Read Online White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi - Free Book Online
Authors: Helen Oyeyemi
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had been torn apart, their roofs whirling away to reveal cakes of brick with savage bites taken out of them. The house was lucky. Or storing its collapse.
To live here without Lily . . . Miranda found that the sadness was far far bigger than her, and it was forcing her back. The wall she leant against had a damp, high temperature to it, like tears on skin.
•
Christmas was dismal. We went to Paris as usual, to stay with our grandparents (Dad’s parents, I mean) on the Île Saint-Louis. There was too much food. There’s always too much food at Christmas, but this time it kept getting stuck in my throat and each bite turned into this choice between eating and breathing, as if you should ever have to choose.
We sat around the table and Miri and I didn’t even try to join in with the conversation that Sylvie, Dad and The Paul were having. I stared at the huge holly and mistletoe wreaths on the wall, and Miri accidentally counted her bites of turkey aloud. “Nine,” she breathed out, and dropped her knife and fork onto her plate with a clatter, and after that no one could think of anything to say for a while.
Miri and I call our grandfather The Paul. He is very wrinkled, quite stooped, smiles amiably and is generally a most excellent and easygoing being. I aim to reach that state of grace by the time I’m his age, calmly putting my tackle box in order or reading the newspaper with seemingly unmitigated attention while my wife gets at me about something. Our grandmother, Sylvie, is not known as The Sylvie. She is the girl who fell in love with a boy who worked in a bakery and had married him by the time his patisserie P. M. Dufresne had become so notable that fashionable magazines recommended it.
Miri told me that Sylvie had once showed her a pristine 1969 copy of French
Vogue
, with a small piece about P. M. Dufresne. Alongside the piece was a photograph of some intimidatingly fashionable creatures tripping gaily in through the shop door. Sylvie only let Miri seethe piece for a couple of seconds, then whisked it away, saying, “Sticky fingers. Besides, you are not able to understand it.”
Sylvie is still vexed because we all tried to learn French but had to stop because Lily couldn’t get the hang of it and would substitute any word she couldn’t recall with “
l’oignon
” and then she’d wave her hands and laugh. When Dad got annoyed with her (which he did quietly, but curtly) her face fell a million feet and she’d call herself an ignoramus until we couldn’t take it anymore and demanded that the lessons stop. But I doubt it was just the thing with the French lessons that came between Lily and Sylvie; there’s also the fact of Sylvie being impeccable. Lily was a bunch of crumpled pockets and Sylvie is a black dress, perfumed scarves, iron posture and whatever else turns a person into an atmosphere. Sylvie doesn’t look capable of getting involved with a messy pastry.
Miri was like a mini-Sylvie, but she hadn’t always been. I can’t remember when she stopped wearing jeans and jumpers and skirts and started with the black and the severe outlines (why did she start?) but I do remember Lily finding the change hilarious for months, and I also remember being embarrassed to have to be seen outdoors with Miri until I realised that no one seemed to think that her dress sense was odd. Aside from infrequent comments
(“Cheer up, love,” or “It’s not Hallo’ween”),
no one wondered why a teenager was dressed up as a chic governess. Sylvie approved of Miri, even at the same time as she was confused by her. “It’s a style at least,” she said, and took off her rope of pearls and looped them around Miri’s neck. “Perhaps when you are my age you will have to turn to short skirts and mini-dresses, just for something different.” Then Sylvie turned to me. “You dress exactly as if you don’t care, but there is some artfulness to it; your colours balance each other.”
“Ah,” I said,
To live here without Lily . . . Miranda found that the sadness was far far bigger than her, and it was forcing her back. The wall she leant against had a damp, high temperature to it, like tears on skin.
•
Christmas was dismal. We went to Paris as usual, to stay with our grandparents (Dad’s parents, I mean) on the Île Saint-Louis. There was too much food. There’s always too much food at Christmas, but this time it kept getting stuck in my throat and each bite turned into this choice between eating and breathing, as if you should ever have to choose.
We sat around the table and Miri and I didn’t even try to join in with the conversation that Sylvie, Dad and The Paul were having. I stared at the huge holly and mistletoe wreaths on the wall, and Miri accidentally counted her bites of turkey aloud. “Nine,” she breathed out, and dropped her knife and fork onto her plate with a clatter, and after that no one could think of anything to say for a while.
Miri and I call our grandfather The Paul. He is very wrinkled, quite stooped, smiles amiably and is generally a most excellent and easygoing being. I aim to reach that state of grace by the time I’m his age, calmly putting my tackle box in order or reading the newspaper with seemingly unmitigated attention while my wife gets at me about something. Our grandmother, Sylvie, is not known as The Sylvie. She is the girl who fell in love with a boy who worked in a bakery and had married him by the time his patisserie P. M. Dufresne had become so notable that fashionable magazines recommended it.
Miri told me that Sylvie had once showed her a pristine 1969 copy of French
Vogue
, with a small piece about P. M. Dufresne. Alongside the piece was a photograph of some intimidatingly fashionable creatures tripping gaily in through the shop door. Sylvie only let Miri seethe piece for a couple of seconds, then whisked it away, saying, “Sticky fingers. Besides, you are not able to understand it.”
Sylvie is still vexed because we all tried to learn French but had to stop because Lily couldn’t get the hang of it and would substitute any word she couldn’t recall with “
l’oignon
” and then she’d wave her hands and laugh. When Dad got annoyed with her (which he did quietly, but curtly) her face fell a million feet and she’d call herself an ignoramus until we couldn’t take it anymore and demanded that the lessons stop. But I doubt it was just the thing with the French lessons that came between Lily and Sylvie; there’s also the fact of Sylvie being impeccable. Lily was a bunch of crumpled pockets and Sylvie is a black dress, perfumed scarves, iron posture and whatever else turns a person into an atmosphere. Sylvie doesn’t look capable of getting involved with a messy pastry.
Miri was like a mini-Sylvie, but she hadn’t always been. I can’t remember when she stopped wearing jeans and jumpers and skirts and started with the black and the severe outlines (why did she start?) but I do remember Lily finding the change hilarious for months, and I also remember being embarrassed to have to be seen outdoors with Miri until I realised that no one seemed to think that her dress sense was odd. Aside from infrequent comments
(“Cheer up, love,” or “It’s not Hallo’ween”),
no one wondered why a teenager was dressed up as a chic governess. Sylvie approved of Miri, even at the same time as she was confused by her. “It’s a style at least,” she said, and took off her rope of pearls and looped them around Miri’s neck. “Perhaps when you are my age you will have to turn to short skirts and mini-dresses, just for something different.” Then Sylvie turned to me. “You dress exactly as if you don’t care, but there is some artfulness to it; your colours balance each other.”
“Ah,” I said,
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