; he couldn’t swim even when sober and even if he’d
kept himself afloat the lightning might well have finished him off. But
somewhere deep inside—or maybe not so deep—a malicious little bitch wants to
know whether he really would have jumped.
“I don’t know, Arlon.
Maybe me.”
Because it is a way,
after all, of making sure; anyone who’s willing to risk her life to save yours
has to love you, doesn’t she? And that night I did love him, because he let me
pull him back from the brink, because isn’t saving a life a little like
creating one?
“What?”
“Never
mind. I’m just glad it only happened once.”
But it happened all
the time, only in different guises; I spent the entire half-relationship
rescuing him from his own clutches, until I finally realized the difference
between giving life and saving it about the time I figured out why he was a
Satanist.
“I miss you. Amy
wouldn’t do that for me.”
“Maybe
not. But you wouldn’t do that to Amy.”
“You never forgave me
for that.”
“It was my fault
too.”
“You loved me.”
“Of course I did.”
“And you still do.”
At least this
signaled the end of the conversation. “Yes, Arlon, I still do.”
“Then why won’t you
go out with me?”
Because
as long as I was there to save him, he was going to teeter there on the brink,
flirting with death and the devil. Because eventually,
even saving his life wouldn’t have been enough to prove to him that I loved
him. Because my needs and his needs fit together perfectly to
make a mirror image of love.
“Because
I’m not good for you, Arlon. You need someone
stable and sane.”
“But you’re the
sanest person I know.”
“That’s only because
you live in
He laughed. I could
hang up now that he had laughed. When I finally did, I went into the kitchen to
say hello to the caterers and look in my mother’s calendar to see when I’d be
able to visit Juniper.
#
I had done all my
shopping at school, but I still had to work to wangle a free afternoon between
breakfast with my brother and my dad and helping my mother wrap presents. I
would have liked to have Juniper over, since I didn’t relish meeting her
parents again, but it would have created unnecessary havoc, so I climbed the
hill, now lightly frosted with snow, to the front door and its useless knocker.
Her mother’s nervous,
astonished smile of gratitude made me faintly queasy. I realized she had been
afraid that I wouldn’t come back. “So nice to see you again!
I hope you can stay for dinner. We’re having a traditional Chanukah dinner.”
“I’m afraid I can’t.
I have to be home for dinner. But thank you for offering.” She walked me to the
kitchen and motioned upstairs. “Judith’s in her room. I don’t know what she
does up there all day.” And you’re thinking probably drugs, I thought, staring
at her next to the bookshelf wearing her apologetic anxious grin. On the thick
binding of the book I had picked up off the floor a few days ago I read, The
Joy of Jewish Cooking. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or groan, but I
didn’t want to do either in front of Ruth so I hurried upstairs.
Juniper was sitting
on the floor with her back to the doorway. In one hand she held an open
paperback and with the other she was dealing tarot cards from a deck. She had
already laid out most of the spread. The last card, which stands for the
general outcome, was of course the Hanged Man.
She nearly hit the
ceiling when I tapped her shoulder.
“Celia! I didn’t hear
you—“ She looked at the outcome of her reading. “I
should have known, though.”
“Yep, you should
have.” I sat down Hanged-Man Style on the bed.
“You’re doing that on
purpose. Stop it.”
I laughed and
extended both legs. “What’s it for, anyway?”
“Nothing, I was just
practicing.” She scooped the cards up and sat on the bed.
“What’s all this
for?” There was a small cat figurine on the bed, between half an apple and a
snapshot.
She handed me the
photo. “It’s for a love charm.” In the picture she was standing next to a
bearded man with round wire-rimmed glasses in a tie-dye and sandals in front of
a van. Even in faded Kodachrome, I could see the total unmarred happiness of
her expression. “I met him at a Dead show in
“Can I watch?”
“Oh,
no. Love charms have to be done in secret.” She handled the cat
fondly. “There’s something between us already, but this should make it
stronger. You don’t ever do a love charm on someone who feels nothing for you.
Terrible things could happen.”
Like
its being totally ineffective.
“Is this a bad time?”
“No, no. I can’t
start until dark anyway.” She curled up next to me. “So tell me all about the
great Christmas extravaganza.”
I found myself
telling a story again, surprised at how easily the words came, at the tone of
comedy I sustained, and even more at Juniper’s rapt eyes never leaving mine. I
saw what she must have looked like sitting by a campfire, the flames filling her
wide eyes as the counselor, with a face dyed hell-orange in the bloody light of
the low fire, told in deathly tones the story of the woman with the golden arm.
I saw her carrying books home from the library, filling the long empty summer
days with wraiths and wolfsbane and moonless midnight. On the bookcase shelves
I had already noticed an encyclopedia of the occult, several complete fantasy
series, an Edgar Allan Poe anthology and a few Shirley Jackson paperbacks. I
felt humbled to be in their company.
When I was done she
asked, “Do you know any ghost stories?”
“I know,” I began as
I always had at summer camp, “most of the ghost stories ever told, and…” I
hesitated, suddenly depressed.
“And…?”
I was surprised to hear
myself continue. “And some that haven’t.”
“Great.” She settled
back. “Tell me one that hasn’t.”
“Sonia’s mother hated
cats,” I began, floundering. “But Sonia held so tight to the black kitten,
silently pleading so desperately with her large green eyes, that she decided to
make an exception…”
I don’t know where
the rest of it came from, but it went on for a while, in several directions. I
was startled at the eerie twists and phantasmal images, which Juniper accepted
as normal but which set my nerves on edge. I had not done this for a long time,
not since one night in eighth grade I managed to convince myself to believe one
of my own stories and lay awake three nights running
terrified of my own goblins. So it wasn’t a good one; but Juniper ignored the
plot holes and the hurried, insincere, frightened ending.
“And you say you’re
not a writer,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“Why
not?”
“Because…” I had
never been able to explain it. “You draw on your own life, your culture, your people. That’s who you tell stories about, that’s who
you tell stories to. And my people…”
“Yes?”
“My world is flat and
so are my people. There are no stories to tell. My life is not worth writing
about. And even if it was, my people don’t read.”
Juniper shook her
head. “You’re wrong about that, Celia.”
“You think there’s a
book in every life? Not mine. It’s a useless web of rules, parties that are more dull than boredom, endless miles of barren
conversation…”
“What’s the matter?”
Something must have happened
on my face. “Barren,” I said. “I don’t like the word.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Me,” I said. “Not
just my world and my people. I’m barren too.”
“I think,” Juniper
said, taking my hand, “that you’re confused about who your people are.” I
looked up at her tilted smile. “We’re your people, Celia. The
changelings.”
I stared, sure that I
was missing a deeper meaning, then realized.
“We’re talking about
different things. I’m barren. Sterile. I can’t have
children, ever.”
After I explained
why, she sat still a moment, then grasped my shoulders
in sudden animation.
“I can help you with
that, Celia. I know a spell for it. All I have to do is get the herbs and a
personal object from you. It’s one of the most powerful spells in the book.
See, witchcraft is really centered around birth and
creation, because that’s what the goddess is, a great big mother that gives
birth to everything, so o course there’s all kinds of spells for this. Let me
do one? I never thought I’d get the chance. Please? Can I?”
Her eyes were lit and
shining, her hands clasped in front of her. She was pleading with her whole
body. And I saw that it was a game, but that the game was as important to her
as only games can be, that its rules were as solemn
and sacred as the rules to the game I used to play. “All
right.”
She clapped her hands
gleefully. “Oh! I have to know why you want this done. Why do you want
children?”
I wasn’t sure what my
answer would be when I began. “Because I don’t want to spend
the rest of my life bleeding useless blood or growing my own death in my womb.
And if my spirit is barren, my flesh can’t be barren too. It’s not fair.”
I don’t think she
heard me. She was muttering, “If I tell Dave at the health food store he can
have the herbs by Tuesday…”
“I have to go, Juniper,”
I said. “I have to be home for dinner.”
“Oh. Too bad. I was hoping you could eat with us. You could meet
my little brother. He’s really sweet.” She smiled. “Too bad
about Hebrew school. If I don’t look out for him, Mom’ll turn him into a
rabbi just to make up for me.” She walked me to the end of the hall, bobbing
excitedly. “Don’t forget to bring something personal next time.” I descended to
the kitchen.
Ruth sprang to her
feet. “I’m sorry you can’t stay for dinner. Have you ever had a traditional Chanukah
dinner?”
“No, I never have.”
“Then you must have
dinner with us some night this week. I’m sure your family can spare you. Say
you’ll come.”
“I’ll come.”
“Good.” She stood,
shivering slightly, in the open doorway and waved as I walked down the hill.
#
“What are you doing
still up?”
“How can I sleep
knowing that tribbles are breeding on the bridge of the
“Didn’t you use to be
an early riser?”
“That was before a
liberal arts education corrupted me.”
I scooped a handful
of Doritos into my mouth. Jim sat down on the TV room sofa.
“Are you okay?”
“Why?”
“You’ve been acting
sort of psycho lately.”
“I didn’t know you
could be sort of psycho.”
He laughed, but struggled
back into his older-brother persona. “I mean it. You were sitting there in the
freezing cold through the party, you go off to visit some girl you met on the
train last week—“
“There’s nothing
psycho about that.”
“And now you’re
eating Doritos. These things are nothing but empty calories.”
“It’s like with the
Inquisition. The converts are the worst.”
“It makes a
difference, Celia, whether you believe it or not.”
“I don’t see
truckloads of chicks beating a path to your door.”
“No, but at least I’m
not dating a woman whose spiritual role model is the Beastmaster.”
“Fuck you, Jim.”
He shut up for a
while.
“Celia, you’ve seen
this episode before. You can recite it in your sleep. I’ve heard you do it. Why
are you still up?”
“Because
I don’t want to go to sleep.”
“Why
not?”
I munched morosely on
more Doritos until the Kraftmatic Adjustable Bed commercial left me no excuse
for absorption in the TV.
“Come on, Celia.”
“Because
I don’t want to have the dream again.”
“What dream?”
I sighed. “Look. It’s
stupid. I dream that I have a baby, and Mom takes care of it, and it turns blue
and shrivels up, and it’s my fault, and I nurse it and it gets better but it’s
still blue, and then Juniper tells me it’s my duty to have blue children, and
Mom turns into a tree, and a seagull with an orange body and red wings crashes
through the window.”
He turned his blank
face to the screen, which was now exhorting us to buy something called a
popeet.
“So, Sigmund,” I
said. “What do you think?”
“You and Mom are
fighting, aren’t you.”
“We’re fighting like
we always are. This isn’t about her.”
“Then it must be
sexual.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“They usually are,
you know. If they have to do with water.”
“Yeah, I guess you’d
know from frustration dreams.”
He looked away. I
felt bad. “I’m sorry.”
“I do know about
frustration,” he snapped. “But I don’t have frustration dreams any more. And if
you’d stop eating this shit, neither would you.”
“Why is everyone
convinced that’s all it takes?” I shouted.
“That’s all it took
for me.”
He believed it; I
could see that. So it was no use arguing with him. And maybe that really was
all it would take. I didn’t know. Maybe thin people didn’t have bad dreams. You
can believe a lot of pretty ridiculous things at 2:40 am in the middle of Star
Trek.
“It’s just because
we’re worried about you.” He and my mother began using the royal we as soon as
Jim converted. “You hang around here looking depressed and then go visit the
loony in
“She’s a friend of
mine.”
“Who’s in your nightmare.”
“She’s trying to
help.”
“In
your nightmare?”
“With
the nightmare.”
“How?”
“By—oh, forget it.”
“Does Mom know about
this?”
“If Mom knew about
this I would be seeing a shrink.”
“I don’t know, maybe
you should be.”
My mouth actually
fell open. And to do him justice, I knew that as soon as he said it he wished
he hadn’t.
“So you’re saying her
lines now.”
He didn’t have an
answer.
“We used to share it.
When she was working both of us it was easier. It’s much worse now she’s fixed
you.”
“Why do you always
try to make me feel guilty for being normal?”
“Why did you run off
to follow the Dead after college?”
The ghost of his old
self flickered in his eyes. “It was my last chance.”
“Well, I don’t want
this to be mine.”
“Your
last chance for what?”
If I had said, to
have a child, I would have been on the couch in Dr. Mettner’s office at 10:00
am the next morning. So I said, “To be a child.”
I pushed the Doritos
away, switched Spock off in midsentence, and followed my brother upstairs.
#
For once fate rescued
me and my parents got invited to an offspring-free party in
I hate eating dinner
at other peoples’ houses. The dinner table is a secret family thing, and
strangers put strained smiles on everyone’s faces. From Robert’s silence and
the family’s indifference to it, I gathered he wasn’t much of a
conversationalist. Ruth kept smiling and asking me about my family, and I
answered as decorously as I could even when it became obvious that her
questions were designed to impress upon everyone present that I was
going to a reputable university and not disappointing my mother.
When I tried to
indicate, as humorously as possible, that not being a witch was not enough to
ensure the tranquility of my home life, she resolutely directed the
conversation back to her initial message.
Andrew, a beautiful
little boy with dark curls and brown eyes that could have sold Fisher-Price
toys to any parent, sat next to me. He kept tapping my shoulder and whispering
while his mother was talking. Was I a witch? His sister was a witch. Could I do magic? His sister made it snow. No one but Juniper
seemed to notice this, although her older sister Danielle and her fiancé sat
across from us. I disliked the fiancé on sight, and disliked him worse when he
started talking. I was glad when dinner finally ground to a close and Juniper
and I could make our escape.
It was getting dark
as she retraced the pentagram with the chalk. I set out the candles in their
holders at the five points.
“You don’t like him
either, do you?” she said.
“The
fiancé? No. I have a special place in my
spleen for psychiatrists. My mother took my brother to one and he was never the
same afterward.”
“What
for?”
“Oh,
irresponsibility. Adolescence.
They cured him of something, but I don’t think that was it.”
I handed her the unicorn
saucer. She was delighted. “I can burn the offering in it! That’ll make
everything much more powerful.” She opened a book full of handwritten scrawl.
“All you do is get up when I present you to the Mother
and walk behind me seven times around the circle. Then you read this.” She
handed me a sheet of loose-leaf.
“How do you pronounce
‘iuq’?”
She read the chant
out loud to me.
“Where did you get
this?”
“From another witch I
met in
“All
right.” She produced a Bic lighter and fired
up the candles. She piled some dried stuff on the saucer and put it in the
middle of the pentagram. She positioned me at one point of the star and turned
off the lights.
The candles cast the
same rippling glow on Juniper as she paced slowly around the circle, touched a
long thin twig to one of the candles and lit the pile in the saucer. I
recognized the smell of incense. As the smoke wisped up, Juniper recited a
chant that included my name twice. She paused, and I realized that was the
presentation. I followed her seven times around the candles, then
read off the paper.
Juniper lifted the
herbs above her head. In the darkness, with her bundle of sacred herbs, wild
eyes and trancelike voice, she really was a priestess, calling on the goddess
for rain for the fields and fish for the rivers, and I wished as watched her
wave the bundle once over each candle that I hadn’t just realized that the
mysterious pre-Latinate chant I had just read was actually the Agnus Dei said
backwards.
She walked the circle
again, placing a few herb stems inside each point of the star. And although I
didn’t believe, if I ever had, that she could help me bear a child, I sat
perfectly still as she concluded the ceremony. Because there was power in her,
power and beauty in the arc of her skirt, in the angle of light and shadow in
her hair, power in the dance of the wavering candle flames. I thought of all
the candles I had lit in Notre Dame that summer, how since there had been fire
there had been someone to light the wick and shield the flame.
She concluded with
another chant and walked around the circle extinguishing the flames.
When she turned on
the lights she was flush with excitement. Of course, I knew, she had no idea,
could not be expected to know, that whoever had given her that chant was lying,
or more likely confused, and that tit was not a hymn to the mother goddess but
a twisted and garbled plea for a father’s mercy. “I think it’ll work, Celia,”
she said. “I felt it. I know I reached Her.” She took
my hand. “You’re my sister, now that I’ve done a spell for you.”
Since her room was
not large enough to echo, I wondered where the resonance to her voice came
from. I blinked, hard, as I looked t her face, but perhaps because of the
sudden light, or the still-heady smell of incense, it blurred into Arlon’s,
into Jim’s, into faces I knew as well as my own, into my own face, as that
tilted smile of love and need pulled at my heart. The tears that stood at the
corners of my eyes but did not fall fogged everything, and I heard, murmuring
under the silence, the hum of the other voices, voices from my childhood and my
adolescence and my infancy and my new tenuous adulthood, the voices of my
friends and Arlon and others I couldn’t place because I had only heard them as
echoes until now and I glanced at Juniper’s eyes which flickered blue for an
instant and I closed my own eyes to shut out the sight of my people.
“Are you all right,
Celia?”
My eyes opened and
the noise faded. “Yes. I’m fine.”
She dropped my hand,
a little frightened. “I’m proud to be your sister,” I said.
She stooped to pick
the herbs off the floor. Her hands shook slightly. “I’ve never had a sister,”
she replied as she handed them to me.
“Of course you have,”
I said. “Lots of them. We aren’t the only
changelings.”
Juniper smiled. “On
the first of every month, steep some of the herbs in boiling water and drink
the tea every day for a week. Then you’ll get your period.”
I wrapped them
gingerly in the handkerchief she gave me. She followed me down the stairs and
hugged me goodbye.
“Come back before you
go back to school?”
“Of
course.”
I was surprised to
see her little brother outside in the snow when I began the trek to my car. He
walked up to me and asked matter-of-factly, “Did it work?”
“What?”
“The
spell.”
“How do you know we
were doing a spell?”
He shrugged. “Because my sister’s a witch.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t
know yet.”
“If you have a blue
baby can I come and see it?”
I squatted down in
the snow and looked him in the eye. “Why do you say that?”
“I’ve never seen a
blue baby.”
I stood up, dusting
the snow off my jeans. “If you don’t go inside soon you’ll be a blue baby.”
“I will. I just come
out here to watch the light in Juniper’s window.”
I glanced up. The
inlaid stained glass glowed red and cobalt and emerald against the black
façade.
He walked away up the
hill. The stars were out. I could see white clouds of breath in front of me as
I flapped my arms to warm them and prayed the car would start.
#
Christmas Eve has
never been my night for sleep. Even after I had stopped listening for reindeer
on the roof I had the Nativity to mull over, and now that I knew that nothing I
really wanted to could be put under the tree and had nothing left to pray to,
there was still enough empty anticipation and deceived hope to keep me awake.
I tried to put myself
to sleep by telling myself the nativity story. I had memorized it during my three-years’ stint as the narrator/ Angel of the Lord in the
Christmas pageant. But I lost the words in the middle of sentences, and other
pieces of unwanted scripture floated in. “And a virgin shall conceive and bear
a son…” “Shall Sarah, who is ninety, bear?” And, out of nowhere, “If you have a
blue baby, can I come and see it?”
Andrew’s face was
suddenly vivid in my mind, its large silent eyes and eerily earnest expression,
superimposed on the cookbook and the candles.
And, treading softly,
I got out of bed, pulled a sheet of paper out, and wrote, by the light of the
full moon outside the window, “He was a blue baby, and though the operation was
a success and he went to kindergarten with the other children, he wanted to
meet other blue children. His sister the witch said they existed, and though
she had never been able to introduce him to one, she promised to keep trying.”
That was enough. I crawled
back under the covers and fell asleep.
#
My family was
enchanted with their presents, and Jim especially liked the tie-dyed tie and
suspenders, so Christmas was a success. I did see Juniper briefly before I
left. We promised to write. She was hurrying to the city and the man in
sandals. I gave her a copy of my story. It was called “The Joy of Jewish
Cooking.”
“I didn’t know the
café car was open.”
I turned to answer
the…man, by the voice, who was sitting next to me.
“Oh, it isn’t.”
He had long brown
ringlets, tied back from a beautifully sculpted face, and was wearing a paisley
shirt with powder-blue harem pants.
“I brought this with
me.” I took another sip and grimaced.
“Herbal?”
I nodded. “Is it any good?”
I shook my head. “It
tastes like essence of tree bark. It’s meant to be medicinal.”
“Really?”
He pulled a pair of glasses from his knapsack. “I’m really into holistic
medicine—I run a health food and crystals store in
“
“To help people
direct their energy, focus their thoughts, get in
touch with their inner selves and past lives.”
“Ah.” I choked down
another swallow, almost spilling it all over him as the train lurched. “Well,
yes, I’d say it’s working.”
“What’s it for?”
“That’s kind of a long
story, and I’m not sure how it ends.”
He smiled. “Tell me
anyway?”
I hesitated, looking
out the window at the claws of the winter trees.
“I’m sorry,” he said,
nervously. “It’s none of my business.”
“No, please, don’t
apologize,” I said. “It probably is your business,
it’s probably about you too.”
“Really.”
“No, I mean…listen,
have you ever heard the stories about changelings?”
I went on and the
train did too, carrying me past forest after forest of stripped trees and
salted, crud-caked streets, carrying me toward the second semester, my echoing
dorm, my friends, and Arlon.
The End
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