Chapter Seven

Word Games Bring House Guests

Veda

I was sitting at my spinning wheel, pedaling away. Spinning was one of the few things I did without shoes on. I nearly always wore shoes, but not when I was spinning. Instead, I wore tiny little black footlets, or whatever pantyhose I had on that day. If I was barefooted, I felt like life had spun ridiculously out of control and I had to get control again, by putting on a pair of boots.

As I was spinning, I happened to look up. Nestled between the interlacing ribbons of our household notice board, were the letters I had seen in the crystal ball. I read them over and over.

When June came in, I questioned her. “June, were any of your sisters named July or August?”

She took off her wrap and hung it on a hook by the door. “I have seven sisters.”

“And I can’t remember any of their names at the moment.”

“Must we speak of this? It's a rather painful subject. My sisters insisted on having a proper coven, but since our mother had eight daughters instead of nine, some of us were no longer welcome. I was one of them. I have brown eyes instead of green, so they decided to discriminate against me for that.”

I was a brown-eyed girl and my temper flared. “Only for that?”

“The rest of them had green eyes. My sister, Hattie, who was also unworthy of the coven, has green eyes too, but in her case, it was more like she left them. She got married.”

Hattie? I looked at the letters on the note. “Look, June. The letters spell Hattie, don't they?”

She took the note from me and read it over, perplexed. “Yes, they do, but Hattie doesn't need anything. She posts everything she eats on Instagram. Trust me, she's eating well.”

I slipped into my boots, did up the side zippers, so I could get a good stomp, and stomped my foot indignantly. “You've got to call her and see if anything is wrong. Does she live nearby?”

“I think she lives in Idaho, or Ohio, or Iowa. I'm not sure which.”

I downgraded my indignation to tapping my toe. “Are you going to call her?”

“How about if I Facebook her?”

“What's the problem here? You came to me for a crystal ball reading and I gave you one. You must call her. I promise, she's miserable.”

“All right. Far be it for me to dissuade your talents. Do you want to listen on speakerphone?”

I joined her at the table in the bay window as her phone started dialing. I wanted to see if there was any wisdom in my scrying.

“Hello, Hattie. It's June. How are you?”

On the speaker, Hattie sounded choked up. “June? I don't know anyone named June.”

“I'm your sister,” she said patiently.

“We haven't spoken in thirty years,” Hattie said coldly. “Why are you calling me now?”

“Well, it's a funny story.” June told her about the crystal ball reading. “I thought I'd ring you to see if you were all right. I follow you on Instagram. You always seem fine, but--”

By this time, Hattie was sobbing gently into the phone. “I'm not fine. Freddie died.”

“Husband?” I mouthed to June.

June shrugged like she had no idea who Freddie could be.

“It was so sudden and I still haven't recovered.”

“But you're still posting food.”

“My therapist follows me, and whenever I stop posting, she comments about it in our sessions. My posts are all photos I ripped off the internet to keep her off my back.”

“Why do you see a therapist?”

“Because our family abandoned me, then my first husband abandoned me, then my second husband abandoned me, then my next three boyfriends abandoned me. One of them left town in the middle of the night, and now my cat, Freddie, is dead. Satisfied?”

June scoffed. “What about me? Our family abandoned me too and I've never even been on a date where I wasn't the one who did the asking. At least, someone wanted you once.”

“That's just like you!” the wounded sister shrieked.

I groaned.

“What was that?” Hattie blurted.

“It was me,” I said into the receiver. “Excuse me. I'm Veda. June and I are roommates. Would you like to come here for a visit? We have plenty of spare bedrooms.”

June glared at me.

I glared back.

“You're asking me to come to Edmonton?” Hattie asked through barely clear airways.

“Yes.”

“You're asking me to come to the heart of a witch-crafting community and just… visit? You know, I quit being a witch?”

I shook my head impudently. “I didn't know, but none of that matters. You're June's sister and you obviously need a break if even your therapist is driving you nuts.”

Both sisters sighed and then said in unison, “Let me talk to her about this privately.”

June shut off the speaker and put the phone to her ear for a more private conversation. I waited in the kitchen.

June did not join me for over an hour. When she finally did, she looked ragged and sorry. “Veda, I don't know why you have to stick your nose into other people's problems. You do it with your cousins and you do it with students at the school. It's not your place to tell people how to dress and who to invite for a visit, but you do it anyway.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“Well, in this case, 'sorry' is not the right word. Hattie's troubles are harder than I thought. She's been living off alimony from husband number two and he just got diagnosed with cancer. As soon as he found out he stopped making payments, and she's not heartless enough to go after him for the money. Unless she gets an income to match what he was paying her, she's going to be out on the street. She's not trained to do anything. She's a professional wife. She had to put her house up for sale today.”

I didn't know what to say, so I waited.

“The point is you asked her to stay with us before you knew she was in trouble. That was key for her. If she had told me her problem and I offered for her to come, she wouldn't have accepted the invitation because she doesn't want to be a charity case. In this case, 'thank-you' are the right words.”

June didn't hug me. She knew I didn't like being touched. She nodded to me before clearing her throat and telling me the finishing touches. “I'm going to see her this weekend. I need to assess the damage. I can't do that from here.”

“Okay.”

“You'll be fine on your own?”

“I'll be perfect,” I reassured her. “I've got things to do.”

⚘⚘⚘

On Friday night, I put a bag together and went over to Pearl's house. If she was still planning on buying that white and black striped gown then I needed to help her choose a hair color to go with it.

The bag I put together had a black wig and a white wig since those were the only two colors I could think of for her to choose from. I also packed permanent hair coloring equipment. If she wanted the black then that would be simple, since it was only one set. For the white, I had a plan to bleach it and then dye it white. I helped Clementine with hers often, so it was I was not in new territory.

At Pearl’s, I was greeted with a most unusual sight. Intarsia and Fair Isle were already there. Why? They never hung out with Pearl.

Aunt Myra let me in. She looked happy, which was weird. She was never happy.

I came around the corner and saw the commotion. Pearl was standing on a stool in the living room. She was wearing her grad dress and Fair Isle was pinning the hem.

It wasn't striped.

She had chosen her color.

I dropped my bag. I was outraged. She had chosen her color without speaking to me and she had chosen badly. It was so bad, I didn't know how her mother had the spirit to smile and look that pleased.

She had chosen peach, flesh, nude, blush, light pink!

Her gown made her look like a muffin, but it had lovely tucks of fabric that looked like flowers and faux jewels sewn in sequence. The dress wasn't awful. The dress was lovely, with one strap exactly where it should have been, exactly as thick as it should have been. It fit properly. She looked good in it. Her hair was dyed that color too. Obviously, the work of Intarsia who was better at dying hair than all of us put together.

The problem was that we were witches. Choosing a color wasn't about one night. It was about the rest of our lives. Skin colored trousers for the rest of her life? Skin colored hair? Baby pink until the day she died? Was she stupid?

I sat down and got my breath.

Fair Isle glared at me. “Don't you like it?”

“You look beautiful.” I directed my words to the girl on the stool. “Like a freshwater pearl.”

She beamed.

Fair Isle's narrowed eyes didn't move at all. She was sensitive about the color choice she had made. Or rather, there was some bad blood between her and me on the subject. It wasn't my fault. I chose my color when I was thirteen, which is the youngest they will let anyone choose their color. I chose black and never regretted that choice. She felt threatened because she had turned thirteen seven months before me and still had not chosen a color. Some people (I still didn't know who those people were) thought it was a sign I was more mature than her. She yelled at me for choosing the color she wanted. I said she could also have it. More often than not, witches in our coven chose black. So she did it too, but she was angry with me for being the one to do it first.

She picked up my bag and looked inside before I could snatch it back. “What's this?” she scoffed, as she pulled out the black dye.

Everyone stared at her.

I was calm as I explained. “I thought she was going to wear a striped dress she showed me. I thought I'd help her pick a color to match it. That's all. I didn't know she was going to do all this today.”

“A likely story,” Fair Isle said, dangling it between her fingers. “I think you just wanted her to pick black, so everybody can be just like you.”

“Not really,” I said, turning over my bag and showing the bleach and the white wig. “I just didn't want her to have hair that didn’t look good with her dress. I was just trying to help out, but you look lovely, Pearl. I'm just a little sad you didn't need my help.”

“Thank you, Veda,” Pearl said. “But we're all going to have to get used to you not helping us with every little thing since you'll be moving to Whitehorse.”

“I never said I'd go with him,” I retorted.

“But you promised to date him at least twice a week,” Intarsia interjected.

“Yes, but I did that for Antony last month and I’m not running away with him. Neither of them will understand how wrong I am for them if they never see me.”

Fair Isle got up and dropped the box of black hair dye on my bag. “You really believe that? I never thought you were stupid, but clearly, I was wrong. If they date you, they think they have a chance with you.” She strode out of the room with angry footfalls in her heavy boots.

I looked at the crowd: Pearl, Myra, Intarsia. “Do you all think I'm stupid?”

They nodded, though reluctantly.

“But he's going to grad with Intarsia!” I reminded them.

“He's not going with me because he likes me. He's going with me because he's cool enough that he would go with a girl he's not in love with. He probably liked you before he got here.”

“I never wrote to him!”

“Doesn't matter,” the red-head refuted. “He's always known about you. I think he'd decided on you years ago.”

I scowled. “I hate this. I don't want him.”

Intarsia put an understanding hand on my shoulder. I wanted to shrug her off, but she was being so nice. Her voice was sweet as sugar as she said, “I know you don't. You always give your boyfriends away. Fair Isle thinks this is different because Salinger's from a coven, but I don't. Well, I did, but Antony changed my mind.”

“Really? What did Antony say?” I asked, wondering if she would ever take her hand off my shoulder.

“He said that you told him to date Pearl before Salinger confessed to you. Why would you have done that if you didn't want our happiness above your own?”

I didn't have the words for how uncomfortable she was making me. In that instant, I feared she knew my secret and my breath became shallow as I waited for her next words.

“Look how happy you've made her,” Intarsia said, pointing at Pearl.

I released a breath of relief. I wasn't caught and what she said was completely true. Pearl had always looked like a straggly little kid and now she looked like a more enchanting piece of womanhood than… well… me. I never looked that lovely. She was sure to knock Antony’s socks off. 

I took Intarsia's hand off my shoulder and patted it. “Dye her eyebrows.”