I’m the Witch
Or so I was taught by fairy tales
In a fairytale world, I would be the witch. Not to be nasty: in fact, I am quite happy. Grey and drizzly outside and I am tucked up, my foster cat at my side, her head all warm and comfy on my hip.
My walls covered in books, and I am baking, the scent of it cozy and breadlike in the air. Yet in these classic tales, my life takes on a sorcerous slant.
I am in my forties, single, childless.
I am not the pretty princess, the resourceful peasant girl, the sea-child intent on her own adventure. I am the witch. My baking bowl transforms itself into a cauldron on my counter.
Why do we see older women this way? These are the stories we tell children, their first inkling of how the world works, old women on the sidelines, in cottages, in the deep dark woods.
This is the story: a woman grown older is so reviled she lives away from the village in a house made of flimsy stuff, bread, cakes, stiffened sugar to see through in the windowpanes.
Two children come, also unwanted but young; they eat her house. In a kind of faux motherhood, she takes them in, gives them yet more food, but this is unsustainable. She is no mother. No man makes his home at her side.
