Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980), American writer and political activist. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1966, and the US National Book Award for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
witchcraft
By Katherine Anne Porter
And, Mrs. Blanchard, believe me, I am happy to be here with you and your family, because it is so beautiful, everything, and before that I worked for a long time in a fairy house - maybe you don't know what a fairy house is? Of course... everyone must have heard of it at some point. Well, ma'am, I always work where there is work to be done and so I have worked hard and without stopping in that place, I have seen many things, things that you would not believe, and that I would not even think of telling you, maybe they would just relax you while I combed your hair. And you will forgive me, but I cannot do anything good when I hear you tell the washerwoman that perhaps someone has put a spell on your linens, they are shrinking quickly in the wash. Well, in that house there was a girl, a slut, a slut, but very much loved by all the men who called her, so you understand that she was not left to the other women who took care of the house. They quarreled, the lady cheated her with her checks: you know, the girl took a check, a secret payment, every time, and at the end of the week she would give it back to the lady, yes, that was the deal, and she would take her percentage, a really small part of her profits: it's a business matter, you see, like any other - and the lady used to pretend that the girl had only given her back a few checks, you see, and she had really given her a little more, but since she didn't have it anymore, what could she do? So she would say, I'm going to get out of this place, she would curse and cry. Then the lady would shoot her in the head. Prore would shoot people in the head with bottles, that was the way she fought. For God's sake, Mrs. Blanchard, what a mess it was sometimes with the girl running down the stairs and the lady pulling her back by the hair and pressing the bottle against her forehead.
Almost always the reason was money, the girls got into debt like this and if they wanted to leave, they couldn't do so without paying every penny. you are marked. The lady had things all in order with the police; the girls had to go back with them or go to jail. Well, they always went back with the police, or some other kind of friend of the lady: she got the men to work for her too, but she paid them very well for everything, let me tell you: so the girls stayed unless they were sick; if they were, if they were seriously sick, she would send them away again.
Mrs. Blanchard said, “Are you in a bit of a hurry here,” and released a strand of hair: “and then?”
Pardon me – but that girl, there was a real hatred between her and the lady. She used to say many times, I make more money than anyone in this house, and every week there were scenes like that. So finally she said one morning, I’m leaving this place now, took forty dollars out from under her pillow and said, Here’s your money! The lady started screaming, Where did you get all this, you…? and accused her of stealing from the men who came to visit her. The girl said, Get those hands off me or I’ll take your soul. Then the lady grabbed her by the arms and started kneeing the girl terribly hard in the stomach, even in her most secret places, Mrs. Blanchard, then she hit her with a bottle in the face and the girl went back to her room where I was cleaning. I helped her onto the bed and she sat there with her hips and head hanging down, and when she got up again there was blood everywhere where she had sat. So the lady came in again and shouted, You can run away now, you are no longer of any use to anyone. I won't repeat it all, you understand that very well. But she took all the money she could find and when she went to the door she pushed the girl hard on the back with her knees so that she fell back onto the street, then she got up and walked away in her barely fitting dress.
After that the men who knew this girl kept asking, Where is Ninette? And they kept asking in the days that followed, so the lady could no longer say, I sent her away because she is a thief. No, she began to realize that she had been wrong to send Ninette away, then she said, She will be back in a few days, don't worry.
And now, Mrs. Blanchard, if you wanted to listen, I'm coming to the strange part, the thing that came to my mind when you said that your girls had been bewitched. That there was a woman cook in that place, colored like me, like me with more French blood, just like me, living alone among people who worked with magic. But she had a heart of stone, she helped the lady in everything, she liked to see what was happening and tell stories about the girls. The lady trusted her with everything, so she said, Where can I find that little girl? That she had gone to Bass Street before the lady started asking the police to turn her back. Well, said the cook, I know a charm that works here in New Orleans, the colored women use it to bring their husbands back: after seven days they come back again very happy to stay and they can't explain why: even your enemy will come to you believing you are his friend. It's a New Orleans charm for sure, they say it doesn't work even around the river... And they did as the cook said. They took the girl's charmed pot from under her bed and mixed in it with water and milk all the relics they found there: the hair from her comb and the face powder from the pouf, even the little pieces of her nails that they found in the corners of the carpet where she used to cut her fingernails and toenails; they put the sheets with her blood in the water and the cook always said something in a low voice; I couldn't hear it all, but at last she said to the lady, Now spit on her; the lady spat and the cook said, When she comes back, she will be a rag under your feet.
Mrs. Blanchard closed her perfume bottle with a sharp click: "Yes, then?"
Then after seven nights the girl came back and looked really sick, in the same old clothes, but happy to be there. One of the men said, "Welcome home, Ninette!" And when she started talking to the lady, the lady said, "Shut up, go upstairs and get dressed." So Ninette, the girl, said, "I'll be back in a minute." After that she lived there quietly.
1924
/Katherine Anne Porter, Collected Stories and Other Writings, The Library of America, 2008
/translation Gazeta Express
edition
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