I don’t know how much time passed before I heard Bobby’s voice saying, “Rae?”
I lifted my head, and he was standing over me, his light brows drawn together in a solemn look that might have been funny in another time, under other circumstances.
“Rae,” he said, “do you want me to bury him for you?”
“No,” I said sharply. The finality of placing Trickle in the ground and covering him over with dirt was more than I thought I could bear.
“We’ve got to,” Bobby said reasonably. “It’s summer, and you know how it is in the summer. We could have a funeral—remember the way we did for my turtles?”
“I don’t want a funeral,” I said. “I’ll bury him myself.” And then, seeing Bobby’s face, I realized he was almost as upset as I was. Next to me, he had probably loved Trickle more than anybody in the family had.
“You can dig the hole,” I told him.
So he got a spade and dug a grave in the corner of the yard out by the rose bushes, and I went in and got a box that had once contained darkroom equipment. It wasn’t a real funeral, but as he covered over the box Bobby said, “Don’t you think we should say a prayer?”
“I guess so,” I said, so we recited the Lord’s Prayer very softly, and then I broke a rose off the bush nearest the grave and sprinkled the petals over the loose earth, and it was over.
When we went back to the house, the whole family, including Julia, was in the living room. They seemed to be having some sort of conference. I could hear Mom saying, “—terribly upset, of course—” and Dad saying, “—has to learn to face these realities, no matter how distressing they are.”
I passed the door without pausing and went up to my room. Even when she wasn’t in it, the room held the feeling of Julia’s presence. Her bed was neatly made, as compared to mine, still a shambles from my restless night and early rising.
On impulse I went to the closet and pulled open the door. My pink dress was there on a hanger on Julia’s side. Angrily I snatched it up and transferred it to my side, but it looked bright and strange and unlike any of my other clothes. I knew that I would never wear it. The essence of Julia clung to every fold of the material; somehow in one wearing she had claimed it for her own.
“Witch!” I whispered. “Witch!”
My birthday is at the beginning of July.
I’ve always loved birthdays. I have a chain of birthday memories that run all the way back to the year I was three, although Dad insists no one can remember that far. I got a doll for that birthday; she had long blond hair and was dressed in a ballet skirt, and when I took her out of the box I thought she was alive.
So, you see, I do remember.
Later there was a circus birthday when I saw my first elephant and ate my first cotton candy. And there was the bicycle birthday, and the tennis racket birthday, and when I was twelve there was the birthday that brought me Trickle.
But this particular birthday, the one on which I turned sixteen, there was no air of festivity. This was my own fault. My parents wanted to throw me a party.
“Sixteen is such a special age,” Mom kept saying. “Don’t you want to invite some people to celebrate? Or if you’d prefer to have it just family, we could go out for dinner someplace nice.”
“No,” I told her. “I really don’t feel like doing anything. I’ve outgrown that sort of thing.”
The truth, of course, was that I refused to share my birthday with Julia.
Julia. Just the sound of her name was enough to make me feel sick. When I heard my mother speak it, her voice filled with warmth—“Julia, dear, you really must do some posing for me. It’s a waste to have a beautiful niece and not to use her for a model”—my stomach churned.
“Julie,” my father called her. Every time he saw her his face brightened, as though she were the second daughter he had always longed for.
I held myself apart from them all and watched, and it was a strange feeling, as though I were a visitor from another planet observing something completely separate from me. I watched Julia smiling at my father and calling him “Tom.” I watched her helping Mom in the kitchen, moving deftly about with a pan or a dish towel, taking over chores that used to be mine. I watched Bobby tease her into a game of dominoes and saw Peter’s eyes follow her around with a kind of hopeless adoration.
But worst of all was watching her with Mike. For the first time in my life I wished he didn’t live next door. It made it way too easy for him to wander over after work, for no special reason, to sit on the porch steps and chat. He was as nice to me as he always was—nicer, really—he no longer tossed me playful insults or called me silly nicknames. He was politely formal and very kind.
“You look really nice today,” he would say. “I like your hair like that,” although my hair was no different than it was before. “Is that a new outfit?” when I was wearing the same tired pair of denim shorts and faded plaid shirt that I’d worn all summer the year before.
But he wasn’t kind enough to try to hide his reason for coming.
“Is Julia around?” he would ask, avoiding my eyes. And Julia always was.
“You’re not mad, are you, Rae?” she asked me. “It wasn’t as though I could help it. These things do sometimes happen.”
“You made it happen,” I said bitterly. “You knew Mike was mine.”
“He wasn’t yours,” Julia said in a reasonable way. “People don’t own other people. You told me yourself the first day I was here that you weren’t serious about him. I didn’t break anything up. Mike says you were just good friends, that you’ve always been like a little sister to him.”
“That’s not true.” I tried to speak with dignity. “I didn’t say it like that. And he may say that now, but he wouldn’t have said it a month ago.”
“Things change,” Julia said with a shrug.
This could not be denied. Things did change, and the thing that seemed to have changed the most was Julia herself. When I think back now, it’s hard for me to decide exactly whom to picture when I say the name “Julia.” There were three Julias—all different. There was the Julia who arrived with my parents that first day, hesitant and frightened, the haunted, tight-faced girl who stood uncertainly in the doorway in the shadow of my father, and held out her hand to me and said, “Hello.”
Then there was the second Julia, relaxed and self-confident, the quaint touch of the hills gone from her speech. This was the Julia who plucked her eyebrows so that they no longer hung like bushes over her huge eyes and used my lip gloss to widen her mouth and make her thin lips fuller and warmer. This Julia laughed and chattered and used Albuquerque slang and went with Carolyn to the hair salon and had her thick mane cut and styled.
“She’s copied Carolyn,” I remarked to Peter, who immediately bristled as though he had been personally insulted.
“You’re jealous,” he said. “You’ve turned into a real bitch since Mike dumped you.”
“Dumped me!” True though they were, the words cut me to the core. I couldn’t believe my brother had said them. “What about you? Do you feel dumped?”
“I never went out with Julia.”
“But you would have if you could,” I said cruelly. “You fell for her hard, and you know it. And she’s your cousin! And you’re not over it either.”
“So?” Peter said. “That’s why I understand how Mike feels about her. No guy in his right mind could help falling for a girl like Julia, and she’s got a right to choose anybody she wants. It pisses me off to hear you complain about her just because she has something that you don’t.”
“What is it she has, exactly?” I asked, really wanting to know. “What are these qualities that have you and Mike so enchanted?”
“I can’t explain it,” Peter said. “It’s just—something. A kind of feeling. A sort of—magic.” And he blushed, embarrassed at having used a word that sounded so romantic. “She’s just—special somehow.”
There was a third Julia too. I would meet her later.
So by my own request, there was no birthday celebration for me. I looked at myself in the mirror that morning as I was brushing my teeth and told myself, “You’re sixteen now—sweet sixteen—the age when lovely things begin to happen.” But nothing lifted and sang within me. At the breakfast table there were some packages waiting for me, containing a new silk top and some earrings and two CDs I’d been wanting. I opened them and said my thank-yous, but it was all flat and forced. I didn’t even feel like trying on the top, and instead of playing the CDs I put them away.
In the middle of the morning Carolyn came by on her way to the pool to ask if Julia and I would like to go with her.
“We can have lunch there,” she said. “It’s my treat for your birthday.”
“I don’t feel like it,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”
Carolyn gave me a funny look and said, “I’m sorry to hear it, but you’re the birthday girl. You can do what you want to. Are you coming, Julia?”
“Yes,” Julia said, “as soon as I get my suit.” She went upstairs and while she was gone Carolyn gave me my gift. It was a friendship ring with a tiny turquoise stone set in the silver band.
“I got it at Old Town a couple of months ago,” she said. “I was so happy about finding it. I thought it was just the right present. Now—well, I don’t know. Maybe you’d rather have something else.”
“Of course not,” I said. “It’s awesome. Why would you think I wouldn’t want it?”
“I don’t know,” Carolyn said again. “We just don’t seem to be as close as we used to be. We used to talk about everything, but lately you seem to have sort of walled yourself off. You never want to go anyplace or do anything. I spend more time with Julia these days than I do with you.”
“Then maybe you’d like to give the ring to Julia,” I said shortly. As soon as I heard the words I wished I could take them back. They sounded so cold and bitter. I saw Carolyn flinch as though I’d hit her. Carolyn and I had never in our lives said a mean word to each other. It was a testament to our friendship that even when we argued we never got angry.
“I bought the ring for you,” she said now in a tight voice. “You can keep it or exchange it or throw it away, it doesn’t matter to me. Here comes Julia now—you’re missing out by not coming to the pool. It’s a perfect day for swimming.”
They left, and I went out into the yard and watered the roses. Then, for lack of anything better to do, I strolled down the sidewalk and paused to say hello to Professor Jarvis, who was sitting in a lawn chair in his front yard, writing in a notebook.
“How did your talk go?” I asked him by way of greeting. “My father read in the paper that you were scheduled to give a lecture on witchcraft to some women’s club.”
“The University Women,” he said, looking pleased that I’d known about it. “It went very well indeed, thank you, my dear. It’s one of the benefits of retirement to have the time to do such things.”
“It’s funny the University Women would be interested in such a fairy-tale subject,” I said.
“A fairy-tale subject?” His pale blue eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Now there’s where you’re wrong, Rachel. The subject of my lecture had nothing whatsoever to do with fairy tales. What I spoke about was modern-day witchcraft of the sort that’s practiced right here in this country all the time.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I regarded him with amazement. “Nobody believes in that stuff anymore.”
“No?” He laid his book down on his lap. “Then why is it that there are over half a million practicing witches in the United States at this very moment?”
“You mean people who practice real magic?” I exclaimed.
“That depends upon your definition of ‘magic,’ ” Professor Jarvis told me. “If you mean the fairy-tale stuff, then probably not. But if you accept as the definition of ‘magic’ the one originated by Aleister Crowley then the question is debatable. Mr. Crowley was one of the best-known of our twentieth-century witches, and he called magic ‘the science and art of causing changes to occur in conformity with will.’ In other words, he described magic as the utilization of the mind force to make things happen as they are desired.”
“Do you think that’s possible?” I asked doubtfully.
The professor nodded. “If I didn’t, I would certainly not be giving lectures on the subject. We know that the mind has powers that often go undeveloped. Scientific tests conducted in laboratories have proved that certain people have more control over their mind forces than others. There are people who can predict the turn of a card or tune their minds in on events that are occurring at other places. Why then is it unreasonable to believe that there might be other people who can channel this mind force outward and create happenings instead of just know about them?”
“And people who can do that are witches?”
“Some of them call themselves that.”
“Have you ever really known one?” It was crazy, but I was fascinated anyway.
“I’m not sure, but I think so,” Dr. Jarvis said seriously. “Back when I was first teaching at the University I had a student who came from a particularly secluded area of the Ozarks. Her name was Rune, and she had been raised in an atmosphere of witchcraft, for her mother and aunts all claimed to be practicing witches. Whether this girl was one or not, she had been taught a number of charms, which she used quite freely. She used to talk with me about it, knowing my interest in the subject.
“I remember one time in particular—” He smiled at the memory. “Rune was in love with a young man who was a member of the basketball team. He was an extremely good-looking boy, and very popular. He dated one of the cheerleaders, and they planned to be married as soon as they graduated. Well, Rune decided to do something to upset that plan. She attended an after-game party in the cheerleader’s dorm room, and while she was there she went into the bathroom and got a couple of hairs out of her rival’s brush. She took those back to her room and made a little statue out of beeswax and stuck the hairs in it. Then she lit a match and began melting the wax figure. She let a couple drops of wax fall, and then she blew out the match and went back to the party.
“Well, it just so happened that while Rune was in her room performing this little ceremony, the cheerleader had become suddenly ill with stomach pains. The party broke up, and the basketball-playing boyfriend was leaving just as Rune reached the door. They stood in the hall and chatted a few minutes, and then Rune suggested in a friendly way that they go back to her own room, where she could make some coffee. So they did, and she brewed the coffee and put something in it—I think she referred to the ingredient as ‘milfoil,’ but I believe it was actually a part of a plant called Achillea millefolium. From that night on, as far as I know, Rune and the basketball player were a steady couple, and he never looked at the poor little cheerleader again.”
“No way!” I exclaimed. “You don’t really believe it, do you?”
“Well, I only know what Rune told me,” Professor Jarvis said. “So I can’t be absolutely certain. What I do know is that Rune herself believed it. As far as she was concerned it had a happy ending. She and her ballplayer married and moved to California, where he played professionally for many years and finally retired to open his own sporting goods store. I still receive a Christmas card from them every year. They seem to be very happy.”
“A wax doll,” I said slowly. “She melted a wax doll.”
“That’s correct.”
“Professor Jarvis—” I hesitated, hardly knowing how to ask the next question. “Was there anything about Rune—about her looks—that made her different from other people? Was she especially beautiful?”
“No,” the professor said. “In fact, she was quite ordinary-looking. Very nondescript features, a short, dumpy little figure. Nothing anyone would ever notice, except for her eyes.”
“Her eyes?”
“She had strange eyes,” Professor Jarvis said. “Sometimes they seemed opaque, closed over. Other times you w
ould look into them and it would seem they were so deep they had no bottom. I think that if Rune did indeed have powers of the kind she attributed to herself, her eyes were a focal point for them.
“And another odd thing—though she most certainly was not beautiful in any accepted sense of the word, there were those who swore that she was. The people who were closest to her, the ones on whom she concentrated her attention, seemed to see her with different eyes from the rest of us. They found her very beautiful indeed.”
“Professor Jarvis,” I said shakily, “do you know why I asked that question—about her looks—her eyes?”
There was a moment’s silence.
Then the old man said, “I think I do.”
“You met Julia,” I said. “Could she—”
“My dear, I don’t know. I did meet her, but only briefly. I must admit the eyes did startle me. They very much resembled Rune’s. However, there are many people in the world with vivid and interesting eyes. My own beloved wife had fantastic eyes, and the last thing she ever could have been was a witch. You simply cannot go around thrusting labels upon people because of physical characteristics that may mean absolutely nothing.”
“But there are other things too,” I said. “There’s a wax figure! I found it one day in the back of her dresser drawer. I thought at the time that it was just an odd-shaped lump, but there was a definite shape to it. It was elongated with a sort of knob at one end, which might have been a head. There were four lumps sticking out at the corners like the legs of an animal—like the legs of a dog!”
“Rachel, my dear, you are jumping to conclusions,” the professor said. “My story has disconcerted you. A lump of wax—”
“There were hairs in it!” I cried. “Hairs the color of Trickle’s!”
“Rachel—” He raised a hand as though to hold back my words, but his eyes had taken on a certain sharpness I’d never seen in them before.