She may have waited too long. Francis’ aging body ached as she tended to her garden in the early morning, and she was relying on trickery more often than the gardening skills that she had so carefully nurtured over the decades. It was fall again and as she stared out the window at nothing in particular she wondered if she would live to see the spring.
Francis’ house was in the middle of a small suburban block, just outside the city. It was a small white house with tidy black shutters nestled in a brilliant garden filled year round with flowers and vegetables, butterflies and bumble bees. A seemingly unending tangle of new growth and older shrubs and grasses – a busy nest of what could have been chaos were it not somehow, inexplicably, so beautiful.
Although summer had barely made its exit, her garden was bursting with bold fall colors – bright orange tiger lilies leaning over the white picket fence, yellow sunflowers barely able stand under the weight of their majestic crowns, and purple hyssops running alongside the stone path that wound its way around the garden. The air seemed to have chilled overnight and the leaves scurried to-and-fro on the side walk keep pace with the children dashing off to bus stops and school buildings, with new lunchboxes and backpacks in tow.
While adults seemed to not notice her little house, the school children noticed everything. They noticed the little old woman with a large Grecian nose who walked with a stick, and seemed to watch them without ever actually looking at them. They noticed her cat, which was usually black, but sometimes it was orange and sometimes it was white. The skeptics in the schoolyard insisted she had many cats, but the slightly crooked left ear proved to the close observer that it actually was the same cat.
Even the cat skeptics couldn’t deny that evidence seemed to support the belief that the old lady who lived in the white house with black shutters that sat in a beautiful garden was a witch.
The fall had arrived right on schedule, but without warning. The temperatures dropped suddenly, the trees turned orange and yellow seemingly overnight, and the neighborhood children ran past Francis’ house on their way to school whooping and hollering to make the anxiousness in the pit of their stomachs feel a bit more real. Some days they dared one another to unlock her gate, although they never dared to enter. They threw rocks at the cat, who only flicked his tail in disgust and, on quieter days, they avoided her house all together, choosing instead to cut through the backyards of the homes in the middle of the block.
Jenny, a petite, shy 7-year-old had moved into the neighborhood just as fall arrived. The move had come as a surprise to Jenny. Yes, she had heard the word “move” with increasing frequency over the last few months, and she had seen the boxes and felt the tension in the air. She had even noticed a difference in the treatment from the kids in her old neighborhood.
“You’re moving?” They would say - more of a statement then a question, and then stare at her momentarily before resuming play. While she was proud of her new status as someone who, ‘was moving’, she wasn’t entirely sure what to think of it all and she was too afraid of her mother’s moods to ask any questions.
The actual move was an 8-hour car ride, a new house, a new room, and then a deafening silence. Jenny simply didn’t know what to do after the move was done. This new house, new room, and new neighborhood were all strangers that she needed to get to know, but they didn’t seem to be making any effort. Neither, of course, was she.
“Go outside and play.” Her mother instructed every time she caught sight of Jenny moping around the house. And so she did. But, even her bike felt foreign. It carried with it flashes of reassuring memories – the cracks in the sidewalk from the trees in front of her old house, the familiar voices of friends shouting out to each other at dusk, and the dusty back corner of the garage where she left her bike at the end of long summer days. She had spent all her days alone since the move, and it seemed an eternity.
Jenny went outside to get out of her mothers way and rode her bike lazily around the block, barely peddling, challenging herself to not lose her balance. She paid attention to the bikes left haphazardly in front of homes that showed the promise of future friends —although she hadn’t yet seen any kids to play with. She noticed which houses had dogs, and which dogs seemed friendly, hopping off her bike every now and again to pet one through a chain link fence. She absorbed the new colors, smells, and shapes and shadows that made up her new home, and sometimes on those bike rides she began to feel a little less lonely.
Almost of its own accord, Jenny’s bike slowed and stopped in front of a white house with black shutters sitting in a tangle of overgrown weeds. She locked eyes with a black cat who flicked its tail in response and Jenny shivered suddenly in the summer heat. Slowly, without taking her eyes off the cat, she backed-up her bike, turned around, and peddled back the way she came, for the first time feeling like she couldn’t wait to get home. She looked over her shoulder as she peddled away and saw an old woman standing with her hand on the gate, watching her.
Jenny’s Mother, Esther, had also been apprehensive about the move. But, she was eager to start anew in a place where there were no conflicts with neighbors, where nobody had heard her yelling at Jenny after a long day. Esther was anxious to begin work at a job where her past episodes wouldn’t define her. She hoped that with this move that she would finally leave behind the pressure that always seemed to be pushing her to snap.
Their new house was a small single family home with a medium-sized yard and a chain-link fence that enclosed the property. The moment Esther saw it she knew that it held all the potential of the life she could have. She was aware that her thoughts were becoming a bit manic, but she didn’t have time to really consider this or make adjustments - there was so much to plan for and so much to leave behind. She was however, growing frustrated with her daughter’s reluctance to match her enthusiasm and felt her resentment building.
Of course, Esther knew that she should've have talked to Jenny more about the move. She had lots of practice conversations in her head where she had explained to Jenny why she had decided to move so far from the only home Jenny had ever known. She imagined them chatting about planning return visits, (although she knew they never would), or discussing the emotional consequences of leaving friends behind. In reality, Esther said nothing and somehow, in the moment, it always seemed fine that she didn’t.
Jenny had always been a quiet child. While Ester did appreciate that she kept mostly to herself, she also found her lack of enthusiasm frustrating and was embarrassed by Jenny’s standoff-ish behavior in public. Esther had enough issues to manage without have to compensate for a sullen child. It often seemed that Jenny withdrew in public just to make her mom look bad. Ester couldn’t help but give Jenny dirty looks or a pinch on the arm to show disapproval for when she wasn’t behaving as she wished. But, this move, Esther hoped, would be a new beginning for them both.
Francis awoke on that chilly morning and knew the time had come. She could simply delay no longer. As she moved around her garden pulling up the dead grasses and flowers that had surrendered after a week of early morning frosts, she hummed a happy tune. Although, this was not a regular practice, she reminisced as she worked on winters of years past with a nostalgia awarded only to those who do not fear for their future. The opportunity she was waiting for would happen today.
Jenny hadn’t been part of the plan to throw the open bottles of black poster paint at the old woman’s house. It was the first day she had managed to insert herself with the neighborhood kids on the walk home from school and so she was completely taken aback when a few of the kids simultaneously pulled bottles of paint, which she recognized immediately as being from the school’s art room, tossed the tops carelessly into the grass, and hurled the open bottles at the little white house, one bottle just missing the bright orange cat who hissed angrily in response.
On the day of the vandalism, Jenny’s mother happened to be raking the side yard, had heard the commotion and looked up in time to see the kids run by, heard them yell their taunts, saw them throw the paint, and to her horror, saw Jenny running with the pack.
When Jenny arrived home shortly after, herself traumatized by what she had just experienced, her mother was pacing back and forth in the living room. She was barely in the front door before her mother’s rant began. Jenny hung her head, and made no effort to defend herself, but this seemed to make her mother even more enraged. While Jenny couldn’t make sense of all of her mother’s criticisms, making a bad impression on the new neighbors and ruining their fresh start seemed of particular concern. Eventually, Jenny slipped away to her room, climbed into bed, and fell asleep without dinner.
She awoke the next morning to the sound of her mother pulling open the bedroom blinds as the early morning sun flooded her room. Jenny had only been awake a few moments when her mother told her sternly that Jenny must go to the neighbors house, apologize for the vandalism, and offer to clean up the damage. She again made no attempt to protest, and cried silently into her pillow after her mother left the room.
The timid knock came late morning; Francis opened the door to a small child in red coat and smiled. Francis saw the child’s uncertainty and was pleased by Jenny’s sweet nature; it would become a part of her own nature very soon, after all. Francis reached out her hand, drew the child into her house, and closed the door.
About an hour after she had send Jenny out the door, Esther, in a long jean skirt and knit sweater, grabbed the muffins she had baked the night before and walked across the street to repair the damage Jenny had done to their reputation.
There was no response to her knock on the door, she knocked again, waited, walked around the side of the house, peaked over the fence into the garden, knocked again, and waited. The house remained dark and silent, and her anxiety grew. Finally, the door opened to a surprisingly bent and fragile old woman who had clearly just been roused from sleep.
The old woman stared without response as Esther tried several times to explain that she had come over to apologize on behalf of her daughter and the other kids who had thrown the paint the day before, realizing even as she spoke that she had seen no evidence of the vandalism as she walked around the house. Esther asked to see Jenny, calling out her name, while trying to peek around the old woman into the dark and musty house. Nothing Esther said seemed to register with the old lady. And yet, Esther had seen Jenny enter the gate and walk up the pathway to the front door of the little white house. She hadn’t actually seen Jenny enter, but she has seen her lift up on to her tippy toes so that her could reach the heavy gold knocker.
After a few more minutes of trying to be understood by the old woman, Ester called the police.
The next few days went by in a blur - interviews were held, searches were done, reports were filed and yet there was no sign of Jenny.
No one suspected Francis of anything, of course. There was no sign that anybody but the old lady had been in her home for quite some time and she appeared much too frail to have kidnapped a child. The police had contacted social services, believing the woman in too poor of health to be living alone. Francis had reluctantly agreed with the authorities that it was probably best to sell the house, and she hired a realtor who was willing to manage the sale of her home while she relocated to Florida, convincing them all that she had moved to an assisted living facility be closer to her adult daughter’s family.
It was unfortunate that the child had to wait so long alive. Francis didn’t want the child to suffer, but she needed the energy transfer to be from a live child, and she couldn’t risk suspicion while authorities were still trying to find the missing girl. Francis kept Jenny hidden by magic, and while the young girl could see and hear what was happening in the house, nobody could see or hear her. Francis was surprised by the child’s reticence, she seemed to accept her capture as a matter of course and made no effort to escape. Francis thought it unkind to try to befriend her, although her cat Pocus, had taken to sleeping in the cage with the child.
In reality, Francis repurchased her house from the real estate agent she had hired the day after her transformation. She was prettier this time than she was after her last renewal, more than 50 years ago thanks to Jenny’s beauty. She now called herself Jeanne and had chatted happily with the real estate agent about her plans to maintain and expand the garden. As she settled into her home with her younger body and new identity, she found she no longer wanted to spend her days tending gardens, but instead purchased a bicycle which she rode for miles each day, in no particular direction, at no particular pace just enjoying the sights of the ever changing neighborhood. Jeanne’s sizeable lot now served as a playground for the hard-to-place dogs she fostered, and it wasn’t long before she forgot entirely about the garden that had once held that space.
Jeanne watched Jenny’s house with interest over the years, her mother never moved away, and was shunned by most in the neighborhood as the press had painted a story that she was somehow responsible for her daughter’s disappearance, having had a reputation of emotional instability in her previous town.
After barely a year, the neighborhood lost interest in what had happened to Jenny.
They all simply wanted to forget that a child they had never really known had ever been there at all.
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