Love Potion

Old Margrete did not truly sell little Jenny Weaver a love potion to ensnare Will Carpenter on the eve of the Maying moon. The very idea of the flaxen-haired, apple-cheeked, green-eyed Jennivere of the Loom needing such a thing, when anyone could see Will’s infatuation with her, set Old Margrete’s raspy throat to bitter laughter. All shy Jenny ever needed was to smile at Will once, and he would be hers, and to that end, when Jenny stumbled, weepy-eyed, into Old Margrete’s cottage at the edge of the woods, Old Margrete gave her the potion she needed.

That is, a hearty draft of strong ale, mixed with chamomile and ginger root to disguise the taste.

“A love potion true?” Jenny had asked. “And ‘twill turn Will’s eyes to mine?”

“Never fret thee,” Old Margrete assured her, “but hie to the commons and catch thy beloved’s gaze. The potion be not all; for the spell to take, he must look upon thy face, and thee upon his.”

“For how long?”

Old Margrete tucked the yellow hair behind little Jenny’s ear. “For as long as is needful.”

And sure enough, two days later the banns were cried and shortly thereafter the wedding of Jenny and Will was celebrated. Old Margrete did not attend, for folk did not care to see her warty face on happy occasions, and Old Margrete did not, for the most part, care to see the townspeople who came to her under cover of darkness, begging for remedies, or the clever hands of the midwife, but made the sign of the evil eye against her should they meet in the light.

So all would have been well, had not the churchman, as he did once a year, perhaps, begin his speechifying against evil, quoting, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” and casting meaningful glances in the direction of her cottage. And still and all, nothing would have come of it, save that Jenny, made bold in her nuptial joy, began to tell around town that, witch though she may be, Old Margrete was a good witch, a kind and loving and helpful witch.

Sides were taken. Eduard Atwater, the alchemist, who also served as village apothecary, had much dealing with Old Margrete, and paid a good price for her herbs. He named those whose mothers had called upon Old Margrete during complicated labors. “Many of us would not be here to today to speak against evil were it not for Old Margrete’s skill,” he said. “Her knowledge of medicinal herbs rivals mine, and comes through experience. She is no more witch than I.”

“Reject the devil in all his forms!” the churchman countered. Sent from the city when the old churchman passed, he had not been raised among them in the village and had no sense of the usefulness of a village witch. “Be not seduced by the fair face of evil.”

“Hardly a fair face,” muttered those who had seen Old Margrete in daylight, but the churchman was young, with a powerful voice that projected across the square, across the commons. It could not be shut out. The more words were spoken in Old Margrete’s defense, the more insistent was he that the old woman had seduced those souls rightly belonging to him, and that she must be put in her place.

“’Tis all my doing!” Jenny wailed, having crept to Old Margrete’s window late at night. It was the eve before the harvest moon, so there was light enough that she had no fear, and besides, little Jenny was with child already, and came also for the tea of fennel and peppermint that Old Margrete mixed so well.

But truly, she came to warn. “There’s talk of cleansing by fire!” Jenny wept. “They’ll burn thee, Margrete, and whether thee be witch or no, thee hast never harmed the merest hair on any mortal’s head.”

“Worry thy thoughts no longer, but get thee home safe to thy husband’s arms,” Old Margrete crooned, again tucking a strand of yellow hair behind the girl’s ear. “Old Margrete’s lived through witch hunts a-plenty.”

“How shall thee find succor?” Jenny sobbed. “Where in the wide world is shelter for thy good old bones?”

“Old Margrete shall stay,” she promised. “There be remedy for all life’s ills here in my pots and jars.” And she sent Little Jenny on her way with the loose tea, along with a bit of licorice to soothe her gravid belly.

Then she went among her herbs and began to mumble to herself as she mixed. “There be love potions and love potions,” she cackled. “And if it’s love that be lacking here, soon there shalt be love a-plenty, even for one with a face such as Old Margrete’s.”

And she mixed something stronger than ale, and sweeter than chamomile, and sharper than ginger, a barrel of it, and said words that were best not to speak, then corked the barrel, hooked a dipper in her belt, and rolled herself and her concoction down the lane. As she went through the moon-dark town, she ladled a dipper of this medicine into every water jug and barrel she came across, with a triple dose for the churchman’s morning ablutions, until she came at last to the village well.

With some straining, for her old joints were sore and her back long since bent under by the weight of the things she knew, Old Margrete hefted the barrel and poured its contents into the water supply, where one and all would draw their drink when the sun rose. “Oh, they’ll see a love potion now, won’t they ever,” Old Margrete muttered.

She slept very late into the afternoon, and when she hobbled out into the day, her front path was strewn with asters and chrysanthemums, her shutters hung with fresh pine wreaths, and three strong young men, the churchman chief among them, were thatching her roof with sweet heather.

End of the Line

They almost always took the same bus, almost always to the end of the line, and they almost always found something to say to Michele.

“Hey, white girl? Where can I get me some shoes like that?”

“Choo bring your lunch? Got mayonnaise? Got white bread?”

“You too good to talk to us, white girl? You think you special? You ridin’ the bus like everyone else. You cleaning rich folks’ houses same as us.”

There were four: two black and two Latina. The Latina girls, Merari and Laura, were sisters. The black girls, Vanessa and Aliyah, were cousins. All of them, except Laura, were fat and proud. Laura was skinny and proud, and the others accused her of being anorexic. Vanessa had two kids, ten-year-old twins. Her husband was good to her, but he worked third shift. Merari had three kids, with three different baby daddies. Laura was engaged, but the other girls made fun of her fiancé. Aliyah had a boyfriend, but he was married to someone else.

Michele’s shoes came from the Goodwill, her lunch would be whatever she found in her employer’s fridge, and she didn’t think she was too special to talk to these women. But she didn’t belong on the bus, and she wasn’t meant to clean rich folks’ houses. She had never scrubbed a toilet or taken public transit until last year.

“She never says nothing.”

They ribbed each other, too, and they were all friends, so she knew, now, that they hadn’t been malicious, not at first. She should have tossed a joke back once or twice, let them know she wasn’t what they thought, but that opportunity had vanished.

The bus broke down.

A hissing squeal emanated from the engine, followed by a white cloud, and the driver hustled everyone off. They milled around, complaining, arguing. Some pulled out cell phones. Some began walking. One or two checked their watches and wallets before hailing a cab.

Michele remembered hailing cabs.

The driver announced that another bus would come.

“When?” shouted Merari.

The driver shrugged.

Michele shrunk away, leaned against a street sign, feeling ugly and helpless. She didn’t notice the old white Cadillac beside her until the redneck in the big white cowboy hat spoke.

“Bus broke down?” he asked.

She nodded, looked away. He slid over to the passenger seat, stuck his head out of the window to get a better look.

“The nine-oh-one? Headed for Lakeview?”

She nodded again, turned her back so he wouldn’t think she appreciated the conversation.

“Need a lift?”

Did she ever. She had to get to work on time, had to get paid, had to eat something today. But every alarm bell in her mind said it was too dangerous. Other girls did things like this. Not her.

“Come on. I don’t bite.”

She couldn’t remember speaking at all, not in a long, long time. “Can my friends come?” she asked.

She didn’t have any friends.

“More the merrier.” He grinned. He did not appear dangerous.

Behind her, two of them were smoking. Two of them were laughing. She took a tentative step, then another.

“This guy wants to give me a ride to Lakeview,” she said.

“White girl speaks!”

“Girl, you gonna be front page news. Dude’s an axe murderer. He gonna cut you into pieces.”

“I know,” she said. “But I have to get to work. He says he’ll take all of us. It’s safe if we’re five against one, isn’t it?”

Merari raised her eyebrows. Aliyah gave the guy a hard stare. Laura blew smoke rings. Vanessa laughed.

“They already turned off my electric,” Michele said. “I have to get to work on time.”

The others stared at her. Stared at the dude. Looked at each other, looked back to her. They gave the white Cadillac a long, hard appraisal.

Empty Spaces

It was a blue hour, a moment of more-than-dusk but less-than-night, and the world seemed to purr at her feet as she hauled a black plastic garbage bag down the driveway. She left it at the curb, brushing her hands against her jeans with finality, and smiling at the neat line of five identical bags. Taking out the trash, she though to herself.

When she turned back up the drive, she noticed, even in the dull half-glow of the absent sun, that the house would have to be painted. I could do that, she thought to herself. She never had before, but how difficult could it be? She would nail down the bad step, and replace the missing shutters. Later, soon, she would learn how.

Now, she would sweep out the wide, empty places where the garbage had resided for so long. She would marvel over the extra expanses of her home, lost beneath the rubbish of another life for so long. There might even be another bag of garbage to carry away.

Once she figured out how to get the Internet back up, she would research all the new skills she would need. She could see no reason why she might fail in her task. The only reason she had never done these things before was that she had never had the opportunity. And now she had all the opportunities in the world.

Bras Are Burning

I read an article denying that women’s rights activists ever burned their bras in the sixties. This upstart historian insisted that “bra burning” was simply a figure of speech, coined by a journalist after the fact, meant to mirror the symbolism of the young men who burned their draft cards to protest the Viet Nam war. He said it never happened, that women never burned their brassieres to protest the inequalities of gender in our society.

I tell you, that historian was dead wrong. I was there. In the sixties, we burned our bras all the time. Not in the first part of the decade; in the early sixties, all we ever burned was the steak, and that was our silent rebellion against the drudgery of men, housework, and stereotypes. But, by nineteen sixty-five, we had moved on to our Maidenforms.

When we exhausted the contents of our underwear drawers, we stormed Woolworth and absconded with any undergarments we could find there. Later, we took to hijacking delivery vans and burned bras by the carton, first in fifty-five gallon oil drums, and later, for greater efficiency, in our own furnaces. In the late sixties, it was not unusual for a crusader to heat her home entirely with purloined underwires. We were burning those contraptions in bulk.

Eventually, the practice diminished after a few entrepreneurs decided to cut out the middleman and set fire to the factories where our undergarments were produced. There was an arson trial, but the women were exonerated, arguing that bra burning was protected expression under the first amendment. At that point, though, the project had lost its shock value. Those few that remained trapped by the confines of rigid gender roles went back to burning steaks, although most of us continued to burn the Sears Roebuck catalog, just as a matter of habit. To this day, I will toss Victoria’s Secret advertising fliers directly into the fireplace. My granddaughter asked me why, and I shuddered to imagine a generation of girls growing up without understanding this pregnant moment in the history of women’s rights. I blame those misguided, misogynistic historians.

Nah, I’m kidding you, really. I’m only thirty-five; I didn’t even need a bra until nineteen eighty-seven, and, at thirty bucks a pop, I can’t afford to be setting those things ablaze. Anyway, my rack tips the scales at a thirty-six double D. There’s probably some kind of local ordinance prohibiting me from going out without support. I could cause a car accident.