Mother, Don’t Poison Us Please

Part I:

There was no suspicious upbringing here, none whatsoever. The clanging of pots at three a.m., signaling both her bedtime and our waking, was of the utmost normalcy. The fine-toothed comb, with which I was entrusted in order to go through our horse’s hair rug on a twice-daily basis to remove new lice eggs, symbolized nothing out of the ordinary either.

Granted, we had little to compare our life to: the friends we had were tasked with keeping silent and remaining motionless, all positions they were well-adjusted for, given their serenity of character and their limp, noddle-like arms, plus their sewed-on button eyes which never seemed to stop staring at us, either in wide-eyed ecstasy or supreme boredom, depending on their mood and ours.

It was all so normal that if someone were to come and call it otherwise, Miranda, Jerome, and I would have all tilted our heads back and howled in unison.

Part II:

But unbeknownst to us, our normal household was about to be upended. It would come when he appeared. But that had yet to occur, and so we lived in blissful serenity, apart from the destruction that had begun to eat away at everything around us.

You see, the crops had been bad that year, all sickly and covered in blight. Even the forsythias, which were usually so ready to please as soon as they’d licked up a good flash of water, were sagging, their unopened buds teeming with orange mites.

And that was just the start of it: the tiny rotting oranges, the shriveled olives, the sagging tomato vines, covered in mold, and even the wilted blanched dandelions — everything seemed to be hovering on the brink of death.

Mother said it was a curse.

She said it was because we were disloyal to her and because we often ran away screaming when she tried to force-feed us dark fibrous mixtures that almost certainly contained frogs’ eyes and samples of our own hair, which, when we had all examined each other for lice (as Mother had bid us do nightly), we had found missing from our already-scraggly locks (as a side note, Mother was never a great barber, and I suspect even worse when she cut our hair in the dead of night after drinking, especially given the fact we were all horizontal and tangled together, sleeping in one sweaty mass, as we had done since before we could remember).

In either case, Mother had declared the blight our fault. We needed to wake earlier, work harder, and most of all, flagellate the dark spirits out of our minds through the drinking of her concoction daily. The first two we could do gladly, if not with a bit of prodding to Miranda, who was, by constitution, a bit of a sow in the wee hours of the morning (although who can blame her, for three a.m. is a hefty order even for near-adults like us).

But that was not the crux of our problems, for it was the last demand that we altogether could not meet: no matter how hard we had tried, two of us plugging the others’ noise and ears (for the stench seemed to get in that way too) while the third one drank, none of us managed to get a gulp of mother’s noxious poison down without retching.

After five failed attempts each, with Mother scowling at us all the while, we finally all figured out it was best just to pretend to (or actually) wretch and faint and then wait for Mother to go for the smelling salts. Then, when she was gone, we would snap up from the ground and hurl the wicked concoction across the rocks next to Mother’s cauldron, then as the liquid hissed and steamed on the hot stones, we would run like fury before she could grab us and brand us with her hot iron.

Part III:

Yes, it was indeed our fault, and as the months wore on, it became apparent the curse was not lifting, and therefore there would be nothing to eat that winter, and that if there were nothing to eat that winter, Mother would either send us away or eat us herself.

And so, sadly, we had continued in our daily tasks and compulsory avoidance of Mother at opportune times (meaning, in the afternoon after she had woken up and nearly finished preparing that day’s potion, and also when she was apt to be hungry, during the twilight hours).

All the while, we had grown more and more somber and thin, our faces seeming to have elongated in a magical garish manner so they could almost be found dragging on the very lice-infested carpets we had been charged eternally with cleaning. And alas, not even that bode well for us, for no matter how many eggs we would each grab from the dark recesses of the weave, aha-ing with glee as we lifted them up, each a precious pearl plucked up from the depths of the ocean, there seemed to be always more, and we wondered if that were not another curse that Mother would pronounce our fault.

Part IV:

The day that he had come, though, there had been a strange wind in the air, carrying smells we did not associate with our little patch of land, smells that pleased our nostrils and lifted our elongated faces toward the South and the Sun, smells that led us involuntarily, away from our task at the rug, out the broken front door which was still littered with glass from the long window that had been shattered one day about a month prior and never repaired, and then down beyond the barbed-wire front gate and to the woods beyond.

When we were finally far out in front of the house, that’s when we had heard the noise. It had been the sound of the bottom gate creaking open. That’s what I remember best. Our house sat on a slight hill, the runway leading up to it pebbled and weed-filled, but nonetheless rising. At the bottom was a gate, only Mother had warned us it was magical, and only we and our blood relations could get through it, plus anyone else that Mother in her inner consciousness allowed.

I startled and jumped when I saw him, but would not for the life of me run for Mother. It was still early afternoon and she was deep in slumber. The last time I had woken her at this time she had thrown a hot iron at my forehead, and it had taken all sorts of healing balms and incantations to shrink my forehead from the size of a large black-and-blue pumpkin, back to its original form. And even now it sometimes hurts me.

No, I would indeed not call Mother.

But of course, Miranda had reminded me of the orders: “Wake Mother,” she had said, eyes big and bulging and mouth curved into a resolute frown.

Miranda still four, believed rules were to be followed, no ifs, ands, or buts, bulging foreheads nor flying irons notwithstanding.

And because of that, I had simply looked at her a moment, pursed my lips, and then grabbed her by the hair with one hand and covered her mouth with the other, pulling her writhing mass with me as I ducked behind the adjacent stone wall, right as the man was stepping past the gate.

Normally, we would have all three pelted him with stones and made up the sincerest of insults. Jerome got to work in doing those very things, and with great pizzazz and creativity I might add, but Miranda and I did not. Strange, indeed.

The way the man walked kept me from it. It was not his stooped-over manner, for normally that would have encouraged me all the more to berate him, but it was instead something else, some sort of dignity and forced uprightness in his crooked frame. It nearly spewed regality, and so (and also on account of holding a writhing, biting Miranda) I was unable to join my brother in his vigorous assault.

And of course, Jerome was putting up a valiant front: he can hardly keep himself from any misdeed even if his hands had happened to be tied behind his back, as they had been that day on account of his earlier refusal to drink Mother’s concoction.

So there I was, holding a writhing Miranda and watching as the man stopped, lifted his hands in defense, and winced as each stone from Jerome’s well-practiced arm hit its target (for Jerome had used a sharp stone to free his hands from behind his back and that was why he was now able to aim so well).

Part V:

I was quite beginning to enjoy myself, actually, save for Miranda’s kicking and screaming and ferocious biting (as her incisors were coming in nicely), but then the man let out a long cry, reaching up to his forehead, and wiped away blood. Perhaps it made my own headache from where mother had thrown the iron long ago, for I cannot think of another reason I might have gotten that terrible twitching feeling in my stomach.

The man was getting close, and I could see the confused look in his eyes, as if he thought he were coming to see a friend and he had no idea why such a travesty would befall him up the path.

Then, as my forehead burned, it occurred to me that he might know Mother, that he almost certainly did.

“Stop!” I yelled to Jerome. The man looked straight at the spot in the wall I was hiding behind, although I was doing a poor job of it indeed because Miranda’s arms and legs were flailing and protruding up above the stones like blades of a windmill.

“Hello!” shouted the man. He lifted his arms and waved. “Ivy, stop!”

As soon as I heard my name I froze. No one knew my name. No one.

Without quite thinking it through, but with an entire wealth of electricity surging through my veins, probably enough to light the entire little town visible through Mother’s looking glass, I jumped up fast, still holding Miranda’s flailing body as I did.

“Stop Jerome!” I shouted, without thinking. “Stop!”

I knew Jerome was turning beady hate-filled eyes toward me because I could feel the burning on the back of my neck, hot with my betrayal. We were never supposed to use our names in another’s presence, for that could be used against us in incantations and spells. Mother had drilled that sacred rule into us since the moment we were old enough to understand, and now I had just broken it.

“Ivy!” The man was now so close to me that I could see the little burn marks around his eyes and across his right cheek in a splattering pattern as if he had had acid thrown on him before. A shiver automatically ran through me and immediately I released Miranda’s kicking, screaming mass and let her run up the hill towards the house and Mother’s bed-chamber where I knew she would knock thrice and sing the magic incantation to let Mother know that upon our peaceful home, some strange madness has been unleashed, and I only prayed to high heavens (which Mother says are far and away against us), that Miranda could dodge well Mother’s iron and bring her running back here to save us.

But it was entirely too long, I knew that. I could tell that by the way that the stones kept on being launched from Jerome’s hiding place, a constant barrage with an aim that has been developed over years of fox hunting with stones (due to the fact that Mother said Jerome could not be trusted with a proper weapon, and perhaps she was right).

Just then Jerome launched a hard precise shot at the man, and the stone went whizzing by my head so close and so fast my reflexes took over and I ducked.

The stone went barreling into the man’s left eyeball, sending his arms flailing as he faltered backward and then, without warning, fell on the ground with a thud that was louder than I would have expected, given his size and relative bent-over-ness.

“Jerome stop!” I shouted, rushing over to him and grabbing him by both shoulders and then shaking him hard. He may be able to throw, but I am still a head taller than him, and the muscles I’ve developed building Mother’s wooden funeral pyres can still dwarf his in comparison.

He shuddered and then stopped. We both looked toward the man. Perhaps I had disarmed the wrong person, and as I turned, I sensed a strange and powerful presence behind me, and I saw Jerome’s eyes getting big in a way they had not even when Mother had earlier that year held the scalpel out and threatened to skin him alive, and I knew, because of this, that the man was about to curse Jerome dead, and I, I Ivy Valeria Quixet, would have my brother’s blood on my hands, and that Mother had drilled into us, is a sin unforgivable and deserving of fire unquenchable.

Part VI:

“Noooo!” I screamed, turning and launching myself at the man.

We slammed to the ground together, but then the man rolled me over with surprising strength so before I knew it I was on my back, and quicker than perhaps I had anticipated, given his age and his bent-over frame and the blood on his face, he was up, facing Jerome, holding his arm out to him

“Father?” said Jerome.

I stopped, having just been able to get to my knees.

I turned my head. “We don’t have a father,” I spit. For some reason, the words were acrid on my tongue. “We have only Mother.”

But the man was nodding and holding out his hand, and I was just then recalling a far-off distant memory in which a man runs screaming from the house clutching at his face, while Mother stands in the doorway with an empty bucket howling like a wolf.

But that had most likely just been a dream.

“Ivy,” said the man then. He held out his hand to me. “I have missed you.”

But I just pulled away and shook my head because this stooped-over, acid-marked man could not be my father, and certainly did not look like what I might have imagined my regal father to be, if I had ever imagined such a thing (which I had never done), and what’s more, Mother had told us clearly that our father had died years ago in a boiling cauldron that he had leaned over just a hair too much, and that now she was all we had and would ever have until eternity rolled back on itself and the whole world was engulfed in flames.

“Eliiiii!”

The shout was bloody as if Mother’s veins had been ripped open and her very life force was rushing forth from them, screaming as it did.

We all turned our heads as she ran hard down the hill. She was a sight to behold, screaming, as she barreled towards us, her large chest heaving up and down in a quite unbecoming manner, and her long black mottled hair bouncing up and down behind her, providing almost enough air turbulence for lift-off. For a long moment, we all stood silent, our eyes riveted in equal parts admiration and repulsion.

Part VII:

But then she shouted real comprehensible words.

“Elijaaaah! Get away from here!”

As she ran, my eyes were suddenly drawn to her face, which was contorted into the most charismatic show of hatred I had ever seen from her, which for Mother, is really something.

Then I noticed it, swinging back and forth from her right hand as she ran: a bucket, a bucket which I realized at that moment must be exactly what was all over this man’s — could it be Father’s? — face, and all the sudden I looked at Jerome, and he looked at me, and a terrible decision which we had never ever thought to be faced with was upon us, and I looked fast to the man who was holding out his hand to Mother, his palm facing hers as if he had some magic power beyond what she did since he was not moving even one inch in the face of her oncoming stampede, but instead, standing, his eyes fixed straight on her.

“Elise,” he said, and for an instant, Mother halted, as if a strong wind had just blasted into her from his direction.

“Elise. Do not do this,” he said then. He remained motionless.

But a look of strange resolution, which made Mother look more like a real live charging boar than anything else, crossed her face then, and the wind seemed to have stopped for she was again barreling toward him and shouting and swinging the bucket as if to throw it hard against him and then right before she did I shouted, and for a brief moment, I considered throwing my body in between them in a heroic act of selfless love, for a man who was likely not even my real father, in what would likely be the end of me or at least a permanent disfigurement, which likely would not matter as Mother had made it abundantly clear that there was no other place for me in this world for all eternity, other than here by her side.

But just then, I caught a glimpse of something up by the house. It was red. It was small. It was moving in our direction and weeping quietly.

“Mother,” I said. My voice was icy and cold and full of grating sandpaper, and because of that (I presume), Mother came to a sudden halt and turned her gaze directly on me, eyes boring a hole straight in my chest, my disrespect to be repaid later, or perhaps in the very next instant.

“What?” she hissed, gripping the bucket tighter.

“Mother. Did you hurt Miranda?”

The shape was coming closer to us down the hill, and I could see that it was a child running and stumbling with blood oozing from its head. My heart leaped into my throat because all of a sudden I could see who it was clearly: Miranda, but a Miranda I did not know, a Miranda with her head covered in blood.

“What if I did!” shouted Mother, and then she spat, as if no words would express what she felt for me, for this man in front of her, for Miranda, the bleeding monster behind her, and quite possibly, for Jerome, who was holding his stones tentatively in his untied hands, as if not sure who to cast them at.

“Enough from you!" she shouted, and then she took a step and swung back her bucket, her eyes drilling not into the man, but instead, directly into mine. Before I could react, she had swung it forward and a whole stream of liquid, hot and bubbling, sailed through the air arching beautifully upward so that in a second it would rain down acid fire upon my head, and I screamed and ducked, but even as I did so, I felt wiry strong arms around me and a body covering mine and pushing me hard to the rocky weed-filled ground.

Then, came the splatter of rain falling, only briefly, accompanied by a sharp cry from directly above me and the hiss of something burning into flesh, and then for a moment, everything fell silent.

A moment passed.

Then, stiffly, the man lifted himself off of me, pulling off his garments quickly and throwing them on the ground, even as the sizzling acid burned into his shoulder.

I looked up, trembling now for the first time since I can remember. Mother had really done it. She had. And she was all I would ever have.

Part VIII:

My gaze fixed on Miranda, the small bleeding child advancing behind Mother’s back.

Any moment now Mother would turn.

“Stop,” said the man then, standing up again to his full height, wincing as the acid burned deeper into his shoulder.

Mother took one look at him and swung the bucket back again, but this time she took a step forward and launched herself toward the man to be sure she didn’t miss any surface area with the limited supply of acid left in the bucket. But this was her one mistake (or one of many throughout her life, but that was neither here nor there at this moment), and as she took her one step, her foot wedged between a rock and a large root, and she suddenly began to fall forward, the bucket spiraled out and up, flying into the air above her, the contents swirling out and then falling, like a soft rain, all over her head.

“Nooooooo!” she screamed.

Her skin sizzled like frogs in hot oil.

I just watched, covering my ears as I screamed. “Noooo!”

Or perhaps it was Mother who screamed. I do not to this day know.

Then all fell silent again and I felt a tug on my hand.

Miranda had reached us and was standing there next to me, strangely quiet, watching, even as blood poured from her own head.

Before us, Mother seemed to disintegrate, melt even, her body sinking lower and lower into the ground.

“Elise, leave us,” said the man, a strange authority in his voice.

Mother, as if she had now become nothing more than the real live snake she had always threatened us she could morph into, turned and struggled to her knees, even as she clawed wildly at her burning face. She ran off in the direction of the woods, howling like a wolf, and although a part of me said to run after her, and I am sure the same voice spoke in Jerome's head, neither of us did.

Instead, we all stood there and listened for what seemed like an eternity until her screams sounded like nothing more than the distant howls of a wolf having lost its pack.

I turned then and screamed myself, truly assessing Miranda for the first time since she'd come out here. Blood was still pouring from her head, and her face was growing paler by the second.

“Miranda!” I screamed. And then I realized I have done it to all of us: we are all under his power now for he had heard all of our names.

And the man nodded, and as if he saw this type of thing every hour of every day, turned his burned face toward Miranda, took two steps towards her, put his hands on her head for a long moment, and then pulled his hands away.

I gasped.

It was magic.

True magic.

Jerome and I are sure of it, even to this day.

For right before us, Miranda’s head became whole and clean, the very blood that had been a moment earlier oozing out, now sucked back in as if she were traveling backward in time to the moment before Mother had thrown the iron at her.

I looked at the man.

He looked at me, then at Jerome, then down at Miranda, whose head was again cupped between his hands, as if in blessing.

“Father,” I said, my voice croaking like that of a toad’s. Jerome looked at me as if to laugh, but then a sobering strange knowingness settled over his face too, and he nodded, and Miranda looked at us as if she had not just been lampooned by a hot iron in the first place (and not by her Mother either), and the man nodded, and because of his pockmarked face and his stooped way and the acid somehow having spared everything except his shoulder and the fact that he knew us by our real names, I realized that everything was about to fundamentally change, and probably forever.

To my left, I saw a sagging bleached dandelion begin to straighten and regain its vibrance, and I wondered if perhaps the lice in the rug were gone too.

Later, when I got to the house, I discovered they were, and I threw the fine-toothed comb into Mother’s cauldron, then lugged the whole thing out back and poured the contents into a hole in the earth.

“Well done Ivy,” Father had said when he saw, and I had turned and smiled. He did not look so stooped over anymore, although the acid marks were still there, and I suspected they always would be.