The Old

Loreal turned to go into the bathroom and close the door. It was a private bathroom with a tub, and Loreal never quite understood why it was in the dormitory.

“She had an abortion!” Loreal declared.

“Well, that is something.”

“Yeah, but it was three years ago and I’m tired of her crying about it.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s not like I’m saying that to anyone but you, and no one made her have it. Besides. It’s the twenty-first century, no one has to get pregnant.”

“Maybe she used birth control and condoms and got pregnant anyway.”

“Nope,” Loreal said. “And if that happened to me, I’d assume God wanted me to have the baby. I’m just bitching now. I need to get the hell off the phone and be a good girlfriend. Are you going to meet us at Merlin?”

“I don’t even know when you’re going to get there.”

“I’ll call,” she said.

“You know,” Loreal confided before she hung up, “I can’t wait to be done with this girly shit. I’m no good at it. Not really.”

She wanted to be left alone. It wasn’t that she hated being with people, she just liked her own solitude, and as she walked from Merlin, across the little sidewalk whose other side was the great field that stretched out to the country road interrupted only by the old fountain and, to her right, the chapel, she felt like stepping out of that noise. She was coming back into reality again.

“I can’t wait to get into the real world,” Loreal murmured. “And when I say the real world, I don’t mean offices and jobs. This is not the real world, not all the talking and the gossip and the bad sex and the weed and the conversations I don’t want to have. This is the real world right here.”

TJ met her at Merlin with the others, and after going through the dorm rooms, they stopped at Ted Waymouth’s for a while. Loreal wasn’t entirely sure why TJ had brought her here. Ted was talking to Sara who had just arrived, and he welcomed them both, but said, “Teej, you came out tonight!”

“This is my friend, Loreal.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

He was courteous, and though he was white, Loreal thought he was, in a way she could not place her finger on, a lot like TJ. But as the two continued talking, and Sara said, “I think we’d better get out of here and leave the boys to their man talk,” Loreal looked to TJ and he said, “Oh, I’d better go.”

“No, TJ,” she said. “Stay. It’s getting late.”

“You going back with the girls?”

“I’m going to head back with Sara,” she said.

“Sometimes you just have to let boys be boys and do what they’re going to do,” Sara said, and Loreal wasn’t entirely sure what she meant.

“Yeah,” she said.

“I think I’m turning into an old lady,” Sara said in a voice that was very much like an old lady’s though Loreal doubted she was doing it on purpose. “I think I’m going to have a cup of tea.”

Loreal wasn’t surprised that Sara Branter sat in her room and drank cups of tea because she herself did that same thing.

“You are more than welcome to join me,” she told Loreal.

But Loreal said, “I’d love to if you’re still up later. I haven’t been by myself at all tonight.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I think I need to take a walk.”

Outside were the stars and the moon and the chill in the air and the empty old church whose doors were always open. Sometimes she sat in there by herself at night and talked to God, and sometimes she didn’t talk to anyone at all. She just felt safe. Only once had she been interrupted, when one of the old priest who lived in the large house for next door for the retired priests had walked in and intoned, “I have come to replace the candle,” and then he had lifted the red glass over the old votive before the Blessed Sacrament, replaced it with a new one, bowed before the tabernacle and left.

But tonight Loreal only sat on the steps of the chapel, and she had not been sitting very long when the phone rang.

“For real?”

Loreal didn’t give her number out to any of her friends. There were phones in each dorm room for that, so she looked at the phone, because it had to be something important for any family to call so late.

Eve

“Oh,” Loreal murmured.

She answered the phone and said, “Is there something wrong?”

“Can you pack up and come home for a few days?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Grandma is dying.”

Loreal frowned. It wasn’t a surprise, and it wasn’t really a tragedy. She found herself… ready for it. She didn’t even bother to ask something foolish like, were they sure?

“When are you coming?” Loreal asked.

“I’ll be there by noon tomorrow.”

Loreal nodded and then remembered her older sister couldn’t see her.

“Alright,” she said. “I’ll be ready.”

She was lost in the countryside, the hills rolling past her, the harvested fields going gold-grey to grey, dusted in white, the bare trees like long tall, old brown men, stretching bony fingers. She was not depressed. She was not sad, really.

“It’s all so beautiful,” Loreal murmured.

“What?” Eve said as she drove.

“Just,” Loreal began, and then coming back to herself and remembering whom she was talking to, she shook her head and said, “Nevermind.”

She remembered the days she had stayed with Grandma, and early in the morning they would wake up to walk through the woods and gather up the mushrooms, and all the plants that looked like weeds to Loreal until her Grandmother taught her what they were.

“Comfrey for healing and headaches. Fly agaric to produce mild hallucinations, or sometimes the rough ones. Assafedida for sickness. And cough. Milkweed for ease in childbirth. Witch hazel keeps the skin clear and removes stretch marks.”

They did not go to church, but Grandma always spoke of God. Sometimes, often when Loreal was older, she referred to God as She. But not always. Early in the morning she would come out onto the porch of the large house in the part of town that bordered the great wood, and she would stretch out her hands like a priest, and she would adore the sun and then bless the fields. Loreal remembered Grandmother making her porridge with honey and raisins, currants and nuts, and as she got older, a large steaming mug of coffee, and then the house would be quiet, and she would wrap up her long white hair into a crown about her head, tie a scarf over it and go to her quiet place.

“You need to be quiet in some places,” she said, “to know that God is there.”

Loreal could still smell the sweet scent of her grandmother’s incense.

“What in the world are you thinking?” Eve asked.

Because Loreal did not really wish to discuss it, she said, “What happened to your hands?”

“Oh,” Eve said, distractedly, “they’re almost better now.”

“Well,” Loreal figured, she wasn’t about to tell. But at least that had taken her from trying to ask questions. She wanted to say, “It probably had something to do with Grandfather.”

“Your grandfather is a different sort,” Grandma had said.

“Is that why you live apart?”

“It’s why it’s strange that we ever lived together in the first place. “Your sister and brother are….” Grandma sighed, “Still enamored of him.”

At that time, Loreal had not known what the word enamored meant. Grandma had said, “His way is easier than mine. And prettier. There is… more will in it. He does not believe in… giving way.”

Loreal had really not known what any of that meant. She understood only that she barely knew her grandfather and heartly disliked him. She only knew that her older brother and sister did what he desired, and she didn’t much like them either. They were from her father’s first marriage, she from the last, and after her father had died, her mother had turned to Grandma, so Loreal had known her. Once she had received a letter from her Grandfather Augustus. It said, “Loreal, I desire to see you.” But in meeting him she felt desired, like a possession, and not like a loved one. She had never wished to see Augustus again.

Her mother was in the house when Loreal got there, and they instantly embraced.

“Eve,” her mother greeted Loreal’s sister with some coldness.

“Morgan,” Eve returned.

“She’s been waiting for you,” Morgan told her daughter, and Loreal nodded, going down the hall. This was the house where she’d had so many good times, where she had spent half of her childhood, and she left her mother in the living room looking at Eve. The last thing she heard from them was Morgan saying, “Would you like something to drink?” and Eve saying, “I would, and since this is my house, I know the way to the refrigerator.”

When she got to the bedroom, Loreal was surprised to see her cousins, Owen and his nephew Lewis.

“You’re here,” Lewis said, and Owen only nodded. Neither one of them went to hug her. It would have been too much. In the corner of the room, hugging himself, was Seth. Like her mother, like the old woman lying in the bed, her face craggy, Seth was white, or nearly, and the old woman said, “Well now the Dunharrows are all together.”

Owen stood and kissed the woman on her wrinkled head, “You need to be with your granddaughter,” he told her, and he squeezed the old hand, blue with veins, and walked around the bed, leading Seth out, followed by Lewis.

Loreal nodded, kissed lightly on the cheek by Lewis, and she pulled a chair up to the bed.

“My child,” the old woman said, and then she didn’t say much for a long time,

“You need to be a priestess,” she said. “To be a true witch, you must be a priestess. Or else you’re just a girl with some parlor tricks. Like Eve. That was her problem, and she had the blood twice over. You must be initiated.”

Loreal nodded, and her grandmother said, “If you aren’t initiated, all of my blessing will mean very little. You understand?”

Loreal nodded.

“Your grades are good?”

Loreal nodded again, mildly surprised by the mundane shift in conversation, and then she said, “Yes, Grandma.”

The old woman said, “Ah… what do I care about grades? Are you…? No, listen. Look at me.”

Loreal looked into the clouded grey eyes of the old woman.

“You are so beautiful,” she said. “So many things were done wrong. So many things that I hoped would turn out differently… I cannot even count them. But you, you were certainly the good thing.”

Loreal nodded, and then her grandmother said, “Call them in. Call all of them in. There is very little time left.”

Loreal stood up. “Yes, Grandma.”

She left the room and went down the hall to the living room.

“You all have to come,” she said, surprised at how small her throat felt. “Now.”

She turned, not waiting for them, and she came back into the bedroom thinking, well she can’t die alone. Loreal sat on the bed and took her grandmother’s cold hand.

“Don’t leave me, Grandma.”

“Loreal!”

“I know you have to go. But… always be with me. Don’t…don’t go too far away.”

She said no more as the first footsteps came, her mother’s followed by Owen and Lewis, Seth and now Eve.

“I want everyone,” the old woman croaked, “to see this.”

She coughed and said, “Owen, prop me up.”

Owen came forward and propped up the woman, and she coughed a little and then she placed her hand on Loreal’s shoulder.

“My child,” she said, and her voice gathered a strength it had not possessed, “in these last moments,” and her hand, so weak, took on a great pressure, almost pushing Loreal to the floor. Her grip was like iron and she declared, “All of my power… I do… place upon thee.”

Loreal felt as if she had been pushed into the floor, and had to stop herself from falling. Her shoulder throbbed with pain, and now, the pressure was released. The weight was gone as the dry weak hand slipped from Loreal and back onto the bed. By the time Loreal opened her eyes, Owen was closing her grandmother’s.