The Smell of Lemon, A Touch of Lace
There wasn't much light in the house, which they expected, but it wasn't as dark as they'd thought a witch's house would be. In fact, it was quite pleasant. The living room, which looked out onto the porch, was filled with a kind of bluish-yellow light, and as they passed the doorway to that room, they noticed huge furniture and pictures on the wall. Then they were past it, moving down the hallway. A staircase worked its way upstairs and just where the steps turned a corner there was a picture on the wall hanging over a small table that had a lace cloth on it and a vase of brilliant red flowers. The flowers caught the sunlight that poured through a small stained-glass window.
The hallway they were in was dim but they could pick out a small bench, a coatrack, and a mirror. (They were afraid to look at themselves.) But they didn't have much time to look at anything because the old lady, without even a word to them, was walking toward the back of the house. They scurried along to keep up.
They ended up in the kitchen. "Sit down," she told them, and they each dutifully pulled out a chair at the table, the table they had seen just yesterday as they peered through the grimy window. The old lady disappeared into the pantry, where they could hear her clattering some jars around. They looked at each other - this was not what they had expected. Though, to be honest, they really hadn't known what to expect when they'd decided to knock on the door.
The kitchen made them feel immediately comfortable. The stove they'd seen through the backdoor window was unlike anything either of them had seen. It was an old wood cookstove that had been converted into a gas stove. The stove top and body was a shining black, like a hunk of new coal, and the sides and edges were trimmed in chrome that had been polished like a mirror. Over the stove hung a rack of copper pots, the strawberry-blond metal the color of freshly dug-up carrots. Pictures of fruit and vegetables and farm scenes hung on the walls, and the walls were covered with small blue flowers on a white background. Katie looked closely at the wall near her shoulder. The flowers had all been painted on - it wasn't wallpaper.
Cabinets of light-colored wood clung to the walls. The doors of the cabinets were made out of glass cut in the shape of diamonds, and behind the glass they could see ruby-red and milk-white cups, dishes with patterns on them, coffee cups hung like bells, so thin that the morning light made them look like silk. A refrigerator hummed in the corner. Hung on the walls on either side of the door the old lady had gone through were braids of garlic and peppers, twists of dried wildflowers, and over the door, as if the were the greatest prize, a palm fan the size of an elephant's ear and painted with a single parrot decked out in all its colors.
She came back through the door with a plate of cookies, exactly like the one she had offered them yesterday, and put the plate down in the middle of the table. "Do you like milk?" she said. Mandy said yes. Katie hated milk, but she thought it would be impolite to refuse. "Yes, I'd love a glass of milk." The old lady took down two glasses from the cabinet, two of the ruby-red glasses, and filled them. As she filled them with milk they watched the red of the glasses change color from a deep blood red to the red of a light sunburn. The old lady carried the glasses to the table and plunked them down.
Then she did a queer thing. She waddled back to the refrigerator to put the milk away. When she'd done that she turned to them and said, "Go ahead, eat up. I'll be right back." They each picked up a cookie; Mandy dunked hers and just caught the drop of milk in her mouth as she took a bite. Katie just nibbled hers along the edges. The table they were sitting at was so highly waxed that they could easily see their reflections in it. It was a heavy table, with thick legs. It was a table that would walk like an alligator if it could walk. Katie put her face down close to see her reflection and an unmistakably strong odor of lemon struck her nose. It was so strong that for a second she had a quick memory of the time as a young child she'd gotten into the refrigerator and rubbed lemon juice all over her body. As she sat up straight she couldn't believe that she wasn't that young kid again sitting on the kitchen floor covered with the wonderful smell of lemon.
They heard her coming back. Mandy was on her second cookie, Katie still on her first. She walked into the kitchen with three of the most extraordinary hats the girls had ever seen. They were broad-brimmed sunhats, at least two feet across, made out of a beige-yellow straw. Around the crowns was a thin band of lace, and out of that band sprouted an outrageous feather. The brim of each hat was shorter in front than in back, so that when a person wore it the face was open and the back of the neck protected from the sun. Two long, slightly curling ribbons hung from the back, like the tail of a swallow.
She plopped two of the hats on the table and brought the one with the turquoise feather and red ribbon over to Katie. Katie made a move to stop her from putting the hat on her head, but the old lady wouldn't have anything of it. She fitted the hat on Katie, and as it settled on her head she wondered why she wanted to fight it in the first place - it felt so good, so light and full of air. It fit her perfectly. She wondered how the old lady knew she liked turquoise.
Mandy had the hat with the peach-colored feather and blue ribbon, and she pulled the brim over one side of her face as she pantomimed playing a southern belle. Katie burst out laughing, and Mandy joined her, and as they glanced at the old lady, they noticed her face rising at the corners, the way a sheet hangs when two people take it off the line and fold it. Mandy picked up another cookie and held it with her little finger out to the side, saying "Veddy good, madame." Katie put her hands together on the table in front of her and tried to make her blue eyes look like somebody royal.
While they played they didn't notice that the old lady had put on the third hat, the one with the black feather and white ribbon. As she pulled out a chair and sat down with them, her small thick body easing into the chair, they suddenly had a feeling that she wasn't old anymore. (They talked about this later, even though they didn't understand how they'd felt - she didn't look any different, and in fact looked pretty stupid with the hat on.) She reached for a cookie and the three of them, each with a cookie in hand, took one ceremonious bite. Oddly enough, not a crumb fell to the table.
The three of them chatted for a good part of half an hour, though when Mandy and Katie talked about it later, it seemed that they did most of the talking since they couldn't remember if she'd told them anything about herself. By that time the cookies were gone, as was the milk, and somewhere in the house a clock, with a heavy gong, rung four times. Both Mandy and Katie realized that they hadn't told anybody where they'd gone and that they should probably get going before anyone got worried. They said this to the old lady and she nodded, as if she knew they'd say this to her.
They gave her back the hats, and with the hats seemed to go a kind of lightness. She disappeared for a few minutes to put them away and both Mandy and Katie felt reluctant to leave the comfortable kitchen. When the old lady returned they all walked back the way they'd come to the front door, again getting only a glimpse of the front parlor, and as they found themselves standing on the porch, they also found themselves feeling slightly deflated, like a balloon without all its helium. The street looked like an ordinary old street. When they got home, their friends looked like their ordinary old friends. For the rest of the day Mandy and Katie felt the light grip of a straw hat across their foreheads.
