Meg Sefton's Blog, page 45

Inktober: Witch

[image error] Dry Tortugas FWC photo by Emily Hutchinson & Maria Cooksey

The Purify Church tested my mother beyond the reef of Marathon Key to see if she was a witch. It had been a stormy, dark day and she disappeared into the waves. Word had it she was still alive, that the devil had saved her.

Hare’s Bride: A Florida Fairy Tale

[image error] FWC photo by Emily Hutchinson & Maria Cooksey, Dry Tortugas, flickr

The night before All Hallows’ Eve, the heavy oak door creaked open while I sat in the hall of the church manse. It moved like an old grandfather, obscuring my face and body in darkness. The dark had a voice. It called to me, a preacher’s daughter, two months before the age of my confirmation. It said Brynn Violet, we have come for you.

Why was I drawn to the hall every night like a bride of Christ? The thick air of the Florida night laid heavy in my nose and mouth. The ocean kicked up breezes, billowing salt air into the curtains down the hall, curtains illuminated by the moonlight. My back felt sweaty against the beadboard.

The open door kept me waiting for hours and hours in its shadow. When it wanted me to leave, it slammed shut, waking my mother.

“Why don’t you sleep?” she would say, standing in the light from the room she shares with my father. She would stand over me in her curlers and robe.  “Why do you sit in the hallway all night like a wild hyena?”

There was whispering only I can hear, women’s voices, reciting something over and over, like a prayer, though I couldn’t make out the words.  A shadow of a long-nailed hand appeared to poke mother’s curlers. I wanted to laugh but I was scared so I slunk away to my room while her words stabbed my back: “I wish I had never adopted you.”

The spirits of the dead had come for me the night before All Hallows’ Eve though my father, a minister in the Purify Church movement, has banned celebrating the holiday from our island.

My adopted mother often reminded me my biological mother was a witch. The Church had tried to drown her beyond the reef of Marathon Key to test her. It had been a stormy, dark day and she disappeared into the waves. Word had it she was still alive, that the devil had saved her.

There were constant reminders of the practices of my female ancestors, ancestors as far back as my great, great, great grandmother, Maria Fuentes, who escaped the violence of the Mexican Revolution and immigrated to the United States with Grandfather Alberto.

Grandmother Maria, housekeeper of the wealthy Warren family on Key West, had survived the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. For the holiday, she and Grandfather Alberto were visiting relatives on Islamorada. When a category 5 hurricane hit, she was swept out into the bay. Later she was found exactly where she had started, clutching a small robed statue that wielded a grime reaper’s scythe, Santa Muerte, a demon’s object, my mother always reminded me.

“What she sacrificed for her devil worship was her husband’s life,” my mother always instructed, “Your great, great, great grandfather.”

Yes but she and her baby, the baby in her belly survived, I wanted to say, but didn’t.

By the time I was in high school The Purify Church Movement was purging all people of foreign descent, people who were brown skinned. Only my status as an adopted daughter of a white evangelical minister saved me.

In the hallway at night, Grandmother Maria sent word that I would be protected. In the darkness I was in her embrace. I let my nails grow long and sometimes stood to look at myself in the mirror, the silver tarnished from the salt air. I tapped on the glass. Grandmother Maria tapped back, smiling, hair dark and wild like mine though she wore a death mask.

On Halloween the year of my confirmation, there was a little dark rabbit in our yard, a swamp rabbit nibbling the saw grass.

“Shoo!” I said though I wanted to make the rabbit my friend. I had been tasked by my adopted mother with keeping rabbits away. I was thinking I could convince her I wasn’t a witch. I was thinking since rabbits are a witch’s familiar, I could show her I thought they were dirty, nuisance creatures and I wanted nothing to do them.

“I’ll be back,” he said as he darted away. But how could he be speaking? I wondered.

One day when I was cleaning the church after school, a woman wearing a wide brimmed hat and carrying a burlap bag found me in the kitchen. Her skin was the same color as mine. She wore a long braid down her back. She appeared to wear the clothes of a gardener or farm worker. Likely she was indispensable to a rich and powerful person.

She took my hands in hers. “These things belonged to your Grandmother Maria. Put them in a secret place and pray to The Bony Lady, our dear Santa Muerte. She has brought me to you so have faith.”

She gave me a quick hug. Her hair smelled like the outdoors. She left me in a shocked silence. I wanted to know more.

When I got home the house was empty.  I hid in my closet with the burlap bag. What I found was a massive statue of a painted skeleton woman wearing a robe and carrying a long blade at the end of a staff. She stood on a huge mound of skulls.

I sat with my back against the opposite wall and studied her. Then I perused other contents in the bag. There was a little book of prayers and instructions, a bottle of liquid called Florida Water, and five candles, each a different color.

I cleaned The Bony Lady according to the instructions in the book. I lit a candle and spoke to her using one of the prayers. I thought of the woman’s words “She has brought me to you so have faith.” I felt a little frisson of power transfer to me as I looked into the stark skeletal mask of the Lady’s face. The woman had told me The Bony Lady loved Jesus. Somehow, I didn’t think my parents would see it that way.

That night I dreamt I was in a mangrove swamp. The mud held me tight. I fought it but I was beginning to sink. The dark rabbit who had invaded our yard sprung past. He shouted at me to hurry up and follow. The earth loosened its grip and I trudged behind dropping heavy mud along the way.

We went deep inside the arcs of the mangrove roots. I became small so I was able to follow him. “Where are we going?” I said. The aerial roots overhead looked like arcs of a cathedral.

Without turning he said “You are to become my bride.” And I could hear his teeth smack against his lip.

His bride? I felt as if I cannot breathe but still I followed him until we reached a little home deep in the grove. The floor was covered with leaves. The walls and ceiling consisted of mangrove branches and mud.

I was to be married here? Where was my mother? My father? Who was to marry us?

I woke with a start, shivering and sweating. No one was awake. I checked on Santa Muerte in my closet. She was still there. No one had discovered her or taken her. I sat down cross legged and lit a candle.

“Dear Lady, what is happening to me?” It was All Saints Day. I do believe she had become my saint and intercessor.

She stared at me, stern and uncompromising, but not distant. Her stillness was like the compassionate copper Christ, a statue anchored in a reef off Key Largo, the Christ of the Abyss.

“Please help me,” I implored her.

The next day the swamp rabbit was in the yard again.

“Shoo! Shoo!” I said, lunging and stomping my foot so that it hopped to the edge of the yard.

A dark cloud passed over. The hare stood on its hind legs. “Come with me, ride on my tail. I will make you my bride and save you from death.” Then he scampered away into the hedge.

That night I dreamt the hare took me deep into the mangrove swamp again. I had become skilled at walking through the mud, I did not sink or get stuck.

“You are becoming a woman,” the rabbit said, stopping to admire my progress. “It won’t be long now before we will be married.”

 As if on cue, a crow flew down, the sun gleaming off its feathers. In its beak was a huge strand of raffia.

“Hold out your hand now,” said the rabbit. “We will measure you for the handfasting. You will be bound to me for your wedding night.”

And the crow flew around my right hand, binding my wrist tightly. With the rest of the raffia he bound me to the rabbit’s leg.

“The crow is our parson. Now you are mine, Brynn Violent!” he said, hopping off into the mangroves. I stumbled after my captor. My head was in peril as I tried to duck quickly under the aerial roots. I had been tricked!

I awakened in a sweat. I leapt into my closet. I lit a candle for The Bony but the danger was real now, it was not a dream. A dark crow landed on my windowsill with a long strand of raffia in its beak.

In the prayer book beside The Lady a page was dedicated to All Souls Day or Dia de Muertos. I picked it up and read: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself.”

Just then Mother burst into the room. She opened my closet to find me with my shrine. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “What in the world are you doing?”

It was decided by the Church I would be tested in the waters off the reef of Key Largo. The test was severe: A chain around my ankle, tied to a huge stone. If I were truly a witch, I would escape. If I died before anyone could save me, it would probably be for the best. I practiced the folk religion of drug lords and prostitutes.

I sank to the bottom of the ocean, the heavy rock landing hard on the ocean floor and shaking the chain. I had never felt so alone, so scared. Though down on the ocean shelf, a few hundred feet from the abyss, it was beautiful and separate from the evil above.

In my heart, I began to pray: “Lady, My Most Holy Saint Death, I declare myself filled with love and devotion for you, and I surrender myself to you. I recognize myself as your subject and recognize you as my queen.”

The chain loosened from my foot and slipped away. I kicked as hard as I could, past the Christ of the Abyss, rising to the surface, where I was hidden from the boat by the waves. I swam a good distance, careful when I came up for air that I did not stick my head up too far above the surface.

And this is how I escaped both the rabbit and The Cleansing. I found passage to Cuba and then on to Mexico.

I became a bruja, or witch, and people sought me out for my power. For the Day of the Dead I always gave my Bony Lady flowers and gifts. I practiced white magic out of respect for the Christ of the Abyss. I prayed for the safe return of my biological mother. And I told my daughter the stories of the magic arts of her grandmothers.

Inktober: Witch

[image error] Photo by Bee Felten-Leidel on Unsplash

I saw Baba Yaga, cannibal witch, when my stepmother sent me out alone to trick or treat: Hair white as clouds, riding in a mortar, pushing it along with a pestle, sniffing the air for child flesh. She invited me to her house on chicken legs and surrounded by skulls.

Awkward

[image error] Awkward by (jennyY), flickr

It was an awkward situation. He was much older and shorter and more frail than he appeared in the dating profile photo. He had sounded taller somehow with a kind of Texas swagger. When they met, however, the cowboy politician twang she imagined was something like a male version of Spongebob’s Sandy the Squirrel.

They met in the parking lot of a huge chain restaurant, with huge Chinese concrete dragons flanking the door. His assumption was that she had never eaten anything exotic or been much of anywhere and he was to show her what was what. She hadn’t disabused him. Secretly, she wondered if there was something not a little bit masochistic about her: Let’s see how stupid this can get. Depressingly, years ago, she had sat with her ex-husband and their old couple friends in the kitchen at a special table, to be waited upon and served by the head chef. She kept this to herself as well.

As it turned out, he had all along, through their talks online, made a plan to create an unbreakable bond of sympathy between them: their shared illness, their previous bout of cancer. As soon as they were seated, he spoke in detail of his health status just last year, the necessity of a colostomy bag for a time, the impossibility of dating during treatment. He shared that they might have something in common.

First five minutes, she thought. She felt a little sick, felt she had in fact very little in common with this person who shared such personal things with her straight off with little to no compunction.

This was akin to him assuming that she had never been anywhere or eaten anything but burgers when in fact she had been many places in the world and cooked and eaten quite a bit. He was presumptuous and bossy, ordered for them even though she had said she wanted salad. He ignored her and ordered just what he was planning to, for him and for her. She was tired within the first ten minutes but she supposed his mentality was since he was paying, this was his show. It was old school.

They sat at a large half moon booth, at first at opposite ends so that she couldn’t hear him well, and he was the only one who was talking. She scooted closer when he did not which was awkward because she was aware of what the fine knit summer dress showed off as she bumped and jiggled along. It wasn’t tight or revealing, just flowing over her and not disguising her lack of tone. This is what it is to be dating at midlife. Embarrassing.

As the food arrived and they ate, there were more surprises: His life as a car transporter which afforded him travel to every state, famous people he had met, trips to Vegas, pictures he pulled out and began to show her one of which included a picture of a lady prostitute friend and her pimp. And he spoke of his grown daughter he had poisoned with information about her mother, his ex-wife.

All she could think about was her dog and how to get back to her.

He had also, like a few other men she had known, formed an over the top quick familiarity with the waitress. She had observed this strangeness in her new dating life, how some would take advantage of paid help – in restaurants and stores to flirt and speak endlessly of their lives, to try and win approval and interest or simply smiles, laughs. And when this happened, she was invisible. Or was that the whole point? She inserted herself with this one. Turns out, the waitress’s father was a pastor just like her own and both had been good men. They talked a long time too and joyfully, she thought, without him. There was no one else in the restaurant at that hour.

He was annoyed. He hated Christians and Christianity. A bunch of superstitious claptrap.

She thought of her dog again. The style the groomer gave her hair around her face was called “Teddy Bear:” round, soft, and full, round eyes. She kept her groomed so she could always see those expressive eyes.

“I’ve got to get home to my dog,” she said. “I know she’s going crazy.” She had driven across town though there was a location closer to her apartment, one she had suggested, but meeting where they did, so far away for her, had been one more way of showing who’s boss, to meet where he lived.

Unfortunately, he spoke on for a bit longer, asked her a couple of questions, discovered her employment status was “drawing on alimony,” told her “it was time to grow up.” At the car he made a crude joke about sometimes dating simply for the sex and not marriage, referring to her unemployed status. She gave him a quick hug which he said surprised him, he wasn’t even going to do that, feigning innocence, an old trick she was beginning to recognize. Her hug was goodbye and thank you for lunch though you threw your money away.

At home, with her dog on the couch, she was so grateful for the sun streaming through the window and gleaming off her glass side tables, the plantings around her patio, the huge palm tree, the sounds of birds and dogs and children, people walking by speaking various languages. She decorated in blues, reds, grays, and floral patterns. She would rather die than be without color. She couldn’t quite describe how she felt, only she was happy to be there.

She was most offended by his “it’s time to grow up” statement though the piling on of all of it from the instant of their meeting had numbed her, a kind of self negating abuse that felt familiar.

Months later, and no more dates with anyone, thankfully, but with the onset of the pandemic, she realized he wasn’t all wrong about her need for a job. As she had learned from other dates and other midlife steadies: Everyone taught her something.

Inktober: Death

[image error] Ballerina by Austin Nguyen

Grandmama had been diagnosed with alzheimer’s. She and Grandaddy visited us in the house where my blue room looked over the pool. She stumbled into my bedroom: Grandaddy’s trying to poison me! She died years later, and Grandaddy shortly after – worn and lonely on his hospital bed, a shell.

Inktober: Conundrum

[image error] Playing with cutlery 2 by mcdarius, flickr

It was a conundrum: To risk her life by taking the only job she could find during the pandemic or risk going broke and without the critical insurance and medical care she so desperately needed. Black thoughts of feckless politicians overtook her and she died of stress, paralysis, hatred.

Inktober: Cling

[image error] Cling by isthisyou, flickr

I was broke and found ghostwriting work at a charismatic publishing house. I was given a handheld cross and told “cling to the cross.” I hadn’t told them I was Jewish. I returned it and quit. Next day, it was in my purse with a note attached. “Jesus loves you.”

Inktober: Prey

[image error] mouse stalker by Jerome Olivier, flickr

Her youtube queue reminded her of a time she attracted men looking for vulnerable prey. In her desperation she had once sought solace and assistance in self-help videos. At last she stopped dating. But every time she spotted one of these videos she had painful thoughts of each of her torturers.

Inktober: Grave

[image error] butterfly of steel by J.S. B., flickr

We gather in the graveyard. There you are, nails radiating out from your head. I don’t tell mother I have nightmares of you crying.

We say We love you.

You say I’m sad you’re fighting.

We say We’re sorry.

And there it is, your shy smile. Then you are gone.

Inktober: Note, part 2

[image error] Inside an abandoned bomb shelter at the Boron Air Force Station by Kevin, flickr

Incredible as it seems as I write this, our country has run itself into the ground. No one used an amendment to our Constitution to disable our leader from endangering the lives of citizens. I am only able to live and write this from a well fortified shelter.