You Never Grow Out of Being a Witch
Creative Non-Fiction by Maggie Edinger
My twelve-year-old self danced in the woods behind my creepy neighbors house, in long pastel dresses that I would find in cardboard boxes at garage sales. I would gather my supplies of love notes written on white college ruled paper, stolen coffee grounds from my mother's morning fuel and a lighter... you always need a lighter. I also always brought my mom’s old paper prayer books. They reminded me of the Riot Grrrl zines, the way they had stories of archangels and women who were burned at the stake for their ideas, their beliefs, their dreams. I would trace my finger over the pencil drawings of saintly women and wonder what they had wished for, because my spells were just fancy wishes. They always had the same two themes--boys and wishing for my mom’s happiness.
One spell would be a love potion for the boy next door, sticky red and full of sweet smelling perfume, bubbles popping on the surface like kisses. The other one was a feeling, an almost desperate plea to end the curse of sadness that landed on my mother and buried itself into her hair. I used fortune cookies for my happy spells. They seemed to hold such drama in the black words scrolled across small, white tabs of paper, with lucky numbers and symbols. Sometimes I would eat them and swallow my magic like a pill, letting it soak in and travel through me hoping that the next time I touched my mother I would infect her with my fortune.
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My seventeen-year-old self still did the witch dances, just more secretly. The woods were darker, the spells filled with more lust and insecurity than before were still being said. My witch wishes for my mom felt more hopeless. I started to think she was a witch too. How else could she repel my spell for so many years? Her darkness was deep, and isolating. Her brewing storm was a war against what was real and what was only in her head. I burned sage on altars of dead tree logs and held hands with other girls in pastel hues whose parents had lost their powers. When no one notices that you carry prayer books full of scrap paper and harvest people's hearts for blind love you can hide in plain sight. No one knew I had secret powers that were tucked inside my pockets, filled with dead flowers and garlic.
My hiding places were hang outs--the simplicity of having friends that believed in the same craft. We braided each other's snarly hair and whispered of romances we had not felt yet. They made me feel alive. Alive with a twirling of my stomach when I tried to do a handstand without one of them holding my legs, alive with the promise of lips actually feeling love, not just speaking of it. We practiced the art of never feeling alone. Loneliness was my enemy, I had seen it wreck havoc on my mom. I could not and would not allow loneliness to steal my soul. I only felt powerful when I was around the other girls--I fed off them; I loved them; they were my icons, my sisters, my true coven. My own cure for breaking the cycle that I was now fighting against. My physical saints, with real hearts and good grips.
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My twenty-three-year-old self lost track of my childhood spells, misplaced my paperback books, and was trapped in the real world. My relationship with the most important woman in my life was so fragile that if I breathed too hard, too close to it, it could unravel in a million, trillion, tiny specks spread across our past lives. Mental illness is a spell itself. It's sneaky and smart; it gathers your pieces and mixes them with dust; it confuses you and misplaces everyone around it. I forgot my mission to wish away her sadness and moved away from what scared me. She scared me. I wanted to understand her, I wanted to help her, I wanted my love to save her, but it didn't and it wouldn’t no matter how many goddesses held my hand and recited words that were born from cookies. She was my connector to the feminine, the rope holding my spirit; she was casting secrets to the same woods, with the same creepy neighbors. I had to learn that she and I had different struggles: as I was trying to fit in, she was trying to tune out. Our genes had split...she went one way and I went another.
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My thirty-one-year-old self found my old pastel pink dress. Everything was still there, smeared on top of tulle. Old dirt, grass stains, ash--it smelled like coffee and when I closed my eyes, I saw my mother. I saw my saint-girls, and my circles of rituals. Magical powers swirled around my eyes. I missed her, I missed them all. My curse to entice happiness had exploded in my hands. I watched her grow older, not happier. Depression seduced her like a child lured into a car with promises of candy. I was tempted to forget my witch that lived inside, but it was my animal guide, it was a part of me, it's the only part that danced. My paranormal double life made me question if I was doing enough to help her; what else could I do, when I had tried it all. I had outgrown the dresses--I would need new ones if I was going to wake up the witch. I was going to need supplies and the woods and a lighter...can’t forget the lighter. I was going to have to startle her awake so she would pop up quickly and not have time to reflect or second guess. I was worried she might never wake up...what if she never woke up? I had to try, I had to try one last time to see if it might work with older and blacker magic. But the most important thing I needed to do was find what each girl had given me in the past and track those traits down in myself. I had been away for so long, would they remember me? I would track them down one by one, asking each trait to help me. They came, like true blood, never missing a beat, pumping life into the trees like rain. I was back to being superhuman, back to drawing circles in the dark and lighting candles for the living to talk to the dead.
I needed my mother, but she wasn't there. I think she wanted to be but emotionally and mentally could not be. I saw her as Joan of Arc, having visions of archangel Micheal instructing her to support Charles VII and recover France from England's domination late in the Hundred Years’ War. My mother saw visions, heard voices, felt panic. She was trying so hard to fight, but in the end it was too hard. Her sorcery was poison, mine was freedom. Magic can come in many forms, many feelings, many shapes. I loved her and my love would be my spell, the only one that can survive this. I would hold on tight, close my eyes and sage the shit out of my bedroom, chanting for the right words to fill my mouth so I could finally get her to see that I love her. I have always loved her. A witch's love never dies--it swirls. It lingers in a bright cloud above our heads, feeding us at the right time.
Just because my charms did not work didn't mean they were broken. I wasn't a kid who only wished for love at first sight and sweet kisses, I had darker spirits to chase out of my family. In the end I knew I didn’t need the physical charms, or the pastel rainbows...I had to embrace what my spells could not make disappear. I had to give my mother room to live, in whatever world that was. As an adult I still needed cosmic spirits, I still needed caldrons of hot love brewing secretly in my basement. Only this time, the wishes were for hope--not a cure for sadness--but a small, glowing orb of hope, that mixed together with the steamy air like smoke in hopes that it would make its way to my mother's breaths. In. Out. Releasing my connection to her, giving it to her again and again...never giving up. I never grew out of being a witch.
Maggie Edinger has a BA from Columbia College Chicago, where she majored in Art Entertainment, Media Management and minored in Woman’s Studies She published her first body of work last March called Bubble and the Invisible Ghosts, a journal. She has been published in the Remington Review and is currently working on her second book, a memoir. In 2010 she started Lipstick Dinosaur, which she owns and operates, a web based fashion brand that has been featured in Nylon magazine, Time Out Chicago, WGN News and many more. Maggie lives in Philadelphia with her husband, daughter and pit bull Bubble.