.

Julie McCracken

Biographical note: I have been writing fiction for about seven years. Several of my stories have been published in small magazines and journals. The following story grew from an exercise at Story Arts and was originally published in Other Voices, Vol. 22. It started with the music in the name "Maria Montalvo" and my vivid memory of helping my aunt with the laundry.

This story is copyrighted and may not be reproduced without the permission of Julie A. McCracken.

Maria Montalvo is the witch who lives next door to us. My mama is a witch also, but she is a white witch, which means she can only curse appliances and small foreign cars. For example, Maria Montalvo wouldn't bother with Daddy's BugWhacker, or Grandma's oil-burning Toyota Corolla. No, sir, Maria Montalvo is the other kind of witch who weaves spells that catch you, and tie you up as tight as the lid on a jelly jar. I like to say her name over and over to myself, because those "m's" feel good against my tongue.

While my mama wears house-dresses, and sometimes Daddy's old khaki pants, Maria Montalvo wears a long, black cloak with a red satin lining, and deep slits for her arms. She fastens the cloak with a big diamond clip fastener shaped like Satan's own cloven hoof. Her hair is silver and it radiates from her head like spokes on a wheel. People say she never combs it, but I've seen her rake her fingers through it, and it doesn't seem to calm those silver spikes one bit.

Mama hangs our laundry, and I pretend to help, but I'm really watching Maria Montalvo rise up and down in the big bottomless hole in her backyard, just like she's buried a department store escalator back there and rides it for fun, or because it's hers. She carries a shiny silver bucket in each hand, and on each hand is a long red glove that covers her arms past her elbow. What can be in the buckets? Mama says she steals the souls of disobedient children, so maybe she carries bloody souls in those buckets, up and down, up and down. I don't know for sure that the hole is bottomless, but I have never seen its bottom, not even from the very top of our garage's peaked roof. That hole is working her hard. She holds a thick cigar in her mouth, and smoke wreathes her face. She goes up, she goes down, and the smoke-wreath never changes, not even in the small wind that blows Mama's white sheets into fat ghosts. That wreath hangs there like a life preserver. The wind blows the smell of nightcrawlers from the hole into our backyard.

Mama hums "Blessed Be the Tie That Binds", and she ignores Maria Montalvo. I wish for that moment that we were Roman Catholics and I had a Rosary for protection, but Independent Baptists do not have handy items of protection from evil spirits. So, I put one of Mama's wooden clothes pins between my teeth to ward off Maria Montalvo's Evil Eye, and I move closer until my toe touches the picket fence that Daddy promises to paint before summer is over. I look over the fence and into one of the coffee cans that line Maria's side. I see into the cold black eyes of the biggest spider on earth who silently measures my weight, and wonders about the strength of her web and the pile of white string in the bottom of her house. I hear her spider friends laughing in their coffee cans, and measuring their string. I hope Mama's clothes pin can protect me from spiders. Various sized cans and tins teeter on Maria's leaning porch and point toward me, or so I think, until I see it's Rudolpho slinking along the side of Maria's porch. The cans slant toward his straight, flat back inching across the yard.

Rudolpho is Maria Montalvo's midnight black cat without so much as one single, white hair on him anywhere. Mama says, "Leave that Rudolpho be, Charlayne. That's pure evil on four feet and he'll get you, sure as the Devil knows every syllable of Maria Montalvo's full and secret name."

I would never under any circumstances touch Rudolpho, although last year when I was just eight, I did try to catch him. The deep scar on my forearm is still pink, and it never tans. I have a knot on my head, too, from the light post I fell against when I tried to run away. I rub the sore spot on my head and feel no urge to pet Rudolpho.

The Blue Jays that peck the spines of the neighborhood cats don't peck Rudolpho. Two Jays eye him from the highest branch of the horse-chestnut tree, and neither one caws "jay-jay", although I can see that Rudolpho holds a sparrow in his mouth. He drops the bird into the hole. Maria hisses at him, and he runs under her porch. Her hiss smells like electricity, like after lightning.

Maria's eyes are the color of ripe chestnuts and they find mine, that hazel-no-color just like Daddy's, and I feel my heart reaching toward her silver bucket. She smiles, but hers is a witch-smile that doesn't have any goodness in it that I can see. When Mama smiles, you know it's good, in general, anyway. I bite down harder on the wooden clothes pin until Maria Montalvo and her buckets go back down into the hole. Before my heart can push aside my rib bones and leap into Maria's silver bucket, I run back to Mama who is whistling "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and hanging bath towels and wash cloths. I hope Mama is a good enough witch to save me. Between us and Maria Montalvo is a barrier of white sheets, soft old pieced quilts, underwear where folks can't see it, and Daddy's work shirts and pants. I can't see Maria anymore, but through the odors of bleach and Tide, I can smell that dirt-rotting-leaves- nightcrawler smell.

"Charlayne Yvonne Pruitt, will you please take that clothes pin out from between your teeth? I suppose you'll be needing to see Dr. Smiley soon enough, if you keep that up. Besides, splinters could get into your stomach and you'd bleed to death before we knew anything was wrong."

I count Dr. Smiley the Dentist in the evil category, too, but not as evil as Maria. After all, a person can bite Dr. Smiley. Mama's natural tendency toward imagining disaster is one of her natural white witch powers.

"I'm sorry, ma'am."

I put the chewed clothes pin in my jeans pocket. I might need it again.

* * * *

While Mama's clothes dry, the wind blows with deeper and deeper breaths across Maria Montalvo's yard and into ours. I like the smell of five-for-a-penny nightcrawlers. I really do, but more lives in this smell than just that. I tell Mama that it might get in the clean clothes.

"What smell are you talking about, child? I don't smell anything but the good clean smell of sweet greens cooking and fresh laundry waiting to be snapped across your bed."

I don't think I can sleep on sheets filled with Maria Montalvo's smell, and I don't know why Mama can't smell it, but I don't say anything more. Her afternoon stories are on the TV, and it would take the Rapture to get her full attention now.

I go to my bedroom upstairs where I can still hear the organ music from the television. From my bedroom window I see that Maria is standing at the edge of the hole. A piece of white string hangs from her red-gloved hands which are placed where her hips must be under her cloak. My heart senses her evil blood pulse, even when she pretends that she doesn't see me, or care that I am spying at her. She sends her witch smile into the bad smelling hole where it rests against the still body of Rudolpho's dead sparrow. She tosses the ball of string into the hole.

I do not want her to get my disobedient soul. With my Bible in my hand, I kneel, and look up into the sky where God is supposed to live. I silently promise Him that I will stop sinning: I will not explore the neighbors' houses when they are not home; I will not make a profit when I make change from the collection plate at Sunday School; I will return the Slave-For-Life Certificate that my cousin Aimee signed in exchange for a Hershey bar with almonds; I will not burn ants or torture grasshoppers, nor will I make jewelry from lightning bugs.

I could go on, but I stop to wonder if maybe it is already too late for my soul. I've done evil, although the Slave-For-Life Certificate is a pretty small evil that has been very difficult to enforce since Aimee lives on a farm two miles from my house. At the memory of the lies, thieving, swear words, and tossed fresh eggs, my heart contracts to the size of a playground cinder. Maybe my soul is too tiny for Maria Montalvo? Maybe I'm safe? She looks toward my window, and smiles that witch-smile which sets my heart yearning for those silver buckets.

I close the venetian blinds against her chestnut eyes, and before I can go to Mama, I hear a thud at the window. I lift one of the metal slats and look into Rudolpho's eyes, flat and bright as new dimes. I scream so loud that Mama calls to ask me what's going on.

"Rudolpho is up here on the window sill, Mama. Come get him off."

I hear her at the hall closet, and then clumping up the stairs. Mama is a tall woman with wide hips. I'll probably have hips like that soon enough, but right now I put the clothes pin in my mouth and make myself small enough to fit into the corner at the top of the stairs. Mama brings Daddy's shotgun.

"That evil creature doesn't deserve to live. Don't argue with me, Charlayne. Nobody hurts my girl more than once. We'll just test how many lives that cat really has."

Mama snaps the barrel into the business position, and jerks the shade pull so hard that the blinds open uneven on one side. I expect to see Rudolpho's unblinking eyes, but I don't see anything. Mama pokes the shotgun out the window, and then her head follows. She takes her time pointing her gun over the back yard and looking.

"Charlayne, this is not a funny."

I hide the clothes pin in my pocket before she can see it.

"He was there, Mama. I wouldn't lie about it. I wouldn't."

I know I am not in really bad trouble, because Mama is not calling me by my three Christian names. She unsnaps the shotgun, but her brow is still worried when she looks me full in the face. Her eyes probe my heart for the lie that isn't there. Her special witch-sense tells her that I am telling the truth about that cat.

"I peeked through the shade, and saw him looking into my face so close that I smelled his cat breath. I don't know how he got up here. Honest. I didn't invite him."

"He's gone now, so that's that. For now."

I follow her downstairs, and she doesn't put the shotgun away, but leaves it on the floor beside the couch. I can tell by the dull hum coming from her head that she's not really listening to her stories, and is working a spell for Rudolpho or maybe Maria Montalvo. She made that same head-hum sound when she cursed Daddy's BugWhacker, which she'd begged him not to be buy, because it killed too many good bugs along with the bad. Out loud all she said was, "You'll never get any pleasure out of it."

I did not then, nor now, understand how a BugWhacker could give anyone, even Daddy, pleasure, but I do know that it didn't work after that, and Mama's orange and black butterflies zip safely around her garden. Daddy doesn't say a word to her about it, but lights his citronella candles to warn away the mosquitoes, which don't stay warned and bite our ankles anyway.

Finally Mama turns to me, "Charlayne, I had a strange dream last night about a ball of string, and it's troubled me ever since."

I feel a little pull at my heart when she tells me this, like I already know what she's going to say.

"In the dream I have a scratchy feeling in my throat, so I cough, and out comes the end of a white string, like the twine the butcher uses. I pull on the string, and more comes out, scratching my throat into a dull ache, and then more, so I wind the string into a ball. All the time I'm winding the string, Maria's cat Rudolpho stands on his hind legs and waits, like maybe I'll give him the ball of string to play with, even though I would never give that evil animal so much as a two-syllable kind word."

Mama pauses to light a cigarette, and she inhales deeply.

"I thought maybe it was a sign that I should shoot that cat, but then, maybe not."

I hear her head humming again, which makes me want to put the clothes pin in my mouth, but I know she doesn't like me to do that. I hold it tightly in my hand instead. It helps me to feel strong. The wind stirs the curtains, and I smell the awakened nightcrawlers from Maria Montalvo's hole, and also a different smell, like a cinnamon stick. I know that if I look at the window sill, I will see Rudolpho watching Mama, and listening to her trying to know the truth of her dream.

Although I don't feel the least bit tired, I lean against Mama and close my eyes. The humming of her head and the beating of her heart send me to sleep. I don't dream.

* * * *

I awaken to the sound of her striking a match to light a cigarette, and telling me that it's time to bring in the laundry. We each carry one of the oval-shaped woven-reed basket that Grandma made, before Mama cursed Grandma's Toyota Corolla for running over an innocent pheasant and Grandma stopped making things for us.

Mama doesn't really need my help until she folds sheets, so I move to the fence to see what Maria Montalvo is doing, but she's not there, and neither is the hole. Before I can cry out to Mama that the hole is gone, I see Maria smoking a new cigar, and sitting on her porch. Rudolpho stretches across her legs like a deep shadow. She stands, and the cat jumps into her yard. I watch her lips form letters which form words, and I feel the electricity the words make in the air. My ears hear nothing but Mama humming "Blessed Assurance".

Maria Montalvo asks me to come to her, and the hair on my arms and maybe my head, stands up straight. I want to go to her, and I open my mouth to tell Mama, but no sound comes out. With my tongue I feel string inside my mouth, strung from one tooth to another on the other side, over again and again, like someone is playing cat's cradle across my teeth. String ties my tongue flat.

The clothes pin in my pocket is too small to help, and I am caught between Mama's percale sheets and a fence somebody needs to paint.

I think about the backyard hole, and ask where it is. Maria Montalvo's lips silently shape her answer: what needed to be in the hole is in there. She mouths not a single letter more, and Rudolpho glides across the grass to the fence, where he rubs his back against the big spider's house. The clothes pin is so hot in my hand that I toss it from my right hand to my left.

I know that I can jump the fence, because I've done it before, but not with Rudolpho looking at me while he licks his right paw. I try to lift the string from my teeth with my tongue, but it's too tight. My aching teeth are too large for my mouth. Behind me I hear Mama snapping a bath towel before she folds it. The sheets will be next, and she needs me. I pray to God in the sky again, because I do want to sit next to Maria Montalvo on her leaning porch, even if she is an evil witch and I ought not to want to be next to her. Rudolpho sneezes. I smell cinnamon.

"Charlayne, come here and help me with these sheets."

My feet will not move, and Maria Montalvo is laughing so hard that her devil's hoof pin shakes and reflects the diminishing afternoon sun. Again, Mama calls, "Charlayne Yvonne!" with irritation in her voice, and also tiredness.

I close my eyes to the laughing witch and the sneezing cat, and try once again to work the string from my teeth. Suddenly, a warm hand grasps my shoulder and the string pops off one tooth, then another, and I spit a mouthful of wet string over the fence. Rudolpho grabs the string, and hops back to Maria Montalvo.

Mama lifts me up like she hardly ever does anymore. She holds me against her heart for a moment, and then gently puts me down.

Mama takes a deep, noisy breath and calls, "Maria Montalvo, Maria Celestine Montalvo, Maria Celestine Tansarina Shapur Montalvo. Your names are not unknown to me. Do I continue?"

Maria's laugh is loud and dry, like the sound construction paper makes when you tear it. When she finally speaks, her voice has too much air in it, "I know, I know. No mysteries between us, sister."

"I'm not your sister. I'm not your kin at all."

"Words are words, but blood tells the truth. The small one knows. Ask her what she really hears. Ask her what the spiders say."

I feel a fierce burning along my forearm where Rudolpho marked me. The scar shines a bright pink, and a line goes from the end of the scar, down my wrist, along the line of my palm that points to my middle finger. Mama grabs my hand, and lifts it to her lips which are ice against my palm.

"Maria Montalvo, leave my child alone."

Mama's voice is thick with anger, and deep as a well.

"It won't matter if I do, or if I don't. Blood knows."

The wooden clothes pin breaks into two parts in my left hand, and Maria laughs like paper tearing. Mama spins me around to face her. I feel more eyes than Maria's are on my back. My heart pounds my ribs, and I tell it to forget Maria Montalvo, that she has nothing that I need. Ever.

Mama's head hum comes on faster and faster and faster until it surrounds us with the sound of a million hornets. The coffee cans shake and the spiders call out to each other in their fear. The sound spins me around to face Maria and forces me back against Mama where it swirls around us like a cylinder of thick rope, and then lifts off of us to spin across the fence into Maria's yard. At first, I see individual blades of grass lift straight up as the sound moves across it, and then I see the sound become a spiral, like a tornado, only it's golden and made of millions of tiny insects like bees, but smaller than the smallest bee I've ever seen. The golden tornado aims for Rudolpho who tries to run under his favorite porch, but the spiral pins him to the flattened grass. His squeal stops when the tornado lifts him, back feet first, into its hollow core. His eyes seek mine, but I find no mercy in my heart for him. I watch the tornado drive him to where the hole was, and I don't feel sorry for him at all.Behind me Mama's head- hum echoes the tornado's sound, and my shoulders shake, even though I will them to be still. Mama's body is warm, almost hot, and the tornado with Rudolpho spins faster and faster, until it is a gold and black blur with a point that drills into the earth. Dirt flies across Maria Montalvo's yard and splatters against our fence. Some of the dirt is wet with blood and fur. The spiders call Maria's names, and helplessly rock back and forth in their cans. The biggest spider screams "Charlayne" and "Maria" over and over until I put my fingers into my ears, but I can still hear her hard, dry voice saying my name and Maria's over and over until it is like one long word. Water comes down from my eyes, even though only babies cry. The sound of webs shredding hurts my ears, and the smoking piles of web and string burn my nose. Maria does nothing, and all of the spiders die noisily, one at a time. The big one dies last, and the sound of my name and Maria's lingers over her home. They are all gone, because Mama wants it that way. The tornado rises golden above Rudolpho's grave, and it grows fainter and fainter until it is a sound like Mama's sound and goes back into her head where it lives, except for a small splinter of a hum that plants itself in my head.

Mama pulls a cigarette from her pocket, lights it, and calls out, "So words were just words, Maria? And, a cat, well, a cat is just a cat, I suppose?"

Mama exhales and laughs, but the sound is like prying rusty nails from an old board. It has no joy in it. I think of silver buckets lined with wet string, and I smell nightcrawlers and cinnamon. I know Mama is not in any way like Maria Montalvo. I know this. I do know this. I lean back against her body, and feel steel.

Maria Montalvo pulls her red-gloved arms inside her cloak, and nods toward us. This time she doesn't laugh, or form letters that make words inside my brain. Her chestnut eyes are dark pools flecked with red. She moves backwards into her house, without showing us her back. Her cigar smoke lingers at the door, and then sifts through the screen. At the snap-shut of her screen door, the Blue Jays say their names over and over, swoop down across the spot where Rudolpho was last seen, and they peck aimlessly at the stirred earth. I don't smell nightcrawlers, but I know that the smell of cinnamon is coming from the place where Rudolpho scratched me. I rub the scar against my shirt, but the smell stays.

Mama hugs me and I close my arms around her waist. She kisses me and say, "Honey, it's time to get these sheets folded, don't you think?"

"Mama, what--"

She interrupts before I can make my lips form the question I don't really need to ask. She wipes the sweat from her forehead with her handkerchief. Her smile is open and kind, but I cannot quite forget that other sound, Mama's rusty witch-laugh. She points to one of the white sheets, and we each unpin a corner. I join the top corner to the bottom corner, and so does Mama, then we walk toward each other to join the corners. We do it again, and each time we make a smaller and smaller white rectangle. I press my face into the sheet before I put it in the reed basket. I was wrong before. This sheet smells only like Mama. And me.