So this story is NOT by me. It's actually by my sister, Leslie. She's a great with coming up with ideas but sometimes has a hard time spelling... So all I did here was edit. If you find mistakes let me know. BUT!
More importantly if something doesn't make sense or the wording was funny or something TELL ME! I've given her my feedback but she'd like as much as possible.
This story is based on the myth of Jason and Medea I suggest you look it up and read it. It will help you make sense of the story. Please read and enjoy and GIVE ME FEEDBACK!! THAT'S ALL I ASK!!!
Why You Don't Cheat on a Witch
I disobeyed my mother twice before I left home. The first time occurred when I was twelve and I stole my coming to age birthday gift.
We'd moved into the neighborhood three weeks earlier and because of the move I started school a month late. I've never had the personality to make friends instantly and the month delay helped me about as much as me being twelve but looking eight. I walked home stewing over the fact that the bus driver kept asking me at each stop, "Sweetie is this your stop? Are ya sure, sweetie?"
I came home exhausted, ready to crash and veg. My mother was still down the hall at the apartment that she had rented to do her teaching so I had the apartment to myself. The doorbell rang and I answered it wishing I didn't have to. The parents of my mother's students came in and I heated some water and gave them some tea.
"As expected, such a good little hostess," they both smiled a sickly sweet smile, "Looks as if Helena Petrovna's daughter has mastered the 'art' of making an excellent cup of tea." They both laughed at this lame joke. I smiled weakly. I was sick of jokes like that. My first grade teacher had asked what my father did for work.
"I don't have a father." There was an awkward pause that I didn't understand. I had never wondered about my father ever.
"Well what does your mother do?"
"She teaches the arts." I was ridiculously pleased at using the fancy name that the adults used.
At my next teacher conference my teacher asked what kind of art classes my mother taught. My mother started laughing and then told the teacher that she didn't teach art classes she taught magic classes.
"Oh, you're a magician?" My mother just smiled. Mother wasn't a magician, she's a witch. My mother thought the whole situation hilarious and told her friends, her students and their parents. I'd been hearing for years those same lines, that my mother teaches 'the arts', and that 'Helena Petrovona's daughter makes good tea'.
My mother finally walked into the room with her two students. The parents simpered in my mother's presence, thanking my mother for all her time teaching their children. "We are soooo looking forward to your graduation gifts." Mother personally prepared by hand the graduation gifts of all her students. It's custom that the parents give a coming of age present for when witches start their training and teachers a gift upon the graduation. One of the parents saw me standing to the side, "Isn't your daughter lucky to be able to receive two presents from the great Helena Petrovna."
My mother smiled at this as she was showing them out. "It's a long way off until she starts her training but I must admit I'm like any other proud parent. I can't wait. I've had her initiation gift prepared for years now." They left and my mother came back. Her face was tired and she sat down on a chair with an exasperated sigh.
"I can't wait until those two graduate. I promise you from here on out I'm only accepting geniuses. Smarter students graduate faster." Mother said that every time her students graduated. I think she was always sad to see them go and thought if they graduated faster that she wouldn't get attached.
She asked, "School went well?"
I shrugged slightly and poured the hot water.
"It can't be because they," referring to the two parents who just left, "didn't call you by your name again is it?" Mother asked. I just put the tea bag in the tea cup. Mother laughed and in the same moment stretched taking the form of her chair. "I thought you didn't like your name." In my opinion mothers shouldn't smirk at their daughters when they catch their inconsistency but mother loved to do it. I handed my mother her tea, she took it and in the other hand she reached out and squeezed my own.
"Medea, Medea you don't know how much I love you."
I knew my mother loved me I just wish she didn't name me after a woman who stole from her father, whose brother died, tricked a daughter into killing her own father, and then when the man that she did this all for deserted her, Jason, killed his fiance and father-in-law and to exact the ultimate revenge killed the children she and Jason had with one another. My present status as the eight year old kid at school was her fault as well.
First let me explain just a few things about witches: One, we have the same life span as ordinary humans. Two, we don't age unless we use the magic we generate daily. But before our maturing age, usually around sixteen, we age due to the magic our parents use. Mother would be horrified at that layman explanation because it is so much more complicated and there are so many other innuendos and such stuff, but I never really cared.
So at the age of twelve I had a couple of problems. First I looked eight because my mother hadn't used enough magic to make me grow and two, I hated the fact that to everyone in the magicking world I was Helena Petrovna's daughter and not Medea. Sorry, make that three, I was being bullied at school. So I stole a book of spells that my mother had been waiting to give me when I had matured.
Inside the cover my mother had written a note. "Medea, I have been waiting to give this to you. Use it well."
I had intended to but I wasn't going to wait until I was sixteen of seventeen. Mother kept everything except for the books she gave at graduation in the other apartment. While few people dare cross my mother there is always a smart aleck that will try to grab it early. It was a small book of hexes. I didn't understand most of it but the simpler ones. I kept my preparations secret from my mother because there was no way she was going to find out.
Except she did. "I talked to the school the other day."
I took a big bite of dinner. Mom had made it, though I had started volunteering lately. My mother may be worshiped enough in our community to have one in four female newborns named after her but she was a horrible cook.
"They said there have been some problems but that I shouldn't be concerned." I didn't say anything. "Seems like several students having been complaining of being bullied, childish pranks but their parents are concerned."
"Really?"
"Seems that they are being harassed by someone who is chronically tying their shoes, homework disappearing, and that only the lunches of these same students are being eaten by mice repeatedly." I stopped even trying to pretend to eat my dinner. "I told them I suspected you of being bullied." I sat paralyzed, my fork midway between my plate and mouth.
I was trying to think of what excuse I could come up with. Oh, I knew I was going to be in trouble. My mother stood and walked over to me she wrapped me in a big hug. "I am so proud of you. Do you know the last recorded witch to have magically matured at the age of twelve?! And to have figured out those spells by yourself. What a smart girl I have."
"You're not mad at me?"
"Mad? Why would I be mad? I'm sure you had a reason for it. The only thing that I am sad about is that my little girl is going to grow up."
So I started school the next summer with my mother. I remember the first day, it was the first time ever I walked into the apartment that my mother rented as her magical studio. The back wall was covered in small drawers from ceiling to floor and a big square, monstrously thick table in the middle of the room. I said 'hello' to them and they looked dubiously back at me. Mother had told me they were twins.
"So your Medea, Helena's daughter?" It was the thin faced one with what I supposed were stylish glasses, as cool as glasses could be anyway.
"Yeah. My names Medea."
His twin smiled a hello and then punched his brother in the shoulder. "Yeah, Richard, yeah." Every punch was accompanied with a 'yeah'. I was nervous about having classes with them. We would most likely be taking summer classes for the next five or six summers together if they could afford it. Mother charged a pretty penny for her classes. Mother nicknamed them Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Their parents, honored that Helena Petrvona had nicknamed their sons did the same. The twin never complained but I thought they must dislike the nicknames. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are not the most astute charters and the two of them were by even the stiffest of mother's friends acknowledged as geniuses. But then look at my name, my mother may be a renowned witch but lets face it, name giving is not one of her talents.
I proved a disappointment to my mother I think on the level of my talents, though she never said anything like that. Dee and Dum were always leaps and bounds ahead of me. Still everything was a competition to those two, and I was continually drawn into it. Dee at first tried to compete with me. I was after all the daughter of Helena Petrovona and one of the first in nearly fifty years to have matured at the age of twelve. So when my mother gave a free time to explore our own interests, it always ended in me loosing though we tried enough things until Dee gave up trying to compete with me and returned to competing with his brother. We competed with divining rods, oil finding toads, the best sleeping drinks. Our relationship wasn't anything more than annoying teacher's daughter until I reached the age of fifteen and I was upgraded to kid sister. That happened when I beat Dee at poker. We were actually kind of sad when we said good by at their graduation when the both of them turned twenty-one and left.
Life was pretty standard after that but by that time but when I finally turned eighteen, I was ever so glad to be able to leave home and go to college. I was tired of studying year in and year out and was so ready to live life. In mothers last lesson that we had, I remember her saying, "The human heart, and ours for that matter, can only be influenced in one direction or the other. It can be coxed and we can try to trick it. But you can never force it. It will choose."
And that was the start of the second time I deliberately disobeyed my mother, except this time it wasn't just me imagining that I was disobeying her. It started with an art class. After my fiasco of having my teacher misunderstand that my teacher is an art teacher and having lied for years about it. I've avoided art and all art classes. This one was required.
I put it off until junior year at college studying landscaping and on my first day back I met J.P. We met in a required art history class, the college believed its students should have a "well-rounded education". So while it didn't have anything to do with either of our majors we ended up sitting next to each other. I don't know what he was thinking but I couldn't help but think uncharacteristically, "He's hot!". I was so aware of him sitting next to me. Instead of listening to the teacher my mind kept wandering on what I could say to him when class was over. But my tongue was all tangled in my mouth and when the class ended he got up and as I tried to shove my book and notebook in my bag he excused himself and brushed past me. My golden opportunity was passing. It was a large auditorium class and I could never seem to sit next to him again. Sometimes I would see him golden curls and bright blue eyes. Girls would often stop him and talk to him; I was right he had a wonderful laugh. I knew I was way out of my league and that he would never notice me. Well, that might have been it, but I'm a witch. So I cast a spell one where he and I would meet and at least talk.
It all came to fruition when that Friday I sat by him again. We had received our test study guides and the teacher was announcing the time that the TA would be having out of class reviews. The bell rang as I was writing them down.
And suddenly he started talking to me.
"I won't be able to go to any of those. Doesn't that just always happen to you?" It actually had never
happened to me but I agreed anyway.
I gathered myself, "If you want I could give you my notes."
He smiled but still looked concerned, "Oh, thanks." But for some reason I could tell that wasn't what he was going for.
"I take good notes." I said
He smiled and I saw that he had a dimple, " I know you do I glanced at your notes during class they make more sense than the teachers rambling."
"My mother teaches art."
"That's why you can actually spell all the artist names. Actually if we could go over the notes, if I just read them it doesn't stick I have to hear someone talk about it." I smiled then and we exchanged numbers and I went over to his apartment and taught him about art history and he taught me about kissing. He ended up getting a better score than I did on the test. Later he told me that he'd wanted to ask me out the first time he sat by me but he could never sit by me again. Sometimes he would see me on the other side of the auditorium but he could never quite catch me after class. After our first time studying together, we just clicked. There was hardly a day we didn't see each other. I loved walking together our hands linked, and the feeling when we cuddled watching a movie together of his arms surrounding me holding me tight, and the kissing--don't forget that. I had never been so glad in my life that I had cast a spell for myself, that I had risked something.
J.P was studying business and finance so he could take over his father's business. His business required his father to travel a great deal and J.P said that when he traveled I would go with him. He was my first in everything. The first man that pulled out a chair for me at a fancy restaurant, the first to say I was beautiful and funny (he loved my jokes), the first to give me flowers, the first to kiss me and the first to say he want to live with me for the rest of his life.
My mother I think was happy for me at first. I was radiant, he made me shine. I felt like I could do anything. But she was furious when I told her that I was going to move in with J.P. We had been dating for six months.
"We love each other, mom."
"If you love each other so much then why don't you get married?"
But J.P and I had talked about that. We could get married later if we wanted. Plenty of people got married and didn't last, in fact J.P knew people that had lived together for years and then finally gotten married to only break up shortly after.
"It's only a piece of paper, it has nothing to do with how we feel. We just want to see how it works out first."
My mother was livid. I guess that’s one thing that witches and really religious people have in common. Magic--a lot of it about rules and contracts and consequences and doing things in the proper order. My mother knew not accepting one piece of paper can mean a lot.
We lived together for a year and I got pregnant. We were both happy. I wasn't talking to my mother and his parents didn't really approve of me as I was below their standards. We hoped that our new beautiful baby girl would help them accept the present circumstances. While I only went to their house once or twice. J.P's father let him start working that his company, I suppose while his father didn't really want his money supporting me, his granddaughter was acceptable. I didn't work much magic before that time. Their was no need in my perfect world. I did a few times when J.P needed it at his new work. More than I should have, it aged me until I almost looked my natural age. I wanted him to succeed to be proud of himself.
But then my world fell apart. It was when Thalia was two that I truly lived the life of my name sake, Medea and J.P his, Jason.
I'd rather not dwell on how I became suspicious. Once I did it was rather easy for me to confirm. J.P said once when we were dating that since the first moment he'd seen me I'd bewitched him. I'd laughed loudly at this. "I am a witch you know." But I'd never told him or tried to convince him that I really was. To him I was merely gifted at getting rid of his hangovers and aches and pains when needed but nothing was really witchy about me I'm sure. Or he might of been a little more worried about getting caught.
I took a piece of his hair when he was late coming home and took a hand mirror and poured a thick layer of water on it and placed their hair down. I cast the spell and, to put it simply, caught him in the act. He came home, and I pretended I was asleep. I hated him and I didn't want to lose him. I didn't want our Thalia to know what tragedy was in her life. I wanted him to give her up and feel terrible for what he was doing to me and come back. I didn't want to confront him yet, all breakfast I felt the words pressing at my lips, clawing their way out.
He asked if I was feeling well. He sounded concerned, that hypocrite.
That same afternoon I went to his office building with Thalia. Somehow my feet and found their way there. I know some architecture, I had studied landscaping and I knew that the landscaping should compliment the architecture. It was a building with a lot of glass, transparency and honesty being the themes I supposed were something needed but often not found in business.
You remember that moment, the one with my mother telling me about how wonderful Medea was? It was another one of those moments. I walked in and stood the information desk in front of me, a hexagon so that it faced the halls that shoot off the main atrium. Above was a walkway with glass railings fenced in a pathway between two departments and their offices, There was JP, his father, another older business man and the woman I'd seen from my stalking JP with his hair.
I was close enough to the information desk to overhear them. "That's Mr. Glauce and his daughter. I bet it won't belong before we hear wedding bells."
The other woman with gaudy bright red lipstick replied, "Its too bad, oh, he's handsome."
"I know but they go well together. You just have to look at them and know their in love."
I've hated information desks. Someone should make information desks that give you information that you want not that you need. I turned not even caring that I nearly knocked a bystander over who was standing next to me talking on his cellphone.
I went home and worked more magic to convince a baby to go to bed even if she didn't want to. I sat and thought a long time. I knew Jason would come home late. And I knew that I would have to know by then what I wanted to say to him.
I called my mother for the first time since I had called her to tell her Thalia was born.
"Hi, mom." I loved my mom for acting as if we had never been angry at each other.
"Hi Medea. How are you?"
How was I? It was like when you're a kid and you've fallen down, you might cry a little but the real heart renting racking sobs can only come when you go find your mother. I still tried not to cry and with a wobbly voice replied, "Not so good." But it was no use they were out. I cried on the phone for a long time. My mother didn't hang up.
"I found a great new hexing book." She said. I laughed and probably would have cried more if I'd had the tears.
"I don't want to hex him, I want him to love me."
"You're my Medea." my mother said. "My Medea doesn't let anyone stand in her way of happiness."
Jason came home that night and was surprised to still see me up. I was smoking something, I had stopped when I found out I was pregnant. I had never been a heavy smoker and protecting my child was more than enough motivation for me to stop. But I did when I was really upset. That was how he knew I was upset and though not sure why, he tried to placate my anger by kissing me on the forehead. I didn't let him. I wondered briefly if I could be Medea, stand tall and call him out for who he was. If I could send a golden robe to that whore of his that would ensnare her and burn her flesh and that would kill that father of hers the one that tempted him away with money from my side. If I could kill Jason's child to cause him excruciating pain he was causing me.
"Why are you smoking? It's not good for Thalia and Em (he rarely called me Medea but shortened it to to Em) that's hardly fair as you always make me smoke outside."
"Are you really worried about Thalia?" I asked bitterly, "Are you really concerned about what's fair? So when were you going to tell us when you got married?!"
He stopped midway of taking off his coat. He didn't even bother to deny it.
My voice dropped, I didn't want to say it but it came out any way. I was glad I'd left the lights off, glad that I could only see some of him from the light he'd turned on. "Do you love her?" Why did I sound like every other pathetic woman who feels betrayed? Why wasn't I taking everything a way from him like my ruthless namesake?
"I didn't mean for it to happen Em, I loved you I really did. I still care for you and Thalia but I couldn't control my heart. I met her a couple of weeks after my promotion--you remember, the one you were more excited about than I was? Her father was at the same business trip and she was accompanying him and my parents were against us and I was just so tired of it all..." he didn't finish and knowing he had no defense left, his face automatically went to that half smile that meant 'I'm sorry'. And every time before that I had forgiven him but I couldn't forgive him this time. And he really didn't want me to, did he.
I hadn't lived up to my namesake. I gave way to the modern Medea, the one that didn't like confrontation. I should have screamed at him. But he took his and my heart away when he went to her and I had nothing left to fight with. I found out later that my mother had taken my hairbrush when she'd come to see me after the baby had been born and had stolen Jason's as well. She'd been watching over me the whole time. I moved home eventually but started burning the hair from that got stuck in my hair brushes. Thalia was unaware of the loss and remained happy. I didn't feel anything the next day after our pathetic fight. Real couples have heated discussions they fight sometimes. Jason hadn't even loved me enough to do that.
Living at home again was an adjustment. Especially as I was coming home in what felt like defeat. I remember a woman who was sharing the pain of divorce and how she felt like she was walking around with a scarlet D branded on her forehead, divorce may be common but that doesn't make it less painful. I was coming home. My room was the same, my mother was the same, and I was in all appearances the same as when I left, give or take a few years, still single and very ordinary. Except I came back with a child. The neighbors would love it, something new to gossip when paying the association fee or collecting that mail.
My life kind of hit a low point here. I was thankful, yet at times angry, throwing fits around my mother. I hated her patience and in those moments wondered if this time I would break that peaceful exterior, wondering when her eternal indifference for life would cease. In our small apartment could she not hear me cry at night? Did she not see me? I fell easily into a pattern Mother watched Thalia during the day and then dropped her off at daycare and I picked her up on the way back. I fell into the rhythm of things. Not really talking to anyone not even my mother.
Home wasn't the only place that where everything seemed to grate my nerves. I picked out my daughter's day care close to home and one fitting my mothers teaching schedule and then merely applied an architectural and landscaping firm. I cast a spell to insure to insure to get the job. But even that didn't go right. I had specifically wanted something steady and stable that wouldn't interfere with my care of Thalia, that would allow me to use my skills to the fullest. I had failed the interview but coming down the stairs had run into Mr. Scott, a lawyer in a new firm right below. He saw me carrying my resume and assumed that I was applying for the secretary post. I wonder how he became a lawyer if he was so influenced by the residue of one my pathetic spells. But I had to be even stupider because I went ahead and played along and took the job.
I found a job not as a landscaper but as a secretary.
Some weeks into the dreary job. My co-workers, whom I didn't really know. I responded when I was spoken to, pretty much 'hello' or 'goodbye'. Tonight was Friday and their monthly hit-the-town night. They would, I suppose, go get drunk and dance the night away. I was invited the first time out of pity or politeness. I refused. I have a child at home and didn't have time to go get irresponsibly drunk. I wasn't much liked after that but I really didn't care.
But two weeks later I was invited again. But my mother had something to do with that. One of the other paralegals came back in because the had forgotten something and saw me at my desk finishing up something before heading out. Suddenly he came over and asked me "Hey, Ms. Gavin" realizing that he didn't actually know my first name. "How about coming with us?"
"I can't. I have to go pick up my daughter." I put on my coat and picked up my bag. And then my cell phone went off and I realized that it was on the desk. The paralegal was closer and I don't know who does this sort of thing as it is rude and intrusive to answer someone else's phone. But he answered it and I could hear my mother's voice in response to the paralegal.
"This is Ms. Gavin's phone."
"Just tell Medea that I picked her daughter up already and that she should just go have fun tonight."
I snatched the phone out of his hand. "Mother, stop." My mother wouldn't know about tonight being a night to go out with my co-workers. I hadn't told her. Unless, unless my mother used magic to spy or even worse cast a spell trying to make me go out tonight.
"Mom, please will you not do this."
"You will go or you will find someone else to take care of your daughter during the day." And with that my mother hung up.
I looked at my co-worker who was coming to himself I could see regret at his spontaneity on his face.
"It looks like I'd love to come."
It proved to be an extremely uncomfortable evening. I hated my mother for forcing me into it and I hated for the way it made me miss J.P. He had liked to go out to places like these. I had never been before and the until I met him. I had come to love going with him. We'd dance and drink ourselves silly and just let life go. Now I looked at the sea of people pulsing with life and felt isolated. Like I was alone and was surrounded by complete strangers because I was. I've yet to meet anyone who likes to feel like a wall flower, but what was worse was sitting with a group of strangers that you're supposed to know and them feeling like they'd rather I'd not be there but too polite to shoo me away and yet not exactly making unnoticeable that they were uncomfortable with me there. I went to the bathroom. I didn't go back immediately, but stood by one of the pillars near the bar and took out a cigarette. I'd been smoking more frequently. I was enjoying myself until I realized that two of my colleagues were at the bar. They were slightly drunk and talking loudly.
"Why did you invite a stick in the mud like her." It didn't take much stretch of anyone's imagination to realize that they were talking about me.
"I don't know what came over me. I just felt like doing it so I did." He asked for another drink, "But man, I didn't think anyone could kill the mood like her. She even take he fun out of the music and the booze."
I looked at them around the pillar and snorted to myself. They could talk all they wanted. I was surprised at how little I cared. It was like they were talking about someone else that I knew was me. I took another drag on my cigarette and listened as they continued to nit pick at my clothes, how were those of an old spinster, or my oppressive nature. I chuckled at the irony of the situation, thinking that even my mother must be having a hard time if her spells ended with me overhearing how unattractive and what a pain I was. For some odd reason it just struck me as funny, my talented mother only failed miserably when it came to her daughter. What a cruel ironic fate and how much fun it was going to be to tease my mother about this. I finished my cigarette smiling. I turned to get a better look at the two that were talking about me before I went back to the table to collect my things and leave. A man was sitting alone a seat away from them he saw me looking and looked from them back to me. He'd obviously realized what was going on. My smile widened just a little, a joke is always better when it is shared. It must have been the alcohol but I uncharacteristically winked and held my finger to my lips signaling that he shouldn't say anything (really the next morning remembering that I realized that instead of looking mysterious and cool I probably looked like an idiot that was drunk and who was trying to to look stupid for being talked badly about) but I collected my things at left with a smile.
The next morning was a Saturday and I woke up late. On my bed stand was a glace of hangover remover (Ha to my colleges! Nothing they would be drinking today would take away their headaches like this) but my mother had also left something to take away my heart ache. It was a thin hand made book. I opened it. On the first page was scrawled in my mothers handwriting was "Why You Should Never Cheat on a Witch." A folded piece of paper fell out when I opened it to this. It was a card from my mother.
"Medea, my dear daughter. I love you. When your father left I wrote this book. You're a witch. Live like one." It was such a small book. I examined it more closely. The paper was obviously a cruder grade, ruff and thick. It looked hand bound and the cover hand made, maples leaves covering it. It was pretty I realized as I opened it.
"Well, it explains my mothers specialty and obsessions with curses and hexes." I murmured as I began reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment