Once upon a time, a witch lived in our town. She wasn’t a bad witch but she wasn’t a good witch either. She wasn’t young as my parents were. But she wasn’t old like the folk who had to sit in the front of mass to hear the preacher man and definitely not as old as those who couldn’t even walk down to the front before getting to winded and taking a seat towards the back. She didn’t live in town per say and nether did she live in the woods amounts the huntsmen shacks. Yes, she lived between everything.
She was of the age to have seen her fair share of births and was essentially the town midwife. Of course there were a few families who would go to the city for the finial duration of pregnancy. Either they had extended family there or thought that having a witch at the birth would be bad for one reason or another. She didn’t seem to mind the glaring eyes that some of the towns folk would give her. But when called upon for her midwifing skills, she would dutifully respond.
She had a great many pouches which hung from a sturdy cord she tied around her waist. She kept everything thing in those bags. Herbs, roots, smalls stones, animal bones, and even coins of pure sliver and gold. These last ones were said to be rumor but I can attest that they were real. Who knows how she kept track of what was in each pouch? I’d never once, in all the time I knew her, did I see her shuffle through the tangle of bags and search for something she was looking for. If she needed and herb or a charm, she would simply pluck the bag from its neighbors, some times without even looking, and have exactly what she was looking for. This was either a skill mastered or a blessing from the god’s. And it came in handy while women were in labor. One-dose bottles of powerful Black Cohosh tincture could be quickly retrieved and given to women in the throws of labor pain. Or if the she began to bleed too much, similar bottles of Sheppard’s Purse or Cranesbill would be applied and given within a moments notice. Often she would untie a bag from her belt filled with Motherwort to ease post-labor pain and give it to the new mother.
Now when I say that she was witch I mean to say she was called this by many of the people in town and she even called herself it once or twice. I asked her about it once when I was real young and this is what she told me.
“Boy, now you listen here,” she said arching up from a garden and stabbed her trowel in the black dirt, “Sum il say I’s a witch. And I’s suppose that’s be the truth. But at the end of der day when your belly is full and dat sun falls beyond yonder hills, I’s just a women like yo mama, yo aunties, and yo grand mama.”
And that’s the last I ever asked her about it. I was eleven at the time and I knew a thing or two about the world I lived in. I were to go to church on Sunday, say my prayers every night and when the preacher man asked me or my brothers or sister if we danced in the kitchen with our pa or sang outside at night with our mama we were to say we didn’t and that we were good boys and girls. Those these last two were lies but they didn’t feel like the bad kind that got people in to real trouble. We liked dancing as pa played his fiddle and we liked singing the old songs ma said her ma and pa sung with her. And we knew others did the same things. Though it didn’t make no sense why the preacher man wouldn’t like people singing or dancing or caring on like that, I knew better that to go telling every last person about our families personal business. I also knew that some didn’t care for the witch very much but didn’t know exact reasons.
Once, when I was twelve this time, she was caught me eating her raspberries and blackberries. She had come up behind me like some silent specter and in a boom voice barked, “Boy what you be doin’ in my sugar canes!”
I damn near jump right out of my skin. She grabbed my tanned arm and whipped me around so fast I dropped the plump berry on to the dust ground. My face was speckled with
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