Wish Me Not

 

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.