The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation (5 page)

“Kill it,” Felicita ordered her daughter.

“I can’t stand to hear bugs crunch beneath my shoe.”

“Then use my shoe,” she said, tugging angrily at the laces of her boot. She jerked off her boot, throwing it at Salia, who ducked. “You will kill the roach,” she screeched from a red face.

She showed her long nails, and Salia gulped at the razor-like tips. She clutched her elbows, clinging to herself, as if she could save herself from Mother’s wrath.

“It’s the sound of death you can’t stand, you spineless girl. Get used to it, for death is all we have in the end.” Mother dropped to her knees, slamming
a hairbrush on the cockroach. The bug splattered against the bristles of the brush. She smiled at Salia. “Let me brush your hair.”

Salia covered her mouth, to keep from throwing up, as Mother brought the dirty brush down upon her head, rubbing the remains of the cockroach into her scalp.

I won’t vomit. I mustn’t show more weakness
.

Grandma came to the door with a dress draped over her arm. The dress was made of a coarse, homespun material, brown and shapeless, but it was new.

“What are we going to do with her?” Mother said. “The girl won’t even kill a cockroach.”

“Perhaps, my granddaughter needs a more sporting foe than a bug. It is good you are sending her to school to mix with the villagers.”

Salia closed her eyes, her stomach no longer upset. She visibly shook. “Do I have to go to school, Mother?”

“Can you imagine,” Mother said to Grandma. “My child afraid?”

“I don’t want to go! Please don’t make me!”

“Then, you don’t want the dress your grandmother made you,” she said, snatching the dress and throwing it from the room.

Salia glared at stoic Grandma. She never stood up for her against Mother. Not only did she love Mother more than she loved her own flesh and blood granddaughter, but there was an inhuman bond between the two.

“I shall have to drag you to school by the hair,” Mother said, yanking at her hair.

Salia winced. She wouldn’t dare. The last thing Mother wanted was to be a spectacle. Any family business was kept between the walls of this damned house.

“Good. You are not a stupid girl, just a stubborn one,” Mother said, scraping her fingernail across Salia’s neck and leaving a red mark. “You refuse to learn what is good for you, don’t you, my darling?” She rubbed her beneath the chin, as if she was a cat. Instead of purring, Salia stared straight ahead, her arms hanging limp at her sides.

Mother put her boot back on and lifted her foot, resting it against Salia’s crotch. She laced up the boot, pulling the laces tight. At least, going to school would get her away from servitude. Salia had been enslaved since her earliest memory.

Mother took an apple from her skirt pocket, handing it to Salia. “Do as I have instructed you. Be ready in five minutes, my Darling.”

Salia cringed at the endearment. She hated those two words:
My darling
. When Mother addressed her kindly, her punishment was to be meted out at a time and place of Felicita’s choosing, and Salia’s stress over the coming event made the punishment that much sweeter to Mother, who took pleasure from other’s pain. Mother was a sadist, Grandma a masochist, which made the two women a perfectly matched couple, in a twisted sort of way. As for Salia, she was what?
The experiment
.

Mother danced the Charleston out the door, and Grandma followed like her faithful lap dog, her normally quiet moccasins dragging against the floor because she did not like Felicita being so modern, but Grandma held her tongue. Mother’s temper even made Grandma timid. Salia sometimes hated her for loving Mother more, especially since Mother was not a loveable person.

Salia pushed the women’s relationship to the back of her mind, placing it in a chest and locking it away with a key. She wished she had the courage to throw the key away, but a twisted part of her took pleasure in retrieving the memories in her chest, especially the painful ones.

When Mother had twirled, Salia noted the lumps sewn into her petticoat hem. The lumps were a collection of little bags stuffed with villagers’ hair—one lump for each villager who ever angered her.

Salia lifted her own petticoat, smiling at the two lumps sewn into the hem.

Another cockroach crawled across the floor. This roach was pregnant.

Salia jumped from her chair and stomped on the pregnant cockroach, bringing her boot down, over and over, until the expectant mother and all her eggs were smashed goo on the heel of her boot.

There
, she thought,
now, the whole family’s dead
.

4

S
alia marched towards the one-room school house. The elder children attended school in the afternoon, the younger in the morning. It was going on one.

She pulled at her hair, trying to clean the bug from her scalp. She should have asked Grandma to brush it out, but she had been too angry to speak to her. Her new dress had vanished, and she was clothed in the old rags she always wore. Well, at least her petticoat had two lumps. She wasn’t as stupid as Mother claimed. Salia knew more magic than she pretended to. She kicked against the lumps, feeling better, hoping Mother and Grandma had the headache with each kick of her boot.

She climbed the steps to the schoolhouse, lingering shyly in the doorway. One handful of copper-red hair stuck up from her scalp.

“Salia Esperanza?” the teacher said. “I am Miss Woodhouse.”

Salia thought,
I know who you are, Teacher. You are the seventh lump on Mother’s petticoat. It is Mother’s fault no man will ever marry you, but as Grandma says, she has done you a favor
.

Miss Woodhouse wore spectacles, a cape, and a bonnet, even when inside. She coughed uncomfortably, wiping her hands on her dress. “The first day of school started seven weeks ago, Salia,” she said with exasperation. She straightened, folding her hands on the desk. “The letter mailed out instructed all parents to bring their children on September first.”

“My mother is not all parents. She never goes by others’ timetables.”

“You will be more than a month behind the others,” Miss Woodhouse pointed out. “Can you read?”

Salia nodded her head, yes.

Miss Woodhouse piled three books into Salia’s arms, slamming each book on top of the previous. “The three Rs. Reading. ’Riting. ’Rithmetic. Find somewhere to sit in the back and tomorrow, don’t be tardy.”

Salia’s shoulders were rounded, her toes pointed in. Her ragged hair was tangled about her monkey face. She had a look of disdain on her dirty
face, as she scanned the faces of the other pupils, who were scrubbed shiny clean.

The other kids dropped their eyes to the floor, their faces flushed beet red.

She stared straight ahead, like a robot, balancing the heavy books in her skinny arms. She shuffled down the aisle, looking for a seat.

The kids held their fingers to their noses, as she passed.

Miss Woodhouse smiled to the side of her mouth, not disciplining the children on their bad manners.

The wooden desks were long, the type shared by two children, sitting side by side. There were four empty seats left.

One row after another, as Salia passed an available seat, the boy or girl sitting in the adjoining seat slid into the empty one, so she wouldn’t sit there. Salia bit her tongue and the cuss words threatening her composure. She wished she didn’t care so much, and the rejection of the others didn’t hurt.

Finally, Salia snaked her way around all the aisles, until there was but one empty seat at the front.

It’s the girl from the funeral
, she thought,
the one with the dead uncle. What was the family’s name again? Rodríguez, I think Mother said
.

She hugged her books in her arms, unsure whether or not to place them on the other girl’s desk or sit on the floor.

Behind her, the other kids snickered, egging on the girl to reject her, just as the others did.

Marcelina paid no heed to the snickering. She didn’t even hear them because Salia’s eyes arrested her. Such isolation reflected back at her. Salia’s blue-grey eyes looked like two ships lost at sea, being tossed about by an adjoining storm, neither ship able to come to the aid of the other.

Along with her loneliness mingled fury. Salia’s anger was a palpitating, living thing. The storm raging in her eyes was like the earth rumbling below the ground, which was something everyone in Madrid feared because the men worked in the coal mines, where two-by-fours of lumber held a roof of earth above their heads, and where there was but one way out.

But one way out
.

One day
, Marcelina thought,
Salia’s fury will cave in. There will be such a storm then, Madrid will surely rumble
.

“You can sit here, Salia,” she spoke very low so wasn’t sure if she heard her.

A sigh of relief escaped Salia’s lips.

“I’m Marcelina,” she said, smiling shyly at her.

Salia set her books down, and Marcelina slid over to make room.

Salia silently took her seat.

The other kids looked disappointed.

Out of the corner of one eye, Marcelina examined Salia. Her head hung down, her wild hair hiding the expression on her face. Salia rolled a pencil between her hands. The pencil clicked against a ring on her finger. The clicking was in tune to her boots hitting the front of the desk. Her left toe stuck out of a hole in the leather. Her nails were dirty and ragged. So was her face. It wasn’t true what the other kids said though. Salia didn’t stink. In fact, she smelled rather good, like peaches. She just needed someone to wash her face.

Unlike her mother and grandmother, Salia did not seem dangerous, just lacking in social graces. Click. Click. Click, went the sound of her pencil passing across her ring. Kick. Kick. Kick, went the sound of her boots.

Until a spitball, hit her in the back of her head.

Salia dropped her pencil, her lips moving silently.

Marcelina bent her head under the desk to pick up the pencil.

Salia swung her head around, locking eyes with the boy who threw the spitball at her. She stared at Jose Pena, opening her eyes wide until dark-blue veins stuck out of her eyelids.

With a pale face and hollowed cheeks, he stared back at her like a zombie, struck by the force of her gaze, literally drowning in her whirlpool of emotions. Regret. Sadness. Fear. Shock. Hatred. Salia especially threw out hatred at him, making his brain numb and an overwhelming lightheadedness consume him.

His head slowly circled his neck.

His eyelids drooped to his cheeks.

All oxygen left his body, his lungs deflating into his spine.

Only Salia could see his flesh separate from his bones. His organs disintegrate.

His heart over there. His liver here. His lungs in one corner. His kidneys the other corner. His bladder under the desk.

Especially his bladder. Jose was pissing in his pants, giving his feet a shower as urine seeped beneath his socks.

He was dying. His spirit was breaking free from his body, tearing his guts open, from the inside out.

Finally, his spirit did break free and whooshed from his belly button.

His soul floated from the ceiling, looking down upon his empty shell.

“Here, I picked up your pencil,” Marcelina said.

Salia moved her eyes away from Jose, breaking her spell.

He gasped for air, clutching his collar, having re-entered his body. The re-entry was like carbonated soda sealed inside a bottle to trap the air bubbles. Green saliva bubbled from his lips. Mucus ran from his nose. Goose-bumps erupted on his arms. He rubbed his chest, blinking his eyes to hold back his tears. Everyone in the room heard his fart when he shit his pants.

“There must be a cold going around. Boys are weak, susceptible to all sorts of things,” Salia commented. She laughed, clenching her desk, belying her humorous mood. She peeked at Marcelina from the corner of her eye, wondering if she had seen her black onyx ring glowing. Two ivory letters were engraved on the ring. The first letter was a
B
, the second letter an
R. Black Rose
.

Salia sat there, breathing heavily, her eyes closed, her hands clenched into fists.
Control, Salia
, she thought.
It’s all about control. Remember what Mother has taught you—there is a time and a place for everything
.

After some boring lessons, Miss Woodhouse told the students they could play outside for 15 minutes. Salia followed Marcelina to the school ground, like a puppy biting at her sock.

You can’t shake me
, Salia thought, running after her to the back of the schoolhouse, where there was no one else around. “I’ve never had a friend before,” she said, pathetically.

“I’m not your friend. Just go away before you ruin my life.”

“Don’t worry. No other kids can see us,” Salia shyly said. She yanked at an apple hidden in her pocket and held it out to her. The apple was shiny, because Salia had taken the time to rub the fruit against the filthy hem of her dress. The apple was meant for Miss Woodhouse, but Salia had changed her mind.