The Good Witches

There was a terrible secret growing inside of Lila and making her sick to her stomach. Well, that was the first sign that something was amiss. After three consecutive mornings of losing her breakfast before even leaving for school, she ordered a box pregnancy tests from China—part of the new mandate stipulated that her name would go on a registry if she bought one at a drug store—and all of the readings came out positive. Though her skin was lily-white, the father had a dark brown complexion, and whatever the resulting shade of their combined DNA, it was sure to be illegal. The moment she gave birth, her child would be taken into CPS custody and she would be detained and sentenced for up to twenty years. The one person she could possibly talk to about it, the father himself, had escaped across the border wall to the Northern states with his family only two months prior. Or at least, she hoped he’d made it. A hushed network of safe homes had created a trail that started in their home state of South Carolina, worked up the coast and crossed from Maryland into Pennsylvania, and he should’ve arrived by now. It was safest for both of them, they agreed, not to have any contact unless she could make it over someday, too.

But she was stuck on the wrong side of the ugly, hulking concrete wall that splintered the country in two, a physical manifestation of the ideological split that rendered her no more than a walking womb. What her body parts could do was more important than the person they constituted, and on the soil where her feet stood, seeking an abortion, or even suffering a miscarriage, could put her legally on the path to the death penalty. That first desperate night after confirming what her body was trying to warn her about, she plucked a wire hanger from her closet and untwisted the hooked end, creating an instrument she’d never dreamed of beholding. The skinny, pointed end looked so violent it made her queasy. After a minute or so of sitting in front of the mirror with her legs spread, considering how she’d do it, her stomach lurched and she twisted the hanger back together.

There was a girl in the grade above her, Beth, who was rumored to have had a back-alley procedure. Such things were forbidden to speak of, but it was Lila’s only hope. She approached the girl at lunch; Beth was sitting alone in the back of the cafeteria. With dyed-black hair and heavy makeup, she’d always been something of an outcast—even before the rumored abortion.

Lila slid onto the bench across from Beth, who was picking the crusts off of a ham sandwich. Beth looked up at her without much interest, but some impatience on having her solitude ruined.

Lila cleared her throat. “I need to… Get rid of something.”

“There’s a trash can behind you,” Beth said plainly.

Lila shifted. “No, not like that,” she said, and then leaned in closer. “I need to get rid of something.”

Beth gave her a blank stare, now growing irritated. “Trash can. Behind you.”

“No, I need to Get. Rid. Of. Something,” Lila enunciated, jerking her chin towards her abdomen. Beth’s eyes widened.

“I have no idea what the the hell you’re talking about. Get the hell away from me,” Beth said, and startled by the outburst, Lila scurried off. But as she packed up at the end of the day, a note fell out of her locker: a slip of paper with an unfamiliar address scribbled on it. She silently thanked Beth and ran home, grabbing her bike and riding to the far side of neighborhood where the houses were just a bit shabbier. She pulled to a stop in front of a once-white clapboard house that had faded to gray, and was missing a few shutters. A weeping willow arched over the front yard, shading the entire front porch where three elderly, white-haired women were seated, rocking in their chairs and knitting. Lila double-checked the paper, but the numbers matched. She was here.

She hopped off her bike and rolled it up the front walk, brushing aside the tendrils of the willow as she passed beneath it. The women didn’t look up from their activity, but from somewhere among them came a faint, “Hello?”

“Hi,” Lila said. “Um, Beth Osbourne sent me.”

“We know not of who you speak,” the tallest of the women said, and Lila noticed she wasn’t knitting at all—she was weaving the web of a dreamcatcher, winding a long thread around a wooden hoop that dangled with colorful beads and silver charms. “Try once more, child. What is it that you seek from us?”

Lila bit her lip. Even hinting at abortion was a risk to herself and Beth; telling strangers was merely a step away from turning herself in. She’d try the coded language again. “I’m here to get rid of something.”

“You must be more clear—” but one of the other women placed her hand on the tall woman’s arm, stopping her.

“She needs the tea,” she said. Her eyes were a cloudy blue—she was blind.

The confusion cleared from the tall woman’s face, and she stood from her seat. “Then you must come inside. There is much to be done.”

Quickly, each woman put down what they’d been busying themselves with, and walked inside in an orderly line—even the blind woman strode in without assistance. Lila hesitated, but stashed her bike behind a shrub and hurried inside after them. The front door opened up onto a parlor, decorated with heavy velvet curtains and a dark, hand-knotted rug. A round, polished oak table sat in the middle, draped with a lacy cloth. The women each took a seat, leaving one vacant for Lila, who lowered herself unsteadily into the chair.

“Tell us. Why do you search out elimination of the fetus? Your age?” said the third woman, who wore a pair of thick glasses.

“The father, he’s black,” Lila said, surprised at her comfort in the presence of the women.

The women tutted sympathetically. “The world has gone to the dogs, I fear,” the glasses-wearing woman replied, and then patted Lila’s hand. “No matter. This will not be the end of your story. Does he know, the father?”

Lila shook her head. “He made it north before I found out.”

“Better if the men aren’t involved, we find,” said the tall woman, placing on the table a navy ceramic teapot dotted with constellations. “They can be volatile creatures when it comes to these kinds of things.”

The blind woman was furiously chopping up a handful of dark green herbs, and Lila was terrified she was going to slip and slice off her own finger. But the woman was skilled, mincing the plant into tiny, uniform pieces before sweeping them all into a strainer and lowering the mass into the steaming teapot. A minty aroma emanated from the kettle, washing over Lila like the hope blooming in her chest. As the tea steeped, the blind woman let her voice drop to barely a whisper, and began muttering to herself. Lila tried to listen in, but it sounded like no more than gibberish. After some time of this, the woman finally poured the tea into a china cup and slid it across the table. Lila drank deeply; the mint hardly masked the bitter aftertaste.

The blind woman cleared her throat. “Now, after you drink the tea, you will bleed on the full moon. That will mark success.”

Lila gently placed her empty cup on the table. “How much blood?” she asked hesitantly.

The woman pressed on. “And you mustn’t forget the final step, to buried the bloodied undergarments under the light of that moon.”

“Why?”

The tall woman cut in, “Do you want to be rid of it or not?”

“Don’t be harsh. She’s just a child herself,” the third woman preached.

“Sorry,” Lila murmured. “I’ll bury them.”

The blind woman nodded to herself, stood up, and exited the room without another word. Scared to anger the tall woman, but anxious to be done with the ordeal, Lila asked, “Am I… Am I done here?”

“Yes. You should get home before dark, and don’t let anyone know you were here. We said as much to your friend, but I suppose the message didn’t sink in.”

“I won’t say a word,” Lila assured, but there was doubt in the tall woman’s eyes. Lila hastily made her way out, grabbing her bike from behind the shrub and riding back the way she’d come.

A week later at midnight, Lila buried a pair of soiled underwear, throwing a few leaves and twigs atop the pile to camouflage the overturned dirt. There was no one to witness her crime but the full moon above. Lila rested her hand on her stomach and breathed a little easier, knowing she’d made the right decision for herself.