“The child deserves a father,” Ms. Cummings insisted.
“No he don’t.”
Cora had stepped out of her room and was spying on the women through the door. Next to her mother, the two visitors looked almost comic: A tall, white woman with horse-like features, wearing a black cardigan over a turtleneck shirt, and her ridiculously short Mexican maid wearing a full-body, white-and-blue checkered apron. Yet, to the frightened girl they looked like the portrait of sheer evil.
“The father is a good for nuthin’ musician,” Mrs. Hamm replied. “That lazybones came to see his son once, and he was so boiled and reeked of weed so bad, I kicked him out before he could put his dirty hands on the baby.”
“But you’re not thinking of the child’s future,” said Ms. Cummings, undaunted by the big woman’s menacing look. “Cora,” she addressed the girl, “you must tell me the name of this man.”
“I think it’s time you leave my property, Ms. Cummings,” Mrs. Hamm insisted.
Ms. Cummings straightened up.
“I promised Brother Kirby to solve your daughter’s dilemma and give your grandson a father. You are not going to make me break a promise. I’m not leaving this place until you give me the name of the man who has dishonored your daughter or you agree to give that baby up for adoption. I repeat: I can help you find a good family.”
“Get outta my house.”
“Please lower your voice.”
“I said, ‘get outta my house.’” Mrs. Hamm stood up.
Ms. Cummings remained in her seat. “How dare you to speak to me like that? You Negroes think life is all easy, don’t you?” She smirked with contempt. “You think that the Lord will provide whether you are worthy or not. The Lord provides, yes,” she raised her right index finger, “but only to those deserving. Only to those who honor his name, and as long as this young woman continues to live in sin, you’re not honoring God’s name. How long will it take until she brings in a second child from an unknown father? How long before your other daughters bring you home a couple of more bastards? She either has to marry or you have to give that child up for adoption.”
Fearing that Mrs. Hamm would jump and hit them, our little friend stepped back.
It wasn’t Mrs. Hamm who exploded, however:
“GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE, YOU FUCKING WHITE COW,” Cora yelled, to even her mother’s surprise. “GET OUTTA HERE AND YOU BETTER NEVER COME BACK UNLESS YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR BONY ASS WHIPPED WITH A WIRE!”
“What a hideous, horrendous, ungrateful family,” President Buer commented, turned again into a cat and prancing between the little woman’s legs on their way back to the spinster’s cottage. “What nerve to say such terrible things to Ms. Cummings. That girl’s dirty mouth almost made me not want to come back to steal her baby. But we will, my dear friend. We will come back this Saturday evening, when the moon is more appropriate to cook a baby. I won’t lie, my mouth is watering already. You’ll let me have one of those chubby feet, won’t you? And on Sunday—what the hell—we’ll do something crazy. Let’s fly to Catalina!”
“Hurry up!” the spinster hollered to her maid, who was trailing behind. “And drive that stray cat away,” she screeched. “I don’t want it to bring fleas into my house.”
“Fleas?” President Buer squealed. “Fleas? Did she just imply I have fleas?” He jumped onto the little woman’s arms and instantly transformed back into a spider; then he crawled up to her neck. “I’ll give that horsey frump good reason to be scared of bites if she doesn’t learn manners,” he mumbled, before stabbing his fangs into the little woman’s neck.
President Buer stayed home the next day, instead of accompanying the little woman to Mrs. Bell’s, so he could take care of his correspondence. He wrote a good twenty-six letters and spent the rest of the afternoon going through what remained of the mother’s old things in the lower drawer of the armoire inside Rosa and Victoria’s bedroom. A few dresses, some empty flasks, scribbled notes on yellowish paper that, despite all of his efforts, he couldn’t decipher (her mother’s attempts to teach herself how to read and write, the little witch explained to him later) and, wrapped in yards and yards of dirty gray gauze and covered with fluff, a black candle…
“This is not just any candle,” the demon announced to the little woman that evening, holding up what she had always thought was an old leather baseball. “It is a hand of glory, a magic key that opens all doors and turns people into stone when you light it.”
He offered the clenched hand to the little witch, who studied it with amazement.
“They are relatively easy to make.” The devil helped her pull two digits out, demonstrating that the thing was, indeed, a human fist. “You remove the bones and cook the flesh inside with tallow; then you refill it and tie it up. When all five fingers are lit, there is no man or beast that could prevent a thief from taking whatever he wants—like a baby,” he chuckled. “The problem is that they ought to be made out of the hand of a man hanged for stealing. Nowadays it’s easier to get a liver; they no longer send rustlers to the gallows.”
The candle had been the little woman’s grandfather’s hand, the magical misdeed that, turned into a pup, her father never received from her mother.
“Do you think we can use it?”
12
In which we attempt to please Satan by means of stealing a child for his supper
President Buer could hardly hide his enthusiasm about stealing the child. He wouldn’t stop talking about it. He rubbed his knuckles and salivated every time he remembered the baby’s rolls of fat and his chubby limbs. It was too hard to decide whether it would be more delicious as a roast or a soup.
“Or flambé?” He slurped. “Bébé au vin, sur une purée de champignons et flanqué des truffes blanches?”
However, at the very last minute he announced that he couldn’t go with the little woman. “I feel a little run down,” he said, placing a lozenge inside his mouth. “I may be coming down with the flu or something.” He took the little witch’s hand to his forehead. “I better stay home and watch the telly with your sisters. I’ll make as much noise as a wingless fly, I promise.”
The little woman frowned with disappointment.
“Don’t be stupid. You know where they live. You only need the hand and a box of matches.” He absentmindedly scratched a scab off his chest and ate it. “I may end up being more of a nuisance.”
The little woman bobbed her head in agreement. Maybe he would. But she had never stolen a child before. She could certainly use some help from the demon.
“Bless your heart, you poor thing,” the demon laughed. “Don’t look at me that way. You will not need me, I promise! Come over here.” He pulled her head down and kissed her forehead. “Now, off you go. Chop-chop. And don’t come back empty handed.”
There was a thin layer of fog in the air that night. The little woman felt the moistness on her face. She left her bike against the fence and entered the Hamm’s property through the back alley. Then she stole her way to the western side of the house. She peeked into the living room through one of the windows. Two boys slept on a foam mattress spread out on the floor. One of them was snoring. She crept to the back of the house. Crouched under their window, she listened to a conversation between Mrs. Hamm and her husband.
“Dorothy?” asked a male voice that she assumed was Mr. Hamm’s.
“So he’ll remember his grandmother,” Mrs. Hamm responded. “He’s Dorothy’s Angel.”
“You want the poor child to be pestered? You can’t give a boy a woman’s name—Cora won’t let ya, will she?”
“The heck she will. She do whatever I say.”
The little woman slunk to the next window. The girls seemed to be sleeping, too. She stood on her tiptoes and peeked in. The two youngest shared a bed. Cora slept on her own. And there was the child, little Dorothy’s Angel, sleeping inside a drawer betwe
en the two beds, just like the fiend had said.
Now would be the right moment to sneak in through the back door, the little woman could almost hear the demon telling her. She had the hand—but what if didn’t work? She better make sure everybody in the house was sound asleep before she tried to enter.
She waited a few minutes and checked again on the boys in the living room. One was fully stretched on his side of the mattress but the youngest had moved to the sofa. Was he awake? She couldn’t hear one peep.
The Hamms weren’t talking anymore. She peered through their window. Mr. Hamm slept with his mouth wide open. Mrs. Hamm slept with a pillow folded around her head.
She sidled to the back door. Maybe she should wait a few minutes more.
The night had cooled down. She pulled down the sleeves of her sweater to keep her hands warm. She had a magic candle inside her pocket… All these years and she had never known what the rotten thing actually was. Thank God her sisters hadn’t tossed it. And thank God for President Buer’s advice. What would she do without him?
She scraped the wax off the finger tips to reveal the wicks. Her heart throbbed so fast she could feel the blood rush through her neck. She lit the thumb. The smell of burnt wax stung her nose. The flame shone emerald green. She lit the index finger, the middle finger, and once all five digits were lit, she turned the doorknob. It worked. The door to the kitchen opened without resistance. The little woman crossed herself twice and stepped in.
The house smelled of mildew and grease. Mrs. Hamm had left the pots on the stove and the dinner dishes soaking in the sink. The little woman tiptoed through the kitchen into the living room. She checked the boys, without getting too close. They hadn’t moved. The door to the girls’ bedroom was ajar. She pushed the door opened and put a foot inside. The wooden floor creaked under her weight. She stood still. Then, she stepped back. The floor creaked again. They couldn’t hear her, could they? She had the lamp. She took a deep breath and entered the room. One. Two. Three. Four creaky steps to the dresser. She put the lamp on the floor and grabbed the baby with both hands. The child started. She held him against her chest to hush him down. She bent down to pick up the lamp…
One of Cora’s sisters woke up.
Fudge, President Buer thought, sitting between Rosa and Victoria, watching an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents as he stared at a green booger that he had just pulled out of his nose. I don’t remember if I told her that she had to light the forefinger first…
What followed was a cacophony of yelling. First from Cora’s little sister, who took the little woman lit by the greenish light for the bogeyman that had come to get them. Then from the little witch, a dry and heavy cry, like that of cattle, as she bustled out of the house with the baby. Then a long wail from Cora when she realized that her child was gone, and as she tumbled to the backyard through the kitchen door, trying to stop the kidnapper. Then from Mrs. Hamm, alarmed by all the shouting. She grabbed Cora by the shoulders and started shaking her like a rag doll, asking: “Where the baby? Where the baby?” to which Cora repeated an hysterical “I don’t know!” and finally from Mr. Hamm, who stepped out of the house in his underpants begging for help from the neighbors to stop the abductor.
Soon enough, a committee of good Samaritans in their pajamas stood by their door, interrogating the young mother.
“Why did you leave the door open?”
“We never lock it.”
“What were you doing?”
“I was sleeping.”
“And you didn’t hear anything?”
“No!”
The more they asked, the less the poor girl seemed capable to respond. Her jaw had stiffened from all the crying. She could hardly speak.
“But who took the baby?” insisted one of the neighbors.
“We don’t know,” Mrs. Hamm cried.
“It was a woman,” Cora’s eight-year-old sister, Jennie, said behind them.
All heads turned to her.
“It was that woman that came to the house the day before yesterday,” the girl cried. “She took the baby.”
“Ms. Cummings?” asked Mrs. Hamm with surprise.
Jennie nodded.
“Are you sure?”
“I saw her,” the girl insisted. “Tammy saw her too.”
Tammy, two and a half years younger, was too scared to respond.
“Yes,” exclaimed Cora in her place. “It was her! I saw her jump on her bike!”
“Ms. Cummings?” asked Mr. Hamm. “On a bike?”
“Yes!” Cora yelled hysterically. “She took my baby.”
Ms. Cummings was, of course, very much not like our nameless witch. How could she be mistaken then for the baby’s kidnapper? The little woman was nothing remarkable; she was so self-effacing and compliant that she was almost invisible. If Cora or any of her sisters had ever seen her before, perchance riding along Main Street on her bicycle on her way to one of her cleaning gigs, they wouldn’t have paid much attention. Ms. Cummings, on the other hand, with her ever-present horsey smile and thin spectacles, had seriously impressed them. In their eyes, the sanctimonious churchgoer had become the true personification of evil. Only someone as evil as Ms. Cummings could have committed such a horrendous crime.
“It was her,” Cora insisted. “She said I should give him away; that I was undeserving. She came back and took him with her!”
“Brother Kirby sent her,” Mrs. Hamm responded.
“It was her!” Cora repeated. “I saw her!”
“She mustn’t be far,” said a tall, shirtless man whose voice rose above all others. He had the word “Freedom” tattooed in blue dots on his left arm, and the word “Brotherhood” on his right. On his chest, he had a sword, a star and an anchor. “Where does that woman live?”
“She lives in Milwood,” Mrs. Hamm replied, referring not to the street, but to the wealthier, nicer, and predominantly white neighborhood east of Oakwood.
“We should call the police!” begged Mr. Hamm.
“Police?” interrupted the tall man. “Daniel, d’you think police will arrest a white woman? Where in Milwood does she live?”
“But, Antoine, she stole a child—”
“That bitch will say it was you who stole the young’un in the first place.”
“But we not sure it was her…”
“It was her! Please help us, Antoine,” Cora begged the tall man. “Bring back my baby!”
Antoine turned to a boy in his early teens wearing nothing but boxer shorts who had come out behind him. “Go get your brother. Bring your bats.” He turned to Mrs. Hamm: “What does that Ms. Cummings look like?”
Mrs. Hamm offered as many details as she could remember of Ms. Cummings. Cora agreed with the description and so did her sisters, even if the small green figure they had seen and the tall slender woman that her mother described could hardly be the same person.
“And she’s riding a bike?”
The three sisters nodded.
Antoine’s son returned with his brother. Other neighbors joined them, and soon a group of eight fierce-looking men armed with bats and garden tools were ready to go in search of the abductor.
Mr. Hamm found himself forced to lead them.
“Don’t you dare come back without your daughter’s baby,” Mrs. Hamm warned him.
Behind them, Cora gave instructions to her eleven-year-old brother, Kevin.
“Go call John,” she said, putting a dime and a piece of paper with the telephone number in his hand. “He must be at the Gas House tonight. Tell him that his son has been kidnapped.”
The men left through the back alley heading east, then turned south on 7th Avenue towards Washington Boulevard (today’s Abbot Kinney). Kevin ran in the opposite direction, turning south on 6th. The closest public telephone was on the corner of California and Electric, a third of a mile away. H
e was barefoot and had nothing else on but his pajama bottoms.
A short explanation of Venice geometry now becomes necessary: The streets of the Oakwood Pentagon run perpendicular to the coast. The streets in Milwood, in the shape of a trapezoid, at a forty-five degree angle. South of the pentagon and north of Venice’s Silver Triangle, the area facing the original trace of the canals, the streets run at a negative forty-five degree angle. Inside the Triangle, the streets run perpendicular to the coast north of Windward Avenue, and east-west from its southern side, sticking out like the spokes of a wheel off Windward Circle. Even for long-time Venetians, it is easy to get confused.
If you’re on a bicycle, the fastest way to go from Broadway Avenue to the Venice canals would be to turn south on 6th until you hit California, then zigzag through the streets of the Triangle until you reach Ocean Avenue on the other side of Venice Boulevard, and finally turn west on Carroll Court. Nowadays, the whole trip wouldn’t take more than six to eight minutes, if you know where to turn. If you don’t, or say, if you’re being chased by an angry mob, and you turned north on 6th instead of south, in order to lose them, it can take a little bit longer.
That’s what our little ugly friend had done. She took a longer route home, with the baby in her bicycle’s front basket. She rode north on 6th and turned west on Brooks, then north again on Hampton until she reached Sunset and felt it was safe to turn south on Main Street and head toward the canals. The detour would have added just a few minutes to her ride nowadays, but back then, the streets of Oakwood were paved with cobblestones, and they hadn’t been maintained in over forty years: some parts had potholes as big as moon craters, some had eroded completely and turned back to sand. Cycling at full speed was extremely difficult. The ride to Main Street took our nameless friend a good ten minutes, and because of the poor conditions of the road, by the time she reached the asphalt, the front wheel of her bike had begun to wobble dangerously. She decided to step down and walk her bike from the Circle.
Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle Page 17
