In Floating Fields
by Susan DeFreitas
Down the road and through the fields, to Grandmother’s house you go. Over the road worn smooth to small white stones, the black seams bumping as you roll. You are going to spend the night at your granny’s house in the country, which is a first for you. But why, you wonder, isn’t your mother spending the night there too?
If you let her leave you in the long gravel driveway with your grandmother, will she ever return?
Or will she set off on some sort of indefinite trip, like your father?
You bury your face between your mother’s legs. Gently, she pushes you away.
Your grandmother is saying you will have a nice time. Your mother is saying she needs some time. The adults are standing around talking about time, and you are staring down the long two-track out back.
All along the driveway, bachelor buttons bloom. The air is warm. The day is bright. But it is dark back there back there in your grandmother’s woods.
It is dark as night.
Your mother drives away, waving goodbye, and now your granny, in her red sweater, has you by the hand. Is it just your imagination, or are her canines just a bit longer than they should be?
You round the back of the farmhouse, pass the hollyhocks and the hostas. Here is the boot brush in the shape of a hedgehog. Here is the long, dim pantry, with its wire-mesh cupboard doors. You peer into a cupboard, mash your nose against the mesh. Every jar in your granny’s pantry is red.
“Stewed tomatoes, strawberry preserves, and pickled beets,” your grandmother is saying, but you don’t believe her. Her skin hangs loose, like it’s an outfit she’s put on. Her voice sounds put on too.
Once upon a time your grandfather lived in this house—once, when your mother was a girl. But then Grandpa moved in with the neighbor lady, Lois, and your grandparents got divorced. Now your mother is a grown-up, your grandfather is dead, and Lois moved to Sarasota. Your mother always says she’s worried about your grandmother, all alone out here. But she never says what it is, exactly, she’s worried about.
Upstairs in your mother’s childhood room, your grandmother dresses you for bed. You watch her knobby knuckles as she tugs down the hem on that long old-fashioned nightgown and fusses with the buttons. This nightgown has a frill of lace at the top and a ruffle at the bottom that swirls around when you twirl.
“Good night,” your grandmother tells you.
“Good night,” you tell her back, but when you hug her it is like hugging a scarecrow.
In your mother’s childhood room, the big moon is shining in through the big window—shining on the rocking chair. Shining on your mother’s doll, which is sitting there, staring sightlessly ahead.
You know this is your mother’s doll because it was presented to you at Easter. This was before your father left on this big trip of his—he was there, and your old aunts and uncles were too, all the family on the Chesnovitch side. They said it had been your mother’s doll when she was a girl, and presented it to you with an expectant air. Later, while the adults sat around drinking coffee, you discovered that the doll’s eyes shut when you laid it down and opened when you propped it up. Or, they were supposed to. When you sat the dolly up on the couch, only one glassy eye popped open. The other stayed half-shut.
Slowly, you approach it now. Your mother’s doll wears a long old-fashioned nightgown, just like you. There’s a little pocket in the dolly’s nightgown, which is how you discover your own, tucked away on the side, at the seam. Why, you wonder, would anyone put a pocket in a nightgown?
The doll’s cheeks are shiny and hard, her pink lips parted, like she’s waiting to be fed. One glassy blue eye is stuck half shut; the other stares straight ahead.
Your mother’s doll has blond hair and pink skin, like your mother. Your hair and skin are brown, like your father’s, and your eyes are too. This weird old-fashioned baby thing has nothing to do with you.
Climb into bed and turn away, pull the quilt up over your head—just as soon as you’ve shut your eyes, they’ll pop back open again. You can feel your mother’s doll staring into the darkness. You can feel how hungry she is.
A footfall, a branch fall, or maybe just a house mouse scrabbling inside the wall—whatever it is or was, you’re awake now, and your mother’s doll is gone.
Go ahead, open the window—maybe you’ll feel better if you get some air. But wouldn’t it feel better still to leave this house? Not to be in here, but out there?
In the blue moonlight, the family farm stretches before you—far from the streets of town, it is the land where you have been allowed your freedom. You have spent summer days here among the buzzing bees. You have sipped the nectar from the thin white flutes of clover here and stuffed your mouth with purple vetch.
But the house itself is hollow, hungry. Once upon a time, it was filled with family, and now that family is gone. Once upon a time, there were two grown-ups inside it, and now there is just one. One old lady, bony as a broomstick, growing older still—or maybe something else entirely, wearing her clothes. You can’t help but feel that this house is a story, and that story is coming for you.
Standing before the window in your white nightgown, you’re a fairytale princess trapped in a tower. Maybe that tower has caught fire, or is about to. Maybe the wolf is at the door behind you.
You could grow your hair out like Rapunzel and hope a brave boy comes along to save you. But the only boy who can save you now is your daddy, and he’s been gone so long on this mysterious trip of his—who knows if he’ll ever return?
Maybe you could be brave yourself, save yourself.
Maybe you could jump.
Daddy’s girl, you did, and now you’re off and running past your grandmother’s garden, past the old chicken coop, and down the two-track out back, past the floating fields. That’s how you think of them, because that’s what asparagus looks like, gone to seed: a cloud of finely branching stalks, the better with which to gather drops of dew.
On the hill in the distance stands the farm’s old barn, and beyond it, the windmill. There have been no cows in the barn since your mother was a girl, and the windmill that once pumped water from the well has been still as long as you’ve lived. But the family farm is still a working one because there is still asparagus here, fields of it gone fuzzy.
Long ago, your mother told you, when your grandfather left, your grandmother, in her grief, stopped planting it. But still the crop came up in the spring, so she hired a Hispanic family to come and pick it, and she let the stalks grown too large for market form their finely branching stalks; she let their red berries fall once more and go to seed. Your grandmother grew up in the Depression, and she never could bear to let food go to waste—that’s what your mother says.
You’ve seen that Hispanic family, out here in the spring. They look like your daddy’s people, the DeFreitas side. The mother of that family looked at you and then looked at your mother—like you weren’t quite one thing, and weren’t quite another.
Maybe it is true that you are two, and not one like everyone else. But you too grew from the sandy soil of this peninsula. You too know the taste of this place. This land is your land, like the song says, and you know it—not like the back of your hand, but like the palm of it.
The farmhouse sits at the heel of the hand, near the thumb; the lifeline is the two-track that curves behind it, past the floating fields. Then there’s the curve by the culvert that branches off toward the back forty; that’s where the love line runs, a little path beside a wooded ravine cut by a nameless stream. The woods get darker the farther back you go.
Why leave the floating fields?
Why seek the dark woods on the full moon?
Well, because you know what kind of story this is.
In the back of the back forty, the forest is alive from the outside but dead in the middle, the trees unnaturally knit. Once upon a time, this was a Christmas tree farm; your grandfather planted it and abandoned it before you were born. But there is a light in the dark woods tonight—there a house, where no house has any business being.
A deer stands beside you, a doe. She too stares into the dark woods. After a moment, she steps into it and disappears. Another little deer appears, and that dear little doe does the same. You have to duck to see it, but the path is clear, like a hole punched in a Brillo Pad.
Crouching, you become a creature, twigs snapping underfoot. The deer are slipping away from you, slow at first then startled. They are moving toward the little house in the heart of the dark wood.
Bright windows swing round, and shadows swing round with them; the house is turning in place. The house rests on four stout chicken legs, and between them are what must be a hundred deer. Mostly they’re bedded down in the duff, curled up like cats. But the two you followed stand there looking back at you, waiting.
What is this place? you ask, but the deer make no reply. The dark woods, you can’t help but notice, are riddled with little bones. The dark woods, a riddle.
Those big chicken legs twitch and then take a step; the house shows you its door, and stairs descend to the ground at your feet. You climb them cautiously to inquire, but as soon as you’ve raised your hand to knock, something flashes past on the path—a white rider on a white horse.
“About time,” says an old woman’s voice. Abruptly, you’re swept inside, and the door swings shut behind you.
And there you are, face to face with the ugliest old lady you have ever seen. She has a big turnip nose with hair sprouting out of it, and overgrown ears, like forgotten zucchinis. Her long white hair seems subject to its own stiff breeze. She’s as ugly as a wolf-eared hobgoblin, this old gal, as homely as a clod of mud. And you don’t want to stare at what is surely a big-deal sort of handicap, but the whole bottom half of her body is one stout hardwood peg.
You don’t feel so brave now. You don’t care if you sound like a baby: you tell her you want your mother.
The old woman cackles, and flecks of something go flying. “I’m the only mother around here, and I used all my kids for kindling. Best you earn your keep or you’ll warm my pot!”
With a groan and a pitch, the house turns around again; as it does, the door behind you disappears, replaced by a door for a mouse. It’s an ornate little thing barely higher than the baseboards, with a glinting golden keyhole.
As the house turns round, you turn round too: Here is the coatrack, on which a witch’s hat is hung; here is an old-fashioned cookstove, with flames glowing in its open oven; here is the enormous cauldron on top. Through one window, the sun is shining through the overgrown trees; through the other, rain is falling down in sheets. Through one doorway is a recliner, and beyond that, a mantelpiece full of knickknacks; through the other stands a girl in an old-fashioned nightgown, just a few years older than you. But as you turn, she turns round too—so that one must be a mirror.
“I want to go home,” you tell the witch.
“Oh, my little stick,” she sighs, “I want to go home too. But this humble chicken shack will have to do. Now, fetch me my needle and thread. It’s in the basket by the La-Z-Boy.”
When you’ve fetched the old woman’s sewing basket, she digs out a silver needle and threads it with a silver thread. “Listen here, little stick, I’m going into town. While I’m gone, find your sister and sew her to you, good and tight; I can’t have two of you running around. And if you don’t”—here the witch leans in close, her breath like a garbage heap—“Baba Yaga will feed you to her fire!”
Then she flies right out the window.
A conundrum: You have no sister and you don’t know how to sew.
Also: You’re too big to fit through the little mouse-hole door.
Also too: The windows on this humble chicken shack won’t open for you.
Through the raining window, you watch the woods, trapped in its tangle. A red rider on a red horse streaks past, and when you turn away, you’re facing yourself in the mirror. The girl in there guffaws.
“Oh, puh-leeze,” she says. “I don’t look anything like you.”
As soon as she says it, you realize it’s true. She isn’t actually older than you—you have the same lanky legs, noodle arms, and breasts beginning to bud beneath your white nightgown—but the girl in the mirror has fair skin, like your mother. Blond hair and blue eyes too.
“Baba Yaga said—”
The girl in the mirror interrupts you, saying, “Baba Yaga can sit on her big wooden stump and spin. I’m not going back! I get double Christmas, double birthdays, double cake, double the money for my report card.”
As the girl talks, you creep closer to her, the silver needle behind your back. You do not want Baba Yaga to use you for kindling.
“Two rooms, two beds, two sets of sun-and-moon sheets. Two slumber parties, two sticker collections, two best friends at two different schools—”
You #2 lets loose a shriek, staring in horror at the pocket of your nightgown, where the head of your mother’s doll has appeared. She leaps into the air, seizing your needle, and then, with her stiff baby arms, proceeds to sew your nightgowns together, lickety split, from the frill at the bottom to the ruffle at the top.
One moment you are both screaming, you and You #2, like a fire truck and an ambulance, and the next you are alone with your mother’s doll perched on your shoulder. She falls to the floor and lands flat on her back. Both of her eyes snap shut.
When Baba Yaga returns, she’s not pleased to see you, with that neat silver stitch down the front of your nightgown. “I see your little friend has come,” she says. “Clean yourself up.”
You risk a glance in the mirror; once again, the girl in there does what you do. But there’s a red spot now on your white nightgown and a sticky warmth between your legs.
The old woman huffs as she stumps toward the sink. “I suppose you expect something else to wear, now that you’ve ruined your nightclothes.”
In the next room, on the mantelpiece full of knickknacks—Troll dolls, mostly—there’s a black cat clock, looking left and right, left and right, as its tail swings back and forth. One moment it’s a clock, and then it’s a cat; it hops down, pads up, and rubs up against your leg. “Give her a break,” it says. “She’s just a kid.”
Baba Yaga scowls. “Not anymore, she isn’t.”
“Go to the water closet,” the cat says kindly. “Take a bath.”
You find the water closet as described, a closet with water inside—a waterfall, in fact. You pull the door shut behind you and step out of that old-fashioned nightgown; there’s a hook on which to hang it, just beyond the misty nimbus. Shivering, you wade into the pool, under the waterfall’s steady spray. You feel less timid beneath its pressure, more assured.
Your breasts have budded out, your hips unfurled. Baba Yaga is right; you are no girl.
When you’ve finished, you find a towel hanging from the back of the door. Your nightgown is gone, replaced by a white gown, which sounds the same but is different. The gown is your basic princess business, conventional except for its pocket, cleverly concealed in its poufy skirt—you’re relieved to find your mother’s doll inside it, and you push it down deeper, to hide it.
When you return to the kitchen, it looks as if a shipment of sawdust has been delivered. There it sits in front of the fridge, like some little creature has perhaps burrowed through the linoleum and up again into the appliance.
You turn to Baba Yaga to inquire about this, but she already has her hat on and is zipping up her parka. “I’m going into town,” she tells you.
“But you just got back!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “Look, there’s Night riding past.” As you watch, a dark rider on a dark horse streaks by—first through the window where the weather is fine, then through the window where the weather is foul.
You sniff, a bit miffed the old woman hasn’t remarked on your appearance. You resist the urge to twirl in your poufy skirt.
“While I’m gone,” she tells you, “sort this pile of seeds. Half are caraway, half are rye. If you haven’t got them straight by the time I return, I’ll feed you to my fire!”
And off she goes out the window again, that batty hag with her insane demands.
The pile of seeds is as tall as you are, the two types indistinguishable.
The cat does its manicure, clicking its teeth. “Jeez,” it says, “what a load.”
“Look,” you say, “I’ve got to get out of this place. Every minute that passes here is like a year. If I don’t leave soon, I’ll be an old woman before it’s all through.”
“And wouldn’t that be a shame.” Its tail twitches left, right, left, right, like a metronome.
Standing there in the witch’s kitchen, you’re thinking of your father, this long trip he’s taken. You know you’re supposed to be brave while he’s gone—every time you talk on the phone, he tells you not to worry, to keep your chin up, that you’ll see each other soon—but right now, you don’t want to be brave. You want your father to come and save you. Clearly, something bad has happened but no one will tell you what it is. You’re tired of all this make-believe.
Just then your mother’s doll drops to the floor. Look at those baby arms go! She’s tossing seeds in the air so fast, so high, caraway and rye, they coalesce like birds in flight. Seeds land in your hair, your cleavage, the ruffles of your long white gown, like rice on your wedding day. When your mother’s doll has sorted them all into two neat piles, waist high, you pick her up and place her gently in your pocket.
Remarkably, she has even managed to clean the floor; that tacky linoleum gleams.
“Well,” says the cat, “looks like you got that all sorted out.” It glances left, then right. “But lemme let you in on a li’l secret: Baba Yaga still won’t let you leave.”
“But why? I did everything she told me to.”
“Duh,” the cat says. “She’s afraid of being alone.”
You furrow your brow at that. At the cat. “What about you? Don’t you live here too?”
“Me?” The cat blinks, bemused. “I’m just passing time.”
“What about her kids, then? She said she used all of them for kindling.”
“True,” the cat concedes, “but they were all about to leave her. There’s only one who ever got out alive.” It eyes your pocket. “Funny, she had a little doll, just like you.”
Then the white rider of day is streaking through the dark branches, and Baba Yaga, on her big peg leg, is coming in hot. The window flies open at her approach, and the cat streaks back into the living room.
The witch settles down, scowling at your seeds. You’re relieved to see they haven’t budged from their two neat piles.
“Look,” you tell her, “I want to go home. I need to see my parents.”
“What a selfish brat you are! Always thinking of yourself.”
“Oh, puh-leeze,” you say, just like You #2, “you’re the one who’s keeping me here.”
“You’re the one who waltzed right in yourself.”
“You set a trap for me!”
“No, little stick,” says Baba Yaga, matter-of-fact, “the deer did. All your uncles killed theirs, you know.”
You remember the way those deer looked back at you. And as you do, you know it’s true—the deer do not love you. All the people who love you are people. Will you ever see them again?
“I want to see my grandmother,” you tell her. “The one who lives in the farmhouse.”
Old Baba Yaga shakes her head. “No one has lived in that old house for years. I’m all alone out here.”
You fix the witch with your side-eye, like a goose. “What about the cat?”
Baba Yaga flaps her lips. “Oh, pshaw. You can’t count the cat.”
Tick, tock, tick, tock—back and forth go the eyes of the cat clock. Resignedly, the old witch thumps over to the cauldron and ladles herself up some soup. It’s minestrone. She sits down at the table, and that big peg leg of hers sticks out straight beneath it, like she’s popped the footrest on a recliner. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen her sit down. “Tell you what,” she says, finally, “I’ll let you go if you can find my soul. It has to be around here somewhere.”
She’s got flecks of soup on her big, pockmarked nose, and she seems to be growing a goiter. Her eyes are full of hard red veins that run in alarming tributaries. She’s only got two teeth, and one’s coming loose; you can tell by the way she avoids it with her spoon. But in the mirror, you can see, there’s a young woman sitting there. Her hair and skin are brown, like yours. She’s dressed in a long white gown, and she’s crying into her soup.
All at once, you throw yourself upon the witch’s lap and hug the hard stump of her leg. Her eyes snap shut. “Oh, little stick,” she says, “you found it.”
A soul, a seal, released, unfurled—it whirls a bit, maybe, around in the kitchen, like a let-go balloon, before settling between your shoulder blades. Tick tock go the hands of the cat clock as the witch’s soul settles, sinking, working its way through you. The day is waning, the light receding from the room. Soon it will be night.
When you rise, the witch is gone. Sitting on the chair is a little whiskery mouse, blinking up at you with its moist, dark eyes.
“Oh, thank you!” says the mouse. “I’m ever so grateful! I’ve been trapped inside that old—”
But then the cat has hopped up on the chair and pinned the mouse beneath its paw. Leering creepily at you, it spears the mouse with its canines (even cats have canines) and bites once with its back teeth. You hear the crunch of little bones, then the cat swallows, once, twice, thrice, and the little mouse is gone.
“What’d you have to do that for?” you ask, aghast.
The cat flicks her tail. “Hey,” she says, “a gal’s gotta eat.”
“Well, at least show me the door.”
“There you go again, just thinking of yourself.” The cat pads through the doorway to the Laz-E Boy, where it hops up and settles down for a nap.
Turn to the mirror now: It’s just as you feared—you’re turning into an old woman. You’re tired in your bones, like they’re riddled with catacombs. All the summer flowers in your eyes are fading. There are bees in your heart, but they have no queen.
You pull your mother’s doll from your pocket. Her little arms are up in the air, like she’s the one asking for help now.
But what is in the dolly’s pocket? It’s a little golden key. A little golden key that fits the golden keyhole of that little mouse-hole door. Open the little door and see if you can tell what’s down there in the dark; if you’re lucky, once you’ve crouched down to see inside it, you’ll fit inside it too.
Now you’re off and running again in your white nightgown, down the deer path through the deadwood, riddled with little bones—along the love line beside the steep ravine, and then along the life line, beside the floating fields.
Those lines are in you, like an old story. But those lines cannot bind you. Your story is a new one. Soon, like the sun, it will find you.
The dawn is rising up from the land, silver gray and misted. Soon the sun will drink the mist from those finely branching stalks; soon their red berries will fall to the sandy loam. Soon the seeds within them will rise again from the family farm and feed you.
If you let her leave you in the long gravel driveway with your grandmother, will she ever return?
Or will she set off on some sort of indefinite trip, like your father?
You bury your face between your mother’s legs. Gently, she pushes you away.
Your grandmother is saying you will have a nice time. Your mother is saying she needs some time. The adults are standing around talking about time, and you are staring down the long two-track out back.
All along the driveway, bachelor buttons bloom. The air is warm. The day is bright. But it is dark back there back there in your grandmother’s woods.
It is dark as night.
Your mother drives away, waving goodbye, and now your granny, in her red sweater, has you by the hand. Is it just your imagination, or are her canines just a bit longer than they should be?
You round the back of the farmhouse, pass the hollyhocks and the hostas. Here is the boot brush in the shape of a hedgehog. Here is the long, dim pantry, with its wire-mesh cupboard doors. You peer into a cupboard, mash your nose against the mesh. Every jar in your granny’s pantry is red.
“Stewed tomatoes, strawberry preserves, and pickled beets,” your grandmother is saying, but you don’t believe her. Her skin hangs loose, like it’s an outfit she’s put on. Her voice sounds put on too.
Once upon a time your grandfather lived in this house—once, when your mother was a girl. But then Grandpa moved in with the neighbor lady, Lois, and your grandparents got divorced. Now your mother is a grown-up, your grandfather is dead, and Lois moved to Sarasota. Your mother always says she’s worried about your grandmother, all alone out here. But she never says what it is, exactly, she’s worried about.
Upstairs in your mother’s childhood room, your grandmother dresses you for bed. You watch her knobby knuckles as she tugs down the hem on that long old-fashioned nightgown and fusses with the buttons. This nightgown has a frill of lace at the top and a ruffle at the bottom that swirls around when you twirl.
“Good night,” your grandmother tells you.
“Good night,” you tell her back, but when you hug her it is like hugging a scarecrow.
In your mother’s childhood room, the big moon is shining in through the big window—shining on the rocking chair. Shining on your mother’s doll, which is sitting there, staring sightlessly ahead.
You know this is your mother’s doll because it was presented to you at Easter. This was before your father left on this big trip of his—he was there, and your old aunts and uncles were too, all the family on the Chesnovitch side. They said it had been your mother’s doll when she was a girl, and presented it to you with an expectant air. Later, while the adults sat around drinking coffee, you discovered that the doll’s eyes shut when you laid it down and opened when you propped it up. Or, they were supposed to. When you sat the dolly up on the couch, only one glassy eye popped open. The other stayed half-shut.
Slowly, you approach it now. Your mother’s doll wears a long old-fashioned nightgown, just like you. There’s a little pocket in the dolly’s nightgown, which is how you discover your own, tucked away on the side, at the seam. Why, you wonder, would anyone put a pocket in a nightgown?
The doll’s cheeks are shiny and hard, her pink lips parted, like she’s waiting to be fed. One glassy blue eye is stuck half shut; the other stares straight ahead.
Your mother’s doll has blond hair and pink skin, like your mother. Your hair and skin are brown, like your father’s, and your eyes are too. This weird old-fashioned baby thing has nothing to do with you.
Climb into bed and turn away, pull the quilt up over your head—just as soon as you’ve shut your eyes, they’ll pop back open again. You can feel your mother’s doll staring into the darkness. You can feel how hungry she is.
A footfall, a branch fall, or maybe just a house mouse scrabbling inside the wall—whatever it is or was, you’re awake now, and your mother’s doll is gone.
Go ahead, open the window—maybe you’ll feel better if you get some air. But wouldn’t it feel better still to leave this house? Not to be in here, but out there?
In the blue moonlight, the family farm stretches before you—far from the streets of town, it is the land where you have been allowed your freedom. You have spent summer days here among the buzzing bees. You have sipped the nectar from the thin white flutes of clover here and stuffed your mouth with purple vetch.
But the house itself is hollow, hungry. Once upon a time, it was filled with family, and now that family is gone. Once upon a time, there were two grown-ups inside it, and now there is just one. One old lady, bony as a broomstick, growing older still—or maybe something else entirely, wearing her clothes. You can’t help but feel that this house is a story, and that story is coming for you.
Standing before the window in your white nightgown, you’re a fairytale princess trapped in a tower. Maybe that tower has caught fire, or is about to. Maybe the wolf is at the door behind you.
You could grow your hair out like Rapunzel and hope a brave boy comes along to save you. But the only boy who can save you now is your daddy, and he’s been gone so long on this mysterious trip of his—who knows if he’ll ever return?
Maybe you could be brave yourself, save yourself.
Maybe you could jump.
Daddy’s girl, you did, and now you’re off and running past your grandmother’s garden, past the old chicken coop, and down the two-track out back, past the floating fields. That’s how you think of them, because that’s what asparagus looks like, gone to seed: a cloud of finely branching stalks, the better with which to gather drops of dew.
On the hill in the distance stands the farm’s old barn, and beyond it, the windmill. There have been no cows in the barn since your mother was a girl, and the windmill that once pumped water from the well has been still as long as you’ve lived. But the family farm is still a working one because there is still asparagus here, fields of it gone fuzzy.
Long ago, your mother told you, when your grandfather left, your grandmother, in her grief, stopped planting it. But still the crop came up in the spring, so she hired a Hispanic family to come and pick it, and she let the stalks grown too large for market form their finely branching stalks; she let their red berries fall once more and go to seed. Your grandmother grew up in the Depression, and she never could bear to let food go to waste—that’s what your mother says.
You’ve seen that Hispanic family, out here in the spring. They look like your daddy’s people, the DeFreitas side. The mother of that family looked at you and then looked at your mother—like you weren’t quite one thing, and weren’t quite another.
Maybe it is true that you are two, and not one like everyone else. But you too grew from the sandy soil of this peninsula. You too know the taste of this place. This land is your land, like the song says, and you know it—not like the back of your hand, but like the palm of it.
The farmhouse sits at the heel of the hand, near the thumb; the lifeline is the two-track that curves behind it, past the floating fields. Then there’s the curve by the culvert that branches off toward the back forty; that’s where the love line runs, a little path beside a wooded ravine cut by a nameless stream. The woods get darker the farther back you go.
Why leave the floating fields?
Why seek the dark woods on the full moon?
Well, because you know what kind of story this is.
In the back of the back forty, the forest is alive from the outside but dead in the middle, the trees unnaturally knit. Once upon a time, this was a Christmas tree farm; your grandfather planted it and abandoned it before you were born. But there is a light in the dark woods tonight—there a house, where no house has any business being.
A deer stands beside you, a doe. She too stares into the dark woods. After a moment, she steps into it and disappears. Another little deer appears, and that dear little doe does the same. You have to duck to see it, but the path is clear, like a hole punched in a Brillo Pad.
Crouching, you become a creature, twigs snapping underfoot. The deer are slipping away from you, slow at first then startled. They are moving toward the little house in the heart of the dark wood.
Bright windows swing round, and shadows swing round with them; the house is turning in place. The house rests on four stout chicken legs, and between them are what must be a hundred deer. Mostly they’re bedded down in the duff, curled up like cats. But the two you followed stand there looking back at you, waiting.
What is this place? you ask, but the deer make no reply. The dark woods, you can’t help but notice, are riddled with little bones. The dark woods, a riddle.
Those big chicken legs twitch and then take a step; the house shows you its door, and stairs descend to the ground at your feet. You climb them cautiously to inquire, but as soon as you’ve raised your hand to knock, something flashes past on the path—a white rider on a white horse.
“About time,” says an old woman’s voice. Abruptly, you’re swept inside, and the door swings shut behind you.
And there you are, face to face with the ugliest old lady you have ever seen. She has a big turnip nose with hair sprouting out of it, and overgrown ears, like forgotten zucchinis. Her long white hair seems subject to its own stiff breeze. She’s as ugly as a wolf-eared hobgoblin, this old gal, as homely as a clod of mud. And you don’t want to stare at what is surely a big-deal sort of handicap, but the whole bottom half of her body is one stout hardwood peg.
You don’t feel so brave now. You don’t care if you sound like a baby: you tell her you want your mother.
The old woman cackles, and flecks of something go flying. “I’m the only mother around here, and I used all my kids for kindling. Best you earn your keep or you’ll warm my pot!”
With a groan and a pitch, the house turns around again; as it does, the door behind you disappears, replaced by a door for a mouse. It’s an ornate little thing barely higher than the baseboards, with a glinting golden keyhole.
As the house turns round, you turn round too: Here is the coatrack, on which a witch’s hat is hung; here is an old-fashioned cookstove, with flames glowing in its open oven; here is the enormous cauldron on top. Through one window, the sun is shining through the overgrown trees; through the other, rain is falling down in sheets. Through one doorway is a recliner, and beyond that, a mantelpiece full of knickknacks; through the other stands a girl in an old-fashioned nightgown, just a few years older than you. But as you turn, she turns round too—so that one must be a mirror.
“I want to go home,” you tell the witch.
“Oh, my little stick,” she sighs, “I want to go home too. But this humble chicken shack will have to do. Now, fetch me my needle and thread. It’s in the basket by the La-Z-Boy.”
When you’ve fetched the old woman’s sewing basket, she digs out a silver needle and threads it with a silver thread. “Listen here, little stick, I’m going into town. While I’m gone, find your sister and sew her to you, good and tight; I can’t have two of you running around. And if you don’t”—here the witch leans in close, her breath like a garbage heap—“Baba Yaga will feed you to her fire!”
Then she flies right out the window.
A conundrum: You have no sister and you don’t know how to sew.
Also: You’re too big to fit through the little mouse-hole door.
Also too: The windows on this humble chicken shack won’t open for you.
Through the raining window, you watch the woods, trapped in its tangle. A red rider on a red horse streaks past, and when you turn away, you’re facing yourself in the mirror. The girl in there guffaws.
“Oh, puh-leeze,” she says. “I don’t look anything like you.”
As soon as she says it, you realize it’s true. She isn’t actually older than you—you have the same lanky legs, noodle arms, and breasts beginning to bud beneath your white nightgown—but the girl in the mirror has fair skin, like your mother. Blond hair and blue eyes too.
“Baba Yaga said—”
The girl in the mirror interrupts you, saying, “Baba Yaga can sit on her big wooden stump and spin. I’m not going back! I get double Christmas, double birthdays, double cake, double the money for my report card.”
As the girl talks, you creep closer to her, the silver needle behind your back. You do not want Baba Yaga to use you for kindling.
“Two rooms, two beds, two sets of sun-and-moon sheets. Two slumber parties, two sticker collections, two best friends at two different schools—”
You #2 lets loose a shriek, staring in horror at the pocket of your nightgown, where the head of your mother’s doll has appeared. She leaps into the air, seizing your needle, and then, with her stiff baby arms, proceeds to sew your nightgowns together, lickety split, from the frill at the bottom to the ruffle at the top.
One moment you are both screaming, you and You #2, like a fire truck and an ambulance, and the next you are alone with your mother’s doll perched on your shoulder. She falls to the floor and lands flat on her back. Both of her eyes snap shut.
When Baba Yaga returns, she’s not pleased to see you, with that neat silver stitch down the front of your nightgown. “I see your little friend has come,” she says. “Clean yourself up.”
You risk a glance in the mirror; once again, the girl in there does what you do. But there’s a red spot now on your white nightgown and a sticky warmth between your legs.
The old woman huffs as she stumps toward the sink. “I suppose you expect something else to wear, now that you’ve ruined your nightclothes.”
In the next room, on the mantelpiece full of knickknacks—Troll dolls, mostly—there’s a black cat clock, looking left and right, left and right, as its tail swings back and forth. One moment it’s a clock, and then it’s a cat; it hops down, pads up, and rubs up against your leg. “Give her a break,” it says. “She’s just a kid.”
Baba Yaga scowls. “Not anymore, she isn’t.”
“Go to the water closet,” the cat says kindly. “Take a bath.”
You find the water closet as described, a closet with water inside—a waterfall, in fact. You pull the door shut behind you and step out of that old-fashioned nightgown; there’s a hook on which to hang it, just beyond the misty nimbus. Shivering, you wade into the pool, under the waterfall’s steady spray. You feel less timid beneath its pressure, more assured.
Your breasts have budded out, your hips unfurled. Baba Yaga is right; you are no girl.
When you’ve finished, you find a towel hanging from the back of the door. Your nightgown is gone, replaced by a white gown, which sounds the same but is different. The gown is your basic princess business, conventional except for its pocket, cleverly concealed in its poufy skirt—you’re relieved to find your mother’s doll inside it, and you push it down deeper, to hide it.
When you return to the kitchen, it looks as if a shipment of sawdust has been delivered. There it sits in front of the fridge, like some little creature has perhaps burrowed through the linoleum and up again into the appliance.
You turn to Baba Yaga to inquire about this, but she already has her hat on and is zipping up her parka. “I’m going into town,” she tells you.
“But you just got back!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “Look, there’s Night riding past.” As you watch, a dark rider on a dark horse streaks by—first through the window where the weather is fine, then through the window where the weather is foul.
You sniff, a bit miffed the old woman hasn’t remarked on your appearance. You resist the urge to twirl in your poufy skirt.
“While I’m gone,” she tells you, “sort this pile of seeds. Half are caraway, half are rye. If you haven’t got them straight by the time I return, I’ll feed you to my fire!”
And off she goes out the window again, that batty hag with her insane demands.
The pile of seeds is as tall as you are, the two types indistinguishable.
The cat does its manicure, clicking its teeth. “Jeez,” it says, “what a load.”
“Look,” you say, “I’ve got to get out of this place. Every minute that passes here is like a year. If I don’t leave soon, I’ll be an old woman before it’s all through.”
“And wouldn’t that be a shame.” Its tail twitches left, right, left, right, like a metronome.
Standing there in the witch’s kitchen, you’re thinking of your father, this long trip he’s taken. You know you’re supposed to be brave while he’s gone—every time you talk on the phone, he tells you not to worry, to keep your chin up, that you’ll see each other soon—but right now, you don’t want to be brave. You want your father to come and save you. Clearly, something bad has happened but no one will tell you what it is. You’re tired of all this make-believe.
Just then your mother’s doll drops to the floor. Look at those baby arms go! She’s tossing seeds in the air so fast, so high, caraway and rye, they coalesce like birds in flight. Seeds land in your hair, your cleavage, the ruffles of your long white gown, like rice on your wedding day. When your mother’s doll has sorted them all into two neat piles, waist high, you pick her up and place her gently in your pocket.
Remarkably, she has even managed to clean the floor; that tacky linoleum gleams.
“Well,” says the cat, “looks like you got that all sorted out.” It glances left, then right. “But lemme let you in on a li’l secret: Baba Yaga still won’t let you leave.”
“But why? I did everything she told me to.”
“Duh,” the cat says. “She’s afraid of being alone.”
You furrow your brow at that. At the cat. “What about you? Don’t you live here too?”
“Me?” The cat blinks, bemused. “I’m just passing time.”
“What about her kids, then? She said she used all of them for kindling.”
“True,” the cat concedes, “but they were all about to leave her. There’s only one who ever got out alive.” It eyes your pocket. “Funny, she had a little doll, just like you.”
Then the white rider of day is streaking through the dark branches, and Baba Yaga, on her big peg leg, is coming in hot. The window flies open at her approach, and the cat streaks back into the living room.
The witch settles down, scowling at your seeds. You’re relieved to see they haven’t budged from their two neat piles.
“Look,” you tell her, “I want to go home. I need to see my parents.”
“What a selfish brat you are! Always thinking of yourself.”
“Oh, puh-leeze,” you say, just like You #2, “you’re the one who’s keeping me here.”
“You’re the one who waltzed right in yourself.”
“You set a trap for me!”
“No, little stick,” says Baba Yaga, matter-of-fact, “the deer did. All your uncles killed theirs, you know.”
You remember the way those deer looked back at you. And as you do, you know it’s true—the deer do not love you. All the people who love you are people. Will you ever see them again?
“I want to see my grandmother,” you tell her. “The one who lives in the farmhouse.”
Old Baba Yaga shakes her head. “No one has lived in that old house for years. I’m all alone out here.”
You fix the witch with your side-eye, like a goose. “What about the cat?”
Baba Yaga flaps her lips. “Oh, pshaw. You can’t count the cat.”
Tick, tock, tick, tock—back and forth go the eyes of the cat clock. Resignedly, the old witch thumps over to the cauldron and ladles herself up some soup. It’s minestrone. She sits down at the table, and that big peg leg of hers sticks out straight beneath it, like she’s popped the footrest on a recliner. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen her sit down. “Tell you what,” she says, finally, “I’ll let you go if you can find my soul. It has to be around here somewhere.”
She’s got flecks of soup on her big, pockmarked nose, and she seems to be growing a goiter. Her eyes are full of hard red veins that run in alarming tributaries. She’s only got two teeth, and one’s coming loose; you can tell by the way she avoids it with her spoon. But in the mirror, you can see, there’s a young woman sitting there. Her hair and skin are brown, like yours. She’s dressed in a long white gown, and she’s crying into her soup.
All at once, you throw yourself upon the witch’s lap and hug the hard stump of her leg. Her eyes snap shut. “Oh, little stick,” she says, “you found it.”
A soul, a seal, released, unfurled—it whirls a bit, maybe, around in the kitchen, like a let-go balloon, before settling between your shoulder blades. Tick tock go the hands of the cat clock as the witch’s soul settles, sinking, working its way through you. The day is waning, the light receding from the room. Soon it will be night.
When you rise, the witch is gone. Sitting on the chair is a little whiskery mouse, blinking up at you with its moist, dark eyes.
“Oh, thank you!” says the mouse. “I’m ever so grateful! I’ve been trapped inside that old—”
But then the cat has hopped up on the chair and pinned the mouse beneath its paw. Leering creepily at you, it spears the mouse with its canines (even cats have canines) and bites once with its back teeth. You hear the crunch of little bones, then the cat swallows, once, twice, thrice, and the little mouse is gone.
“What’d you have to do that for?” you ask, aghast.
The cat flicks her tail. “Hey,” she says, “a gal’s gotta eat.”
“Well, at least show me the door.”
“There you go again, just thinking of yourself.” The cat pads through the doorway to the Laz-E Boy, where it hops up and settles down for a nap.
Turn to the mirror now: It’s just as you feared—you’re turning into an old woman. You’re tired in your bones, like they’re riddled with catacombs. All the summer flowers in your eyes are fading. There are bees in your heart, but they have no queen.
You pull your mother’s doll from your pocket. Her little arms are up in the air, like she’s the one asking for help now.
But what is in the dolly’s pocket? It’s a little golden key. A little golden key that fits the golden keyhole of that little mouse-hole door. Open the little door and see if you can tell what’s down there in the dark; if you’re lucky, once you’ve crouched down to see inside it, you’ll fit inside it too.
Now you’re off and running again in your white nightgown, down the deer path through the deadwood, riddled with little bones—along the love line beside the steep ravine, and then along the life line, beside the floating fields.
Those lines are in you, like an old story. But those lines cannot bind you. Your story is a new one. Soon, like the sun, it will find you.
The dawn is rising up from the land, silver gray and misted. Soon the sun will drink the mist from those finely branching stalks; soon their red berries will fall to the sandy loam. Soon the seeds within them will rise again from the family farm and feed you.