The Flower Bowl Spell

by Olivia Boler

  Yes, Cooper is sixteen years older than me, but he’s no fogy. He’s what Marisol calls a Silver Fox (and really, he’s only just going silver at the tender age of thirty-nine). One of the things I don’t understand, since I have no interest in planned exercise, but do appreciate about him as it benefits me, is his need to run at least five miles every morning. Keeps him in tip-top shape.

  We slip and slide across the hardwood floor to the bed in our socks and underwear. Mine have girlish flowers on them, blue and pink, a Costco six-pack. I was not thinking about seduction this morning when I showered, but at least I did shower, and I have my good bra on, the push-up T-shirt bra that gives me my wee bit of cleavage. As for Cooper, he’s the only man I know who is sexy rather than embarrassing in briefs.

  We throw back the covers, the scent of our past sleeping bodies rising up. They’re a little grainy from our walk on the beach last night. He leans over me and we kiss. And then some.

  ****

  I wake from a light doze, no more than ten minutes. Outside, the sun has barely shifted. Cooper lies by my side watching me, a smile on his lips, his eyes a little confused with love.

  “Time for the sunset now?” I yawn.

  “Yes, by all means. The sunset.”

  He rolls to the edge of our bed and I watch him walk out the door to the bathroom. I hear him turn on the shower and start to mumble-sing “Toréador” from Carmen, his favorite shower song.

  Cooper knows about my Wiccan upbringing and refers to me and Auntie Tess as the Asian Pagan Invasion. I’ve even shared tales of some of the more far-out stuff, like the green glow that would suddenly emanate from candles when our former coven would chant around a pentacle circle. But we don’t talk about fairies. Or inanimate objects coming to life. I tried to once, and he told me I had a very active imagination as a child, a sure sign of greatness of mind. Who am I to argue?

  Besides, I knew he’d say something like that. Cooper is supportive and easy to read. It’s why I chose him. But he’s not able to handle the fact that my imagination only gets me so far. For reasons I don’t even understand, I can see and do things other witches can’t, things you read about in fairy tales. Only two others know about me. One is Auntie Tess, yet we never talk about it. Something stops me from sharing too much, and something stops her from asking. The other person—well, we haven’t spoken in a long, long time.

  I study the ceiling, my old friend. There’s a crack that’s been there forever, before I moved into this place. I’ve never liked the ceiling light fixture and pretty much ignore it, even though each time I pass a lamp store I study the possibilities. Cooper tells me to wait until we buy a place of our own. But I doubt we’ll ever leave this apartment. Still, that lamp with its 1950s design of starbursts and boomerang angles just does not fit with the Edwardian crown molding and—

  Something behind it moves.

  My breath catches. I blink. What could it be? A mouse? A giant spider? Something small. Something that darts. With wings.

  A face peeks over the rim of the lamp. As I sit up it ducks away, disappearing from my view. I feel something, almost like a raindrop, hit my belly, and I jump low into a crouch. Slowly I stand up on the bed, trying to balance on the lumpy old mattress. I reach for the lamp. I’m too short.

  “Did you just spit on me?” I holler. “What do you want?” And where, I wonder, have you been?

  Footfalls pound down the hall. Cooper stands in the doorway of our room, dripping wet and naked. He looks me up and down. The shower is still running.

  “Why are you yelling? What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “Nothing. There’s something there.”

  “Where?”

  I point. “The light. The lamp.”

  For a second, I don’t think he’s heard me. He continues to stare at me like maybe this is the moment where he sees the truth about me and it all ends between us. It’s only a fraction of a second and then he steps onto the bed—he’s a good foot taller than I—and unscrews the knob that holds the shade in place. Carefully, he removes it before peering inside. He raises his eyes to me.

  “You’re right. There’s something here.”

  I open my mouth but don’t say what I’m thinking: Are you magickal after all? He pauses, making sure I’m ready. I nod. He holds the shade toward me like—I can’t help thinking with a wee shiver—it’s a sacrifice.

  Inside are bits of asbestos. Dead flies. Lots and lots of dust.

  “Oh,” I say. “Oh.”

  “Confess.” He wipes the dripping water from his wet hair out of his eyes. “You just wanted me to pull the ugly lampshade down. Am I right?”

  I look up at the glaringly bright lightbulbs in their sockets. There’s a hole next to them—a swallow could fit through it, or something of that ilk.

  “Yeah, big C,” I say. “You caught me.”

  “You are a piece of work, Memphis Zhang.”

  “You mean a control freak.”

  “Comme tu veux.”

  Cooper goes back to the bathroom. He turns off the shower and I hear him toweling off. I stretch out on the bed and study my bod. The spot where I felt something drip on my skin is dry, clean as a whistle. Cooper comes back into our room and starts to dress.

  “What did you think was there, anyway?” he asks.

  I raise my hands in a helpless shrug. “A squirrel?”

  He snorts. “A squirrel.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. That’s crazy talk. It was probably a fairy.”

  “Or the ghost of Columbus.”

  “Ha ha.”

  Yet, I know it was a fairy because he smiled at me.

  Chapter Three

  The first time the veil lifted I was eight and very bored.

  When I was a kid, my parents often left me in the care of Auntie Tess. Since she was a practicing Wiccan of the hippy-dippy variety, the kind that gives San Francisco its reputation for benign lunacy, they knew I’d be safe. I don’t remember a time when we weren’t together in someone’s backyard or a public space celebrating Sabbats major and minor. For these ladies—and sometimes gents—practicing magick was like prayer. Or wishful thinking. They’d do their rituals, but nothing supernatural actually ever happened—except, on occasion, the green light from the candles, which not everyone could actually see. They didn’t seem to expect real magick. They just liked to come together. Like a book club.

  On the night in question, we’d gone to Golden Gate Park’s Lindley Meadow. In the daytime, it was the domain of dogs, acrobats, guitarists, and Frisbee freaks. I liked to visit the horses in the nearby stables or watch the model-boaters cutting loose on Spreckels Lake.

  But after the sun went down, the meadow was a favorite ritual site for Wiccans and pagans. It’s resplendent with tiny daisy-chain daisies. The other coven kids and I would collect them, their petals tightly closed for the night, while our mothers and caretakers prepped for the forthcoming hocus-pocus.

  The priestesses would get there before everyone else to set up, lighting candles, arranging the talismans, laying out white ropes in a near perfect circle. They were dressed in their robes, mostly handmade get-ups of maroon velvet or navy blue velour. When everything was just so, they called the kids over. As the laughter and murmuring died down, we all joined hands and, without preamble, began to sway and hum. The women closed their eyes. In unison, they sang a song that was some variation of this:

  Through all the world below

  She is seen all around

  Search hills and valley through

  There she is found

  The growing of the corn

  The lily and the thorn

  The pleasant and forlorn

  All declare

  She is there

  In meadow dressed in green

  She is seen.

  La la la. Hills and valleys we have in San Francisco, but growing corn? A few public garden plots here and there, I’m sure, but even as a child I knew fantasy from reality. We were urban witches longing for a l
andscape that belonged to Wine Country fifty miles away. Or to a time three hundred years past.

  On and on they sang, in harmony buffered by the fog. That night was extra-special—in the center of the circle next to the usual beeswax candles, someone had placed skeleton dolls dressed in bright clothing.

  Auntie Tess was the smallest woman there (easy to pick out in the crowd if you set your gaze lower than usual) and the only Asian face among the others (not including yours truly), which were predominantly white. There was a black woman from Cuba too, but that’s as far as our coven’s diversity diversified.

  As I mentioned, I was bored. Bored with making daisy chains, bored with the other coven kids, bored with Tess. I leaned against her, her dark silk kimono slippery and cool under my cheek. She had sewn it shut so that she could slide it over her head.

  “Auntie Tess,” I whispered.

  “Shhh.” She opened one eye, which glinted down at me.

  “I want to be Dorothy for Halloween.” Wizard of Oz Dorothy, of course. “When are we getting my costume?”

  “Tomorrow, Memphis, I promise. Now sing or be quiet.”

  I watched the other women. Some smiled through their song, earnest and blissed-out. Some undulated. Others mouthed the words, but not Tess. With my ear pressed to her side, I could feel her strong voice, her heartbeat, the gurgling of her supper digesting. I pressed harder until she stumbled a little, and got a frown for my hug.

  In the center of the circle, the candles in their hurricane lanterns and jelly jars burned, illuminating a bouquet of flowers. The shadows flowed over the dolls, which made it seem like they were dancing and grinning. I blinked and peered closer and realized that they actually were dancing, all on their own. One tossed off his sombrero and led the others in a Mexican hat dance. Faintly, I could make out their voices, a discordant cheering through the women’s singing. You might expect them to sound like cartoon chipmunks, but their voices, though faint, sounded quite robust.

  As they cha-cha’ed by, they saluted me. And I saluted back. I tugged on Tess’s brocade sleeve.

  The thing is, I realized in the instant she turned to look down at me that it was hopeless. Her face was full of annoyance, and there was an absence of something I couldn’t name at the time, but I thought of it as a light. She was missing the light that makes magick visible.

  “Do you see them?” I whispered, not ready to give up hope.

  “What?”

  “They’re dancing.”

  I felt Auntie Tess’s sides going in and out. “Who?”

  “The skeletons.”

  Despite herself, Auntie Tess looked into the center of the circle, and I looked with her. But the dolls were still. One had fallen on its face. One had lost its hat. One was getting its leg chewed by a gopher that was craftily dragging the doll down its hole.

  “It’s just gophers, lamb. See?”

  I looked again. I did see. But I also saw what she couldn’t. One of the gophers and one of the skeleton dolls were now engaged in a lively conversation. They both turned to me and waved. I blinked. And the dolls lay helter-skelter just as they had been, in tiny, colorful heaps.

  The women finished singing and Gru, our high priestess, spoke. Like the other kids, I rarely paid attention to what she said. When she was done, everyone sat on the ground, avoiding the dog crap, some better than others. At least one person always went home with a soiled robe after a Sabbat.

  I folded my hands in my lap and looked around. Everyone’s eyes were closed. Each person was speaking to her dead. Beforehand, the grownups had told us kids that we too could talk to the dearly departed. The adults called out. Cymbeline Pitts asked for William Shakespeare. Sadie LeBrun Murray hailed her twin brother Isaac, bringing tears to the high priestess’s eyes. Tess made her call in poorly pronounced Chinese (second generation, American-born—not a whole lot of opportunities for the native speak), which made the others shift, wondering what she said.

  I had trouble thinking of anyone dead to call, so I silently asked for my father. He wasn’t dead—and still is very much alive—but he was far away at the time, and to me it was the same thing.

  When everyone was done, Gru gave the nod for cakes to be served. Bright Vixen, Gru’s second in command, had made blueberry muffins from a mix. “I was in a software design meeting all day,” she explained, handing out the pale little muffins. “No time for much else.” I didn’t care, and I devoured my share.

  “Happy New Year. Happy Samhain,” the women murmured to each other and hugged, their arms reaching and enfolding. We kids imitated the grownups, squeezing each other too hard as we giggled. “Oh, Happy New Year, darling. Happy Sow-Wayne.”

  Gru gave each of us a hug. Even then, she seemed aged and ageless, her long silver hair plaited down her back, her skin soft and lined, her blue eyes icy bright. As she embraced me, she whispered in my ear, “I saw the skeletons and gophers. I saw them say hello to you.” She pulled away from our hug and gazed into my eyes. I didn’t know what to say. I smiled a little and looked away.

  “Don’t worry, Memphis,” she said. “This is a wonderful gift. A powerful one.”

  I nodded, afraid she would tell Auntie Tess, or worse, my parents.

  “I won’t,” she said. And I knew she had read my thoughts. She was on my side. And for years, she helped me figure out how far I could go with this powerful gift. Until I decided it wasn’t a gift at all.

  I remember leaving the fog-laden park in Auntie Tess’s neon yellow Chevy Nova, wondering what the gopher and the little skeleton were up to down below. I had just as much curiosity about the availability of Dorothy costumes. Fifteen years later, I still don’t know why magick decided to show itself to me that night. And I still have trouble figuring out what to wear.

  ****

  Auntie Tess takes her time answering the buzzer. I’m beginning to suspect she’s a little hard of hearing, even though she’s not that old.

  “Hi, lamb,” she says with a quick, hard hug. She has a soft roundness to her, but her arms and shoulders are bony. She doesn’t really go for sweets, which is why I’m surprised to see the tub of cheap supermarket ice cream on the living room sideboard.

  “Some dinner,” I say. Cooper and I had our sunset picnic—prosciutto panini and salads with a good pinot noir from A. G. Ferrari. Atop Billy Goat Hill we watched another Columbus Day bite the dust.

  Auntie Tess looks balefully at the ice cream, and I regret my words. She’s very good at extracting regret from me.

  “Well, I needed a little something,” she says.

  I open the refrigerator door. A bottle of hoisin sauce, a bag of rotting mustard greens. Tess nudges me out of the way and puts the soggy ice cream carton back in the freezer.

  “So, what’s up? What did you want to talk about?”

  She washes her hands in the sink. “There’s something going on at work.”

  “Office romance? Has that guy in design been hitting on you again?”

  “Memphis!” She scowls while drying her hands on a dishtowel. “He knows I’m married.”

  She isn’t, actually. She just wears a wedding band to ward off advances. Not that she’s had any lately. I kind of wish she did as I glance around the small one-bedroom condo. It belongs to my parents and she rents it from them. There’s none of their energy lurking in this space—they are long gone, my father with his teaching, my mother in London, last I heard. There’s only Auntie Tess’s frenetic force. She wears rings on every finger and even a couple on her toes that were clamped on by a Bangladeshi woman in the Tenderloin.

  “I think Gil wants to fire me.” Gil is Tess’s boss, an assistant veep of operations at Ana & Co., one of the biggest clothing chains in the world. Everyone on six continents owns at least one pair of their jeans, a logo tee, or a knock-off. I do. It’s a really cute logo. Palindromes are visually fab.

  “Why?” I say.

  “I accidentally forwarded an email from the legal department to the ACLU.”

  Uh oh. �
��What about?” I ask.

  “Accusations from some civil rights groups that we’re using sweat shop labor.”

  “Okay. Is it true?”

  She throws up her hands. “I don’t know! But he yelled at me. He put me on mandatory leave.”

  “With or without pay?”

  She shrugs. “With.”

  “Well, that’s good! You know, maybe you should take a break. When’s the last time you went on vacation?”

  “Stonehenge.”

  “Exactly. That was two years ago, right? This time, you should go somewhere tropical. Hawaii maybe.”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Auntie Tess, what is it?”

  Her eyes seem sad, and a deep maroon glow—her aura (I can’t seem to stop seeing those damn things)—radiates from her like soft-focus lighting around the star of a romantic comedy.

  She walks out of the kitchen and into the living room. Her altar is set up under the window, facing north. Between the neighboring apartment buildings, you can see the fog rolling in, illuminated orange by streetlights.

  “Nothing, Memphis. Don’t worry about it. Bring me the matches, will you? I need some answers.”

  I pull a matchbook out of a kitchen drawer and hand it to her.

  “Let’s do the ceremony,” she says. “And I think I’ll use sage. This space could use a little smudging. There’s too much negative energy.”

  I don’t sense any of that, but I say nothing.

  “Did you bring the candles?” she asks. I hand her the plastic Target bag.

  “Thanks. I need to go up to Gru’s and get some more of the good kind.” She pauses, a box of cheap white votives in hand. “It’s rather strange. I haven’t heard from her in a while. Not since the last time I visited, and that was around the May Pole. It’s not like her to not call.” She waves the box at me. “You could come too.”

  “Where?” I say, feigning spaciness.

  “You know where.”

  “I haven’t been up there in forever. It would be weird.”

  “She misses you, you know.” Tess frowns and begins picking through her magickal cabinet. “Where did I leave that bottle of lavender?”