thirteen

Veronica told me she was a witch right after the Christmas break was over. She claimed to be the current heiress to a magical (or magickal as she preferred to spell it) lineage passed from mother to daughter over twenty-one generations. A line unbroken for over five hundred years. She said her family traced its roots to the Carpathian region of Romania and that her mother’s ancestors arrived in America over two hundred years ago.

I found it hard to swallow that a succession of women gave birth to baby girls without fail for hundreds of years. I suppose stranger things have happened on this planet, and when you are operating in the occult world the unpredictable becomes more likely—maybe—if you believe in that stuff.

Perhaps there were times when only a male was born and they had to fudge the records and the wife of the witch’s son would become the inheritor of the “art,” as Veronica called it. I told her this theory of mine and it pissed her off.

She explained that her great-great-great-great-(etc.)-grandmother had sworn an oath and with her last breath pledged a curse before she was burned at the stake in Romania. Having had the prescience to send her only daughter to France before her arrest, Great-Grandma the Witch made a dying promise that this female line would last for a thousand years to “right the wrongs of her murderers and punish them and their progeny for centuries.” As Veronica told me this, she stared into my eyes for a long time without blinking.

I’d like to believe the purpose of her deep gaze was to emphasize the gravity of the story rather than an intimidation tactic, but I must admit that a chill ran through me. I sensed a queer sort of power emanating from her. I never felt it from her again and she never looked at me in quite the same way, but on that very gray January afternoon, sitting on a bench with our backs to Central Park . . . I believed she was a witch indeed.

I asked her what kind of things she did with her witchcraft powers.

“We call it art, not power. And all I can say about it is that I am able to assert my will in a certain way that can have a subtle influence over the way events unfold.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“No. I don’t know you well enough. I’ve probably told too much already . . . But you have nothing to worry about. You’re my friend, so don’t be scared or anything.”

“I’m not scared at all.” That was not entirely true.

“Good,” she said as she took my hand in hers for the first time.

We stared straight out toward Fifth Avenue and watched the cars, buses, and taxis flow downtown. She didn’t look at me for a long time.

As I held onto her hand, I felt certain that she was telling the truth and I never needed to worry about her harming me. Anything she did to me that seemed challenging or confrontational was only to test me and train me into being more like she was: confident, strong, and fearless. All things that I was not. She took this on as a mission or duty. She said that the city was going to eat me alive if I didn’t wise up, that Jackson Heights and Manhattan were as far apart as Bumfuck and Hollywood. I agreed.

When I walked her to the subway later that afternoon, she told me that she had turned her first trick right around this time last year.