Helen Oyeyemi - White Is for Witching

I sighed and put my jacket on.

“Ah. You should get a girlfriend. It would cheer you up. You are gloomy. Miranda too.”

“Our mother died,” I explained, and wandered around to the back for my bike. Miri was looking out of her window, a white white face with the darkness of her curtains behind her, and I don’t know why, but I ducked out of her sight.

The interview was conducted in a cream-coloured room with a flip chart. It was an interview for an internship at a television production company based in Cape Town. Since Miri had left the video with the advertisements on a chair in the sitting room, I’d watched most of the adverts as soon as I’d woken up. I filled my parts of the interview conversation with references to the apprenticeship “work” I sometimes did for an ad agency. By the time I got back to Dover, it was already dark. I wrestled my bike off the train and rode home, keeping an eye out for the girls who had been out to get Miri. There was no sign of them, but the cliffs were wearing broad chains of snow, so I took out my camera and slowed down, elbows on the handlebars, pointing the lens upwards. I took photos. Too many, and I worked the shutter too fast, because I kept thinking someone would come and get in the way, people with shopping bags or something.

Dad had had Lily’s Haiti photos developed, and

(Taking the film out of that camera, closing the back up again, how much had that felt like blinding someone?)

among them was a sunset miniatured in purple, birds with long wings swimming through it in curious Vs. There was a bucketful of live sand, no, crabs, at a market stall. A potted tree, or a green skeleton, stood in a darkened doorway. Tiny robots churning in a grey fishing net. Looking at those last photos was like flipping through a book of silence, all the information conveyed with the certainty of a glimpse. There were people in the photos — the bored, teenaged market trader was there, the fisherwomen too, kings of their boats — but they were there minus everything that was absurd and ungainly about them. They were in the picture but their bodies weren’t.

You can only take pictures like that if you’re able to see ghosts. Lily could. Miri too. Why can’t I?

•

On Sunday afternoon Sade washed the sitting-room windows from the inside, an expression of pure patience on her face as Miranda tried to teach her to whistle. She couldn’t get the hang of it. Every time she got the right length of breath going, she looked nervous, opened her mouth fully and said whoooooosh .

“I grew up believing it’s bad luck to whistle in the house,” she explained, eventually. “It’s just no good. It’s too late.”

“Why is it bad luck?”

“Well. I know of witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don’t have names.”

Miranda was pleased with the idea of a whistler as a witch, and she let out a long, unmusical whistle, relenting when Sade winced.

“I was only calling Eliot home,” she said.

The front door banged.

“Eliot?” Sade called.

He announced, “It is but the shade of Eliot,” as he went upstairs.

Sade and Miranda looked at each other significantly.

“Whistler,” said Sade.

“Witch,” said Miranda.

Then: “Is it bad luck if a builder whistles at you? And if it is, is it bad luck for you or for him? Because technically he’s sort of indoors.”

Sade wiped a wet cloth over the soap, inspected the window and wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ll tell you later. What’s the time… actually, never mind, you.”

She went into the kitchen and checked the clock. Visiting hours at the Immigration Removal Centre had begun. “Help me get the food together.” Together they packed a bag full of food wrapped in tin foil and cling-film until it was a solid block, like a building caught in plastic. The sun shone on the garden and made it seem warmer out than it was, and Miranda hummed to herself and looked out of the kitchen window.

The couple who had made her circle the Cinque Ports on a map for them, the couple she’d heard together in their room, were sitting under one of the trees, on a blanket. The woman wasn’t wearing a coat, just a short-sleeved white dress. Her legs were bare and a big white flower shone from the midst of her plaits. The man was wearing his sweater slung across his shoulders, the arms tied around the front of him. They were talking earnestly and eating apples. It was far too cold for them to be sitting out there having a picnic. Miranda wanted to open the window and shout “It’s January!” but she didn’t, because there was something so lovely about their being out there, their faces turned towards each other, their gazes chained together. They had stayed for quite a while now, longer than most other guests stayed. She wondered what were they doing in Dover. She thought she should try to remember their names.

Sade turned up the volume on the kitchen radio. Up at the port, fifty-eight people had been found dead in the back of a truck. Chinese. They had suffocated. Miranda was a heartbeat away from putting her hands over her ears. What is wrong with Dover, she thought.

Eyes closed, Sade stroked the scars on her cheek.

“Didn’t they call Dover the key to England?” she asked, slowly. “Key to a locked gate, throughout both world wars, and even before. It’s still fighting.”

She drew her scarf around her neck and wriggled into her coat, swinging the heavy carrier bag as if it was nothing. As she left, a gust of wind came through the hallway and the back door slammed. It was the couple who had been picnicking outside. Now they came into the warmth and looked around, and shivered. They were sweating. They passed Miranda and she was troubled. The woman smiled vaguely and gave Miranda the lily from her hair. The man followed the woman up the stairs without even glancing at Miranda.

“Is everything okay?” Miranda asked.

No reply. She tried to add up how many days the couple had booked in for; she should look in her father’s book. The flower in her hand was so large and sweet smelling that she might have been carrying the frozen scent of a lily. She paused halfway up the staircase, looked up and listened to them.

“A tisket, a tasket,” the man sang, off-key, outside the door of the couple’s guest room. “A tisket, a tasket.”

“Stop it,” Miranda heard the woman say, just as she herself mouthed, “Stop it.”

“Something’s killing me.” There was a static quality to their voices, as if they were people on the radio. Miranda’s vision blurred until the staircase was the only thing she could see clearly. A helter-skelter of wood and carpet, a backbone.

“What is it?” the man asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe it was the apple. Where did it come from?”

The woman began to choke. Miranda, who did not know CPR, ran up to the second floor, but the man had led the woman inside the bedroom, saying, “Sh, sh,” and the horrible coughing was quieted somehow.

The doorbell rang.

“Er…”

Jalil had brought her a bunch of sunflowers. Miranda found sunflowers very ugly, and yellow made her so nervous that she suspected it was the cause of war. She was irritated with Jalil for bringing the sunflowers, and irritated with herself for being ungrateful. She stood at the door, a barrier between him and the house, sniffed at the brown florets that spiralled at the centre of the petals. She couldn’t smell anything, but she said, “Thank you. These are beautiful.” Then she closed the door, praying that no one else would come up and ring the doorbell until he had gone. Jalil stood on the doorstep for three seconds, smiling uncertainly, waiting for her to open the door, but she said, “Goodbye! See you at school!” through the letter box, and then he went off, disconsolately dragging his feet against the gravel.