Yarrow and amethyst, chalk diagrams and chicken blood. A horn of brass and a raven’s feather, the hand of a hanged man and a mason jar holding a deathbed wish. Statues of crying women and scourged saints with their eyes on the ceiling and eventually heaven, seated men with goat’s heads and their left hands held aloft. Lower East Side, Harlem, the Bronx, Flatbush and Coney Island. Strong belief in these streets, these basements, these storefronts and a lithe woman with black hair and blue eyes entered one off Division Street four years ago. A tiny brass bell sounded from the door. There was dust in the corners and the air smelled of strong incense and menthol cigarettes. "Hello?" She called out, expecting a crone not the woman in her late thirties with plain brown eyes who answered. "Yes?" The woman asked. "I was told… That is. Somebody said…" "Who?" "My ex." "I need a name." Walking forward, the woman with the blue eyes put her hands on the counter between them, using the fifty pounds of shaped glass and aluminum as an anchor. "Angelo." The woman in her late thirties, la bruja or whatever you’d like to call her, laughed. "Fitting. Tell me how." "I wrote it down." And this is what the lady with the blue eyes read from a page torn out of an old day planner from last year: May the next love to hurt him drive a common black car so that he jumps whenever he sees one. May his head grow a thousand throats with a thousand voices each and may their chorus haunt his quiet moments. May only whiskey and smoke calm them. May he fight every gift kicking and screaming. May he never write a word that he has not first fought and subdued only to find he has fought and subdued only his own heart. May he learn to love the struggle so well that he can never declare victory or surrender. May he ever toil in the fields, flounder in the seas, and fall through the skies. May he lose his taste for comfort. May he see the world’s beauty and may it deal his soul a thousand cuts and may he see it whenever he turns and touch none of it except to put it upon the page, may he write of great love and never feel it, may he want the fairy tale but never find the tower or the dragon, may he always have want without a name and hunger without belief. May he never know satisfaction. He will hunger for battle but never find his war and always look for shadows no matter how bright the light, that he be unable to wish and yet always dream. She finished, rocked and slumped with the relief of it, and lifted her hands leaving behind fogged shapes on the glass. Her eyes had been far away and when they came back, she looked at la bruja and the woman smiled and told her a price that did not seem like enough. The woman with the blue eyes paid and left, unsteady on her feet and gasping. La Bruja went into her back room and a young girl with matching cheekbones sat in a chair writing in a school exercise book. The cursive arcs of her S’s are perfect, but the Z’s and G’s could use work. "You were listening." La bruja said. "Such a terrible curse, mama." "Do you think so?" "It wasn’t?" La bruja began collecting the things that she would need and put a large pot from William Sonoma on a hotplate. She smiled. “For some perhaps. For others? For others she has just ordered a powerful blessing. Some men, some women, they learn that for those so cursed, the world opens its most delicate petals, reveals its most delicious scents.” The little girl frowned. “I don’t understand.” La bruja wiped her fingers on her apron and took the little girl’s chin in a hand that smelled of saffron and clove oil. There was a sadness in her eyes, but pride too. "You will, love."
Posted on: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 01:38:51 +0000
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