Ann Willow

ONE

In 1984, a series of events opened a vault of secrets buried deep within my unconscious mind. The door ajar, memories of my past slipped out one at a time, sometimes in great numbers. As the door swung wider, I looked deeper into my history. Terrified of the truth, I ran for thirty years.

I am a grandmother now. And as would a grandmother, I take the hand of the little girl, teenager, and new mother I once was, and walk with her back in time. I stand by her, love her, and protect her. I give her the voice to tell the secrets she has longed to reveal . . .

The Changing Time. Somewhere in the wooded environs of the wealthy North Shore suburbs of Chicago. I don’t remember how I got to this clearing in the woods, a grove surrounded by a dense stand of tall trees, the circular area worn to dirt. Around the perimeter are posts upon which blazing torches offer golden light. In the center of the circle, a huge bonfire points flaming fingers to the sky.

I am three years old, naked, squatting before a large animal slit from tail to jaw. A man stands to my left, slightly behind me. I stare straight ahead, bewildered, feeling as though I’ve just woken from a dream.

I look downward in shame at my nakedness—dirty, ugly, and bad. I pee on the soft, dark dirt, adding a deeper pool of shame to my tiny person. The man swings a silver ball of puffing smoke. He wears all black, like a priest I saw in a Catholic church. I feel awkward and insignificant in his presence. Even in my tender toddlerhood, I am aware of his black costume in contrast with my white, naked skin, and the importance of being white.

I’m not afraid, really, having already shut off fear as much as possible to survive. What I endure most keenly is the pain of abandonment, the self-consciousness of shame, and the anxiety of guilt, always wondering what I’ve done wrong. Nobody at this ritual sees me or thinks of me as a baby. To them, I am merely a vulnerable object to be shaped and molded into the role they've planned for me.

One moment I squat beside the beast, the next, I’m lying on a rough stone altar before the dancing, taunting firelight, gazing up at a pitch-black sky, the stars obliterated by the light of the fire. Watching, waiting, hoping this will be over soon, I observe the scene as a visitor from another place who does not belong here.

Girls, twelve or thirteen years old, dance around the fire in white dresses. They twirl, flowing hair swirling about their pale faces. Flat, unblinking, crystal-blue eyes reflect the wagging, accusing fingers of fire. As the young women on the verge of womanhood spin past the altar, they dip over me with vacant faces, their ice-blue eyes looking upward. They chant a monotonous song, twirling in a half-circle before me, or so it seems from my view—unknown hands turned my head to the right, facing the fire, and a voice told me not to look left; I sense people who don’t want to be recognized are standing back there, watching. With my face positioned this way, the girls spin on a slant, swirling faster and faster until I’m dizzy, feeling I will vomit.

The dancing halts.

The priest-man lifts me off the altar and takes my hand, leading me to another man sitting on the red velvet cushion of a black wooden chair with ornately carved woodwork surrounding the high back, like a throne. He must be a prince of some sort, in his early twenties, and like the priest-man, wears black: black turtleneck shirt, black pants, shiny black shoes, and even shoulder-length black hair swept up and away from his pale white face, exposing a high, furrowed forehead. The only colors in what seems a black-and-white snapshot of him are his icy blue eyes—like the girls’—and the blood-red cushion upon which he is throned. A round silver medallion on a silver chain hangs around his neck.

The prince half smiles as I reach him, the left side of his mouth slightly curved, so I think maybe I've been a good girl? He pinches the chain holding the round medallion and swings it from side-to-side below his chest, a lazy pendulum hypnotizing me into submission. Drawing nearer the pendulous medallion, it comes into focus, depicting three black, triangular mountains behind a lake, their peaks pointing into a silver sky with a black moon. The moon reflects silver upon the ebony lake, with tiny silver waves rippling its surface. I cannot see, nor will I for many years, that the ripples are words of an ancient language passed down from generation to generation of this coven of black witches.

I have no idea I am being raised to take my place in the circle of this coven. I am unaware that this ceremony is only one of many in my indoctrination.

Lulled into compliance by the swinging mountains and lake, I toddle toward the shiny disk. As I reach out my hand to touch it, the chair begins moving backward.

The priest-man releases my hand and pushes me forward. I run toward the throned man, but backwards into the forest he zooms on his throne, swinging the medallion, sinisterly grinning, holding my eyes with a mesmerizing stare. I race after him, fast and furious, with chanting and whirring sounds all around me. The scene’s periphery is unfocused, like a wildlife film focused on the cheetah chasing its prey, the surrounding scenery a blurry haze.

Tick tock, tick tock. Time has no meaning.

Tick tock, tick tock. Sudden silence.

No more chanting. No more backward racing motion of the man on his throne. He is gone, has disappeared. I stop running.

Tick tock, tick tock. The stillness so complete I can hear it, a ringing in my ears. It slows, then stops.

Tick tock, tick tock. Time resumes amid the quiet of the forest, beginning anew. The crossing of a threshold, a fusion of space and time.

I am now standing in a smaller grove encircled by giant, fully leafed summer trees. The air is chilly here in the darkness of the grove. The full moon eerily illuminates the scene with pale, silvery light. Wondering what will happen, I am afraid now, a cold fear shivering through my body. I frantically look around, waiting for a rescue I know won’t come.

I think I hear my name whispered behind me, so faint I’m not sure. “Haannnah…” I turn to face the voice.

I hear my name whispered to my left. “Haannnah . . .” I turn.

Then whispered to my right, in front of me, behind me, to my left, my right. I spin around and around, searching for the women’s faces who call to me in whispers, “Haannnah . . .”

Then they stop.

The leaves rustle in the sudden gust of a light breeze. I hear them approaching, the women, the soft shuffle of their feet as if wearing moccasins. They slowly surround me. One holds a staff in her right hand, using it like a walking stick, tap, tap, tap on the ground; it comes up to her shoulder, with a crystal ball sitting on top. In another’s right hand is a bell raised to her shoulder, in her left a stick. A third woman swings a globe of golden light, barely giving off enough light to illuminate the scene.

There are other women behind me I cannot see, and do not turn around to look, as I am immobilized, frozen like a statue of myself. As they come closer, a buzzing sound rises to a murmur of whispers which circle me in a crescendo of monotonous chanting. I know it is not in English, nor Swedish; the languages I hear at home. It is different, yet familiar. I cannot see the women’s faces, hidden by hoods pointed forward to hide them, creating black holes where their faces should be.

And suddenly I feel tall, and become a glowing white light. I grow bigger and bigger, brighter and brighter, rising above them, strong and brave. They will never have me.

It does not matter who is behind me because I am greater than them. As I rise, I see a speck of a child on the forest floor, surrounded by six hooded women chanting the incantation intended to transform me into a witch. With the tinkling of the bell in a witch’s right hand, the Changing Time begins, and my toddler self, unable to resist the weight of their ominous chorus, succumbs to the adults ruling my existence, charting its course. Robbing me of a chance to travel down the myriad paths open to all babies, they instead direct me down a secret path, a path upon which I will walk in shadows of loneliness that will shade my life.

High up above, angels help my spirit fly away. Far, far away. And though my human form falls under the witches’ spell today, I will someday choose another destiny. One which my predecessors—people of lies—have not planned for me.

They will be violently displeased when they discover I have made my own way . . . Out.

TWO

August 1984

“I gotta get out of here.”

“What are you talking about, Hannah?” Mark was in the driver’s seat of my cute, burgundy-red Volkswagen Scirocco. He’d driven because I was too drunk. “Come on. You wanna go home? Want me to take you home?” Mark asked for the fourth time. He turned to me, the leather seat making that creaky-crunching sound.

I was living in West Rogers Park, a North Side Chicago neighborhood. Mark and I were at his apartment in Skokie, a suburb north of the city where we’d grown up. Mark still lived with his mother in the same apartment they’d lived in when we were in junior high school.

“No, no, no, no! I have to get out of here. I’ll die if I stay!”

I curled into a circle on the passenger seat of my cute little car, my long blonde hair draped over my face like the last curtain call.

“I can’t wait another day, Mark. Help me. Please help me.”

“Ugh! I can’t figure out what you want? You’re acting crazy.” He opened the car door.

I grabbed his wrist. “Please, Mark, don’t go. Please don’t go. Help me.”

“What the hell do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I gotta get out of here. Gotta go, gotta go . . .” My voice trailed off. I could hear it flying away as if it had taken the last flight out, leaving me behind.

“Don’t leave me,” I begged in a husky whisper, to Mark and my vanishing voice.

“Hannah, stop! I’m home, so I’m going in now. You’ll be okay. Goodbye!”

He pried my fingers off his wrist with a sigh of disgust, slammed the car door shut, and I gave up. I imagined him taking a seat beside my tired and weary words, flying away to parts unknown, leaving me to sit in my misery.

I’d run into Mark a few weeks before at a bar in downtown Chicago. He was an old friend from junior high school, a year older than me, a guy with a crush on me back then. When we were kids, my mother gushed over Mark when he’d come to the house with the rest of the gang my twin sister and I hung out with. I thought she was crazy, having thought of Mark as an overweight goon, though funny and kind in his way.

Mark and I hadn’t seen each other since high school, seven or eight years earlier. When I saw him at the bar, I didn’t even recognize him. He’d changed so much—lost about a hundred pounds, grew his hair long. Wow, he was handsome. I liked the way he looked, and knew how to look good myself. Upon first meeting me, nobody would suspect I was a wreck. The thing is, I didn’t know why I felt like such a wreck, smashed and broken.

Mark still liked me, although this night may have changed his mind about that.

I opened the passenger door to beg him once more not to leave me. But my voice was gone, had already boarded the plane. I gently closed the door, head bent, my curtain of hair blessedly blinding me from the sight of him walking away.

Maneuvering over the gearshift, I climbed into the driver’s seat and drove a few blocks to my parents’ house—the house I’d grown up in—to ask my mother for money. She gave me twenty dollars, apparently not noticing, or not caring, that I was drunker than drunk. I staggered back to my car, slid into the driver’s seat, and drove to O’Hare airport to catch up with my sad voice, tired of searching for words.

* * * *

It’s Wintertime. I am a child. I’ve been asleep and am awakened by voices. It’s dark outside. I’m in a car? Snow. Cold. I’ve been dreaming about a place that gives me comfort. A happy dream of warmth and safety. Car doors. Joyful voices. They’re leaving. Don’t go! Take me with you! A longing deep within my soul. But I must be quiet. Very quiet. My whole childhood spent in silence. Not a word to anyone.

. . . I still dream about the place I belong, but never remember where it is when I wake up.

THREE

I parked in the long-term lot at O’Hare airport. I wore a royal blue dress of thick, soft cotton, just above my knees, sans underwear (I don't know why I remember not wearing underwear). Other than my dress, all I had was my purse with a depleted checkbook and the twenty dollars my mother had given me, and a smile. Damn, it was muggy, the humidity so thick it was like trying to breathe underwater. What a relief when the terminal doors whooshed open to frigid air conditioning.

I dashed to the ticket counter and wrote a check for an airplane ticket to Dallas, which wasn’t going to clear my bank. I hadn’t been working much, and when I did, I sold ads for my cocaine dealer’s coupon flyer—you know, those coupons in the mail for two-for-one steak dinners, discount eye exams, and such—both of us struggling to pretend we lived ordinary lives with ordinary jobs. Everything I earned went up my nose with the cocaine I bought from him as soon as he paid me, typically only a fraction of what he owed.

On the plane, far above the city of Chicago, I held a vodka and tonic in my left hand while writing a suicide note to my parents with my right, exonerating them of any blame.

I decided to enjoy my last few hours, or days, on planet Earth. Chatting with other passengers and the flight attendant, I felt happy and free. I was on my way to find Jerry, a boyfriend who, a few years before, didn’t try to stop me when I left him for another old boyfriend, Michael. Jerry wasn’t the jealous type, so when my inevitable fights with Michael erupted, and I wanted Jerry’s attention, he always let me back in when I drove to the little house we’d once shared at the Wisconsin border. Even if he wasn’t home, I was welcome to let myself in with the key I hadn’t returned. Sometimes he’d find me asleep in his bed, which had once been mine, too. We’d lie there together, me talking, him listening.

On that muggy night in August 1984, flying to a new life or Heaven, I hadn’t spoken to Jerry in almost five years. His brother told me Jerry lived in Abilene, Texas, wherever that was, and I had to fly to Dallas to get there.

I watched Dallas come into view, forming pinpoints of light like stars thrown across a black sky, growing into shapes of street lights, and then the various colored lights of the runway as the plane touched down just before midnight. One day laying to rest as a new day began.

Tipsy, I sloped into a seat in the terminal, shocked I’d done it. I left Chicago. I dropped my forehead into my hands, adjusting to the possibility that maybe my departure marked the start of a new life, rather than the suicide I’d envisioned. The world I’d left behind already seemed long gone, yet flashed before me like a life remembered at death.

I’d spent my last few months in Chicago living a double life.

֎ ֎ ֎ ֎

My parents were the children of immigrants, raising us kids in an ethnic Swedish home. In the mid-1980s, they’d been married almost forty years. They appeared to be typical suburbanites of the era—my father the breadwinner, my mother a housewife who didn’t even drive a car. Yet, I sensed something different about them: a not-quite-spoken ethnocentric attitude of superior descendancy from a white, Nordic, non-Jewish bloodline.

My father was part owner of an import business specializing in gourmet food from Scandinavia, which provided ample financial stability. A large man, over six feet tall and well beyond two hundred pounds, he dominated my mother, sisters, and me with an abrasive demeanor, critical and distant. His persona was ultra-conservative righteousness, proud as hell he’d been an army intelligence officer in London during World War II—his glory days.

My mother was petite, with a certain graciousness that inspired strangers to confide their life stories, to which she listened with sparkling aquamarine eyes.