by Nichole McGill

Blond Jack, my other brother, would correct: "Watch out for her NOS-trills! They’re filled with black rubbery SNOT."

And I’d clap my hands and squeal the loudest, most horrific details: "Sucked in, sucked in, you’ll get sucked in with all the black snotty children that she keeps in her nose."

Jack’d wrinkle his nose in disgust but I’d catch the proud grin on squared-headed Red’s face even if he’d usually add, "Gross, Dottie. Be a girl, eh?"

Okay, I’ll be a girl. I’ve got my chestnut curls tied back in ruby red bows. I got my polka dot summer dress and I’ll sashay out of Belle’s Grove to Lorne Park’s Main Street, making sure to stay one block behind nasty Mrs. Laverty. I knew she was going to do something bad. You might think she was a nice old lady beetling her way down Main Street to the farmer’s market but I knew her proper destination. She was heading to the clapboard Town Hall where the police, the clerks and the Humane Society all shared space. She was going to rat us out because of Cookie.

And the Lord listened ‘coz Momma’s arms just got bigger and bigger and each time she wholloped me, it stung a little more. It didn’t stop me from catcalling Mrs. Laverty, it only made me look to see if she were near.

"It all stared with those two calves," Poppa continued at dinner last night.

"Now, Poppa…" said Momma who always hushed him when he got like this.

"Mark my words…first, the calves, then Rover…She’s not going to rest until all of our animals are dead." Rover was the family mutt, a regular Heinz 57, Poppa said. He had the face of a German shepherd, the bushy body of a sheep dog and the stubby legs of a collie that didn’t stop him from running wily-nily all over the neighbourhood. Rover met his end under the wheels of the milkman’s truck and Red swore, that exactly at the same time that Rover made his last fateful dash across the street, Mrs. Laverty had chased Rover out of her front yard with a broom, shrieking that Rover would meet his maker if he ever crapped on her property again. And see ­- her curse came true.

And those tawny calves, I had memories of waking up to see apple-sized black eyeballs blinking dumbly at me through the bedroom window. Soft eyes that over a year, sickened into black tarantulas. That wasn’t Poppa’s fault that he’d been sold two bad calves from some fella from Purpleville but Mrs. Laverty didn’t care what was what. She called the Humane Society and the men came and took the spindly calves up from the basement where Poppa hid them.

After that, she’d chastize Poppa from her side of the peeling picket fence: "Farm animals are for farms, Mr. McAlister, and this area, it isn’t farmland any more. It’s for families and houses and well-kept, well-mannered PETS."

And there’d be a tailless limping dog panting dumbly at her heels. Susan, she called it. It was a corgi, Jack said, the type of animal that rich types coddle in their homes. I thought it looked like a hairy sweaty sausage but what did I know?

Poppa’d holler back at her: "If you want to get away from us, why don’t you up and move to Tronna with the other snooties! Leave us regular folk alone."

And Mrs. Laverty’s lips would tremble -­ I’d almost feel sorry for her then except she was so nasty to us, thinking she was better than anyone else in Belle’s Grove, all because she grew up in a big nice house in Lorne Park.

But Poppa paid Mrs. Lavery’s powers no mind and got two chickens next and Jack and I had to pick their eggs in the morning. After the hard winter, one of the chickens died but the second one, the one we named Cookie, she was okay except she had a funny bump on her neck. A goiter, Momma called it, and once Red dared me to squeeze it. Jack said, don’t do it Red. You know Dottie’ll do anything if you dare her. But Red just grinned, I said "okay" and all three of us cornered Cookie in the front yard.

Cookie must’ve known what we were up to ‘coz she darted all over the yard like we were aiming to chop off her head. Finally, Red caught her by the oak tree and pinned her in his arms while Jack paced the yard, absently running a dirty hand through his fine blond hair.

Red egged me on, "C’mon Dotty. Touch it. I dare ya."

I looked Cookie straight into her black pebble eyes, raised my right hand and with my thumb and forefinger, I pinched her goiter. It felt like a ripe cherry floating underneath her feathers but one that slipped away from you when you tried to get a good hold on it. Not that I had a chance to. As soon as I squeezed, Cookie squawked and flapped a fuss so Red had to let her go and once all the feathers calmed down, who was there staring at us with a blanched face but Mrs. Laverty and Susan, her hairy sausage at her heels.

Mrs. Laverty was struck dumb. Jack and I stopped breathing but dumb Red put up his pink square hand and waved "Hello, Mrs. Laverty. A fine day it is."

Jack hissed to Red: "Dummy! She’s going to put a curse on us now."

Red sneered: "You’re the dummy."

Still, all three of us hushed until Mrs. Laverty turned slowly and went back into her house.

After that day, we made sure to be nice to Cookie. We stroked her feathers, Red stopped chasing her around the yard and sometimes Jack and I would sit, heads cocked, resting on crossed arms and watch as Cookie scratched and pecked around her dominion in the backyard, laughing at her funny walk at first but soon becoming mesmerized by the motion of the head jutting then the white chest thrusting then the claw feet catching up to the chest and the beak to see the whole motion repeat itself. We’d watch this dance, Jack and I, until Momma’d call on us to clean the pen or fetch the eggs or so some other chore to stop us from fixating on Cookie.

"It’s just a bird," Momma’d say. "And it’s a dirty bird at all."

But after Rover got run over, she was the only pet left. In my heart I knew her days were numbered ‘cos I’d catch the beady eyes of Mrs. Laverty, peering through her lace curtains at me and Jack, at Cookie. I’d feel the itsy-bitsy spiders that she’d send climbing up my neck and I knew the witch was going to get Cookie taken away. Which is why I’m one block behind Mrs. Laverty as she clomps down Main Street, her heavy purse waving. She almost at the steps of the clapboard Town Hall when at the last moment, she turns left when she should’ve gone straight and disappears around a corner.

This isn’t like Mrs. Laverty, so I follow her around the corner, and find myself face-to-face with a boy my age. He has blue bowl eyes and clean knees. He gives me a loopy grin just before our noses slam into each other. I giggle. But the smiles don’t last long. The boy’s mother whisks him out of my path with a lace glove. She recoils like she smells garbage but it can’t be me ­- I’m wearing one of my best dresses.

"Witch," I hiss and it’s then that I hear Mrs. Laverty’s icy voice reverberate through me: "Why Dotty McAlister, you must be lost, child."

I’m stuck dumb. I turn around and Mrs. Laverty is standing in the doorway of the pharmacy, all cold eyes and rigidity. It takes all my will to not wipe the chill off the back of my neck.

"Hello Mrs. Laverty," I recover, careful to not say "lavatory." I’ve never been this close to her before -- come to think of it, I’ve never been alone with her. Even though we aren’t quite along. Townfolk bending around us as they stroll by, creating a bubble between us two, maybe thinking "There’s one of those filthy McAlister kids ­- watch out for this one; she’s not a proper young lady". Maybe they’re thinking, "Ah, Mrs. Laverty. She’s a witch, did in her husband, they say. They never found his body."

"Why Dotty," she continues. "What brings you into town?"

Out of the corner of my eye I spy Gormley’s apple cart parked down the street, so I put on my best little girl smile and say, "Why, I was just down to get some apples from the market and bring them back to Momma. She’s making a pie."

"Doesn’t that sounds nice," she says. Though her voice is tight ­ not nice at all. We stand there for a bit, eyeing each other. Mrs. Laverty is smaller than I thought, her skin paler, like craft paper hardened in rain. I can see that her eyebrows are painted black arches that look like birds flying away, her eyes sharp and grey, her nose a beak with those black pit nostrils. Only her mouth seems human ­ demure, round like a dried rosebud. If I squint, I see tufts of grey hair peaking out from the raven black. Mrs. Lavatory wears a wig? I think, astonished. Mrs. Laverty’s eyes pierce me like a crow’s so I bite the chant that is rising on my tongue. But if I look close, I see the ball in her throat warble and what’s funny is even though she’s so mean I can tell she’s scared of me; scared maybe I’ll start chanting "snotty booger children" again; scared I’ll throw a temper like Red or Poppa. Scared of a girl who’s only seven and a half.

Then, almost as quickly as she senses it, the feeling of fear is over.

"Well," she says finally. "Run along and fetch your apples now. Good day."

The words come out before I can stop them: "Good day," I say politely and I almost turn to go to Gormley’s apple cart before stopping myself. Now why did I do that? But before I can take them back, Mrs. Laverty already down the street and enters a store. I trace her steps. The front door reads "Allin, Shugart & Ross" in block letters on glass. "Lawyers." Now what is she up to?

***

"Now, Dotty McAlister, what are you up to?" said Bud.

"Poor Bud," Momma’d say, "God forgot to give him a neck."

I sashayed over to the cart and said, "Oh, not much, Mr. Gormley."

"Now," he wagged a sausage finger at me. "I’ve seen you follow poor Mrs. Laverty around all morning. Maybe you should stop scaring the bejesus out of her. "

"Me?" I say. When I raise my eyebrows, my face looks heart-shaped. It’s Daddy’s favourite look.

"And…" continues Bud, unfettered. "I saw your Poppa not twenty minutes ago. Said something about looking for his daughter who maybe ran away to town when she’s supposed to home doing chores."

"But I am doing something!" I yell. "I’m doing something more than important! I’m trying to save Cookie."

"Cookie?" Bud looks puzzled. "Wasn’t Cookie run over by the milkman?"

"Nooo!" I say. "That was the dog ­ Rover. Cookie’s a chicken."

"Cookie’s a chicken," Bud repeats, but I can tell he doesn’t quite get it.

"And Mrs. Laverty is going to take Cookie away."

Bud sighs, fed up now. "Missy, my advice to you is to go home before your Poppa finds you snooping around here and who get a whooping."

There was no sign of Mrs. Laverty in the bright upstairs but the butterflies in my stomach told me she’d be heading over here after visiting the lawyers and my butterflies are never wrong. So I sit in a chair set by the wall, I take a bite out of my apple and wait, swinging my legs back and forth. And while I’m waiting, I’m wondering if we were nice to Cookie. I feel bad now for squeezing the goiter in her neck. That couldn’t have felt too good…but we did love her.

"Excuse me, miss…miss? Miss? Are you asleep?"

And of course not silly - I’m looking straight at you.

"Are you lost?"

Lost? I’m in a large room with tellers and right in front is Mrs. Laverty’s wide figure in line and I start to scream: "No! Mrs. Laverty. Nooo!!"

I jump up and the clerk looks like he’s going to grab me but he’s afraid I’m hot like a boiled kettle so I slip out easily from his panicked arms and run to the counter where Mrs. Laverty is standing and I grab a fistful of her faded dress and I plead: "You can’t let them take Cookie away, Mrs. Laverty. You can’t!"

Tears are streaming down my cheeks. I didn’t want to cry, I have to show her I’m tough, too, as tough and as mean and as nasty as she is, the witch of Belle’s Grove.

The clerk behind the desk is a woman with stern painted lips. She eyes me warily. "Do you know this little girl?" she asks Mrs. Laverty.

"Never mind her, do you have it?" Mrs. Laverty sounds anxious. I wonder for a minute what line she’s standing in. But I can’t stop pleading: "Please, Mrs. Laverty. I love Cookie and she’s all we have left. Don’t take her away. DON’T TAKE HER AWAY!"

I feel arms pulling me back. The greasy-haired clerk has regained his confidence and he and another man are dragging me away just as I throw myself into a temper tantrum, legs kicking, arms flailing, I can’t stop myself, even though I see that Mrs. Laverty is standing in the "Death certificates" line, not the "Humane Society". Even though I can hear the stern-lipped clerk say: "As I said, ma’am, there is a death certificate for a Donald Laverty but it is signed by his wife, Livia."

Anger breaks through Mrs. Laverty’s calm: "In the eyes of God. I am Donald Laverty’s wife. This ‘Livia’ is nothing more that a whore."

Everyone in the office starts at the word "whore." The clerk sputters as if Mrs. Laverty has thrown a bucket of water over her but Mrs. Laverty has already turned her back on the lady. She’s now facing me.

My wailing has turned to choked sobs and the men on either side of me have me gripped under my arms. I’m helpless as Mrs. Laverty unloads her frustration unto me. "Horrid child," she hisses as she approaches me, "horrid. Why don’t you start jeering now with your snot and your booger chants?!" But her voice breaks off into a sob and my guards, who were momentarily frozen by Mrs. Laverty’s outbreak, hurry me to the bottom of the stairs.

In the front lobby, stands none other than my Poppa. His face is a flaming sparkplug ready to blow. He’s trembling with anger and I shut my mouth then and there, not daring to utter a sound when he grabs my little hand, which is easily swallowed into his fists and tosses me into the passenger seat of Uncle Davey’s truck.

The door slam rattles my brain. Poppa’s real mad and so I think, maybe I’ll try to explain what happened, but the words come out garbled in between nervous hiccups: "…Mrs. Laverty, I thought she was going to take Cookie away…but she was going to the lawyers and make she was going to get them to take her away…that’s why I went Poppa. I wasn’t being bad. I wasn’t forgetting my chores…"

Poppa grips the wheel with his left fist so the whites of his knuckles show, eyes fixed on that road, his heads nods slowly as I spit out words.

"…So you understand, Poppa?…You understand…? But everything’s okay now because no one’s going to take Cookie away…"

And Poppa still keeps doing that slow, deliberate nod and feel fire emitting from him like an invisible cloud. I shut up and inch away from him, so I’m leaning against the passenger door. His anger eats up the space between us. I know what Poppa’s capable of when he’s this angry. If a dog would’ve walk in front of the truck, Poppa would’ve mowed him down until the fur got caught in the wheel well. I saw it happen once with a raccoon. Poppa said it had rabies. He didn’t notice that the tail got stuck hollow until the next day. Finally he says, calmly: "No one’s going to take Cookie away."

With those words, Poppa’s released all the butterflies in my belly. They’re flying around like crazy, hitting my spine, thumping against my skin, tickling my heart. My mouth is dry when the car screeches to a stop in front of our house and in a flash, Poppa’s out of the car and he walks past the front porch to around the back. Momma comes out on the porch holding a dishtowel.

"Vern?" she calls quizzically, a stunned bird look on her face. Momma sees me, still inside the truck, still leaning against the door, afraid to move.

"Dotty?" she asks. She still has that funny look on her face. Now Jack and Red have stepped cautiously out unto the porch.

"Where’s Poppa?" she asks.

And that’s when Poppa comes back from the backyard, stomping in his boots, and in his right hand is Cookie, squirming and straining to get free, and seeing Cookie unleashes a wave in me. I throw open the truck door and run towards him screaming, "No Poppa!" I yell. "Don’t" but Poppa stands still as a statue in a patch of dead lawn. He holds up Cookie and he hollers over to Mrs. Laverty’s empty house: "You wanna take our animals away! You wanna kill all our animals ­ FINE! You got it, goddamned witch!"

Poppa raises Cookie and with a violent twist of his arm, spins her over his head like a rag doll. I clamp my hands over my ears right after I hear the crack of her neck, like a shot, and Poppa’s windmill motion causes her blood to spray him and rain down on my polka dot dress. I’ve already sunken to my knees in the dirt lawn. Jack disappears into the house, and Red, of all people, starts to blubber like a baby. Only Momma watches dumbly while Poppa hangs Cookie’s carcass over the splintered picket fence that separates Mrs. Laverty’s yard from ours. That way she’ll see it when she returns from town.

But Mrs. Laverty didn’t come home that night and so Cookie’s body was draped over the picket fence all that night and all the next day until it was getting close to dinner and with Poppa off doing work at Uncle Davey’s farm, Momma fearlessly plucked Cookie off the fence herself and began to pluck her.

"No use letting good food go to waste," Momma said.

That night she served the whole family Cookie with boiled some cauliflower and potatoes. I hate cauliflower. It tastes like boiled nothingness and there it was, snuggled up beside warm Cookie on the plate. Jack and I pushed our plates away not daring to touch the meat. Momma and Red, who didn’t know any better, ate up the bird hungrily but Poppa was still too mad to eat her.

"There goes the eggs," he grumbled and left the table. Momma couldn’t clean the bloodstains out of my dress from that day. It was just as well, she said, because I was growing fast.

Mrs. Laverty did return from town after a week or so. It seemed one day, I saw her tending her wild rose bush behind the oak tree. She moved like an old lady now, like her limbs were held back by invisible gum.

She didn’t come out much to sit in the yard though she still had to let out her dog and Susan would head to the place in the fence where Cookie hung for two days. Momma had already cleaned the blood off of the fence. Even the hairy sausage could sense death in the air. Susan was now the only pet left on our street.

In the time that followed, Momma would say town gossip said that Mrs. Laverty had received a certificate of death from her late husband who died recently of some such thing and this was strange because everyone in Belle’s Grove knew that Mrs. Laverty’s husband had been dead for 15 years. Turns our maybe he hadn’t been dead at all. Maybe he faked his own death or maybe, just maybe, Mrs. Laverty spread the rumour herself, saying he died was easier than admitting that he had left her and gone married someone else, leaving Mrs. Laverty to be that most detested of things ­ a divorced woman, Belle’s Grove’s first one. And even when the bugger did die, he didn’t have a nickel to his name, not that Mrs. Laverty would’ve been entitled to it, even if she thought she did. From time to time, when I’m putting out laundry or cleaning the pens for the latest batch of chickens, I catch Mrs. Laverty, her ghost face peaking out from underneath the lace curtains. She doesn’t send her itsy-bitsy spiders to climb the back of my neck any more. Maybe she never did.

Nichole McGill's first collection of short stories, 13 Cautionary Tales, was published to acclaim by Toronto's Gutter Press in 2000. She adapted one these stories into a short film, The Waiting Room, which was an official selection into the 2002 Berlin Film Festival. McGill's poetry, prose and screenplays have appeared in anthologies and magazines across North America and she runs the raucous durtygurls interdisciplinary literary reading series in Ottawa. She prefers her chickens without goiters. http://www.nicholemcgill.com.