White Witch

All the trouble began whenever Grandma came for Christmas. To make matters worse, she was a fastidious old bat, had a fat, wrinkled face, and went around the house, shunting furniture out the way in a wheelchair.

I hadn’t really been looking forward to the holidays until I heard she was coming to the house for Christmas. She was fastidious, yes, crippled, sure, ninety-three, yep, but the old girl was interesting as hell.

I remember spending one Christmas with her and Grandpa at their farm deep on the island. She lit a candle and put her index finger in the flame. She didn’t seem afraid of burning down in a roasting hot furnace of wax. A whole lifetime goes by and it’s nothing, not even a drop in the ocean of my sufferings, she told me. But my attention was all fixed on her finger. After many seconds, she removed it. It was a great achievement. A religious woman like that, well, I didn’t think she would burn in hell.

It was so amazing, I took Susan Rafferty to watch her do it after the holiday.

Susan was mortified.

I perhaps should explain that Grandma was a white witch.

Grandpa, however, was a pretty normal old guy; except the time he lashed at her with a breadknife. After that, she left him alone. Grandpa complained all the time that he always felt that his heart was scalded. His ears were like cauliflowers, so like, he told me, because of Grandma’s musings. Grandpa was the son of a sergeant-major and lived his life never sure what she would be up to next. He told me hell held first place in her heart. It all made her very interesting.

Then, to crown his misfortunes, Grandpa died in a fire when Grandma left a candle burning in the house. She was about eighty-nine when Gramps died. Jack Rafferty attended the second cremation of Grandpa’s ashes in his policeman’s uniform. He stood next to her for the ceremony. Grandma wore a black cloak and bonnet. After the ceremony, Jack escorted Grandma out of the church. I didn’t see her after that for several hours, then I saw her at Grandpa’s grave. She went every day after that to his grave where she talked to him about hell, the gossips in the village said. I overheard her one time at the grave: That’s okay, love. I know that you’d be proud of me if you were able to say so.

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