She Gave Me Some Cookies...

The house I lived in the longest (5 years) when I was a kid was on a small lake with about 30 other houses. Our road was a brick one & there were only a few roads that weaved their way around the lake...kinda forming its' own little community. As a kid, I grew to know every ripple & dimple of that road intimately. I knew it on foot, on board, on big wheels & bikes. I knew the houses, the landscaping, the world of docks & drain pipes that sat around that lake almost as well as I knew that road. And I knew some of the people even better.

Some of the people I would never know & some, I still know.
Five of the ten houses that sat on my little block contained girls my age. We formed gangs. We would do things, make dares, bets, challenges & sometimes war. We were all constantly trying to get on top, and when on top...we strived to stay there. We tested our strength, our fears, our determination & sometimes pushed it all to the limit.

But not always...sometimes we just hyped things up.

There was a house on the twist of road at the end of my block where it was rumored a witch lived. Her house was big & sat up on the top of The Big Hill looking down across & over the lake. There was a solid wall with vines growing over it all around her property. Likewise, the ivy spread like veins across the skin of her house. There was a black spiked wrought iron fence than ran atop of her ivy covered wall & the were matching bars over hew windows. I guess it was pretty creepy. We had a hard time accessing her land & we never saw her.

One day, we discovered that we could climb the concrete wall at its highest point on the outside & land at a much higher level inside her yard in a flurry of flowering shrubs. We sleeked through her yard, hiding, looking, pinching off wild flowers of the likes we'd never seen before until we heard her shrill hollering. Then the soles of our feet smacked our backsides as we ran to the same section of the wall we had dropped from just minutes before.
Standing atop that concrete wall, with heels tucked in between those wrought iron spikes... we realized we had to jump down from this, the highest section of the outside wall. I looked down, the sidewalk was all cracked up, like peanut brittle that had been smacked with a hammer. I imagined it was from all the kids who had crashed to the witch's delight over the years, as they attempted this frightening leap. I couldn't fight the hype anymore, I was scared & so I jumped.

The moment my feet hit the ground, my fear turned to anxious amusement.

'I was in the witches yard'
'I picked the witches poisonous flowers'
'I was chased by the witch'
'I had to jump from the witches wall'

The first time I ever saw her was a few weeks later... I saw her driveway with the gate open & there was car leaving. I looked & thought I could see her through a window on the backside of her house. I saw a cat in her yard & lost sight of the witch. I walked up the driveway towards the cat & scrunched down, as if being closer to the ground would lure the cat towards me& keep the witch at bay. Then she was there...right there, not making a sound but with one arm reaching out towards me.

She wore all black with a white apron & she sat in an old Alfred Hitchcock style wheel chair. He hair was dark & it was in a bun. I didn't even have time to stand or gasp before I got a whiff of the poison she was throwing my way... fresh baked chocolate chip cookies.

A plate full of them sat in her lap & her outreached hand held one towards me.

I ate it....mmmm, hmmmmm....so damn good.

I told her that everyone thought she was a witch & I told her why.

We became friends & soon we would meet in her driveway for cookie swaps.
I'd show up with two Oreo's I'd earned by taking Ms. Vicki's trash out & trade them for one home baked cookie from the witch.

Most of my friends wouldn't come around us...they told me that I was being poisoned slowly.

Then the witch died.

And she was gone & so were her cookies.

Oreo's alone were no longer enough motivation to take Ms. Vicki's trash out.

Years passed...

All grown up...years later, I lay on my back with excrutiating lower back pain. I close my eyes & although I was only hoping to ease my back-ache by laying down, I found myself slipping into a dream-like state. Realizing that I was falling asleep I popped my eyes open & the witch was there. She said 'Child, you go'own 'n clotz dem eyes. Izza awright now Child.'

I closed my eyes & could feel her breath hovering over me and then her hand , palm down began to root itself onto my abdomen. Then all fell still & I could feel the warmth from her hand radiating through my blouse, through my skin, through my stomache & down into my back where her healing heat seemed to spread out like butter in a hot iron skillet. The pain in my back seemed to melt away. She lifted her hand & I snapped my eyes wide open.

She wasn't there.
It must have all been a dream.
The Guess Who was playing on the radio & my back was feeling fine.
I got up & made some chocolate chip cookies.