Witch Baby
Francesca Lia Block
For My Mother
and with thanks to Randi Shutan,
in Memory
O
nce, in a city called Shangri-L.A. or Hell-A or just Los Angeles, lived Weetzie Bat, the daughter of Brandy-Lynn and Charlie Bat. A genie granted Weetzie three wishes, so she wished for a Duck for her best friend Dirk McDonald, “My Secret Agent Lover Man for me,” and a little house for them all to live in happily ever after. The wishes came true, mostly. Dirk met Duck Drake and Weetzie met My Secret Agent Lover Man and they all lived together. When Weetzie wanted a baby and My Secret Agent Lover Man didn’t, Dirk and Duck helped her, and Cherokee was born. My Secret was angry and went away. He stayed with Vixanne Wigg for a while, but he loved Weetzie so much that he returned. One day Vixanne left a basket on the porch of the house where Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man and the baby, Cherokee, and Dirk and Duck all lived. In the basket was Witch Baby and this is her story.
O
nce upon a time. What is that supposed to mean?
In the room full of musical instruments, watercolor paints, candles, sparkles, beads, books, basketballs, roses, incense, surfboards, china pixie heads, lanky toy lizards and a rubber chicken, Witch Baby was
curling her toes, tapping her drumsticks and pulling on the snarl balls in her hair. Above her hung the clock, luminous, like a moon.
Witch Baby had taken photographs of everyone in her almost-family—Weetzie Bat and My Secret Agent Lover Man, Cherokee Bat, Dirk McDonald and Duck Drake, Valentine, Ping Chong and Raphael Chong Jah-Love, Brandy-Lynn Bat and Coyote Dream Song. Then she had scrambled up the fireplace and pasted the pictures on the numbers of the clock. Because she had taken all the pictures herself, there was no witch child with dark tangled hair and tilted purple eyes.
What time are we upon and where do I belong? Witch Baby wondered as she went into the garden.
The peach trees, rosebushes and purple-flowering jacaranda were sparkling with strings of white lights. Witch Baby watched from behind the garden shed as her almost-family danced on the lawn, celebrating the completion of
Dangerous Angels
, a movie they had made about their lives. In
Angels
, Weetzie Bat met her best friend Dirk and wished on a
genie lamp for “a Duck for Dirk and My Secret Agent Lover Man for me and a beautiful little house for us to live in happily ever after.” The movie was about what happened when the wishes came true.
Witch Baby’s almost-mother-and-father, Weetzie Bat and My Secret Agent Lover Man, were doing a cha-cha on the lawn. In a short pink evening gown, pink Harlequin sunglasses and a white feathered headdress, Weetzie looked like a strawberry sundae melting into My Secret Agent Lover Man’s arms. Dirk McDonald was dancing with Duck Drake and pretending to balance his champagne glass on Duck’s perfect blonde flat-top. Weetzie’s mother, Brandy-Lynn Bat, was dancing with My Secret Agent Lover Man’s best friend, Coyote. Valentine Jah-Love and his wife, Ping Chong, swayed together, while their Hershey’s-powdered-chocolate-mix-colored son, Raphael Chong Jah-Love, danced with Weetzie’s real daughter, Cherokee Bat. Even Slinkster Dog and Go-Go Girl were dancing, raised up circus style on their hind legs, wriggling their rears and surrounded by their pup
pies, Pee Wee, Wee Wee, Teenie Wee, Tiki Tee and Tee Pee, who were not really puppies anymore but had never gotten any bigger than when they were six months old.
Under the twinkling trees was a table covered with Guatemalan fabric, roses in juice jars, wax rose candles from Tijuana and plates of food—Weetzie’s Vegetable Love-Rice, My Secret Agent Lover Man’s guacamole, Dirk’s homemade pizza, Duck’s fig and berry salad and Surfer Surprise Protein Punch, Brandy-Lynn’s pink macaroni, Coyote’s cornmeal cakes, Ping’s mushu plum crepes and Valentine’s Jamaican plantain pie.
Witch Baby’s stomach growled but she didn’t leave her hiding place. Instead, she listened to the reggae, surf, soul and salsa, tugged at the snarl balls in her hair and snapped pictures of all the couples. She wanted to dance but there was no one to dance with. There was only Rubber Chicken lying around somewhere inside the cottage. He always seemed to end up being her only partner.
After a while, Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man sat down near the shed. Witch
Baby watched them. Sometimes she thought she looked a little like My Secret Agent Lover Man; but she knew he and Weetzie had found her on their doorstep one day. Witch Baby didn’t look like Weetzie Bat at all.
“What’s wrong, my slinkster-love-man?” Witch Baby heard Weetzie ask as she handed My Secret Agent Lover Man a paper plate sagging with food. “Aren’t you happy that we finished
Angels
?”
He lit a cigarette and stared past the party into the darkness. Shadows of roses moved across his angular face.
“The movie wasn’t enough,” he said. “We have more money now than we know what to do with. Sometimes this city feels like an expensive tomb. I want to do something that matters.”
“But you speak with your movies,” Weetzie said. “You are an important influence on people. You open eyes.”
“It hasn’t been enough. I need to think of something strong. When I was a kid I had a lamp shaped like a globe. I had newspaper articles all over my walls, too, like Witch Baby
has—disasters and things. I always wished I could make the world as peaceful and bright as my lamp.”
“Give yourself time,” said Weetzie, and she took off his slouchy fedora, pushed back his dark hair and kissed his temples.
Witch Baby wished that she could go and sit on Weetzie’s lap and whisper an idea for a movie into My Secret Agent Lover Man’s ear. An idea to make him breathe deeply and sleep peacefully so the dark circles would fade from beneath his eyes. She wanted Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man to stroke her hair and take her picture as if they were her real parents. But she did not go to them.
She turned to see Weetzie’s mother, Brandy-Lynn, waltzing alone.
Weetzie had told Witch Baby that Brandy-Lynn had once been a beautiful starlet, and in the soft shadows of night roses, Witch Baby could see it now. Starlet. Starlit, like Weetzie and Cherokee, Witch Baby thought. Brandy-Lynn collapsed in a lawn chair to drink her martini and finger the silver heart locket she always wore around her neck. Inside the
locket was a photograph of Weetzie’s father, Charlie Bat, who had died years before. The white lights shone on the heart, the martini and the tears that slid down Brandy-Lynn’s cheeks. Witch Baby wanted to pat the tears with her fingertip and taste the salt. Even after all this time, Brandy-Lynn cried often about Charlie Bat, but Witch Baby never cried about anything. Sometimes tears gathered, thick and seething salt in her chest, but she kept them there.
As Witch Baby imagined the way Brandy-Lynn’s tears would feel on her own face, she saw Cherokee Bat dancing over to Brandy-Lynn and holding a piece of plantain pie.
“Eat some pie and come dance with me and Raphael, Grandma Brandy,” Cherokee said. “You can show us how you danced when you were a movie star.”
Brandy-Lynn wiped away her mascaratinted tears and shakily held out her arms. Then she and Cherokee waltzed away across the lawn.
No one noticed Witch Baby as she went back
inside the cottage, into the room she and Cherokee shared.
Cherokee’s side of the room was filled with feathers, crystals, butterfly wings, rocks, shells and dried flowers. There was a small tepee that Coyote had helped Cherokee make. The walls on Witch Baby’s side of the room were covered with newspaper clippings—nuclear accidents, violence, poverty and disease. Every night, before she went to bed, Witch Baby cut out three articles or pictures with a pair of toenail scissors and taped them to the wall. They made Cherokee cry.
“Why do you want to have those up there?” Weetzie asked. “You’ll both have nightmares.”
If Witch Baby didn’t cut out three articles, she knew she would lie awake, watching the darkness break up into grainy dots around her head like an enlarged newspaper photo.
Tonight, when she came to the third article, Witch Baby held her breath. Some Indians in South America had found a glowing blue ball. They stroked it, peeled off layers to decorate their walls and doorways, faces and bodies.
Then one day they began to die. All of them. The blue globe was the radioactive part of an old X-ray machine.
Witch Baby burrowed under her blankets as Brandy-Lynn, Weetzie and Cherokee entered the room with plates of food. In their feathers, flowers and fringe, with their starlit hair, they looked more like three sisters than grandmother, mother and daughter.
“There you are!” Weetzie said. “Have some Love-Rice and come dance with us, my baby witch.”
Witch Baby peeked out at the three blondes and snarled at them.
“Are you looking for those articles again? Why do you need those awful things?” Brandy-Lynn asked.
“What time are we upon and where do I belong?” Witch Baby mumbled.
“You belong here. In this city. In this house. With all of us,” said Weetzie.
Witch Baby scowled at the clippings on her wall. The pictures stared back—missing children smiling, not knowing what was going to
happen to them later; serial killers looking blind also, in another way.
“Why is this place called Los Angeles?” Witch Baby asked. “There aren’t any angels.”
“Maybe there are. Sometimes I see angels in the people I love,” said Weetzie.
“What do angels look like?”
“They have wings and carry lilies,” Cherokee said. “And they have blonde hair,” she added, tossing her braids.
“Clutch pig!” said Witch Baby under her breath. She tugged at her own dark tangles.
“No, Cherokee,” said Weetzie. “That’s just in some old paintings. Angels can look like anyone. They can look like mysterious, beautiful, purple-eyed girls. Now eat your rice, Witch Baby, and come outside with us.”
But Witch Baby curled up like a snail.
“Please, Witch. Come out and dance.”
Witch Baby snailed up tighter.
“All right, then, sleep well, honey-honey. Dream of your own angels,” said Weetzie, kissing the top of her almost-daughter’s head. “But remember, this is where you belong.”
She took Cherokee’s hand, linked arms with Brandy-Lynn and left the room.
Witch Baby, who is not one of them, dreams of her own angel again. He is huddling on the curb of a dark, rainy street. Behind him is a building filled with golden lights, people and laughter, but he never goes inside. He stays out in the rain, the hollows of his eyes and cheeks full of shadows. When he sees Witch Baby, he opens his hands and holds them out to her. She never touches him in the dream, but she knows just how he would feel
.
Witch Baby got out of bed. She put the article about the radioactive ball into her pocket. She put her black cowboy-boot roller skates on her feet.
As she skated away from the cottage, Witch Baby thought of the blue people, dying and beautiful.
Devil City, she said to herself. Los Diablos.
W
itch Baby passed the Charlie Chaplin Theater that had been shut down a long time ago and was covered with graffiti now. The theater still had pictures of Charlie Chaplin on the walls, and they reminded Witch Baby of My Secret Agent Lover Man.
Someday me and My Secret will reopen this theater, she thought. And we’ll make our own movies together, movies that change things.
Witch Baby passed Canter’s, the all-night coffee shop, where a man with dirt-blackened feet and a cloak of rags sat on the sidewalk sniffing pancakes in the air. She only had fifty cents in her pocket, but she placed it carefully in his palm, then skated on past the rows of markets that sold fruits and vegetables, almonds and raisins, olive oil and honey. The markets were all closed for the night. So was the shop where Weetzie always bought vanilla and Vienna coffee beans. But next to the coffee bean shop was a window filled with strange things. There were cupids, monster heads, mermaids, Egyptian cats, jaguars with clocks in their bellies, animal skulls; and lighting up all the rest was a lamp shaped like a globe of the world.
Witch Baby stood in front of the dust-streaked window, wondering why she had never noticed this place before. She stared at the globe, thinking of My Secret Agent Lover Man and the lamp he had told Weetzie about.
Then she opened the door and skated into a room cluttered with merry-go-round horses, broken china, bolts of glittery fabric, Persian carpets and many lamps. The lamps weren’t lit and the room was so dark that Witch Baby could hardly see. But she did notice a gold turban rising just above a low counter at the back of the store. A humming voice came from beneath the turban.
“Greetings. What have you come for?” The voice was like an insect buzzing toward Witch Baby and she saw a pair of slanted firefly eyes watching her. A tiny man stepped from behind the counter. He smelled of almonds and smoke.
“I want the globe lamp,” Witch Baby said.
The man shuffled closer. “My, my, I haven’t seen one of my own kind in ages. You’re certainly small enough and you have the eyes. But I wouldn’t have recognized you in those rolling boots. Is that what we’re wearing these days?” He looked down at his embroidered, pointed-toed slippers. “What have you come for?”
“The globe lamp,” Witch Baby repeated.
“I wouldn’t recommend the globe lamp. It’s
not a traditional enough abode. On the other hand, you may not want to be bothered with all those people rubbing the lid and whispering their wishes all the time. It gets tiresome, doesn’t it, this lamp business? They don’t understand that the really good wishes like world peace are just out of our league and those love wishes are such a risk. So the globe’s a fine disguise, I suppose. No one bothering you for happily ever after. I understand, believe me; that’s why I quit. The lamp business I’m in now is much less complicated.”
“What time are we upon and where do I belong?” Witch Baby asked.
“This is the time we’re upon.” He blinked three times, shuffled over to the window, drew back a black curtain and reached to touch the globe lamp. Suddenly it changed. Where there had been a painted sea, Witch Baby saw real water rippling. Where there had been painted continents, there were now forests, deserts and tiny, flickering cities. Witch Baby thought she heard a whisper of tears and moans, of gunshots and music.
The man unplugged the lamp, and it became
dark and still. He carried it over to Witch Baby and placed it in her arms. Because she was so small, the lamp hid everything except for two hands with bitten fingernails and two skinny legs in black cowboy-boot roller skates.
“Where do I belong?”
“At home,” said the man. “At home in the globe.”
When Witch Baby peeked around the globe lamp to thank him, she found herself standing on the sidewalk in front of a deserted building. There was only dust and shadow in the window, but somehow Witch Baby thought she saw the image of a tiny man reflected there. Skating home, she remembered the lights and whispers of the world.
It was late when Witch Baby returned to the cottage and tiptoed into the pink room that Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man shared. They lay in their bed asleep, surrounded by bass guitars, tiki heads, balloons, two surfboards, a unicycle, a home-movie camera and Rubber Chicken. My Secret Agent Lover Man was tossing and turning and grinding his teeth. Weetzie lay beside him with her
blonde mop of hair and aqua feather nightie. She was trying to stroke the lines out of his face.
Witch Baby watched them for a while. Then she plugged in the globe lamp, took the article about the glowing blue ball out of her pocket, put it on My Secret Agent Lover Man’s chest and stepped back into the darkness.
Suddenly My Secret Agent Lover Man sat straight up in bed. He shone with sweat, blue in the globe-lamp light.
“What’s wrong, honey-honey?” Weetzie asked, sitting up beside him and taking him in her arms.
“I dreamed about them again.”
“The bodies…?”
“Exploding. The men with masks.”
“You’ll feel better when you start your next movie,” Weetzie said, rubbing his neck and shoulders and running her fingers through his hair. “You and our Witch Baby are just the same.”
My Secret Agent Lover Man turned and saw the globe lamp shining in a corner of the room.
“Weetz!” he said. “Where did you find it?
What a slinkster-cool gift! It’s just like one I had when I was a kid.”
“What are you talking about?” Weetzie asked. Then she turned, too, and saw the lamp. “Lanky Lizards!” she said. “I don’t know where it came from!”
Witch Baby wanted to jump onto the bed, throw back her arms and say, “I know!” But instead she just watched. My Secret Agent Lover Man, who didn’t look at all like Witch Baby now, stared as if he were hypnotized. Then he noticed the article, which had slipped into his lap.
“Two glowing blue globes,” he said, gazing from the piece of paper to the lamp. “I’m going to make a new movie, Weetz. One that really says something. Thank you for your inspiration, my magic slink!”
Before she could speak he took her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers.
Witch Baby turned away. Although her walls were papered with other pieces of pain, although her eyes were globes, he had not recognized her gift. She did not belong here.