Wish
Me Not
A
Memoir
I
think most people probably prefer fall, but personally, I don’t understand it.
Spring is my favorite time of year. I was born 12 days late, right after the
Vernal Equinox, and I like to joke that it’s because I wasn’t going to come out
until it was officially Spring. I’ve never liked winter, and to me, Fall is
just the decaying prelude to the worst season.
Spring,
however, is all about life. The first shoots of green pushing up through the
soil, the roaring thunderstorms that drive the warm water deep into the cold
ground, thawing it. The jasmine scent of honeysuckle heavy on the breeze. When
I was growing up, we would chase the fireflies around the backyard every year,
and my cousins would catch them, and rub the glowing goo along their arms to
make tattoos.
I
was a bit different. Far too long into my childhood, I believed that fireflies
were fairies and that they made their homes in the little mushrooms that would
spring up around our yard. I’d cry when my cousins crushed them.
Every
year, clovers would spring up in the damp, rich soil around the brick base of
my grandmother’s house, and I’d spend ages hunting for four-leaf clovers,
holding buttercups under my chin, making wishes on dandelions, and shooting
stars. That was before I knew how dangerous wishes were.
Out
in the backyard, there was a huge pot that had belonged to my
great-grandmother, black, and cauldron-shaped, although my mother assured me
that she had not been a witch. I’d collect rainwater in it, and pull up spring
onions, and wildflowers, and moss, and any frogs my cousins would catch for me,
and stir it all around with a big stick, pretending I was casting spells.
I
grew up on superstitions and old wives’ tales. A broom never fell in our home
without a remark, and once I dropped a fork, and when I stood from picking it
up, my aunt grabbed my arm in a tight grip. “Which way was it pointing?”
My
mother told me that when I was born, she wouldn’t let a friend of hers into the
delivery room, because he was scarred, and such things were catching. I’m
always careful when putting on my shoes that I shan’t take a step with only one
shoe on. An ulcer in the mouth indicates that you’ve been telling lies. When I
get a hair in my mouth, I immediately run to kiss my fiancé, because it means
you’re going to kiss a fool, and I’d hate to kiss the wrong one. If I ever say
never, I always knock-on-wood.
Everyone
knows about wishing on stars and dandelions, but I bet you didn’t know you
could wish on eyelashes. If an eyelash is loose on your cheek, press it between
your thumb and forefinger, and silently make a wish. Then out loud, say what
finger it will be stuck to, and open your thumb and finger to check. If you
were correct, you’ll get your wish, just blow on the eyelash, and send it out.
You can wish on the clock at 11:11, and you can wish on a necklace turned
around backward.
But
it’s important not to wish in anger, for nothing good ever comes of it. The
first time I learned this, my brother nearly died.
My
brother, you see, liked to steal my Barbies. He thought it was funny to strip
them naked and leave them hanging from the rafters of my bedroom by the
shoestrings he tied around their necks.
I
was the only girl amongst my cousins and always outnumbered. But I could take
any of them in a fight and had fought them two at a time. They hated to lose
though and would form a circle around us fighters, pinching and kicking at me
if I ever got close to them.
One
day, my brother and I were fighting because he had messed with my Barbies
again, and two of my cousins grabbed me and held me down. My brother didn’t
beat me up, but sitting on top of me, took a big handful of dog poop, and
rubbed it all into my red hair, laughing while I screamed and cried. Then he
wiped his hands off on me, and the boys let me up, all laughing and pointing
and calling me names.
My
voice was shrill enough to break glass when my arm whipped out, my finger
straight and accusatory. “I hope you die!”
~x~
Inside
the house, I cried in the shower, hating my brother and cousins with a fierce
passion. I wanted to rip them all to shreds with my bare hands. Long after the
water ran cold, I sat in it unfeeling, warmed by the heat of my fury.
Finally,
I got dressed and went out to the family room, where my Mama was peeling
potatoes. You could hear the yelps and hollers of the boys from outside, and
the roar of my uncle’s riding lawnmower.
Then
the yells turned to screams, and the group burst through the screen door,
dragging my brother. One look set me to screaming too. Blood covered his face, and
a long, thin line of it stretched across his throat, which had been cut open
from one side to the other.
~x~
My
mama rushed him to the hospital, and he got a few stitches and a scar to add to
his growing collection. He’d fallen off the lawnmower where he’d been riding on
the engine, and the blood wasn’t from his neck at all but had just run down his
cheek and across it.
My
mama wouldn’t look at me when she got home. My dad took a swig of beer and
looked at me coldly. “That’s what you get for wishing ill on somebody like
that.” When I asked what me yelling at him had to do with it, my mama told me
tersely. “Wishing is dangerous. You can’t take back what you’ve said. Don’t do
it again.”
And
I didn’t.
For
a while.
~x~
When
I was about ten, my mama and daddy sat me and my brother down and asked us if
we’d be okay with taking chores to help around the house. I was always eager to
please and readily agreed. But I hated washing dishes. I had to stand on
a stool and lean far over into the sink, and I’d shudder and gag any time my
fingers would brush some soggy foodstuff.
Somehow
my brother never ended up having to do much of anything. As the older sister,
anything that he half-assed, I was expected to fix for him. Which meant,
inevitably, that I ended up doing all the chores. I’d put them off as long as I
could, which just meant that they’d be harder to clean, and I took to hiding
the worst of them under the kitchen sink to avoid washing them.
One
of them grew a thick, filthy mold, and stank so bad I thought I’d puke. I was
in the living room, reading when I heard my daddy calling me from the kitchen.
I knew immediately that I was in trouble. I met him at the kitchen door, and he
held out the pot to me. “What the hell were you thinking? Get your ass in there
and wash this.”
I
looked down at furry growth in the pot and smelled the stink. I squared my
shoulders and glared up at him. “I don’t want to.”
“I
don’t care what you want. You agreed to do the chores, now get in there
and do them!” he looked flabbergasted that I’d even think about questioning
him. I was usually a good kid, and never defiant.
I
looked him dead in the eye. “No.”
The
back of his hand took me across the cheek so hard I forgot how to breathe for a
minute. I couldn’t see his expression through the tears in my eyes when I
looked up at him. “I hate you.” It was a hoarse whisper.
I
heard him call after me, but he didn’t try to follow me. I sat alone in the
woods, crying for a good long time. It was damp from the rain, and I could
smell the green, and dirt, and moss. After a while, I got up and wandered,
going deeper into the woods behind my house than I ever had before.
It
was there, deep, deep in the woods, that I found the remains of a building. It
was brick, with a sagging roof, no doors in the frame, no glass in the windows,
just big, dark holes with no hint of what was inside.
On
a normal day, I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to go in on my own.
But on this day, I was filled with reckless misery.
Inside
were rusted metal shelves, some fallen and twisted. Pine straw and dirt caked
the floor. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I made out an abandoned nest resting
on one of the shelves, but the rest were full of glass jars, filled with dark
and foreign substances.
I
was careful picking my way across the floor because some had fallen and broken,
leaving dark stains on the concrete. One jar, in particular, had caught my eye.
The liquid was thinner, clearer than what was in the other jars, and the color
was distinctly red, although very dark. Floating in the liquid were orbs, and
my heart thudded in my ears. I was afraid to look too closely at them, in case
they were eyeballs or tiny dead animals.
It
occurred to me suddenly that this must be my great-grandmother’s house, that
she must have lived here, and these were her potions. She really was a
witch…Ever so carefully, I picked up the jar, cringing at the texture of
dust and grime on the surface, and the feeling of the liquid sloshing inside.
I
carried it in my shirt back to the edge of the woods and left it carefully
concealed there while I made my way down to the house and dragged the heavy
cauldron up the hill until it and I disappeared into the edge of the trees.
Then I set to work on my revenge.
Firstly,
I had to get the liquid into the cauldron. Using my shirt, I tried to gently
twist the lid off the jar, but it was tight, and I was squeamish that it would
get on my hands. Knowing witchcraft, it would probably boil my skin straight
off. After a few furious minutes of fighting with the jar, I threw it hard into
the cast iron cauldron, expecting it to shatter. It had only cracked a bit, a
few droplets of scarlet liquid bubbling up through the seam. Using a stick, I
was able to poke at the jar until it fell apart, the red liquid rushing out to
fill the bottom of the cauldron.
It
reeked about as badly as the pot had done, and I pulled my t-shirt up over my
nose to gag the stench somewhat. Wild onions, moss, a spider web that had
gotten stuck in my hair. Dirt with a worm still in it. I found a muddy hole and
used a toy shovel to carefully make a few trips back and forth, adding the
dirty water. Dead brown and red leaves from the ground, and dandelions and
clovers for wishing.
As
the sun went down, I captured a few fireflies in my cupped hands and shook them
out into my brew. They stuck in the muck, their tails glowing as their tiny
limbs wriggled. I was too angry to care. My cheek was still throbbing in pain
when I found a long stick and began stirring my potion.
“Fire,
water, earth, and air, come to me, I call you here. Spirits of the doom and
gloom, come and take my dad away soon.” I chanted into the darkness, and when
the moon was full in the sky, I howled at it like a wolf.
~x~
By
the next morning, I had cooled off substantially. My dad made us pancakes, and
my cheek didn’t hurt anymore. Mom was home, and we all watched cartoons in our
pajamas. I snuggled tightly against my dad. At some point, he fell asleep, and
when the cartoon ended, my mom told us to go play outside, and gently woke him
to tell him to go back to bed.
I
was playing on the swing set when I saw it. A long, dark shadow, moving across
the side of the house. Time seemed to stop as I looked for the hooded man who
had cast it. The outline was clear, but there was no man there. My heart
thudded into my throat.
I
blinked, and the shadow was gone. I dug my feet into the dirt beneath the swing
and came to a stop. From inside the house, I could hear my father coughing.
~x~
Someone
took pictures of us at the funeral, I’m not sure why. My already pale skin was
grey and taut, and my eyes were dark pits in my head. My mother and brother
didn’t look much better.
I
don’t remember much from that day, and the memories I do have are like dead
fish, floating to the surface of black water. Coming through the door to the
funeral home, a strange woman grabbed my arm, long, red nails digging into my
flesh as she pulled me to look at her. “I know you.” She brought her face down
to mine, and I could smell ashes. “I knew you in another life.” Cat-green eyes
seemed to bore into my soul.
I
retreated behind my mother as she introduced me to the stranger. A
fortune-teller who she’d known for years. The woman watched me where I hid
behind my mother’s skirt, and her smile was not kind.
The
day drug on and on, and the longer it went, the sicker I felt until I was sick
in the funeral home bathroom. The puke that came up was scarlet red.
That
night I slept fitfully, and when I awoke in the darkness, the shadow was there,
and it was watching me. I tried to scream, but I was too afraid to raise my
voice. “Mommy…” I whispered into the darkness. “Mommy!” Each time, a little
higher, each time, the shadow moved a little closer.
Finally,
my mother burst into the room, and the light came on. There was nothing there,
of course. She slept with me that night, but from then on, any time the lights
were off, I knew the shadow was there. Gathering in the dark corners of the
room. Waiting for me to let my guard down.
~x~
Years
passed, and the fear faded, although I still wouldn’t sleep in the dark. I grew
into a teenager, and my friends and I would play at being witches, running wild
in the woods at night, dancing and chanting in circles, and skinny dipping
under the full moon.
When
I was 16, I got my first tarot deck and would spend hours asking it about when
I’d meet the right boy, when I’d fall in love, what he would be like. I tried
to cast a love spell, but rushing across the house, I tripped and broke my
ankle, and by the time it had healed, the urge had passed. I took it as a sign
not to tamper with magic like that.
My
friend Jessica, however, loved all the danger. She’d lock us in the bathroom
and make us say “Bloody Mary” and turn the lights off to make us scream. My
mother refused to buy me an Ouija board, but Jessica bought one and talked us
into performing a séance.
We
met at my place, because my mom had work, and my brother was spending the night
with his friends. We were old enough to be alone, but if my mother had known
what we planned to do, she wouldn’t have allowed it. We set up the board on the
coffee table of my small living room and turned all the lights off, except for
the candles that we’d placed around the room. Most were tealights or scented
candles. Leslie pulled out a bottle of whiskey that she’d stolen from her mom.
I grimaced when it was my turn to take a drink. “It smells like old men.”
Jessica
wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, and eagerly reached for the
planchette. “Okay, everyone, hands in.”
I
felt the whiskey burning its way down my throat, and took a deep breath, trying
not to think about my mom’s warnings on evil spirits.
When
everyone’s hands were touching the planchette, Jessica started pushing it
around. “We’ve got to loosen it up.” She explained, and dutifully we all helped
move the planchette around the board. “Okay, now close your eyes.” I glanced at
the others, then pinched my eyes closed, then peeked out through one eye before
closing them fully. Jessica must have been peeking too because when my eyes
were fully closed, she spoke again. “Okay, now we summon the spirit.” And she
began chanting.
I’m
not sure where she got the words, but they sounded like nonsense. The other
girls seemed to be taking it seriously, so after they started repeating her, I
joined in as well, although I stumbled over the unfamiliar words at first. I’d
never heard of having to use strange words to summon the spirits, but I didn’t
want to sound stupid, so I didn’t say anything.
The
chanting filled the room, and outside, a late spring thunderstorm roiled in the
distance. With my eyes closed, I became increasingly aware of the noise around
me, including the hiss of the handles. The hair on the back of my arms rose,
and I shuddered. That seemed to be Jessica’s cue because she suddenly stopped
chanting, and the rest of us followed. I opened my eyes to look at her.
“Spirits,
can you hear me?” Jessica didn’t sound frightened in the least, but when the
planchette began to move, I gasped, and instinctively withdrew my hands. Ashley
did as well, and so it was only Jessica and Laura still touching it when it
moved across the board to YES.
Suddenly,
I wasn’t feeling so comfortable with this. Ashley seemed to agree with me, and
she made as if to stand up, but Jessica’s voice lashed out like a whip, halting
her. “DON’T break the circle!” And Ashley stilled, indecision wavering across
her face. “Put your hands back on the planchette, both of you!” Jessica’s voice
was a command and a warning. “If you don’t, something else might!”
Jessica
was the one who had read the instruction manual, so Ashley and I exchanged
dubious looks, but moved our hands back to the board dutifully.
“Okay.”
Jessica seemed to relax some, and her eyes were black and glittery as she
looked back down at the board. “How many spirits are here with us now?” And the
smooth marble of the planchette slipped right out from under my fingers and
found the number one. Everyone but Jessica seemed to be scared now; she mostly
looked disappointed.
I
brushed the planchette with my fingers. It seemed to be warming up to our
touch.
“Spirit,
are you a man or a woman?”
This
time I managed to keep hold of it as it slid across the board to M A N. I
watched Jessica carefully now, trying to feel if she was pushing the
planchette, but she was looking around the room. The hair raised on the back of
my neck, and suddenly I was searching the darkness too.
“Spirit,
did you die here?”
NO
“Where
did you die?”
“H…
O… S…” As the planchette moved across the board, Ashley said the letters aloud.
“P- “
“Hospital!”
Laura breathed before the word was completed. “Why are you here then?”
“H
O M E.” All three other girls looked straight at me.
I
felt like I’d swallowed lead, my stomach suddenly knotting terribly. Was this a
spirit that was always here? Always watching? The thing I saw in dark corners
and behind my eyes?
“Spirit,
did you know anyone in this room?” Across the board, my eyes met Jessica’s, and
I suddenly felt enraged.
“Stop
it!” I took my hands from the planchette, realizing what her intention was. But
the planchette was already moving, straight across the board to YES.
“This
isn’t funny Jessica.” Everyone at the table was looking back and forth between
Jessica and I, and Ashley had removed her hands too.
“I’m
not doing anything but asking it questions.” Jessica stared back at me, not the
least bit remorseful. She seemed pleased with her spooky surprise.
“It’s
not real, I know you’re moving it.” I pushed away from the table, sending the
planchette skidding to the floor as I stood.
“I
am not!” Jessica stood up too, and she looked ticked off now. “You can’t just
leave the circle; anything can get in!”
“Stop
it! It’s not real!” Outside, the storm was moving closer, and the first drops
of rain started pinging on the roof.
“Fine!
I won’t even touch it! If you don’t believe it’s real, why don’t you do it!?”
“I
don’t want to anymore, this is too weird!” My stomach was twisting in knots. I
didn’t want to touch the board. I sat down on the couch and curled up, wrapping
my arms around my knees protectively.
“Okay,
then Ashley and Laura.” Jessica turned to stand over them. “Put your hands on
the planchette.” It wasn’t a request. Ashely and Laura both looked at me
uncertainly, but their hands were already moving towards the planchette. I
didn’t try to stop them.
“Okay
spirit.” Jessica looked at me defiantly. “Are you Madyson’s dad?”
YES
“That’s
enough!” I stood up, and grabbed the Ouija board, and hurled it across the
room. It hit the edge of the kitchen counter so hard that it broke in half. I
flinched, and looked at Jessica, backing away.
“You
bitch!” Jessica shoved me, and the two of us began pushing each other back and
forth. Part of me wanted to kick her ass, but another part was worried I was in
the wrong and she was right. Finally, Laura grabbed Jessica and Ashley got
between us.
“You
cunt!” Jessica screamed at me, running over to her broken board. “You stupid
bitch! Do you know what you did?”
“Oh,
shut up! None of it was real! You were fucking around with us, and it wasn’t
funny! You had no right to bring my dad into this! That’s just sick!”
“I
didn’t DO anything, and you didn’t close the circle!”
“It
wasn’t real!”
“Yes,
it was! Laura, Ashley, tell her!”
Jessica
looked at the two girls, and the two girls looked at each other, and then at
me, and then at Jessica, and each other, and me again. Then they shrugged.
“I
wasn’t moving it…” Ashley said timidly.
My
accusatory gaze moved to Laura.
“I
wasn’t either!” Laura sputtered indignantly.
“See!”
Jessica sounded triumphant. “It was a real spirit!”
I
was so pissed off by that point that I wasn’t seeing straight. “If it was a real
spirit, it would show itself! Do you think my dad is just hanging around here,
not doing anything??? Did you hear that ‘Dad’!? If you’re here, prove it!” I
picked up a house shoe off the floor and tossed it at the ceiling.
A
clap of thunder shook the house, and all the candles sputtered and went out.
