Witch

Witch

One acre. My world had become one acre of land. I kept a simple house and a simple garden and I tried to live.

People don’t understand; they have never understood. They scurry past my fences, whispering “witchhh.” I am the bogeyman they frighten themselves with at night.

It’s true; I took the child. That was wrong. If only, but . . you can’t and you won’t. So I say simply, the parents were bad. They had stolen from me. The father offered his unborn child without even considering if I would raise the child or burn her as a sacrifice to the Devil. He was one of the whisperers. It was always something with him. His well went dry and it was my fault. His horse broke a leg and it was my fault. Finally, he accused me of making both his land and his wife barren, and he had the audacity . . . the gall . . . the simple bad taste to steal from me?

I took the child.

It was wrong.

I am the bane of people’s existence. I am so awful and so powerful I have caused every inconvenience they have ever faced.

I couldn’t have a child. Not of my own.

Rapunzel was a beauty from her very first breath. I would hold her in my lap and marvel at nature. How could two such ugly, vile people create something so wondrous? I used to see it as a sign that I was meant to have her.

When your world is so small and fragile that you see someone snatching it from you in every shadow, you cling to it and try to shield it from every little threat . . . real or imagined. I left my acre of land and took Rapunzel to a tower, far away from her parents. I couldn’t risk them seeing her, telling her. I couldn’t lose her.

I clung to her like her little finger gripped my bigger one.

I changed her diapers; taught her to talk; to read; to write; I nursed her from a bottle; I brushed her hair; washed her hair; told her stories; played with her . . . . I was her mother.

Except that I wasn’t. I never told her I was. You have to give me credit for that, at least. I never told the girl I was her mother. I told her simply that her parents had gone away and they had made me her guardian.

That was enough for awhile. But as she grew older, she asked more questions about the world. Questions about her parents. I used to tell her that everything that mattered to me was right here in this tower. Couldn’t she see my love? Couldn’t she feel my love? When that stopped working I told her of people. How they hate and hurt you. I told her no one could ever love her as I did. I almost told her of her father and the details of how he gave her to me.

But I didn’t.

It was my custom to leave Rapunzel in the mid-morning. I’d gather food or fabric, whatever it was we needed, and return in the evening.

I spent 16 years living in this way. How could I not have known? How could my senses have so dulled? She was everything. I loved her like the miracle of simply being alive, being able to take a breath and another and another.

But there was another visitor. Rapunzel had a lover.

I never blinded or injured anyone. When I discovered them together, he fled like a coward. She went after him, cursing me. I had kept her from the world; I had ruined her life.

Once when Rapunzel was a child, we had a kitten. It had been born sick and when it died, she begged me to revive it. It broke my heart to tell her that I couldn’t do it. I told her that as she had loved the kitten and it had loved her, it would be with her forever. Nothing you love ever really leaves you. She held me close and wept onto my sleeve.

Rapunzel never calls. She never writes.

When her children pass my fence, they whisper “witchhhh.” And they scurry away.