Yeah—No. Not Anymore

“She’s upon us.”     

The family, who had been silently eating—upending a fiery awkwardness rising into the air—smashed said tension. It broke, and everyone sat there, staring at the fiery redhead. She nodded, the eight-year-old sure of this truth.

“Are you okay?”    

Tod the younger sibling, a year younger, looked at his sister out from his blue-rimmed glasses. Tod swallowed hard when his sister held out her hands wide, explaining how she had visited this place in a book. How, when she opened it, it read Join me. Then she did—stepped into the book like she was stepping into water. Then when she was there, with the witch in the rickety old house within the book, the woman told her to stay. She was lonely, so she needed company. No one else was going to join the book’s cast of characters, so why shouldn’t she?

“But she’s a witch, why would you go?”

“Well, I didn’t know. Until I read stories posted on her walls of other children having been written into worlds where they remain until the witch decides which dessert to turn them into by writing them as she having turned them into that dessert to feed them to her friends at dinner and cocktail parties she hosts in this here house. But—but,” she looked around the dinner table, being the center of attention now. “We need to stop her. She’s—she’s going to take me, and you, Tod, and you, Brentley, all of us, to her house. And we’ll be eaten.”

Her mother, her eyes half-shut, sat there, fork poised in the air, looking at her daughter. “Mm-hm.” She said very slowly.

“Honey,” her husband looked at her, waving his hand in front of her face. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe until you stop telling stories, maybe you can make us all dinner.”

“But, Mom!” The redhead threw her hands out to the sides. “I only got started. Besides, I thought you loved stories.”

“Dear.” Her husband turned to his wife, but not sternly. “I thought we talked about it.”

“Talked about how this person at my table needs to stop telling stupid stories.”

The redhead went back to her dinner, eyes downcast. Her mother hated making dinner—especially for this redheaded child. The redhead also asked all the time whether her mother was tired or upset about something—to which the woman sternly told her she was fine. She was just fine.   

“It’s your turn to do the dishes, sweetie.” The sweetie wasn’t very kind; it was more like the mother had obliged to say it. She was the mother! A hug was as real as a ghost. A kiss on the forehead? In her dreams!    

Tod came over, and tried consoling her, but she cleared and did the dishes.

“I knew there must be something I’ve done to deserve Mom’s wrath. Quiet wrath shoots from her piercing eyes like daggers.”

Her brother leaned against her bedroom door’s border. “Well, she is our mother. She is raising us.”

“You two. She just wrapped me in diapers, put me in pretty dresses for school and Sunday School and took me to parks.” The girl grabbed Phoebe her stuffed animal elephant, squeezing it tight. “Sometimes, I talk to Phoebe and ask whether my mother is even my mother at all. Or whether she belongs in a pie!”

The brother’s quartz eyes grew huge. “So you’re going to write her into the book?”

“Yes!”  

But the brother blocked her from going against his wishes. She found herself being pushed backwards, and fell into her little hammock hanging between the drawer next to her bed and the desk on which her iPad sat. Giving him with a smug look, she challenged, “What would you do?”

The boy shook his head. “Orange Lion Flower, you’re something else!”

“Why are you telling—”

“I’m not the redhead. I’m—”

“I wasn’t talking to you, was I?” The mother’s eyes slid over to her son, whose head whipped behind him. “Now.” She extended a hand. “Let’s go to bed, okay, honey?”

“No.” Orange Lion Flower ordered. “Not until you say you’re sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

This woman’s cruelty was beyond fist-clenchingly frustrating. The woman ordered her son to bed. He went but not without throwing his sister a pitying look. After the two were in bed—the mother tucking in her son and kissing him on the forehead—the redhead snuck to her bookshelf, stealing the book along with a pencil from somewhere on her desk.

I need you to turn my mother into a pie.

Please, by all means, we’ll have some dinner. Dessert will be delicious!

The girl hurled out of bed, whipped open her parents’ door and ran around the bed. Shaken awake, the disgruntled woman grumbled she was sleeping, but the redhead begged her. She had an adventure, she said. It couldn’t be missed!

“What can’t?”

“No—please, Tod! She doesn’t want you. She’s going to turn you into a pie—”

“What! Get away from me, redhead—I need my beauty sleep.” The mother slipped her sequined, glittery sleeping mask down and rolled over, but her daughter’s almost high-pitched voice made her groan she was so done with this fiesta. Fiesta of a nightmare.

“Orange Lion Flower’s lying! She’s—she’s going to give you over to the witch!”

As the redhead hissed at Tod to shut his mouth, the mother snapped at both of them to just go to bed.

The redhead dashed off. Explaining her abusive mother’s stubbornness, Orange Lion Flower stood before the woman. She had a spread-out violet collar, hair yellow and a little like she had put her wet finger in an electric socket, eyes narrow and sharp. Her lips were blood-red. Lipstick? Very thin, very thin mouth. Almost skeletal body.    

A smile crept up the woman’s face.

“Then I’ll go get her. Want to come?”

“Sure!”

The woman extended a hand, and Orange Lion Flower wondered at those batter-stained hands. The witch woke the mother, who turned on the light and stared, wide-eyed, at this weird creature.

“Will you join me for dinner? Dessert will be delicious!” She smiled sweetly.   

The woman in deep, deep purple put an arm around the sleeping mask-less mother. As they led her to the kitchen, Orange Lion Flower smiled as the witch opened the heated oven to retrieve the pie. The mother smelled it. “Wow—even smells delicious!”

“Wake up!”

Tod had appeared, to Orange Lion Flower’s great disapproval.          

The mother’s eyes instantly opened when his hands clapped in her face. She looked at the witch serving dessert on the kitchen table. She turned to Orange Lion Flower, grabbing her arm. “Let’s go. We’re not staying here another minute!”

“Wait.” The witch held up a finger. “Wait—my guests will be here for the party. A dinner party.”

The mother looked at her watch. “It’s ten o’clock!” She grabbed Orange Lion Flower’s arm and headed out the door.   

“No!” Orange Lion Flower returned to the kitchen, the mother yelling at her to come back with her now! Orange Lion Flower told the witch to just stuff her in the pie. Yeah! And when Tod sees this, he’ll thank her for ending such abuse. Orange Lion Flower rushed to the real world, grabbed her other brother’s arm.

“What’s going on?” He rubbed his eyes.

“You have to see it—Mom’s going to be baked in a pie!”

Brentley’s eyes were open now. “What? Mom’s going to be a great mother one day if we just help her understand she can’t separate her children—love two, but not the other. Don’t wish this upon her!”

“She needs to love me.”

Orange Lion Flower ticked off on her fingers how she had never been the one to have the love reciprocated back to her. The brownies, dresses, Christmas cookies and slumber parties. Her mother might as well snapped her fingers. It just went down the drain of obligation, washed away into the ocean of indifference. When Orange Lion Flower was in the kitchen of the rickety house, she watched the witch push her mother towards the oven door. “Come on, you’re going to a new world—a world where you’re not going to have to deal with any children you don’t love.”  

The stupid woman joyfully climbed into the oven. Suddenly, Tod was there, lunging for her, telling Orange Lion Flower she needed to forgive her mother for her emotionally neglectful ways.

“No!”

Orange Lion Flower tore her brother from their mother, all crashing to the ground. She ordered her brother to just let her mother die for all it was worth. The mother scrambled up, dusting her silky pajamas off and whirled around, staring at her daughter, horrified.        

“Do you love me now? Now that you’re going to get baked into the oven?”

The witch demanded everyone to just join the dinner party! The front door opened just then, and people with wild, colorful, expensive tuxedos and gowns wound the wall, announcing their arrival. “My friends!” The witch welcomed the thirty guests into the dining area. They thanked her, gathering around, white gloved hands flying this way and that way. Did they just come from a Mardi gras party? Parade? Orange Lion Flower would never know.    

The witch invited Tod and the mother to join. Orange Lion Flower, eyes narrowed, waited for the witch to return her mother in the oven of death. But she was serving the pie, fingers sticking out of the side like legs out of a spider’s abdomen. After the guests bobbed their heads—like they just wanted the witch to serve them some and then get back to their conversation—the witch turned to Orange Lion Flower.

“Name?”

“Orange Lion Flower.” The girl looked up at her, without a trace of fear in her pretty frosty blue eyes.

“Come with me, sweetie.”

She led her to the library in a back room. Orange Lion Flower asked the witch whether the books contained children who wouldn’t listen to their parents, or animals who disobeyed their owners or anything like that. The witch brought out a book.

“A woman in this book is very nasty to her daughter. When she came to this house, her daughter wanted her to become a pie—”

“That’s me. And my mom!”

“Yes. I’m not done with the book. Will you help me write the rest?”

We need to forgive her.

Orange Lion Flower remembered Tod’s words. Backing away slowly, she ran, heart pounding. She’s going to eat me, too. This is a total trap. I must get Tod out of here!

“Tod! Tod!”

Orange Lion Flower burst into the kitchen, screaming for her brother. When everyone shushed her, waving her away with their hands and crying out for more food, she burst out with, “This is all a trap. I know it! She’s in that library, writing all of you in her book. When she finishes, you all are victims of her so-called dinner parties—”

“Honey, we must not spill the beans!”

Jumping onto the table, Orange Lion Flower grabbed the pie and chucked it at the witch’s face. “Let’s go!” Orange Lion Flower grabbed Tod’s hand, the mother dashing towards the door, the woman asking whether she had any idea of getting home.

“I think we just need to—”

The witch was there already, the front door closing. Turning calmly to the terrified trio, she folded her hands. “All of you are recipes in that cookbook.” She went over to some, tearing them off the walls. Orange Lion Flower noticed they were written in icing, frosting and raspberry jam. “My dinner guests need dinner. Once I’ll write you,” she told the mother, “into a chicken with chicken bones left over from the last dinner—the family father—they’ll have a delectable feast, complete with you as gravy. All of you are for my guests. If you leave, I’ll always find you.”

Orange Lion Flower looked at the wall of recipes. It seemed that the witch had written these certain recipes with their certain ingredients—flour was written in flour, baking soda in baking soda and so on. Orange Lion Flower’s eyes bulged. Those ingredients were people—the witch had written each ingredient into a recipe after turning them into that specific ingredient to make her decadent dessert or dinner. “I almost have all the ingredients. You’re just the gravy needed to coat a scrumptious chicken!”    

Orange Lion Flower, the mother and Tod all stared at each other, Orange Lion Flower’s stomach churning. Tod backed away. The mother took deep breaths. Orange Lion Flower bolted outside.

“GET BACK HERE AND GET US HOME!” Tod thundered, chasing his sister. The witch cackled, telling her oblivious guests to hurry up with the dessert so she could serve dinner. The backwards meal? No one did that. Orange Lion Flower grabbed a piece of paper with some flour all knocked onto the sidewalk. She rewrote this meal plan—first the dinner and then the dessert.   

“Orange Lion Flower, the witch! Watch out!”

“Oh, so now, I’m your daughter!”

Orange Lion Flower ignored her mother’s apologies, watching as the begging woman was shoved into the recipe. The witch told Tod to be a sweet boy to her guests.

But he glared at her with such a fierceness even a fire wouldn’t feel so hot. “Give me back my mother!”  

“She’s not our mother!”

“Yes, she is—”

“She’s yours! She’s not mine.”

“Orange Lion Flower, do something. She’s going to cook us. Please!”

Orange Lion Flower took the pencil, writing and writing until her hand ached. Looking up, she saw her mother come into the room, the black woman smiling lovingly down at her. Bending her head towards her, the redhead closed her eyes and smiled brightly as her mother kissed her on the forehead. “Please—I need to finish it! One more hour!”

“It’s ten o’clock! School’s tomorrow.”

“But the dinner party’s started at that time.” The girl didn’t want to whine, but she couldn’t help it.

“Okay.” She glanced at a paragraph. “What? I’m emotionally abusive?”

“Uh—” Orange Lion Flower clutched her book to her heart. “I…just wanted to…”

“Make the bullying go away.” The mother hugged her daughter. “Tomorrow.”

Orange Lion Flower showed the girls the half-finished story. They tossed it into the trashcan. Giggling, they strutted away, the leader flicking her hair over her shoulders.

Orange Lion Flower phoned her mother in the principal’s office.

“Yes, mom. They hated it.”

“I’m so sorry, honey—”

“Mom—I got an idea.”

Orange Lion Flower dashed out of the principal’s office and grabbed the book after jumping into the trashcan. No one’s going to throw me away now! She grabbed a piece of food from underneath her, writing with a piece of dried-up gum. And wrote. Soon, written legible words stared back at her from the banana peel—

“Stop ruining my recipes!”     

Orange Lion Flower escaped the witch’s grasp. She ran towards the books. When the witch ordered all her books’ characters to invite the girl to help them finish their stories, Orange Lion Flower refused vehemently, knowing she was going to be eaten. How she wished Tod was here!  

Orange Lion Flower looked over—the partygoers were still having a blast, having moved on to dancing and playing cards, the table becoming a pool table and casino game table. Wondering whether those guests were really on the witch’s side, Orange Lion Flower ran, the characters coming out and chasing her—           

“Oh, dear, you don’t want to rewrite those books.” The witch’s honey voice stopped everyone, especially Orange Lion Flower, turning her around. “I have lists upon lists of recipes just oozing with the need to be used for a wonderful story!”

Orange Lion Flower heard a knock on the door. Answering it, she saw Tod grab her arm, whipping them away from this world. However, Orange Lion Flower stuffed her face into Tod’s shoulder. Brentley must’ve heard her muffled crying because he came into the room, asking what was wrong.

“Nothing. We’ll explain it tomorrow on the bus.”

Brentley comforted her. She told her two brothers she had to write that woman into her own recipe. End her once and for all. But how? She was unstoppable.

“You were right. She’s upon us. She’ll eat us all.”

“It’s just…that foster home. I still have nightmares of the abuse! I guess I just need someone the witch can turn into a pie. I don’t know. I just wanted…”

“The bullying to stop.”

Orange Lion Flower erased the abusive mother idea and rewrote it as the witch turning her bullies into pies. The witch showed up at the playground the next day, grabbed the girls and Orange Lion Flower and had her stand there while the witch coaxed the girls into the oven. Absolutely refusing, the horrified girls shook their heads, demanding why Orange Lion Flower would do this to them.

“Stop bullying me.”

“Yeah—yeah! Just give us a second chance!”

“We’ll stop. Just—don’t eat us!”

The girls, Orange Lion Flower saw, looked guilty. And even apologetic. “Let them go.”

But the witch coaxed the girls into the oven. Demanding them to go free, Orange Lion Flower told the witch she’d shove her in the oven herself if she didn’t listen. “Let’s go, girls! She’ll just eat all of us.”

Orange Lion Flower helped the girls escape the book. The witch, she knew, was upon them.

As Orange Lion Flower closed the book after writing that the witch couldn’t escape it, she sighed.

I’ll write her as kind! Yeah—then she can visit us, and we’ll all have a special meal. Together. With Annie, Mabel and Scarlet. They can come, as former bullies. And with a smile on her face, she closed her eyes, planning to do just that. Just as her mother came in to give her a kiss on the forehead. And say goodnight. Before having done so with her two sons.