Centerville's Witch

       From that day on, Katie went to the library with Brian once a week.  On the days Brian was ill – and there were unfortunately many – his mother usually dropped by to let Katie know. She had asked for their phone number, but as Katie and her mother did not have a telephone, they had not been able to oblige. 

       Getting a library card took longer than Brian thought, though.  “Just bring a piece of identification with your address on it,” said the librarian. Katie stared at her blankly.

        “Or a letter addressed to you, then,” Brian added helpfully. Katie shook her head at him. “We don’t get letters.”

       “Just bring your electricity or telephone bill,” the librarian said, looking a little impatient. Katie had no idea what an electricity bill was, and when she asked her mother for this, her mother told her that they did not use electricity.  Fortunately, though, they did use gas – and because of that Katie now had a library card.

       Katie’s loved her library card. Every week, she was allowed to bring home seven books.  She started with books that Brian recommended, then began to choose them on her own.  The only problem was finding the time to read them. Her mother always needed a lot of help in the garden and with the household chores, and there were her own studies in the evening to keep up with. Katie still drew pictures of plants and read the big books that belonged to her mother, and she still copied out descriptions of herbs, but this was fast losing its appeal. All she could think about was reading her library books. Her mother sighed and shook her head to see Katie rushing through her chores in order to have time to read. Katie no longer dawdled by the window to watch the children going to school in the morning; she missed chatting with Brian every morning, but after all, she got to see him once a week now, and waiting for him cut into her reading time.

       Wednesdays quickly became her favorite days. She and Brian raced to the library, chose their books, then sat and read. Katie always felt depressed on the way home – another week before she could go again! – but the books she brought home made up for it. 

       One spring day, on their way to the library, Brian reached into his pocket and pulled something out. “Here,” he said, casually, putting several hard, shiny things into Katie’s hand. Katie looked – and gasped. Magic stones!

        “Where did you get these?” she asked, astounded.           

       “My mom’s always buying them. They’re her favorite.”

       “And she lets you have – this many?” Brian had two or three of them himself, and had already opened one and popped it into his mouth.

       “Sure, anytime.”  He sucked hard at his peppermint and the Katie felt the sharp, cool smell bite at her own nose tantalizingly.

       “Anytime?”

       ”Well, okay, maybe not exactly anytime. She doesn’t like having to take me to the dentist.”

       Katie remained silent.

       “You don’t know what the dentist is, do you?”

       Katie grinned at Brian. “No. I don’t.”

       “You’ve never had to go to one?!”

       “How would I know that when I don’t know what it is?” answered Katie tartly. But she was pretty sure she never had.

       “It’s someone who fixes your teeth. You must have holes in your teeth if you’ve never been to one. Do you?”
       “How would I know?”

       “Someone would have to look into your mouth and tell you.”

       “Well, how would that person know?”

       “I don’t know; I guess they can see them.”

       “But I couldn’t see them?”

       “No. Or at least I couldn’t see mine. I had hundreds of them.”

       Katie covered her mouth in alarm. “Really”

       “Well, no. But I had at least ten. You get them when you eat lots of candy and you don’t brush your teeth. Do you brush your teeth?”

       “No,” said Katie.

       “But you’ve never been to the dentist? That isn’t fair. I’ve been to the dentist so many times I’ve lost count, but I brush my teeth all the time.”

       Katie did not have anything to say to that.  She carefully peeled the clear paper off one of her magic stones and put it reverently into her mouth. Pure heaven.

       “I clean my teeth,” she said. After every meal.

       “But you just said you didn’t!”

       “Well, I don’t brush them.” She looked at Brian disdainfully. “I brush my hair, not my teeth. My mother and I use a kind of wood, a root, really, I guess  –”

       “You’ve got to be kidding.”

       “I’m not! We chew on the root and our teeth are always nice and clean.”  Sometimes Brian really got on Katie’s nerves, acting like everything she and her mother did was so strange!

       “Boy, talk about alternative lifestyles. You don’t use toothpaste and brushes and stuff?”

       “No” said Katie stiffly. What is – toothpaste?”  Paste for teeth?  It sounded icky.

       “It comes in a tube – I can’t believe I’m telling you this – and it smells like, well, like this. “  Brian stuck out his tongue to display the magic stone he had reduced to a thin white disc.

       Imagine having that taste whenever you wanted to clean your teeth!  Katie was impressed.

       “What’s the dentist like?”

       “Awful.  Mine’s a woman, and she’s nice and friendly, but it’s still awful. You have to sit in a chair and she sticks needles in your gums, right into the bone – it’s true!”  Brian had just seen the look of disbelief on Katie’s face.

        “And then she drills into the holes in your teeth to make them bigger and she fills them up.”

       Katie nodded politely and tried to look suitably disgusted.  But really, there were times when Brian let his imagination run wild.

        It was a wonderful spring day, the warmest day of the year so far. The last snow had long since melted away, and everywhere new buds were swelling and trees were bursting into flower.  Brian and Katie were halfway to Katie’s house from the library when they suddenly heard someone calling in a thin, high voice.

       They had walked past the house the voice was coming from, when they heard it again.

       “You two kiddos – the boy and girl! Hey there!”

       Brian and Katie stopped in their tracks.  Sitting in a wheelchair in front of a bungalow was a woman, very old, thin and feeble-looking. Her white, fluffy hair was so sparse they could see her pink scalp underneath. She was wearing a blue cotton dress, from which her arms and legs protruded, stick-like.

       “Were you calling us?” enquired Brian, politely.

       “You see any other boy and girl around here?” 

       “No,” answered Brian guardedly. “Umm…we’re kind of in a hurry, though.”

       “Well, I only want to talk to you for a minute. Just a minute of your precious time.” There was a nasty, sarcastic note in the woman’s voice.

       Katie and Brian looked at each other, flabbergasted. They walked up the gravel driveway to the woman. Once they got close enough for her to see them well, the woman drew her head back a bit and began to stare at them. Her skinny jaws worked on an invisible mouthful of something. She had a sparse, but noticeable, mustache. 

       “You there, then. The girl. What’s your name?”

       Katie found the woman’s tone rude, but like Brian, she answered politely.

       “Katie.”

       “Katie what?”

       “Just –  Katie.”

       The woman laughed. “Just Katie” she mocked, and the laugh turned into a sputtering cough. “I thought so. She never did have a last name, your mother. Not a real one, any road. You know what we called her? Back when we were kids? ”

       Katie and Brian looked at each other in consternation.

       “I said, do you know what we called your mother, back when I was a youngster?”

       “No” said Katie in a small voice. This woman was surely crazy.

       “We called her that witch. That’s what we called her. I guess I look pretty old to you kids.” The woman’s cough had turned into a wheeze. Katie and Brian stared at her in dismay.

       “Well, I am old now, but I wasn’t as old as you when we moved here back in the twenties, but she –” 

       The door of the house suddenly flew open and a large, flustered looking woman hurried out.  “Grandma, how many times do I have to tell you to stop frightening kids?”  She grasped the handles of the wheelchair and started back to the bungalow.

       “Come on Katie. Let’s go home,” said Brian. Katie started walking, but she could not get the old woman’s words out of her mind. We called her that witch. I wasn’t as old as you when we moved here… Surely the woman must be thinking of someone else! How would she even know her mother, anyway?

       “I don’t ever want to get that old” said Brian emphatically. “My mom says that lots of people get like that when they get old. They call it Old-timer’s disease.”

       But Katie did not respond.  She remembered the fertilizer farm, the girl with the bristly hair and the rings in her nose.  Is your mom really a witch? 

      Was she?  Katie had learned something about witches from her library books, but in no way did her mother even remotely resemble any of the witches she had encountered in her books. It was true that they had a backyard full of herbs, and her mother brewed teas from these and make them into powders and tinctures and sachets, but there were no spells or incantations, no toasted toads, eye of newt or wing of bat. Her mother never used the broom; she left the sweeping to her.  And though she wore an old straw hat when she worked in the garden or went out on a sunny day; it wasn’t black, and it didn’t have a pointy top. And she invariably shooed out any cats that came into their garden.  Besides, witches were either hideously ugly or flawlessly beautiful. And they were either magic or evil. So her mother could not be a witch, it was impossible. She was just different.  Surely that was it – her mother was different and people who couldn’t understand that assumed that she must be a witch.

      But what had the man with the ponytail said? She really doesn’t look any older than when she first came here.  It didn’t make any sense!

    That nasty old woman, on the other hand: could she be Estelle’s great grandmother – Centerville’s witch?