Witchscape

by Y G Maupin

  “But why, Jackson? We should enjoy our youth and get out all of our wild and crazy ideas before we have kids. I hate the idea of putting the brakes on our first years of marriage to start having a family. Also, I’ve only started teaching three years ago. Now is not the time to consider taking a break for four to five years.” She shook her head at that thought.

  Jackson sighed from his place on the couch. “I know people that waited until they were in their thirties to start trying to have kids, they’ve struggled and had setbacks. The longer it takes, the more expensive it can become. And if we finally do have kids, they could be in their difficult years when we’re in our forties, right when we want to start slowing it down and relaxing more.” T gave him a funny look.

  “I think you have your age ranges off by about twenty years,” she said. “Forties are the new twenties, haven’t you heard?”

  “Yeah and I don’t want to be chasing a little leaguer when I’m in my fifties. Or getting mistaken for a grandpa when I go to their football games when they’re in high school,” he replied exasperated.

  T’s heart melted. She walked over to the couch and drooped down to lay in his lap. Reaching up, she stroked his jawline and lips softly with her fingers. “Aww sweetheart. You want to go to their football games? You hate football.” She smiled. Jackson’s mouth broke into a crooked grin.

  “Yeah. I’m excited to do all the things my parents never had a chance to do with me, because they were busy building businesses. I don’t begrudge them for wanting to provide, but I really wish they could have made it to at least one talent show or class field trip,” he said looking away. “ You don’t know how many times I would look out into the audience, hoping against hope that I would spot them hanging out by the door just barely slipping in at the last minute,” he laughed sadly. “Yeah I watched too much tv and movies that had feel good family storylines.”

  T sat up enough to kiss him better and lowered herself back down, her mind wandering about her own parental expectations.

  T thought about her parents and how those kinds of events never registered on their radar. She would want to be a better parent too. However, she feared that she didn’t have enough maternal instinct in her. Her mother was completely missing and she never knew her grandparents. What if she didn’t feel anything for her child?

  “I don’t know babe, let’s think about this some more. We haven’t even decided when we would want to get married,” she reminded him, hoping he had the ring already. She knew he didn’t, she had been checking her scrying bowl. She internally cringed at the reminder that she had stooped so low to scry for herself even though she could never see anything, but could for others. T found out she could scry by accident when she was around six years old. Her mother was busy fussing about something in the kitchen while T sat at the table, trying to find a way to not have to finish her chicken soup. She stared down into the bowl. Pale yellow liquid with the occasional noodle drifting by.

  “You better finish that up, girl. I don’t care if you sit there for another hour, you will eat your food!” her mother warned, as she passed her by.

  T didn’t know what her mother was so upset about. Both of her parents were on edge most of the time. At first, she was curious and would ask them if they were ok. Depending on how much they had been drinking or if they gotten oxy that morning, their response would range from lovey dovey appreciation to silence. They were rarely violent, saving that for themselves and keeping it from her. Her mother rushed past her again, wringing her hands, opening drawers, slamming them shut. After her third pass, T struck up the courage to ask. “Momma, are you looking for something in a little bottle? Like pills that Uncle Toby brings you?” an innocent question, she thought. Her mother spun around and grabbed the little girl by the shoulders.

  “What was that, baby?“ she asked breathlessly, tendrils of her light brown hair starting to stick to the sweat that was rimming her pale, wan face. T’s eyes opened wide. This had been a mistake and she immediately regretted opening her mouth. She took a spoonful of the now cold soup and slurped it quickly.

  “Answer me. Were you playing with them? Did you move mommy’s medicine?” She had let up on T’s shoulders and was trying to pull herself together for the sake of her daughter, who was now staring at her wide eyed and visibly frightened.

  T slowly shook her head and looked down into her soup. She wished she could help her momma out, she tried with all her heart to think that she screwed her eyes shut tight until she saw stars and then opened them again. She looked down into her soup and in the hazy liquid saw a vision of her mother pocketing the prescription bottle into her down jacket that was now hanging on the coat rack in the corner of the room.

  “Over there!” she shouted, and pointed to the jacket, proud of having a way to help her momma be happy again. Her mother walked over to the coat rack, looking at T with suspicion and caution in her eye and started searching the pockets of the jackets that were hanging. She pulled her hand out with the bottle gripped tight. Shaking the bottle at T, she was close to tears.

  “You know how important mommy’s medicine is to her, don’t you?” T slowly nodded. She continued. “It’s not nice to play games with mommy’s medicine when you know she needs it every day,” she pleaded, tears filling her eyes.

  T started to cry too. “But I didn’t touch them, Mommy. I promise I would never play with your stuff,” she choked out.

  Her mother quickly walked over to the cabinet and got herself a glass to fill with water. She shook out a few pills and tossed them back and drank the glass. Putting it down firmly, so hard that T had worried that it would break, she turned to her only child and said. “You can get up now. You can finish that soup later.”

  T found that if she drifted off in class, she would snap out of her reverie with her classmates laughing at her. She would speak phrases of what she saw while in a trance, never knowing what she was saying. She learned by the time she was in fifth grade how important it was to stay focused in class and to have a good night’s sleep the night before so that she wouldn’t doze off. Her early years were the hardest, especially during third grade when her parent’s substance abuse problems hit an all-time high. The kids she grew up with as she made her way through the Fort Worth public school system had tagged her early on as a weirdo, calling her worse names and laughing at her during recess. Once she had left for those years due to foster placement they didn’t see her again, but her first day back in the sixth grade, having been out of their lives for the last three school years, they recognized her right away and picked right back up as if she had never been gone.

  “Oh no,” one particularly snarky boy called out, as she walked into the classroom. “Ol’ crazy girl is back with her gibberish.” He laughed as she stood next to the teacher, scowling as she had remembered him too. The teacher pointed out what seat she could take, surrounded by a group of girls that she only half recognized. They visibly shrank back, as if being in her proximity would rub crazy off on them. T closed her eyes for a moment and sighed.

  “There she goes!” that tiresome boy whispered again. “You better look out, Carrie’s back,” he laughed mockingly, calling her by the name of the fictional telekinetic girl that had ended up killing all of her classmates when she had tired of their bullying.

  Quickly spinning around in her seat, he jumped back. T replied, “That’s right, I’m back, Travis! You better not make me mad because.” She stopped and made a hand gesture from her eyes to his general direction. The teacher had stopped passing out paperwork and turned around to hear their exchange.

  “Excuse me? Do we have a problem here?” she said in a voice tired of dealing with the prepubescent snots in her classroom, and needing to get another coffee. The boy shook his head quickly and T folded her arms across her chest.

  “Not anymore,” she replied. At lunch, she sat alone and on the bus ride home she had the seat to herself. Her visions had increased in the last year, getting stronger when she was close t
o getting her period and being hard to summon when she was hungry or angry. Anger was an emotion that only recently has started to manifest itself in her personality. She was quick to find offense at a perceived slight and would end up crying when questioned about her outbursts. She had started seeing a therapist as soon as she had been placed in foster care, but didn’t really appreciate it until she was close to ten-years-old, around the same time her period started and her emotional outbursts cropped up.

  “It’s understandable that you would be upset.” One particularly kind therapist had told her. He reminded her of a very young Santa Clause, with a graying beard and the beginnings of the bowl full of jelly belly. He handed her a tissue when she had tearfully broken down about not being able to control her anger. “You’ve gone through quite a bit. Leaving mom and dad behind, living with people that although kind, they aren’t your real family. You just feel like maybe, sometimes,” he added, leaning in with understanding in his eyes. “That you don’t belong and no one understands how you feel.” He finished. T nodded and wiped her nose with the tissue. “Feeling like you don’t belong is actually a very common feeling. So it feels like you’re different, even weird” He went on. “Oh, yeah. Lots of people, even famous people, sometimes feel like they’re outsiders and that others are laughing at them. We all feel like that sometimes,” he replied, in a quiet tone. “And that’s ok. Because it doesn’t last. You will find your tribe someday. People that feel just like you do and like the same things you like. And they’ll be the best of friends. Even if it’s only one friend, because sometimes it’s a blessing to have a group of likeminded buddies, but one friend to talk to is good too. Let me just promise you, and you know I don’t like to promise,” he reminded her, holding up his hand and placing it over his heart. She giggled. “You are not alone in your feelings and it’s ok to cry sometimes. But just like its ok to cry it’s also ok to smile and be nice to someone too. You never know what they might be upset about in their heart and they could use a friend like you.” Mr. Craig had been the nicest therapist she had ever met. She knew he was one of a kind.

  Anesta shut her front door behind her, making sure she had locked it well. “Anjolie? Are you here?” she called out. Hearing nothing she left her purse and keys on the entrance table and kicked off her heels. It had been a long afternoon, starting from when Sarah had called her shortly around eleven asking her to come over for an important meeting. Anesta had struggled to fall back asleep after being woken up by Anjolie, and caught a good hour and a half near eight am, once her sister had seen she was struggling to stay coherent and let her rest.

  “Here I am,” Anjolie whispered, appearing from the hall closet.

  Anesta nervously laughed. “Girl, what are you doing in my closet? There’s nothing in there to try on but winter coats and snow boots,” she laughed, taking off her heavy earrings. Anjolie smiled. She was still a little girl. Forever frozen in the age at which she had left the living to be among the dead.

  “I wasn’t trying on clothes. I was hiding.” To this reply, Anesta felt a knot in her stomach.

  “Baby girl, what are you hiding from? Tell me, now I’m getting scared,” she asked, fear in her voice. Anjolie shook her head.

  “I’m not scared. I was worried about when you would come home. I don’t like being here by myself and I don’t want to go back,” Anjolie said, as she absentmindedly picked up Anesta’s purse and slipped it over her shoulder. She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled. “Look. I’m a grown up too.” Her smile faded. Anesta’s heart broke at the sight of her twin sister, left behind.

  “Being a grown up can be a headache. I have student loans I can show you, I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted to..”

  Anesta broke off and bit her tongue. Anjolie hadn’t even made it to junior high. That pool party had been her first really mixed party to attend and she had been excited to go. There was no point in trying to bolster her tragedy by telling her she didn’t miss out on the drudgery of college courses and paperwork for school applications. Anjolie had missed out on school dances, first real crushes and boyfriends and possibly she would have married and had a family at this age. Anesta hadn’t gotten the chance and she was alive.

  “Sister,“ Anesta began, determined and using the formal address that they would use with each other when they wanted to know they were talking seriously. “I need your help. My friends and I need your help with what we’re up against. Come sit with me.” Anesta rounded the couch and sat down feeling the soft cushions envelope her.

  Anjolie walked over and sat across from her twin. The look on the dead little girl's face was a mixture of curiosity tinged with sadness. “Ok.”

  Anesta sensed something was off and thought the process was starting off in the wrong direction.

  “First. Tell me what made you think to come tell me about what you saw.? she asked letting Anjolie take over.

  “Well, at first I saw groups of people talking to each other, like it was a secret. When I tried to get close to them, they would stop talking, because they still see me as a little girl even though I’ve been on the deathscape longer than they have.” At that, Anesta stopped her.

  “Deathscape? What’s that?”

  Anjolie sighed like she had been explaining this for years, which in actuality she had.

  “Deathscape is where we are when we die. Not all of us go to heaven and I don’t know about hell because Papa isn’t there like Mama said he would be. Deathscape is like the waiting room. Remember when we had to wait outside the office of the principal or the doctor before they would call us in?” Anesta nodded. “Well that’s what deathscape is. It’s the waiting room before moving on to wherever people go after they die.”

  Anesta’s forehead scrunched up. “So, you’re saying that when people die they don’t automatically go to heaven or hell they go to deathscape” she clarified, and the little girl nodded.

  “Yes. And we wait. I don’t know for how long. I do know that there are people there that have been there since I died and they haven’t gone on. It’s hard to talk to them. Most of them are too mad to talk so I stay away. They won’t hurt me, it’s just scary how they get when they want you to go away,” she ended, looking down but then she brightened up. “Oh guess what? That one singer that we liked, he’s there! Yeah he still sings all the time and sometimes he dances. I watch him. Some other people that remember him watch him too but he’s sad and sometimes he cries.” Anjolie ended. It seemed that this deathscape place was misery and Anesta wanted to know why her little sister was still there. It didn’t make sense.

  “Alright. So let’s get back to this. You say they were telling each other secrets?” Anesta asked. Anjolie’s head bobbed up.

  “Yep. Just like Mama and her sisters a long time ago when they would be cooking in the kitchen for Easter. Oh I miss eating. I’m not hungry, I just miss getting to sit down and eat at the table with everybody like we used to on Sunday. How come you don’t do that anymore with the aunties, Anesta?” she asked, in annoyance.

  Anesta sighed. “It’s not the same anymore, Anjolie. We’re all busy and it seems like we don't have time to come over anymore with the funeral home and.”

  “I’ve been there,” Anjolie cut her off.

  Anesta was taken aback. ”What? Where?”

  “I’ve been to Duke’s Funeral Home. I went with you many times and sometimes I just wish myself there and I go,” she said, matter of fact.

  “Tell me how you do that. Tell me how you move from place to place and I can see you, and I’m assuming others can’t,” Anjolie giggled, and covered her mouth with her hand.

  “I just close my eyes like this.” She demonstrated. “And then I think really hard and I move.” The small figure of the girl on the couch shimmered like Star Trek when they would beam to other planets and disappeared. Anesta caught her breath. It slowly returned as she tried to regulate the speed at which she inhaled. This was unlike anything she ever thought she would be seeing.

&
nbsp; “Boo!” Anjolie whispered right above Anesta’s left air. Anesta startled and rolled off the couch. On her hands and knees, she looked up in a daze at the little girl standing on the couch.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to scare you.” She walked over to the woman and patted her head with love. “I always watch you and try to go where you go. Except, when you take a shower or poop. And when you go see those ladies, I don’t go.”

  “Why?” Anesta asked, slowly getting back on the couch. This was like having the kids she thought she would have had at this point. She would have been a patient mother, she thought.

  “Because they’re weird and they do weird things. I watched it once.“ She confided in her sister. “When you guys were outside with the candles and stuff. That looked like fun. I actually blew out your candles.” She giggled and flounced down on the other end of the couch.

  “You can move things?” Anesta asked. Anjolie nodded. “Can you move people?”

  Anjolie thought for a moment. “Kind of. We can make them feel something on their bodies, funny or scary that makes them move, but I can’t pick anyone up or nothing like that. When the spirits are strong enough to make someone hurt themselves to come over, when they pick who they want to hurt, they call it pushing.” She added opening her hands on her lap. She had a figurine of a cat in her left palm. Anesta recognized it as being Sarah’s.

  “Hey, where did you get that?” she asked sitting up. Anjolie’s face looked guilty.

  “I saw it at their house last year. One of the only times I went there with you. When I was there last month, she gave it to me.”