Helen Oyeyemi - White Is for Witching

She took a stick of chalk from her cigarette box, but before she could raise it to her mouth it broke in her hand. Her palms were clammy. She licked her lips and asked Lily a question; she asked Jennifer and her GrandAnna the same question: How is consumption managed?

She heard stones rattle against her window and pushed it open. Down on the street, Ore closed her hand over her remaining pebbles and stepped out of the path of a cyclist. She was wearing a blue dress over her jeans, and at least four belts around her waist. Her eyelashes were neon blue. It was complicated just to look at her.

“Can I come in?”

They tried to cook dinner for themselves, something with rice and dried beans and fresh tomatoes and nutritional value, but the water in the pot shrank much faster than expected and everything burnt black while they kissed and kissed and kissed on Miranda’s sofa. The food burnt even though they’d left the door open so they would smell an emergency.

Ore rose, her lips stinging, to turn the cooker off before anyone else on the staircase complained, and while she was gone Miranda crossed her arms over her body and watched, out of the corner of her eye, the perfect Miranda, who had taken Ore’s place on the sofa and crossed her arms too. She was giddy with hunger.

Ore came back and said, “So much for nutrition. Let’s go and fatten our calves.”

They went arm in arm and kissed in the street, bumping into people because they couldn’t keep an eye on where they were going and kiss at the same time. Boys thought they were drunk and whistled at them. Ore’s skin was hot, and her lips were dry. She touched Miranda’s face and said: “You’re burning up.”

There was a chip shop just off Market Square that displayed photos of its customers on one of its walls. Hardly anyone looked good in these photos. These were photos taken at the end of nights out — the featured subjects had spent hours rising in sweaty heat and then blithely collapsed, like soufflés. There was a photo of Tijana near the bottom. She was with two girls and a guy, none of whom Miranda knew. There was glitter in Tijana’s hair and the photo seemed to have been taken while she was in the middle of saying “What?” Miranda was surprised. But then what had she expected Tijana to do when they got here; evaporate?

They bounced down from the shop doorstep, and Ore commanded: “Now you tell me a story.” She held the paper cone full of chips between them as reverently as if it had been a ring to bind them. Miranda took a chip.

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who kept dreaming about a little girl called Eden. She knew exactly what Eden looked like, how tall she was, what her voice sounded like, how she smelt, all sweet and powdery. Everything. But she had never met a little girl called Eden.”

Already Ore had nearly finished the chips; Miranda stopped and gave her a reproachful look while she made up for the time she’d lost talking.

“Go on,” Ore said, after a few seconds, raising the cone up above Miranda’s head and out of her reach.

“Well… she didn’t know how she’d get to meet Eden,” Miranda improvised. “So one day she stood outside the gate of her local primary school at home time and called out: ‘Eden, Eden,’ in a motherly sort of voice as all the kids ran out.”

“And?”

“Well. One girl stopped and looked at her, and smiled mysteriously.”

Ore frowned. “ And? ”

“Well, it was Eden.”

“What, just like that? What’s the twist?”

“There is no twist, it was Eden. The little girl the woman had been dreaming about.”

“So what then?”

“Er… well, then the woman took Eden’s hand and they went home together.”

Ore looked disgusted as she threw the last few chips into her mouth. “And lived happily ever after, I suppose,” she said.

Miranda smiled. “In a way. As they walked home the woman began to remember why she had been dreaming about Eden, and why Eden had been sent to her.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. As soon as they got home she strangled Eden and cooked her for supper. Then she went to bed all drowsy and full and she settled in to get ready for the next dream. The dreams were like a menu, you see, only someone else chose the courses for her.”

Ore laughed, but she seemed aghast. “You just made that up on the spot I suppose,” she said.

“Indeed no, it’s a very old story. Older than the one about the soucouyant,” Miranda teased. “Now. Your turn again.”

Ore thought.

“Okay, this one is true and, I suppose, more boring because of that. For a couple of years I had a birthday every other month. If I wanted my mum to make me a cake I’d just say that I felt as if it was my birthday. My mum would say, It’s not your birthday yet, wait a bit. And I’d be like… I’m not even asking for presents, just some cake to show you’re glad I was born, and Mum would get flustered and say, But it’s not your birthday! And then I’d pull out the silencer, which was: ‘How would you know? You weren’t there, man.’ She’d bake the cake after that. But one day my dad took me aside and said that I couldn’t keep doing it, that I was worrying her. He said my mum thought I was trying to tell her that I didn’t like her. I went through the whole how do you know when my birthday is, you weren’t even there thing with him and he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Let me show you something.’ He showed me my birth certificate. It was just like he’d showed me a gun — suddenly I was looking at something that had no life of its own but was stronger than me. I was eight. I hadn’t known that everyone had a bit of paper that proved the date and place of their birth and all that stuff. I was trapped. And embarrassed. Yeah, so I stopped doing the frequent-birthday thing—”

Miranda interrupted her: “What are you doing?”

“What?” Ore said. “You mean why are my eyes closed? I was trying to see it while I said it. To make sure it was true.”

“And did you?”

“Yes.”

“You might want to keep your eyes open whilst walking,” Miranda said.

“You wouldn’t let me walk into anything,” Ore said.

Miranda took her hand.

puts the kettle on.

Sade puts the kettle on,

Sade puts the kettle on and sparks fly out. Electric shocks say it’s time to leave, bye bye. They get inside your head and hurt you so you can’t speak you can only tremble and for some time the will to open your eyes escapes you, bye bye. A word that you believe in jangles in your head until it no longer has meaning.

Courage, cabbage, cuttage, cottage.

What was the first word?

Cabbage?

Very good.

Juju is not enough to protect you. Everything you have I will turn against you. I’ll turn sugar bitter for you. I’ll take your very shield and crack it on your head. White is for witching, so ti gbo ? Do you understand now? White is for witching, Sade goodbye.

I woke up and Miranda was on top of me, clinging to me, I knew she would be lost. Her head was thrown back, and her mind was gone from her eyes. When I tried to move, she clung tighter, her thighs locked over and around mine. Her head was up; her eyes looked down but didn’t follow me. She wasn’t awake. I rolled off the bed and she came down with me. I had to prise her fingers from around my neck one by one. I heard her bones click. That broke the spell, and she came to, weeping.

“I can’t stay here,” she said, and got up, hurrying around the room, gathering things and dropping them. “I’m to go home. The house wants me,” she cried. The moonlight made her look blue. It made her look as if she was dead. She opened my window and sat herself on the ledge; she dangled her bare legs over it. We were four floors up.