
I
My name is Regina, Regina Doe. I’m fifteen years old. My favorite class is electronics. I have a kind of a knack for it, and my parents are weird. My life is weird. I’m weird, too, I guess.
I might just be a kid but that doesn’t mean I don’t know anything. I know some things.I know nothing is ever just one way. I know nobody is all good or all bad. I know parents can love you to the core of their being and still be the freaking bane of your existence at the same time.
At the thrift store digging through a bin of two-for-one clothes with my mom at my elbow I was intensely aware that just because I would be willing to take a bullet for the old maternal unit didn’t mean I particularly wanted to be seen in public with her.
Behind me I heard a snickering laugh followed by a cough “Grape Ape” then another cough. Crap, it was someone from my school. Crap. Crap. Crap.
On second thought I was fifteen, I didn’t really want to be seen in public with myself.
Shuffling feet and suppressed giggles continued.
I wondered which of us was more embarrassing.
Mom was dressed the way she always was, too much eye make-up and hair sticking out at angles a geometry teacher would be hard pressed to express mathematically. Tattoos on the backs of her hands and rings on every finger. Black lace dress and combat boots. I would have paid real money for her to go invisible at that moment.
I, on the other hand, was me.
Cough. “Grape Ape”. Cough. Whoever it was repeated themselves in case I hadn’t caught their act the first time around.
On second thought I’d pay real money if I could disappear, but seeing as my mother didn’t hold with “frivolous” magic and I’d been six feet tall since the sixth grade all I could do was ignore them.
My mother held up a purple flowered dress. Most of my clothes were dresses. All my clothes were purple.
I shrugged and held up a white linen dress in response. It looked a little roomy in the waist but she could take that in.
“I don’t know...the cut looks pretty good but it’s not really your color,” she said, pursing her lips.
“Everything I wear doesn’t have to be purple. I could wear other colors, you know?” I said, for maybe the millionth time in my life.
“You say that but…I guess we could always dye it.”
It looked like we weren’t giving our harassers enough attention because, Gracie and Mikayla, two perfect girls from my school, as tiny and hateful as wasps, appeared with their shy and heavy-set minion Emma and walked right up to us. Like they ever spoke directly to me at school if they didn’t have to.
“Oh hi, Regina is that your...mom?” Mikayla said while the other two struggled not to laugh, at our very existence, I guess, and failed.
I wished with all my heart I had something cruel and cutting to say but the truth was my mouth felt like it was glued shut. Against the forces holding me in check I willed my eyes to move in my mother’s direction. Her pinky, the one with the amethyst skull set in a silver ring, was moving in tiny circles, widdershins.
She acted as if Mikayla, Grace, and Emma weren’t even there.
Then her finger stopped and the three really were gone. Maybe Mother scared them off. Maybe. We were actual real life weirdos, afterall.
“Remember, Baby,” Mother said quietly, “You’re protected. Anything they do to you comes back on them three times.”
I knew what she said was true, but it didn’t help because it wouldn’t stop them from bullying me in the first place.
By the time I finished my thought my mother was gone, too. When I finally found her again she was at the register with a pile of two-for-one dresses so high I couldn’t see the clerk.
~~
Outside the weather was cloudy but not raining yet as we stumped along the sidewalk, arms full of bags.
“You could take the bus without me, Baby. Just because I can’t doesn’t mean you can’t,” Mother said, shaking the hair out of her face and making the bells on her earrings jingle.
“It’s fine, I’m strong like bull, remember?” I said, because it was true, I didn’t mind and I’d never met anyone as strong as I was. Still the walk was a little bit tedious.
“I keep wondering if there’s some sort of buffering spell you could use to let you ride in a motor vehicle,” I said conversationally.
Mother shook back her hair again, Mother’s wild hair had a mind of its own, and that was not a metaphor “I’ve tried every one I’ve ever heard of, even the one where you sew the spell inside the body of a bird. It’s always the same, we get at most two blocks before the electrical system shorts out, the drive shaft falls out onto the street...it’s terrible. But if you come across something new, I’ll give it a try.”
And so we walked. Personally, I was hoping to get home before the rain but I knew my Mother loved a good storm. Not that I don’t like storms. I’m not some kind of miscreant. I just like storms better when I’m not in them. With a pane of glass between me and a storm they’re pretty fun.
So as we walked I was concentrating on the clouds, pushing them back, even as I could feel my mother, smiling to herself, pulling them our way. Between the two of us the sky was churning by the time we turned the corner and were within sight of our house and ...oh crap... a limousine parked down the street.
And there, standing on the sidewalk, pale toothpick arms extended and snake-hips wiggling was Ann.Of all the useless people in the world. Ann. My mom’s one rich friend who never-the-less never did us any good but couldn’t make a move without consulting my mother. What was the point of being a big time movie star if you were miserable and scared all the time and never thought about anyone but yourself?
“Tabby!” Ann called dramatically from the sidewalk ”I dropped by and you weren’t in. I didn’t know what to do!”
I guess it never occurred to her that she ought to go home, maybe.
True to form Ann threw her arm over Mom aka Tabby’s shoulder.
The raised-lettered label tape was peeling half-way off the mailbox, so I did my best to smooth the DOE FAMILY back down onto the mailbox again.
Ann was still talking, steering my mom into the house, probably afraid of being recognized by a fan.
“My life is chaos, absolute chaos, I need your advice,” Ann said.
Of course she did. She was rich, dumb, and needy. And of course my mom refused to accept payment for her services. I mean, I get it. It’s unethical to take money for magic but couldn’t she at least accept gifts?
Something for me?
Something not purple?
What could I do about it? What could I do about anything? What I was already doing was all I could think of.
I stood in the doorway, my arms full of bags from the thrift store.
“I’m going to drop these in my room and head over to Ivy’s,” I wondered if Mom could hear me over Ann’s whining. Seriously, she didn’t even pause for breath.
“Be back in time for supper. Daddy’s bringing something home,” Mom said as I left my room, so I guess she did hear me afterall.
It wasn’t long before I had spent most of the afternoon on the floor of Ivy’s room, drawing and listening to music with Ivy. Ivy had been my best friend since grade school. She was Native, too, but like real Native, compared to me anyway. I mean, her dad was white but she knew her tribe, had a family you couldn’t fit in a single building, much less a public restroom stall, if your life depended on it, could bitch people out in her language, the whole shebang. Ivy couldn’t be cooler if she tried.
“I’ve gotta be heading home pretty soon, wanna come with me?” I asked her.
“Why not? There’s nothin’ going on here. Too bad your mom can’t use a cellphone like normal people,” Ivy answered.
That was how we found ourselves, me and Ivy, on the covered porch of the Old Doe family mid-century modern ranch house. Two bedrooms, one bath, and about as non-descript as non-descript can be, on the outside anyway. Common sense held me back the minute my hand touched the front door knob.
“I’ll just check first…” I said, holding the door closed with one hand.
“I get it. I mean, I like your mom and all, I just don’t want to be there if she’s doing anything weird,” Ivy said.
“You and me both,” I agreed with her, even if I didn’t really. Ivy’s family was pretty normal, relatively. She didn’t get it that things that weirded her out were standard operating procedure in the good old Doe family household.
I turned the knob and jammed my face in the cracked door, with the chain lock against my forehead like Jack Nicholson in The Shining
“Is it okay if Ivy comes over?” I asked, scanning the family living room, there were plants everywhere, herbs hanging from the ceiling, a ritual knife on my mother’s work table. Mom herself was standing between the livingroom and the kitchen, a mortar and pestle in her arms, grinding. From the couch Bigfoot waved at me.
“I’m sorry, Reggie-baby, Uncle Harry’s here,” Mom said apologetically. Uncle Harry, right. It wasn’t even cute anymore.
I clicked the door shut and turned to Ivy, grimacing.
“Sorry, she’s dancing around naked in there,” I said,
“No, she isn’t. It’s your Uncle Harry isn’t it?” Ivy said, shaking her head.
“You got me, there’s no lyin’ to you,” I said because what else was going to say?
“He’s drunk isn’t he?” Ivy said.
“Stinking...and naked,” I said, both of which were true. As any eye-witness can tell you, the smell is one of Bigfoot’s defining characteristics.
“I’ll talk to my mom, maybe you can spend the night tomorrow,” Ivy said from the sidewalk.
“I would love that,” I yelled from my doorstep and it was true, I would. Ivy’s family were, nice, normal, Native folks not whatever the hell my family was.
As soon as Ivy was out of sight I let myself inside and started spraying “Uncle Harry” down with a room deodorizer.
“And that... in a nutshell is why I’m going to be alone for the rest of my life,” Uncle Harry said. His voice, surprisingly, matched his personality and not his shape. He sounded like a shlub with cheeto dust in his chest hair, which, in his soul, he was.
I heard a bang clank and there in the door stood the man of the hour, your friend and mine, not to mention Harry’s, Frank Doe aka dear old dad, smiling and brown and only a little bit shorter than Uncle Harry.
If you didn’t know any better you might assume Uncle Harry was my Mom’s doing, but nothing could be further from the truth, Uncle Harry was all on Dad. Dad being a garbage man and letting no weird old shit go unscavenged it was more or less inevitable. To be blunt about it both Bigfoot and my Dad were trash connoisseurs, all their favorite things are what anybody with any sense would throw away, already had thrown away. They met when Bigfoot started hitting the trash in Dad’s favorite scavenging grounds. Uncle Harry got a Rookwood vase Dad had his eye on, Dad offered him smoked salmon as a trade and they’ve been best friends ever since. It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t smell so rank. Bigfoot, not my dad. At least not after his post-work shower.
“Who wants sushi?” the paternal unit called from the foyer.
Harry, of course, raised his hand without moving from the couch “I do!”
“Moocher,” I said, getting up to take the bags so Dad could jump in the shower before we ate but Mom beat me to it. And of course she had to smooch him, tongues and everything, while she did it.
“I love you, Bubba,” Mom said. So gross.
“I love you, Sissy,” Dad said. Grosser still.
At least Harry had the good taste to be as disgusted as I was “Don’t be gross, Guys.”
“I’m with him, I really wish you would stop saying that, it’s nasty and embarrassing,” I told them for the millionth time.
“I’m just going to hit the shower real fast,”Dad said. Because, yeah, of course he was. He always did. That’s what sanitation workers do. They shower when they get home or they live alone.
“That’s what they used to say in the foster home ‘You’re all brothers and sisters now’ ,” Mom said slowly unpacking Dad’s haul.
“That doesn’t make it not gross,” I reminded her.
She didn’t dignify my comment with a shrug let alone a verbal response, instead she carried on with supper “Reggie, if you can set the table Harry can get the drinks.”
They’d been together since their last foster home.
Dad was found in an alley with his dead mom before he was old enough to talk. She didn’t have her ID on her, only beaded earrings that went to her shoulders and a baby in a Pendleton blanket. He’d grown up not knowing which tribe she’d come from, or even his real last name. Just the last name they give to anonymous bodies and the first name of the cop who found him.
Mom had been found wrapped in a paisley blanket in a display at the Museum of Mental Health, on the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital. Her umbilical cord was still wet. Patients were examined but none of them had given birth recently, no one ever figured it out. It must have been a visitor to the museum. A weird visitor. My mom might look white in a certain light but she always looks weird. When she fills out forms she lists both her ethnicity and her occupation as “Witch”.
I turned to Harry “Last time there was hair on my ice. I’ll get the drinks. You can set the table.”
“Well, excuse me for living,” Harry said but he went straight to the silverware drawer anyway.
By the time we were all crowded around the yellow formica table with our ice tea in Mom’s thrift-store glasses and our mismatched porcelain plates. Dad was out of the shower, smelling like the coffee and coconut soap Mom makes for him, special.
“Would you pass me the dragon rolls, Tabby? Frank, you gotta try this narezushi,” Harry said, already packing it in.
“Is that all the unagi nigiri you got?” I asked because it’s my favorite.
“No, but it’s all we could fit on the table, the rest is over on the counter,” Mom said.
Dad was too busy eating to talk.
Harry burped, loudly before saying “All I want is one woman, Tabby, just one, it can’t be impossible, can it?”
“Yeah, Tabby, Harry’s a great guy,” Dad agreed between bites.
“The right one’ll show up sooner or later. I promise, the tea leaves don’t lie..” Mom said, but I couldn’t possibly care less about the loser’s love life, or lack there of.
“What about me? All I want is a tv, that’s got to be easier than a woman with no sense of smell and a thing for...big hairy guys,” I said.
“I’ve tried baby, Lord and Lady know I’ve tried, your mom just blows the things up,”Dad said sounding genuinely sorry.
“I’m sorry. Reggie, we could go to the bookstore tomorrow if it helps,” Mom said.
I nodded, my mouth stuffed with food. Like I was going to turn down an offer like that.
~~
A week later I came home from school and opened the door and what did I see? Bigfoot with one of our best delicate china tea-cups to his lips.
He drained it all in one quick gulp and set the cup carefully upside down on the saucer.
“It doesn’t say how or when but a woman is definitely coming,” my mom said staring into the bottom of the cup.
“Ooo Me next, do mine next,” I said.
“What for? Your fortune’s always the same,” Harry said, because not only is he smelly, he’s a jerk.
“You don’t know that, this time might be different,” I insisted, and before Mom could answer I sat down next to Harry and poured myself a cup of tea, thoughts of tvs in my head
“C’mon tv, C’mon tv,” I said in between sips, my knee bouncing. Then, in quick order,I turned the cup upside down on the saucer and handed it back to my mom.
At first I put my hands over my eyes but in the end I couldn’t help myself. I got up and took a look over Mom’s shoulder. The interior of the porcelain cup showed a clump of leaves in a semi-circle and a single leaf sitting apart
“The same as always, Baby. You’re destined to be queen,” she said with a sigh.
I threw myself back down in my chair.
“You say that but queen of what? Antarctica? France? The Rosebowl Parade?” I was tired of the same fortune every day of my life. I was also tired of it not happening. That was it! I wasn’t giving up so easily this time. I decided to stand my ground.
“Pour me another one,” I said.
Bigfoot put his chin in his palm and rolled his eyes. Oh, to heck with that guy.
My mother’s rings flashed as she poured tea into the delicate bone china cup.
I gulped down the hot tea. It scorched my throat.
I set the cup down hard on the table in front of my mother
The inside of the tea-cup was identical to the one before.
I screamed.
“The neighbors are going to call the cops again if you keep that up,” Mom said, and she was right, the neighbors hated us. Last time it was her goat. Some people will complain about anything.
I had no choice but to lie on the couch with a pillow over my face. I was still in that position when Dad came in the front door. When I took off the pillow they were both standing over me looking concerned.
“What’s wrong with her?” Dad asked.
“She insisted on having her leaves read. Twice,” Mom said.
“She doesn’t know when she’s got it good,” Bigfoot said shaking his head “Kids these days, am I right, or am I right?”
“I’ve got something for you, Baby, it’s Philco Predicta Continental Model - with intact mahogany pedestal. It’s a tube tv. Mom can’t blow it up,” Dad said holding a big weird thing in the air. It looked more like a trophy than a tv to me.
“That’s a real tv?” I asked him because it really trully did not look like a tv, for starters it had fins, and second of all the screen wasn’t much bigger than a dinner plate.
“A real old tv,” Bigfoot said.
“That’s why it’s perfect,” Dad said happily “No fancy electronics to short out.”
“Does it work?”I asked. I mean, I know it sounded ungrateful but it was the obvious next question.
Dad set the tv on the table and strung the cord in the general direction of one of our sad lonely electrical outlets. Mom stood back anxiously.
“Here goes nothin’,” Dad said.
I’d seen tv at other people’s houses. I’d seen computers. I’d even worked on them in electronics class, like I said, I have a knack. It should have stood to reason that tv in my house wouldn’t be quite like what I’d seen before. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, the image was stuck half-on half-off the screen.
Mom leaned toward the screen, fascinated. The picture stayed stuck between frames, on the top was the bottom half of a woman and on the bottom was her head and shoulders.
Dad leaned even closer and ran his finger under the edge of the pedestal… I wasn’t sure how but somehow that fixed it.
“Does it have sound?” my mom asked.
“It did down at the sanitation department, let me see,” Dad answered, adjusting a knob.
We all jumped at once at the sound of a woman’s cartoon voice.
“You gotta lift me highya or come down lowa, I’m breaking my neck tryin’ t’ look at youse.My name’s Ethel by the way,” the little cartoon woman said.
“Are you speaking to us? You can see us?” My mom said as Bigfoot crowded in behind us.
“Sure I can see all tree uh youse, The Witch, The Queen, The Wise Guy...Oooweee Witch Lady, who’s your friend? he’s a big beeeyootiful hunka meatt!” The cartoon squealed as soon as she saw Harry. But it was too late, he’d already run away.
The next day when I got home from school there was my mom, bowl in hand, making cookies while she talked to Ethel on the tv.
The next few days after that were more or less the same
“Hi, Reggie, how was school?” Mom said, sitting at the table sewing a poppet, the tv at the other end of the table.
“Hail Regina!” Ethel shouted.
A grunt hello was the best I could manage. I had homework and I don’t like being teased.
~
By the time my homework was finished Mom was in the living room sprinkling black powder on the table in the shape of a large pentagram, Ethel was on the tv screen.
“And harm none so mote it be... Reggie, you didn’t tell me how your day went. I made your favorite oatmeal cookies...extra raisins to help keep you regular. If he’s on this plane this locator spell will find him,” my mom said, talking to both me and the cartoon lady without looking up from the center of the table.
“You really think it’s gonna work, Tabby? Hail Regina!” Ethel yelled, in what sounded like complete seriousness. My mom’s predictions were bad enough without her telling everyone about them.
“Mother... Could you...not?” I said feeling more put out than usual.
“Could I not what?” she asked distractedly.
I threw my hands in the air prepared to complain bitterly when Bigfoot stuck his big head through the open back window.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked “It’s not meal time.”
“I know, weird, right? I just had this overwhelming need to be here all of a sudden. It’s too bad cuz I was messing with these two guys...I took a picture on that cellphone camera thing Frank gave me. I know he’d get a kick out of it,” Bigfoot said.
“Would you like to come inside and meet my friend, Ethel?” Mom said with a smile you could spread on toast.
I guess some things are so stupid they’re unavoidable.
“We’ll just leave you two alone to get acquainted,” my mom said, taking my hand in hers and backing us out of the room.
“It’s our living room!” I reminded her.
I was both annoyed and bewildered as she leaned against the inside of my door, effectively blocking the two of us inside my room.
“Do you think I’m too immature to see two horny adults?” I asked her.
A truly weird noise, somewhere between a shriek and yodel rattled through the wall. A tiny hairline crack appeared in the plaster near the corner of the room. The horseshoe above the door trembled.
“I’m too young to see what’s going on in there,” Mom said and I realized, young or not, as our eyes met, I didn’t want to see it either.
“You mean we’re trapped in my room until they’re done doing ….whatever it is they’re doing?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? It stinks in here, you need to do laundry,” Mom said as she unlocked my bedroom window and dragged over my dad’s old army footlocker, from before my time, to use as a step-ladder “We’re gonna blow this popsicle stand.”
~~
“Now what do we do?” I asked, standing in the tall weeds and random rocks that made up our backyard.The goat made a goat noise at us.
What we did was we taped a note to the Doe Family front door reading GONE FOR BUBBLE TEA. MEET US AT THE CORNER TABLE- MOM AND REG
Eight hours later Mom, Dad, and me were at our own front door. Dad with his key in the lock, Mom with her finger to her lips, me rolling my eyes.
On the other side of the door there was low growling and loud panting.
Dad put his hand on the knob and turned anyway.
What we saw was Bigfoot on the floor asleep, drool coming out of his mouth, his tongue lolling, legs running in place like a dog,one arm around the tv, and on the tv Ethel asleep alone in a giant ornate bed one hand hanging almost to the floor. For the record Bigfoot was panting, Ethel was snoring like a bear.
So what did we do?
My dad covered Bigfoot and the bottom half of the tv with a blanket and we all went to bed.
~
The next morning at the family at the table, I sat closest to the tv, and was kind of surprised to see Ethel, fully dressed, curtsy deeply.
“Your Majesty, I know the tv was a gift to you from your fathuh but...well... Harry and Me…” she stammered out.
I speared a piece of melon on the end of my fork “It’s cool...don’t worry about it... just make sure he takes a long enough extension cord to reach his cave.”
Ethel curtsied so her head touched the ground.
“You are a wise and magnanimous ruler, Your Highness,” she said as she rose.
“No problem,” I said, scratching my head.
I spent that Friday night at Ivy’s house. The two of us stayed up most of the night laying on the floor of Ivy’s den, watching tv, eating junk food I’d never be allowed at home, drawing.
“I love tv, when I get my own place I’m going to have a computer and a tv in every room,” I said blowing on the inside of a hot pocket.
Ivy shrugged “It’s always better when you’re around. Better stuff on, I don’t get the premium channels when you’re not here.”
“Opposite of my mom, I guess,” I said as I tried to puzzle it out for a minute but it didn’t make much sense to me. I wondered why Ivy’d never bothered to mention it before, not that there was anything I could do about it, either way.
Five minutes after I got home Bigfoot showed up, about a mile of electrical cord looped around his arm, Ethel’s tv clutched in his hand. They both looked rough. Harry’s eyes were red and his fur was matted in some spots and worn in others. All Ethel had on was a rumpled slip and smeared lipstick, one strap kept sliding down. She pulled it up like it was a nervous tic. Ethel spoke first.
“I’m sorry me and the big guy weren’t thinkin’ too clear, that was...
“Yeah...it got weird,” Harry said.
“Kinda frustratin’,” Ethel said.
Dad grimaced “You already said enough.”
“Too much, maybe,” I added.
Bigfoot squatted close to the ground, his head in his hands. Ethel on the tv looked sincerely heartbroken.
“But I told the big guy, I said ‘Honey, if anybody can help us outta this fix it’s Tabby, that dame’s a miracle worker, I gotta believe we got a chance!” Ethel squeaked out.
“I told you they’d be back,” Dad said, sipping his black coffee.
“And I didn’t disagree with you, I just said I didn’t know if I’d be able to do what they’re going to want me to do,” Mom said “None of my books, nothing I’ve ever heard of, touches on the kind of magic it would take to pull someone out a tv. I’m not even sure I understand exactly where you are Ethel.”
All morning long the three of them, Bigfoot, Dad, and Mom paced in a circle, their paths marked by in my imagination by dotted lines. They were going to wear ruts in the carpet if they didn’t come up with something soon.
Then not long before lunchtime Dad stopped and Mom almost ran into him.
“When you think about, it might be something kinda simple...like tv, the things that happen inside it, might be their own realm, made real by the belief of all the people watching, that would make it simple, wouldn’t it?” Dad said.
“Simple is not the same as easy. Bringing a physical manifestation across from another realm is…” Mom struggled to explain herself.
“Impossible?” Bigfoot offered.
“No, not impossible, just really really hard,” Mom said.
“One thing I know is if we don’t take a chance, we’ll never have a chance,” Ethel said from her screen, her little four-fingered hands balled into fists.
I walked out of high school on Monday morning struggling not to get ahead of Ivy, other kids on all sides crowding us, when all I wanted was to have a conversation and not lose my mom’s list.
“So,” I said loud enough to be heard of the crowd, because if I played it cool she wouldn’t be able to hear me, ”my mom is doing like this big spell and she wants me to get some stuff she’s gonna need. You can come with if you feel like it.”
“What? Like eye-of-newt? tongue of dog?...I’m down as long as she doesn’t need any liver-of-blaspheming-Jew,” Ivy laughed. Sometimes I forgot her dad was Jewish. He just seemed like a white guy to me.
“If she needs it she didn’t put it on the list,” I answered her.
So Ivy texted her mom and we spent the afternoon walking around, getting the things on the list.
“Okay, we’re getting close to the bottom. Next it says frog bones?” Ivy said inspecting the list before handing it back.
“To the Park!” I said grabbing the list and running “the one with the pond.”
Which was how we wound up at the edge of a pond surrounded by cattails, me poking through the weeds with a stick.
“Why can’t we just catch a frog, again?” Ivy asked for maybe the fourth time.
“‘Cause it’s bad luck to kill a frog, everybody knows that. There’s nothin’ here, lets move onto the next thing on the list, we can look for a frog later,” I said, giving up.
“We killed frogs in biology class,” she said.
“I didn’t. My mom wrote a note,” I reminded her.
We hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when Ivy shook my shoulder, hard.
“Is that… a ...what is it eating?” She said and I saw a shiny crow trying to choke down a struggling frog.
I charged. The frog fell out of the crow’s mouth, belly up.
We nearly bumped heads, bending over the frog. It didn’t move. I picked up a stick to poke it with. It still didn’t move.
“Are you dead, Mr. Frog?” I said skewering him on the end of my stick. He looked like a boy frog to me.
“Now what?” Ivy said.
“Now we’ve got to find an anthill,” I said “I mean... unless you want to clean all the meat off the bones yourself.”
Ivy folded her arms across her chest “Yeah, no thanks. What’s next? After the anthill, I mean?”
“Look at the list,” I said, handing her the folded and refolded list from my pocket. “I think there’s an anthill on the other side of the pond. You can read to me while we find it.”
And so I ran, frog on a stick, in the general direction of the anthill.
“Umm it says bone 7,” Ivy called from behind me.
“That’s short for the 7th bone from a black cat’s tail,” I said as I ran.
“Your mom won’t let you kill a frog but cats are fair game?” Ivy yelled, incredulous.
I stopped short and turned around, Ivy almost ran straight into me.
“Two words. Road. Kill. and an anthill, so three words I guess. Is anthill one word or two? Anthill? Ant. Hill. You know what I mean,” I said.
“What’s this shit about ants? I know it’s gross but wouldn’t it be quicker to wash the bones ourselves?” Ivy asked, and I guess she had a point, at least timewise.
“Hey, it’s over there” she said charging in front.
“Ants are special, they kinda add a magical charge to the bones, they’re the only creatures that travel between realms, My Mom says they do it without even trying,” I said shaking the frog on top of the busy red ants.
I closed my eyes and spun in a circle, trying to feel the right way to go next.
“Some people travel between realms, though, right? It’s not just ants because that would…” Ivy said a few minutes later as we walked along side of the road, eyes on the ground, looking for flat cats.
“People are complicated... Success!” I said as I saw a line of dried guts tattooed with tire marks.
“Eeew, poor kitty,” Ivy said, jumping backwards.
“I’ll get the bone if you’ll pull my pen knife and a walmart bag out of my backpack- Tell me about it. Witchcraft can be a messy business. Now back to the anthill,” I told her.
Two hours later we were at the paddock down at the racetrack. Ivy hanging over the paddock door talking to a groom. She was cuter than I was.
The groom was standing a little too close, holding a horse shoe nail out in her general direction..
“So you’re sure this horse won yesterday? And that nail fell out of his shoe?” Ivy asked, fake smiling. I was hanging back in case the groom tried to get too friendly.
“Cross my heart,” the groom said, drawing up then down in the air in front of his chest with the nail “So you’re gonna give me those digits.”
“Sure,” Ivy said as he tossed the nail in the air “555 eat-shit!”.
I lunged forward and caught it then we both ran as fast as we could hoping we never saw him again. Laughing as we ran.
It was late by the time we made our way back to the park and the anthill. I bent down carefully to pick up first the seventh tailbone followed by the heart-shaped bone and the hook-shaped bone from the frog.
“I never noticed those in biology class” was all Ivy had to say and somehow the heart slid in my fingers and the hook-shaped bone dug into my thumb, sharp a drop of blood falling onto the anthill.
“Oww, shit!” I said unhooking my thumb and sucking at the blood.
“Is that going to mess it up? The blood, I mean? Are we going to have to find another frog?” Ivy said while I sucked my thumb.
“Nahh,” I said, wiping the bone hook on the hem of my shirt and sticking my thumb back in my mouth “The spell’s got nothin’ to do with me.”
Two days later, during the right phase of the moon according to my mom, she started casting the spell.
Ivy wanted to see, of course. To be fair she’d put a lot of work in gathering ingredients.
“Please, Mom,” I said, not sure I ought to be backing her up on this.
“Please, Mrs. Doe?” Ivy asked.
“Ivy, you can stay if you want but you’re going to see some things, and if you tell anyone...well they won’t believe you anyway, so I suggest you don’t,” Mom said.
“You don’t have to threaten her,” I said.
Mom laughed like a breeze through about a dozen sets of cheap bamboo wind chimes.
“I’m not threatening her, Reggie, I’m just saying, if she tells anyone they’re going to think she’s crazy and I say this as the voice of experience,” Mom said “You’re welcome to stay if you want to, Ivy.”
“Thank you, so much, Mrs. Doe. I’ll stay out of the way, I promise, and I won’t breathe a word. I swear.”
A couple of hours later the time came.
The table was covered with a paisley shawl, a pentagram drawn on the cloth with red sand, a candle burning at each point of the five points, an alcohol burner in the center. Uncle Harry stood beside my mom, and my mom dropped a tuft of his fur in the crucible.
Ivy’s eye’s bugged and her mouth dropped out.
“And that’s why you never met my Uncle Harry,” I whispered in her ear.
Dad stood against the wall, watching from the background as usual and Mom dropped the black cat bone and the heart shaped bone in the crucible right after the fur.
“Televisionem Planto Summa Caritas,” Mom intoned.
I could feel my heart beating in my scabbed over thumb.
My mom swiped the hook-shaped bone through the air, for an instant I could have sworn my blood still colored the tip of the hook.
Something rumbled low in Mom’s throat and she began again “Televisionem Planto Summa Cupiditas Praemium Summ est. Volo. Cupio Desidero...oww shit something’s not...!” her index finger went straight to her mouth. Her eyes went wide, her finger still in her mouth, the crucible shot flames so high they licked the ceiling.
Ivy backed up, her eyes wide, until she bumped against the front door. A tiny tornado, the size of a sparrow, was spinning in the center of the table. The screen from Ethel’s television cracked as loud as thunder, splitting in three. The funnel skipped, like a stone across water, until it landed ontop of Ethel’s tv where it began to grow.
Now man-sized, the tornado began to pull
everything towards it. Bigfoot’s hand was distorted as the vortex pulled him across the room.
I could see the faces of my mother and father, their mouths wide, shouting, but all I could hear was the roar of the funnel snaking across the living room, so big I didn’t understand how it fit in the living room, so loud it was like a train but only if you were being run over at the time. I felt myself flying, dragged across the room, through the air towards the tv. I reached out to my father.
“Daddy! Mamaaaaaaaa!,” I tried to call but no sound came.
Both Harry and I were spinning in the tornado. My Daddy was lifted up, suspended, holding onto my hand. My Mom was dangling in mid-air, her arms locked around Dad’s waist.
“Run, Ivy, Run, get outta here!” Dad shouted above the roar.
I knew there was only one thing I could do. I let go of his hand.
I knew I was spinning. I knew it, but I didn’t feel it. I had a headache that didn’t hurt and a feeling that my skull was blossoming like a flower. I was changing.
In some part of my brain, some mind’s eye I never knew I had I saw Ivy in the front yard looking haggard and disheveled, like she’d been drug backwards from an automated carwash. Anne stepping out of her limo in front of the house, the roof burping.
“What’s going on in there?” Anne said.
“Even if I thought you’d believe me I wouldn’t know where to start.”
With whatever part of me that was changed I saw Ethel and Bigfoot embracing. Tabby and Frank sitting on the ground, dizzy orbits around their heads sharing one glance, taking each other’s hands and jumping, on purpose, into the steadily shrinking cyclone.
I rose to my feet, feeling like I knew both everything and nothing as a huge crowd of cartoon characters kneeled, pressing their foreheads to the ground in front of me.
“Salve, Regina!” the crowd shouted with one voice.
Like that I found my domain, purely by accident. I was in the tv, and I was their queen. But then it occurred to me, the tv wasn’t just one world but maybe millions. Every channel, maybe every show, was its own world, wasn’t it? But how was I supposed to move between them.
The part of my brain that had been turned on saw so many things I couldn’t figure out what was what. Something in my brain said “jump”, so I jumped, not knowing what else to do.
It was like climbing up a wheel made of stairs.
With first one jump and then another I stepped into what looked like a 1950s kitchen, or 1960s, like it matched the era of Ethel’s weird tv. The inhabitants, three women with their hair in curlers sitting at a kitchen table, jumped up and bowed deeply.
“Your Majesty! If we knew you were coming we would have done something about our hair!” one of them said.
All I could say was “Oooff”. Landing had knocked all the air right out of me.
I tried to take a step down on the wheel that only I could see. It left me feeling like I was hanging from the top of a screen.It sounds weird but I jumped down onto the top of a skyscraper and climbed into the middle of a busy city. By the time I got inside the building all the people were bowing low.
And they were shouting.
“Hail! Regina!”
“Hail! Regina”
“Hail! Regina!”
All I could ask myself was What is all this? What are the limits?
Was it just t.v. shows or could I go to other screens? I could talk to people in the tv, people in the shows, but could I talk to people watching the shows?
I turned, like I was stepping back onto the wheel, then using all my strength I turned sideways, leapfrogging the wheel altogether. I was looking out of the screen, not into it. It looked like the inside of a big box store. On the other side of the screen people were pushing shopping carts. Only one little kid, maybe five or six, was watching.
“ Hey, kid! Can you see me?” I whispered, loud, on two dozen giant screens at once.
The kid nodded.
It took some doing, some playing hide-and-seek until I got there but finally I found her, Ivy on a school computer wearing a headset. The look on her face when I appeared was, believe it or not, pretty amazing.
“ Reg! Is that you? For real? Are you okay?” Ivy whispered.
“ I am so much more than okay.” I told her outloud, and it was true.