Chaka or Forest: Boudah or witch

The witch-woman came to my wedding, without invitation, and refused to give my new wife the goat milk which would have blessed us with children

. “She has the black soil,” she said “She’ll sprout”.

WIth those words she left to get drunk in the mead house, not the cleaner one by the center of town but the further one by the second road, and took a plate full of food from the wedding, bundled in cloth and just... left. In the noise that followed, my second-mother (my wifes mother) accused my wife of getting herself pregnant and that’s why the wedding was premature. “It came without formality, without money” she said “money for the family you are buying into”. She was not shy telling me I should hold out for a less willful wife, a daughter she was less angry with and they’d give me more money if I did. Of course, the Christian cousins accused her of having affairs. We were ALL enmeshed in affairs: my father who had at least two mistresses among the wedding attendees and my mother who had at least one back-door man who was a dancer, and so on and so forth until it was found out nine months later she was not at all pregnant. Not with my child, nor with any other men she may have seen in the meanwhile, and not until after our fourth year together, entirely too soon -- my wife had my child.

My girl was born gifted with hair curled vicious fast and grew bold and strong from roots thick as horse thieves, and with big eyes almond set like my grandmother who was maybe from the East, their color the gold and brown of her mother, light like the southern tribes, her mouth smiled like all the good and all the fickle of her nature. 

She cried too often. Too often she complained at night, of being hungry, or dreaming, of needing company, usually insisting that my wife and I both sleep by her side. 

My wife couldn’t keep her hands off her hair, combing it, perfuming it, braiding it, and running her hands through it, happy like she very rarely was. 

I was too happy and gave in too easily when my child asked for this or that, berries, and mangoes, and the pearls that were brought in to market and indeed no one said “no” because she glowed, the little thing, like a bounding light from between eaves and she scurried and moved and jumped and climbed and the small town was all in love, my daughter almost as close to them as theirs. 

So it was, for sixteen tender years, all the town in love, all shame forgotten, all guards down, when she decided to go to school and so it was when she began conducting her own affairs with the other young folk. So it was, until the witch woman moved down into the baker’s after the death of his wife, and brought with her a daughter. It was surprising. He was a very good looking man, involved in many, many, romances, and she was entirely coarse, beautiful (of course) but liable to fart in your face and run. 

Beauty, the only thing stronger than the love that draws one to it, is the thought they need to own it, and have it, and never let anyone else have it. A horrible thing really, beauty, to one who has no claim on beauty and to fall in love with it. So it was with the daughter of the witch woman who became friends with my daughter, and whose desire ran through her frame, and grew wild as swept fire in the dark minds of desert devils, or the animated reticulation of the rock python in the mulch. 

My daughter came home one day, quiet, and told me Orange (the daughter of the witch) had asked to be her friend and wasn’t it weird she had asked when nobody else had and wasn’t she polite. What should she do?  She wanted to be friends with my daughter and I was an open, non-religious sort, and they went to the school house together and it was as sweet as ever to see her with a friend that had the cunning she lacked because she was too beautiful to be cunning, good Damn blood. At least then, and that’s a sad thing to lack. 

The schoolhouse was one room and my daughter had many friends and the daughter of the witch woman had just the one and so it was with jealousy that she looked at my daughter and so the changes began, without the intention of Orange. 

“Today she brushed my hair so,” she said “so happy, the way she brushed was so nice and so, and she held my hair tight so tight.” And she played with her hair, as it curled less strong, and the roots found rotten water and came undone, and the witch woman’s daughter had hair like my daughter’s all of a sudden, and yet no one knew what things had passed because my daughter was still too beautiful and Orange just so. It was a slow change, but my wife noticed the hair changed when she set upon to braid it and was heartbroken. 

Still the friendship lingered, Orange too sad to have gotten new hair at the expense of her friend. She bit her nails to flesh and said she would keep her hands off but the power took hold of her now so when she said she liked my daughters skin, it was just  too soon that my daughters skin dried up and no amount of butter or imported oil would make it look so rich again. By twist and turn, my daughter became more ordinary and maybe she had a mind, poor girl, to notice the change was happening. To look upon the mirror or the face of her mother, now too sad to get out of bed, or sing, or have affairs. So it was that Orange left, for the good of my daughter, and left her much but not enough. The town talked, grew bored, and then adjusted. My daughter grew cunning instead of ordinary or dumb. My daughter talked to the mother of Orange about what had happened. My daughter went to the Bush to find her friend. That was how Orange died. And how my daughter became beautiful again.