The Witch Read Online Free Page A

parents.” She paused to let that sink in.
    I didn’t know what that meant, unfit. Like clothes fit you?
    â€œThe state wants to keep you from turning into juvenile delinquents. That’s why they took you away. You understand?”
    We didn’t. She exhaled, and the pineapples billowed in and out. “Now, upstairs, and keep quiet.”
    â€œMy daddy says, people should keep their noses on their own faces.”
    I thought she would hit me. But she wasn’t a hitter. Instead she gripped my wrist and squeezed hard. “And who’s your daddy? A jailbird? A drug addict?” She released me. My wrist burned for a long time.
    Upstairs, Kerry sat on one bed and I took the other. We heard the television going, some show with lots of laughing and applause. We didn’t talk about what Mrs. Wojo had said about our father. It would have made it real. We looked out the window, a dormer at the back of the house. The view was of the yard, and the alley, and the grid of similar small, fenced yards and the houses beyond them. Where was our house? All I knew was you needed a car to get there.
    Kerry rubbed at his eyes again. By morning they would be crusted over, and would have to be pried open with a warm washcloth. He said, “You shouldn’t make her mad.”
    â€œI didn’t.” She was already mad. “Is she a witch?”
    â€œThere aren’t witches.”
    â€œAre too.” I knew them from television. Mostly they were green-skinned, but not always.
    â€œThere aren’t any just walking around.”
    â€œI bet there are.”
    The argument didn’t go anywhere. We didn’t have enough energy to keep it up. Pretty soon Kerry fell asleep but I didn’t. I poked around the room and found those things that weremeant for children’s entertainment: A set of alphabet blocks. A picture book,
The Golden Treasury of Bible Stories
. A jigsaw puzzle in a box spilling pieces.
    I had to go to the bathroom, so I went down the stairs, as quietly as I could, waiting on each step. I crept past the door to the living room and the back of Mrs. Wojo’s head as she watched her show, smoke rising from her cigarette in a question-mark shape.
    I didn’t turn on a light in the bathroom. The green tile and the green plastic curtains over the small window gave everything a drowned, underwater look. I peed and then spent some time investigating the different bottles and jars set out on the sink and tub and the shelf over the toilet. There were a lot of them, as if it took a great many potions and paint pots for Mrs. Wojo to make her natural self presentable to unsuspecting eyes.
    I’d shut and latched the door behind me and suddenly there was a terrific rattling and commotion, Mrs. Wojo on its other side. “Open the door this instant!”
    Fright made me clumsy with the latch. When I did manage it, the door flew open and smacked into me. I yelped, and Mrs. Wojo made the room echo with her rage. “WE DO NOT LOCK DOORS IN THIS HOUSE! NEVER! EVER! DO YOU UNDERSTAND? DO YOU?”
    She kept yelling until I whimpered that I did. Of course it wasn’t true about the doors. The front door was bolted and triple-locked, as were the back door and the back gate, and of course, the door that led to the basement.
    Dinner was meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and frozen green beans that squeaked when you tried to get them on a fork. Kerry’s plate had more food on it. I didn’t complain. There was no point. After we were done eating, and had taken our plates tothe kitchen sink, Mrs. Wojo took her own plate into the living room and ate in front of the television. We were allowed to sit on the plaid couch and watch with her, although we had to stay still. It was some old black-and-white movie with songs and dancing, a production of such vast and purposeful boredom that I wondered what I had done wrong now, that I had to sit through it. I wondered what our father and Monica