Helen Oyeyemi - White Is for Witching

“Tried that,” Miranda said.

There was an especial horror in lying with her eyes closed and her thoughts coming too quickly and strongly to be deciphered. At such times she saw herself twice, the girl lying down and the woman in the trapdoor room sitting directly beneath the fireplace, delicately wiping her beautiful mouth again and again.

“Hot milk and honey, Nytol, a nice long warm bath…?” Luc ticked the options off on his fingers.

“Tried that, tried that, tried that.”

“I have heard,” Eliot murmured, “that marijuana is a good sleep aid.”

Luc snapped his fingers. “I can give you some work. I was going to give it to Eliot, but…”

He went to his desk and sorted through the envelopes on it. He handed her one. A friend of his had started working for an advertising agency, his job was to get feedback on television advertisements they’d filmed before they were sent for approval to the companies who had commissioned the product advertisements. Things like crisps, contact lenses, house and car insurance. There were sheets to fill in for each advert she watched. She had never realised that anyone cared so much; besides there were some terrible adverts on TV. “I’ll do it,” she said, picking up the pen that had dropped out of Eliot’s hair.

After Luc and Eliot had gone to bed, she watched as many adverts as she could and scribbled notes, poking at her eyelids with her pen so that she could pay better attention to the dancing life-sized tadpoles that, to her surprise, made her feel like buying the soft drink they were promoting. A pungent smell of stewing meat crept out of the kitchen, getting bolder and bolder until it was wadded up behind the bones of Miranda’s face. Sade was cooking vigorously, her curly perm trapped in a hairnet. She jiggled from countertop to countertop, chopping chillies, crushing garlic, tossing handfuls of spice into pots. The smell made Miranda realise how hungry she was; not for the sharp-toothed fireworks that Sade was lighting in Luc’s pot. Not for chalk, not for plastic…

Uneasily, Miranda came into the light. She did not feel steady on her feet. She thought she had better sit down and tried to sit on the wall nearest her, forgetting that it was horizontal and high instead of vertical and low.

Sade took her arm and led her to a kitchen stool, then, when Miranda was unable to climb onto it, Sade lifted her onto the stool herself.

“They’re calling you, aren’t they?” Sade asked her.

Miranda found it easy to look into Sade’s eyes. The pupils were simple, and the whites were slightly yellow.

“Who?”

Sade brought Miranda some water and a small plate of fried, crispy batter. The pieces looked like broken doughnuts, but Miranda could see shreds of chilli puffed up inside them like a red rash.

“Your old ones,” she said. “I know it’s hard.”

She shrugged and took a piece herself when Miranda waved the plate away.

“No, nothing like that. I’m not sure what you mean, actually. Everything is fine,” Miranda said. Her lips missed her glass and she spilled water down her front and into her lap, then put the glass down on the nearest counter. The water was so cold on her skin that it felt dry. “Please tell me more about old ones calling,” she said.

Sade looked so alarmed that Miranda thought the topic must be the utmost taboo. Then she saw herself on the floor. Water makes a mirror of any surface. She’d sucked her cheeks in so far that the rest of her face emerged in a series of interconnected caves. Her eyes were small, wild globes. The skull was temporary, the skull collected the badness together and taught it discipline, that was all. Miranda wanted to say, That is not my face . No, it wasn’t hers, she had to get away from it, peel it back. Or she had to leave and take this face with her, defuse it somewhere else. Eliot and Luc, she had to protect them.

Sade turned Miranda’s head away from the terrible face.

“Thank you,” Miranda said, limply. “Thanks.”

(I’m very hungry)

Sade offered her the plate of fritters again, then, after some hesitation, a handful of peanut shells. As Miranda nibbled at peanut shells, Sade pulled up a stool and sat herself on it. She began plaiting strips of Luc’s old shirt and dragging them through a saucer of red fat on the counter beside her. Every now and again she looked about her, checking on her cooking projects. Miranda watched.

“What are you making?”

“Juju.”

“What’s that?”

She pulled her finger through a knot.

“Company.”

The figure Sade was making looked like two hanged men holding fast to each other. She spun black thread around a hook, breaking the thread with a sharp jerk of her arm when the hook was completely covered. She spoke without looking at Miranda, she spoke as if to herself. “Something is wrong.”

“That is true,” Miranda said, for want of any other comment. She was the something wrong. It was she who had fallen asleep and lost Lily’s life. Now sleep wouldn’t come anymore. Sade’s talisman was a thing worked against her.

•

During one English lesson Martin sat next to her. She was surprised; they hadn’t spoken properly since he’d asked her to the cinema months before and she’d said, rashly and unconvincingly, that she didn’t like films because they hurt her eyes. When put on the spot she became terrible.

At the end of the lesson, he put his arm around the back of her chair.

“It’s Friday!” he said.

“Yes,” said Miranda. “It is.”

She wondered when it was coming, the stupid thing she was going to say to him.

“Coming to the pub tonight?” he asked. “We haven’t seen you for ages.”

He kicked the back of Emma’s chair and Emma turned around. “Yeah, come,” she said.

“We’re underage,” Miranda said. Ah, there it was, the stupid thing. Luckily they laughed.

“She doesn’t want to come,” Eliot called from across the room.

“Yes I do,” she said, because she hadn’t been asked before.

She had no idea what people wore to the pub. She had better wear what she always wore. Later she hopped in and out of the shower, sent a hot iron skating over her black linen dress with the pouch pockets, brushed her wet hair and painted her lips with a bright red dot in the centre that grew outwards and dulled as it did. She threw rose attar over herself in a hasty splash, as if it were a liquid jacket. Then she stood, shivered, and sneezed. She would drink the juice of grapes, she told herself. From a glass. And be comfortable, and be liked, like Eliot.

Their group sat at a corner table, the girls all strawberry lip gloss, halter-neck tops and bare legs, the boys wearing so much gel that their hair didn’t move when blown on at close quarters (Miranda experimented surreptitiously when they had their heads turned). Everyone was touching each other, heads on shoulders, arms around waists, and all she could smell was skin and smoke. She could hardly see — the world was fogged over.

Emma was kind, asking her neutral questions about music and TV from her precarious position on the lap of a boy called Josh. But it soon became clear that Miranda didn’t watch TV, and had no opinion on any record released after 1969. Eliot sighed, got up and added a song to the jukebox selection, then went to play snooker. A few of the others got up and followed him about like ducklings. Martin stayed and spoke to her and she thought, Help, I will die, and struggled out of the corner, asking if anyone wanted anything from the bar. It was as if she hadn’t spoken. Finally: “You’re alright,” Emma said. Josh kissed her shoulder, and she squirmed and giggled.

Miranda went and sat down at the bar. She asked for peanuts and made a circle with them in an ashtray. A vaguely familiar boy turned to her and said: “Miranda. How are you doing?”