Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Chapter 1

She didn't think things could get any worse, then she saw the sign.

Welcome to Florida, it read. The Sunshine State.

She knew she shouldn't ask. She knew she stood in a puddle of gasoline and every word was a lit match falling from her lips. She knew her dad hated her. But that sign made her throat squeeze shut so tight she couldn't breathe, and her bloated stomach pressed on her lungs so hard she couldn't get enough air, and she'd suffocate if she didn't say something.

"Dad," she said. "Why're we in Florida?"

His hands tightened around the steering wheel until it creaked, but he kept his eyes on the road.

"Huntsville's the opposite way," she said, trying to stay calm.

They'd been driving for hours and in all that time he hadn't looked at her once. He'd shown up at Aunt Peggy's that morning so angry his hands shook as he snatched her clothes and stuffed them in her suitcase and slammed it shut. One of her bra straps stuck out the side, but she didn't think it was smart to say anything.

It isn't too smart for a girl to be smart, her mom had always said.

So she just made herself very, very small. For hours and hours she made herself so incredibly small. But they didn't know anyone in Florida. They didn't have any relatives in Florida. This was kidnapping unless he told her where they were going. He had to tell her where they were going. So she resorted to the one thing she knew could reach him.

"I saw the trailer for that Planet of the Apes sequel," she said because he loved science fiction. "It's about nuclear war. I bet they got the rockets all wrong."

"Goddammit, Neva!" he exploded. "Do you understand what you've done? You have ruined your mother's health, God knows what you've done to your brother and sister, and now you've ruined your aunt Peggy's good name. I don't even know who you are anymore. It'd have been better if you'd never been born!"

"Where are you taking me?" she bawled, terrified.

"I'm taking you wherever I want!" he bawled back.

"What's happening, Dad?" she asked, and she couldn't help it, she was so scared. "Why are we in Florida?"

He shifted from side to side in his seat, adjusted his hands on the wheel, then addressed the windshield like it really needed to understand this was for its own good.

"We found a place for you to stay," he explained to the windshield. "With other girls in your condition. After you're better, I'll come get you and we can put all this behind us."

The full horror of it hit her.

"You're sending me to a Home?" she asked.

Headlines from confession magazines streaked through her brain: Disgraced Debutante Left to Rot in House of Shame! Good Girls Say No-Bad Girls Go Here! They Gave Away Their Own Flesh and Blood! During rehearsals for Arsenic and Old Lace Margaret Roach had told them about the Homes. They were run by nuns who beat the girls, made them work in industrial laundries, and sold their babies, and Margaret Roach was a Catholic so she would know. The Homes were for poor girls, trashy girls, fast girls. They were for sluts.

"Daddy, you can't do this," she begged, because he had to understand, he had to turn the car around, there had to be another way. "Please, please, please, take me home, or to Granny Craven's, or talk to Aunt Peggy again. I promise I'll stay in the bedroom and I won't make a sound and I'll vacuum and wash dishes and I'll do whatever she says, but you can't take me to a Home. They aren't for people like us. They're for Catholics!"

He turned to face her, briefly, and in that moment she saw how much he hated her.

"You've ruined everything," he said, cold and flat. A simple statement of fact.

He was right. She had ruined everything. Her mom had always told her she was going to ruin her grades by spending too much time on dramatics, she was going to ruin her eyes by reading in the dark, ruin her reputation by riding in a car with boys, ruin her figure by eating two desserts, and every time she did it anyway and nothing bad ever happened, but now she'd finally done it. Now she'd finally done something so bad nothing would ever be the same again. Now she'd finally ruined her life.

She was being sent to a Home.

She wasn't one of those wilting violets who cried at every loud noise but she couldn't help it, her body did whatever it wanted these days, and now she leaned her head against the hot window and wept-big, ugly, racking sobs.

Her dad clicked on the radio.

". . . Brother, you are not prepared for Hell. You thought life was one big sinning party and there'd be no price to pay and now you're burning in the pit and finding out how wrong you were. Look up and ask for help, but what kind of help can there be in Hell . . ."

Florida was Hell. Back in Alabama they had hills and trees and lakes, but Florida was an endless flat tabletop with no escape from the sun. It beat down on the highway, cooked the roof of the station wagon, sent sweat slicking down her bulging stomach, trickling into her rubber girdles, pooling underneath her butt.

Her dad fiddled with the radio and a comforting ballpark voice cut through the static:

". . . sets up, and here's the pitch. It's a fastball on the outside corner, and it's a ball. Ty walked him. That is the first walk he's given up and . . ."

She stopped crying somewhere around Tallahassee. Pretty soon after that, her dad pulled over at a Burger King and left her in the car. Sitting for so long had made her feet swell and her kidneys bruise, but she couldn't make herself get out and walk around. Whenever they stopped at a rest area people saw her protruding stomach and at first they smiled, but then they saw the bare ring finger on her left hand and looked away or shook their heads or stared back at her over their shoulders, like she was an animal in the zoo.

Wasn't that what they'd all said about Donna Havermeyer last year? All she'd done was gain a lot of weight and skip graduation and suddenly all the girls were talking about how she'd gotten pregnant by an officer up at the Arsenal, and then Racee Tucker said what did you expect, her whole family's nothing but Arkansas trash, and she'd laughed, too, and now here she was. She bet that was what all those people at the rest stops thought: Look at that Alabama trash.

Her dad got back in and handed her a single skinny cheeseburger from the bag. He pulled out a Whopper for himself. She used to eat a single cheeseburger when they went to Sno Wite's because she was an actress and cared about her figure, but she didn't have a figure anymore. Now she wore her mom's old deck shoes because they were the only ones that fit her swollen feet, and her mom's old plaid maternity dress, and she had two chins and they were both covered in pimples, and her bust had popped a button on her dress yesterday. She tried to make the cheeseburger last a ladylike amount of time, but it was gone in three bites.


They drove through Florida for hours, and there was still more Florida to go. They passed a yellow painted billboard for Gatorland (SEE All Kinds of Animals), then one for the Fountain of Youth (Beautiful Ladies Will Give You a Drink of This Famous Water!), then more alligators (SEE-Tons of Gators!). Above them, buzzards circled in the merciless blue sky.

A curtain of static ate the baseball game, then a jolly grandfather said:

". . . demonstrations on a number of the nation's college campuses, most of the protests related to the U.S. involvement in Cambodia . . ."

The radio chewed static, then:

". . . is one for eleven at the plate this year, his batting average is point one nine zero one. Here's the shoe strike delivery, it's on the outside corner, it's a fastball, and that's . . ."

She'd tried everything to fix this. She'd searched for Humphreys 11 but couldn't find it anywhere. She'd bought a bottle of castor oil and drunk the whole thing, but it only gave her the runs. She'd jumped off her dad's worktable in the basement over and over until her legs gave out, lifted the dictionary above her head until her arms cramped; she'd even drunk turpentine, but she barely managed a capful before throwing up. She'd closed her eyes when she crossed the street and prayed she'd get hit by a car until she realized they'd probably do an autopsy and everyone would find out.

No matter what she did her stomach kept growing like it wanted everyone to see how stupid she was. They all kept finding ways to make her feel stupid. That second night at Aunt Peggy's after dinner, they'd told her she could ask anything, and she'd asked how they covered up the scar where they took out the baby, and her uncle Albert had busted a gut laughing and said it came out the same way it went in.

"But," Neva said, because it had to be more scientific than that, "it can't fit!"

Then her aunt Peggy had said Enough of that kind of talk and excused her from the table.

No one would tell her anything. They'd shown films in school about emotional maturity, and fire safety, and getting along with others, but no one had ever shown them a film about having a baby.

A burst of static stabbed her in the bladder, and she realized she had to go to the bathroom again. No, no, no, no, no. She couldn't ask her dad to pull over now, not when he'd finally stopped yelling at her. She clenched everything inside herself as hard as she could.

". . . Guardsmen moved in after the students smashed windows and set fires on the campus and the surrounding . . ."

Up north, soldiers were shooting students, and kids were smashing up their schools. The Weathermen were blowing up buildings in New York City, and her dad thought he was going to lose his job because Apollo 13 had blown up in space. Out in California, freaks were murdering people in their houses and shooting them in their cars. Everything was spinning out of control. Even her body was revolting.

". . . Look out, Tonto! It's the Lawn Ranger! The Lawn Ranger, here to save you from yellow lawns, wilting bushes, and dead flowerbeds . . ."

The sound of the Lawn Ranger's automatic sprinkler system sprayed from the speakers. Her bladder throbbed.

"Dad?" she tried.

He ignored her. A wave of static.

". . . lift up your eyes and beg for water, just a drop, just a trickle on your parched lips, and know that in Heaven there is a fountain . . ."

She'd taken him to the fountain on Valentine's Day.

She'd gone with Guy to the drugstore to get a Clark bar. He always needed sugar when he studied, and on the walk back she insisted they go through the park and made him sit near the fountain.

"What's with all this sappy stuff?" He smiled.

Then he kissed her. Her bosom had been getting bigger and she knew he liked that, so she leaned into him and they necked for a minute, and then he said:

"Dad gave me the car tonight."

It should have been perfect. This was the first time she was actually going steady with a boy on Valentine's Day, even though he didn't hold her hand at school or give her his varsity letter or sit with her at lunch, but she knew that was because he was seventeen and she was fifteen and he didn't want to get razzed.

Last year it had been perfect, and when the world got scary at the end of the summer Guy told her he'd always keep her safe. Always. She watched him play football, and they went to see 2001 at the drive-in where they mostly necked, and at the Splashdown Whoop Up in Courthouse Square he took her hand, and it felt like a bubble named Always protected them, and so she told him, right there by the fountain.

She knew he'd be scared at first but she also knew that when he got over his surprise he'd squeeze her hand and say What are we going to do, Nev? or maybe Do you think we're too young to get married? or maybe put his arm around her and tell her they'd get through it together. Instead, he pulled away from her and stared into the fountain.

Her dad stared straight ahead at the road. The station wagon jolted over roadkill and lightning forked through her bladder. The sound of a waterfall filled the car:

". . . tropical Hawaii vacations, hear the waterfalls, see the sun going down over the waves, dive into one of our three swimming pools . . ."

Finally, Guy turned to her and his eyes were full of tears and he said, "How could you do this to me?"

Then he got up and left.