Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

by Rivka Galchen

Martin Luther said that those who do not love music deserve to hear nothing but the grunting of hogs and the braying of asses.

dislike stories that end in failure or punishment. I should have changed the ending.

LittleHammer survived. But she had become cold and aloof. I understood her—to love others is to suffer.

Don’t be superstitious, Mama. Superstitious about what? Our misfortune now is not an omen of our misfortune later.

“But this is not the place to mourn about the misery of our century, but to rejoice with you about such beautiful ideas proving the truth.”

He saw delphinium as I saw delphinium. As a plant capable of good and evil both. As a plant that required the knowledge and good intentions of man.

But again I didn’t say anything. Sometimes you pay the price whether you speak or don’t speak.

I was standing in line reading a letter Alexander had sent Anna. I had picked up the letter by accident, thinking it was a receipt or order. Young people are so stupid. I tried not to read the letter in its entirety. But it was curiously gripping. As bad decisions always are. Suddenly

I do so much wrong by doing pretty much nothing at all.

Rumor had it that she was a witch. Though it’s very hard to tell with these things.”

he fled to the church like a coward,” he said. “Couldn’t stand to the left or the right. Wouldn’t help, nope. But wouldn’t not help, you see? Didn’t intervene, but couldn’t accuse him of not intervening, either. Watched his own rump, that was my impression.”

bees know how to make honey, which is unfathomable enough.

was told many times what a good student you were. And that you were very pretty, and kind. I didn’t share that with you because I didn’t want you to be distracted by your capacities. I have always put you down a little bit. I like to think that has helped you.

we have to see the good in people, at least in people who have power over us and who will be angry if we see them in another way.

“Passions are too high,” he said. “I do have a gift for steadiness,” I said. “But I know nothing of the law.” “It’s about telling a credible story, that’s the main thing.”

In the courtroom, the counsel asked me if I knew that any false testimony would provoke God’s great anger and I found myself saying that I was hopeful that was the case, of course, since so many had spoken falsely against me. I had spent so much time thinking what I would say, and there I went saying something provocative right off the top for no reason, like a child who doesn’t understand the intersection of tactics and truth. I could feel in the room that crackling before a storm in response to my words. That stoked my vanity.

“Why do you have no pity?” I heard the counsel asking me. “I do have pity,” I said. One of the judges, whom I had known since I was a young bride, said, “Please, Kath-chen. Can’t you show us a little heart? Haven’t you any tears to show?” You were crying, Greta. I could see you. And so were your brothers. But I have cried so much in my life that there are no tears left in me. That was my testimony.

law of the Carolina

She was situated between a stall decorated in red that was hawking an edition of Luther’s pamphlets, and another stall that sold yet another edition of Death and the Ploughman. So the stalls on each side of her both sold books from a century ago. Why no interest in the awful and dramatic present?

“If you don’t mind a bit of advice: People don’t like an old lady story, you know? I wouldn’t lead with that part.”

If faith is worth anything, shouldn’t it make us not fear death?