Witch Baby Read Free Page B

all about drums. Witch Baby stopped playing drums too. She pulled apart Cherokee’s Kachina Barbie dolls, scattering their limbs throughout the cottage and evensticking some parts in Brandy-Lynn’s Jell-O mold. She stole Duck’s Fig Newtons, made dresses out of Dirk’s best shirts and bit Weetzie’s fingers when Weetzie tried to serve her vegetables.
    “Witch Baby! Stop that! Weetzie’s fingers are not carrots!” My Secret Agent Lover Man exclaimed, kissing Weetzie’s nibbled fingertips.
    Witch Baby went around the cottage taking candid pictures of everyone looking their worst—My Secret Agent Lover Man with a hangover, Weetzie covered with paint and glue, Dirk and Duck arguing, Brandy-Lynn weeping into a martini, Cherokee and Raphael gobbling up the vegetarian lasagna Weetzie was saving for dinner.
    Witch Baby was wild, snarled, tangled and angry. Everyone got more and more frustrated with her. When they tried to grab her, even for a hug, she would wriggle away, her body quick-slippery as a fish. She never cried, but she always wanted to cry. Finally, while she was watching Cherokee and Raphael running around the cottage in circles, whooping andflapping their feather-decorated arms, Witch Baby remembered something Cherokee had done to her when they were very young. Late at night she got out of her bed, took the toenail scissors she had hidden under her pillow, crept over to Cherokee’s tepee and snipped at Cherokee’s hair. She did not cut straight across, but chopped unevenly, and the ragged strands of hair fell like moonlight.
    The next morning Witch Baby hid in the shed and waited. Then she heard a scream coming from the cottage. She felt as if someone had crammed a bean-cheese-hot-dog-pastrami burrito down her throat.
    Witch Baby hid in the shed all day. When everyone was asleep she crept back into the cottage, went into the violet-and-aqua-tiled bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. She saw a messy nest of hair, a pale, skinny body, knobby, skinned knees and feet with curling toes.
    No wonder Raphael doesn’t love me, Witch Baby thought. I am a baby witch.
    She took the toenail scissors and began to chop at her own hair. Then she plugged in MySecret Agent Lover Man’s razor, turned it on and listened to it buzz at her like a hungry metal animal.
    When her scalp was completely bald, Witch Baby, with her deep-set, luminous, jacaranda-blossom-colored eyes, looked as if she had drifted down from some other planet.
    But Witch Baby did not see her eerie, fairy, genie, moon-witch beauty, the beauty of twilight and rainstorms. “You’ll never belong to anyone,” she said to the bald girl in the mirror.

Tree Spirit
    T he chain saws were buzzing like giant razors. Witch Baby pressed her palms over her ears.
    “What is going on?” Coyote cried, padding into the cottage.
    Witch Baby had hardly ever heard Coyote raise his voice before. She curled up under theclock, and he knelt beside her so that his long braid brushed her cheek. She saw the full veins in his callused hands, the turquoise-studded band, blood-blue, at his wrist.
    “Where is everyone, my little bald one?” he asked gently.
    “They went to the street fair.”
    “And they left you here with the dying trees?”
    “I didn’t want to go with them.”
    Coyote put his hand on Witch Baby’s head. It fit perfectly like a cap. His touch quieted the saws for a moment and stilled the blood beating at Witch Baby’s naked temples. “Why not?” he asked.
    “I get lonely with them.”
    “With all that big family you have?”
    “More than when I’m alone.”
    Coyote nodded. “I would rather be alone most of the time. It’s quieter. Someday I will live in the desert again with the Joshua trees.” He took a handkerchief out of his leather backpack and unfolded it. Inside were five seeds. “Joshua tree seeds,” he said. “In the blue desert moonlight, if you put your armsaround Joshua trees and are very quiet, you can hear them speaking to