White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

Author:Helen Oyeyemi [Oyeyemi, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 9780670068579
Google: UG5fPwAACAAJ
Amazon: 0385526059
Publisher: Penguin Group Canada
Published: 2009-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

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Dad packed all Lily’s things up one day in the middle of August. Miri knew what he was doing, and she let herself out of the house quietly and just disappeared. If I hadn’t caught Dad in the actual act of dragging bags full of her clothes over to the lift, no one would have said anything to him. I took a bag in each hand and asked him where he was taking it all. Suddenly there was the smell of rose attar all around us. I couldn’t keep my grip on the bags—the way they bulged—in my mind I saw Lily in them, in clean pieces. Put me back together and I’ll stand up. I nudged one of the bags with my foot. Soft. Just clothes.

“They’re all going to charity,” Dad said. “Miranda won’t wear these things, use these things. It wouldn’t be good for her if she did. These things are being wasted here.” Something about the slow way he spoke made me think he hadn’t known what he was going to do with Lily’s things until he’d said it aloud. He walked past me and into the bedroom, brought out more bags, more boxes. I met him at the door and threw bags back into the room. One of them hit him, then sagged across the floor. Multicoloured scarves flowed out. Dad said: “Eliot. Eliot, I know. But it’s got to be.”

I thought briefly of pulling the door shut and locking him in somehow (how?). I thought, Don’t take her away. “Just . . . don’t give her stuff away, Dad. Not now. Alright?”

Dad opened his arms. The bare room seemed to settle around his shoulders like a cloak. It took me a moment to interpret the gesture as a request that I come across the room to him. I started to go, I really did, but in the time it took me to make a step he’d dropped his arms. He sat down on one of the boxes.

“Listen,” he said. “I cannot endure that dream again.”

“What dream,” I said.

“The one where it’s dark, and the house gets warm, warmer. Then it’s hot and I’m all . . . dried out. I drink from the kitchen tap and go out into the garden to breathe. After a few moments I feel much better and I try to get back into the house, but my key won’t work. I walk around to the back door and the key for that doesn’t work either. The key breaks when I try to turn it in the lock, the handle breaks under my hand. It’s pathetic, really, but I walk around to the front of the house and start pleading. Let me in! I don’t know who I’m talking to. The house just stands there, dark, absolutely silent. I put a rock in my pocket and climb a tree in the garden, thinking I can open a window, and climb in. But I can’t even touch the windowsill—it gives off a strange, feathered static that bites me.

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