A Hard Witching by Jacqueline Baker Read Free Book Online

knew. I thought it had something to do with love.
    Max and Grandpa weren’t around much in the days following; they spent most of their time across town, sorting through things, packing up all that junk or maybe throwing it away.
    My grandmother said to me one afternoon as I stood by myself, kicking at the nearly dried cornstalks in the garden, “Why don’t you go on over?” But we both knew I couldn’t.
    I crunched a browning stalk under my bare heel. “Why doesn’t Grandpa like Aunt Gerri?” I asked.
    Grandma smiled a little. “It’s been so long,” she said, “I don’t think he remembers.”
    She bent and began collecting garden refuse in fistfuls, stuffing it into the plastic garbage bag she toted by her side.
    “But you remember,” I said.
    Grandma stood up, laughed. “No.” She shook her head. “Some things, it’s best to let them go. Old hurts. Your grandpacan’t let go.” She propped her hands on her hips and looked with dismay around the garden, as if she’d only just noticed it, the soft, yellowing leaves, the rusting, wrinkled flesh of pumpkins. “Such a waste,” she said. The thing she seemed to hate above all.
    “Do you like her?”
    “I don’t know her,” she said.
    I nodded, though her answer wasn’t entirely satisfying.
    “What will they do with his stuff?” I asked.
    Grandma shrugged. “Keep it, I guess, his personal things. There’s room in the attic. See if your father wants anything.” She paused. “Is there anything you want?”
    There was—of course there was.
    “No,” I said.
    Grandma went back to gathering cornstalks. “Anyway,” she said, “we could all blame someone if we let ourselves. We all have something we could blame someone for. But what’s the point?”
    I felt bad, standing there watching while she worked, and so I bent to help her.
    “No,” she said firmly. “I want to do this myself. If you want to help, you can get me some more garbage bags from the kitchen.”
    So I went, taking my time. I took the bags from the cupboard below the sink, then, thinking she might appreciate it, went to the fridge to get her a cold drink. There on the bottom shelf stood the bowl of saskatoons Max and I had picked the day Aunt Gerri arrived. In all the upheaval, I’d forgotten about the berries entirely, though Grandma had washed them and put them in one of her good porcelain bowls. They lay like dark pearls, beautiful now out of context, like something of sand and water. It was almost a shock to find them amongthe ordinariness of pickles and mayonnaise and eggs. I stood admiring them, just for a moment, and I thought, I’ll remember this. I’ll remember this one good thing.

Lillie
I
    Lucy Satterley was sunbathing again, her hair pulled up in a knot on top of her head and secured with a ribbon the exact green of her two-piece swimsuit. She did not move, but every so often the wind would lift a long end of the ribbon in a cool, shimmering flap and twist it gaily about her ears, then let it fall. From where he sat in the shade on the low cinder-block wall, Owen, who was almost eight, noticed she’d slipped the straps of her swimsuit down over her shoulders, exposing a white, shining rim of flesh. She looked, he thought, like a water queen, like something you read of in books, some fine thing washed in from the sea. He mouthed her name, counting the beats off on his fingers: Lu-cy-Sat-ter-ley, Lu-cy-Sat-ter-ley. Five beats exactly, five fingers. It wasn’t much of a game. He jumped down, brushed dust from the seat of his corduroy pants, waited a moment to see if she’d turn and notice him. When she didn’t, he crossed the Satterleys’ backyard to where she stretched belly-up on a silver blanket, glistening like a new fish. Owen sniffed. Up close, her skin had an oilier sheen and a smell like the cookies his motherused to bake—raisins and coconut. And something else, something like mown grass after it has lain for a while in the heat. He stood there,