Three Witches

by Paula Jolin

  Underneath, though, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Mariam still stood in the doorway, spying on her. Once, twice, she turned around, half expecting to catch her cousin’s face pressed against the glass. But Mariam was gone.

  The woman in shirwal kamis took her package off the counter, thanked Sami in accented English, left. “Salaam aleikum, Aliya,” he said, wiping his knife with a wet rag. “What brings you in here, so late?”

  “I have a strange request,” she said. Breathe, Aliya, breathe. “I’m planning a brilliant science fair project, a model of a heart that actually beats, and I need some blood.” Raised eyebrows, a grin, careful attention as she filled in the details. Aliya tried to relax. She could trust Sami. The surest way to get a Syrian to spread a rumor was to ask him not to say anything—Arabic code for “tell as many people as possible.” But Sami was different. He’d always looked out for her, even when he was a restless teenager, still in high school, and she hadn’t hit kindergarten yet—oh God, and she used to steal his shoes at the mosque, while he was praying, and go hide them outside, under cars, behind rocks, beneath the outdoor faucet. He’d had to take off his socks to go and look for them; then, of course, she’d stolen the socks. But he never told on her.

  “I’ll get the blood for you, Aliya.” He held up one hand. “No, don’t ask me how. Come by Friday night, around this time—I’ll be working alone again. Come around back, though, don’t come inside. Okay?”

  “Shokran,” she said. She looked over her shoulder at the plate-glass front door again. Nothing behind it. “Shokran katir.”

  “La shokran ala wajib,” he told her. No thanks required. She turned, anxiety replaced by relief, relief pushed aside by anticipation. Friday. Two days away. She was floating through the door when she heard Sami call out, “Allah maaki, ya Aliya.”

  God go with you, again. But did He? As far as she could see, God didn’t go anywhere. Trevor maaki, now that was more believable. Maybe he hovered over her, directing cars and bad guys out of the way like a traffic cop. Maybe—she gave a little gasp—it was Trevor’s presence she’d sensed at the glass door every time she looked back, expecting to see Mariam. He was probably waving his see-through hand in front of her face right now, testing how far he could go before he freaked her out. Now that sounded like the Trevor she knew.

  She wasn’t sure whether she felt more comforted or less as she began her long walk home.

  FOURTEEN

  MIYA AGREED to get the pee.

  The easiest of the three tasks: all she had to do was collect her own. Infinite bottles of water, urgent bathroom breaks; a stack of paper cups, later emptied into a big yellow pail with a sealed cover. Kept in her closet and spritzed over with Vera Wang’s Princess.

  But then she had to go and agree to get something else, too.

  Trini_in_Exile: meh cousin say get some strands of hair. there’s power in hair. ever hear the story of samson & delilah? check pillowcases, the waste bin, anything

  SweetnSexyAsianChik: Morbid. And disrespectful. You think it’s so important, YOU get it.

  Trini_in_Exile: yuh have the least to lose.

  SweetnSexyAsianChik: !!!

  Trini_in_Exile: aliya’s out, she gets caught it’s the noose & i can’t afford trouble.

  SweetnSexyAsianChik: And I can?

  Trini_in_Exile: truth will out, gyul. malcolm frederick, boys’ locker room––could yuh be in any more trouble?

  Trini_in_Exile: yuh there?

  Trini_in_Exile: yuh mad, girl? i’m just saying, yuh the best choice

  SweetnSexyAsianChik: But break into the house? Couldn’t I just get something out of the garage? Like his skis, or that nasty dog when it goes outside?

  Trini_in_Exile: aliya say he never emptied his trash & kevin––meh cousin––say we need strands of hair, it’s got dna, u know

  SweetnSexyAsianChik: Aliya says, cousin says. . .what about me? Don’t I have a say?

  She didn’t. In the end, she’d agreed to all their crazy schemes: to the pee, which would join the shit and blood as a powerful conduit for otherworldly forces, and to the lifeprinted strands of hair. But it wasn’t because she believed Gillian’s obeah nonsense. Spirits haunting the living? Nothing more than a manifestation of the living’s subconscious guilt. Omens? Just coincidences, elevated by the gullible.

  Odds were, Gillian didn’t believe it herself, was just crossing her fingers that Miya would stumble across the money hidden in the wastebasket, and their quest would be over. That girl was all about the cash.

  Trini_in_Exile: c u @ lunch tomorrow? we can brownbag by the radiator

  Okay, not all about the cash. She had to know what the other island kids would think if they saw her with Slutiya Chonan.

  SweetnSexyAsianChik: Thanks, but I’ve got library.

  Someone had to protect that girl.

  SO IT HAD NOTHING TO DO with Gillian and her made-up obeah rules when Miya found herself on the fire escape outside the Sanders’ second-floor bathroom Thursday night. It was partly the thrill of it, that slightly naughty feeling that went with cat burgling. Second, well, she didn’t want to let Gillian and Aliya down. Any other girls would have said, If Mrs. Sanders finds you in her house, she’ll just assume you’re twisting sheets with Luke. But they kept their mouths stitched closed.

  She’d dressed the part: skin-tight black pants, black top like a wetsuit, back-to-black hair pulled back with barrettes. So what if the wind breezed across her shoulders like it was trying to turn them into an ice sculpture? Who cared about the dog growling below, straining at his chains?

  She heaved a little, sweated some under all her clothes— look at that, cat burgling took brawn as well as brains. God, please don’t let this window be locked.

  God laughed a little. I thought you didn’t believe in me, Miya? The weight shifted, the window creaked upward, and Miya found herself crawling through. Her legs dangled a minute—it was farther to the floor than she’d expected, and she fell long enough to think about it. Then she was in the bathroom, feet tingling with the impact, eyes taking in the dark before she turned on her flashlight.

  Sniff. The harsh smell of Comet, the lemon of Mr. Clean. Cream-colored towels hung on the towel rack, and the top of the sink had been cleared free for guests—the last of them went home yesterday, hugging Mrs. Sanders good-bye and driving off with a couple of bikes attached to a rack on the back. (So said Aliya, who’d been staking out the place.) No one to hide from except Mrs. Sanders, high on the tranquillizers prescribed by three doctors (info courtesy of blog.myspace.com/SweetSavannah) and Luke, who ducked out of the house every time the sun dropped its pants and sank in the sea.

  Miya clicked off her flashlight, opened the bathroom door. Hesitated a moment, then left her shoes on. Made her way into the dark, dead hallway. Took two steps and—what was that? A creak, from downstairs. A thump. Someone was in the house after all. She reached her hand back toward the door, took comfort in the unbending metal handle. Deep breath. Probably no one there but the stupid dog.

  The stupid dog was outside.

  Maybe it was Luke. Maybe he would come silently upstairs on stocking feet, a cat burglar who knew what he was doing, and he would surprise her, wrap his arms around her waist. He’d growl Don’t scream in her ear, and then—

  What was she thinking? It wasn’t like she liked the bastard.

  Then he’d run his finger along her neck and up to her ear and—

  Get on with it, Miya. Move your feet down the hall. Trawl through the trash can, find some spare hair, get a move on, get out.

  What if she got the wrong hair, pulled up some pieces of dog? Would they end up killing Rambling by mistake?

  Not like she believed any of this anyway.

  She headed down the hallway, stumbled over something—what poor design, putting a plant there—and stood paralyzed for ten long seconds.

  Nothing. Miya pattered on, arms outstretched in the dark, until she found a door. She eased it open and slipped inside, l
istening. No snores, no rustling as someone turned back the blankets. No one rushing out of the dark to cover her mouth with—

  Enough. Maybe she’d hit Trevor’s room with the first push.

  Click. Flashlight on, she scanned it across the room’s contents. She still wasn’t sure. A boy’s room, yes, dark furniture, plain blue bedspread, a pinup calendar over the bed. Miya squinted at Miss November. Long black hair, ovalshaped brown eyes—not quite Asian, but not precisely white either.

  More clues: a stack of old records, a guitar—had Trevor been musical? She passed up the records for the bookshelves, always her first stop in a new room. Rows of thrillers: John Grisham, James Patterson, Walter Mosely. Some science fiction. A careful selection of fantasy, but, thank God, Robert Jordan only through volume 8. On the next shelf, some historical tomes, one on forensics of the Middle Ages. Miya was reaching for it when she saw something even more interesting. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft.

  Miya knelt down, pulled it off of the bottom shelf. Flipped through—she couldn’t help it—looking for an entry on Japan. No time for this, of course. No entry, either. Still, the frontispiece yielded some useful information: LUKE SANDERS, someone had written. OCTOBER 31st.

  Miya shoved the book back, returned to the hall. At the next door, she pressed her ear up against the wood, heard nothing for a minute, and then a series of choking breaths, or smothered sobs. Mrs. Sanders, crying into her pillow. Miya found her hand on the doorknob. But what consolation did she, of all people, have to offer? She blinked away the memory of Mrs. Sanders opening the door that day, of her shattered face as she stared at the pictures of her husband and his mistress stored on Miya’s cell phone. How could you do it? Trevor asked her on his last night. My dad, your mom, it was just some fling, they would have broken up, gone their own ways. What kind of bitch would go and tell my mom about it?

  Breaking and entering didn’t seem like such a lark, suddenly. Downstairs, something clattered. Miya pulled back, perked her ears, listened harder. Nothing.

  Must have been the wind.

  Final door, at the end of the hall. She ran her fingers over its surface, came across a series of lines etched into the wood. Not lines, letters. K and E and . . . KEEP OUT. Left over from Trevor’s pirate phase? Or had some eerie afterlife hand reached out of the ether to send her a personal message?

  She was getting as bad as the rest of them.

  Push open the door—creak. Inside, a shocker. The eerie hand—if eerie hand there was—had been doing more than scratching notes. Miya put down the flashlight, felt along the wall, flicked on the overhead. Luke’s room was a boy’s room, stuff everywhere. Trevor’s room had been torn to shreds. Pictures, some face up on the floor: Trevor and his family in happier days, Trevor in the front seat of his car, Trevor with his arms around a floppy-eared dog—all torn, right down the middle. The pillowcases had been ripped open and the stuffing blown everywhere. Glass somethings lay broken near her feet. In the corner, a collection of model boats and pirate ships had been crunched into bits of wood and plastic. Books, clothes, bed linens lined up in piles like they were waiting for entry to the landfill. Trevor had had his own bathroom: The door was open, and dozens of bottles, pastes, and creams had been scattered across the tiles, most of them cracked, some of them oozing lotion. Shredded papers flowed out of the upended wastebasket.

  Who had torn the place apart? Mrs. Sanders? Some friend or cousin, looking for drugs? Aliya, even, searching for secrets and keeping her own counsel? No matter, whoever it was had made things easier for her. The scraps of paper strewn across the floor, the wadded up tissues stuck to the bottom of the basket, they were innocent. But across the room, clinging to the fragments of pillowcase, she found what she was looking for: two strands of dark brown hair.

  Miya dug into her back pocket and whipped out an envelope, slipped the hair inside, sealed it up. Time to leave, Miya. Get going. But she couldn’t, quite. Instead, she walked across the room and knelt down. If they came in and found her, if Trevor’s mom had apoplexy, if Luke had her arrested for trespassing . . . well, she’d live with it, she’d have to. She cleared a space on the floor and sat cross-legged, determined to sort out the wood and plastic parts, determined to make the pirate ships whole again.

  This one here, with the black hull and the Captain Jack flag, Trevor had been sailing it that first day she met him, at the Cataplan Health family picnic. Or trying to sail it, while Luke bombed rocks at it from the shore. He passed her a handful and they pelted it till it sank, and Trevor had to splash through knee-high water to get it. I’ll get my revenge! he’d shouted, waving his fist, but he’d been laughing.

  Miya tried to swallow, but it was like one of those rocks had lodged itself inside her throat.

  It took her a long time to assemble the pieces into ships, and it would have been easier with a bit of glue, a short, sharp knife, blueprints. But she finished at last. The bookshelves were clear, so she lifted up the ships one by one and put them back. Up close, parts were splintered and bent, some pieces cracked, but from a distance—in the doorway, for example, using the flashlight, not the overhead—they looked whole.

  It caught in the beam when she turned to go. A corkboard on the wall, most of its stuff still intact: a football schedule from two years ago, a couple of crumpled and then flattened out phone numbers, a coupon for a car wash. And in the far corner, a girl’s photo: she wore black pants, a white T-shirt that said Boston University, and a black cap on her red hair. Red hair. Couldn’t be. Miya squinted and the hair curled up a little, but still shimmered auburn. She reached up and snatched the photo, but her eyes had already moved on to the next thing. In the very center of the board, a note; stark white paper covered with large, block letters: HEY INFIDEL, IF YOU DON’T WANT YOUR HEAD CHOPPED OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, STAY AWAY FROM DECENT MUSLIM GIRLS.

  FIFTEEN

  “NOT AGAIN,” said Mama. “Your father won’t allow it. And we’re having kibbe tonight, and I need your help with the tabouli.” Mama added up a long column of figures in the red account book, muttering under her breath: But that doesn’t make sense. Then she looked up. “What?”

  “I promised Sherine—”

  “When? When you promised this? Tuesday night, when you were supposed to be at her house studying, but were actually seen at the butcher shop?”

  Good God. Now she wasn’t allowed to check out a bit of beef?

  “Ya Aliya, I tell you and tell you, but you don’t listen. People talk. You’re a good girl, home studying, they have nothing to say. You hang around a butcher shop, and they call you the kind of girl who hangs around the butcher shop. And you know what that means.”

  She didn’t.

  “I should find my slippers and rap the soles of your feet till you scream.”

  Mama hadn’t beaten her for years. “Don’t be silly. So I went into the butcher shop. So what?” A stack of invoices sat on one corner of the desk, paid and unpaid bills from Baba’s pizza shop. Aliya straightened them. “I wanted to see if he had any cheap lamb, surprise you with it. You know he does sometimes, at the end of the day. What’s the problem?”

  “Your father doesn’t like it, Aliya. He hears things at work and he better not hear them about his daughter.”

  Aliya waited for the hot, angry, self-righteous words to come, but she wasn’t innocent enough to shout them, to storm out of the room. After all, Mama was right about her. She had been playing around. She felt shame and embarrassment well up deep beneath her skin, come out red. When she’d first fallen for Trevor, she’d quaked in bed at night, prayed to God for the strength to give him up. Later, she’d buried her face in the pillows and remembered every time Trevor touched her, his fingers skimming her lips, his mouth halfway down her body . . .

  Nowadays? She tried to think about nothing.

  Out loud, she said, “That Mariam. Of course she went straight to you with her gossip.”

  Mama’s eyes were back on the book. “I just don’t u
nderstand how we lost a thousand dollars . . . And Mariam didn’t say a word. Um Zubeir told me.”

  Aliya saw her opportunity. “What was Um Zubeir doing out so late, did you ask her that? Hmmm? Was she maybe going to meet up with the butcher behind his shop? Did you ask her if she was gossiping about me to make sure nobody believed what I said about her?”

  “Aliya!” But Mama was giggling. Giggling so hard her hand slipped and scrawled a big red line across the paper. “Don’t be ridiculous. Um Zubeir isn’t the type—”

  “She may have forty pounds on him, but you know how Arab guys go for the curvy ones.”

  “But she’s twenty-five years older than he is. Don’t you think Sami wants children?”

  “He can take a second wife for that, a young and glamorous one.”

  Mama was still laughing. She caught sight of the account book, though, and sobered.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” said Aliya. She was, too, about so many things. “I didn’t mean to make you ruin your page.”

  Mama pushed her glasses up on her head. “No matter,” she said. “It’s not coming out right anyway.”

  “Should I take a look? Did you check your figures against the bills?” Aliya dragged the folding chair across the floor and propped it open. For a few minutes, neither of them spoke as she flipped through the invoices. $200 for tomato sauce, $1280 for olive oil, $1121 for gas—“There’s the problem. You copied the figure wrong.” Aliya felt a little rush of triumph, and something else, too. It wasn’t so long ago, back before Baba was making enough money to hire more help, that they’d all worked weekend mornings in the pizza shop. Mama paying bills, Baba firing up the ovens, Aliya and Mariam giving one last polish to the tables.

  Mama was muttering again. “Should have doublechecked over those.” But then she wasn’t looking at the accounts anymore, she was looking at Aliya. “Don’t trouble your father tonight, ya binti,” she added, as though she knew the jinn were waiting for Aliya in the state forest. “Stay home with us. We’ll play Parchesi, and Uno.”