If only it worked like this

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Part I. Referral

I waited too long to get a doctor referral to see the witch, that’s on me. I knew better, in that way we always know when we’re lying to ourselves. I guess I just feared being told that something was terribly wrong with me. Maybe, if I had gone to see her sooner, the whole ordeal would have been easier.

When I saw the doctor, she looked at the lump on my leg with a frown. She asked how long I had had it, and I told her that it had been there for as long as I could remember, but that lately it had been getting bigger and more irritable. She felt the skin around it, poked and squeezed. When the cyst burst and popped out a little leaf, I exclaimed, but the doctor sat back in her chair as though she had been expecting this to happen.

A leaf? It was tiny, no bigger than mt pinkie nail, but… a leaf?

“I think I know what might be happening here.” The doctor said, turning to her notepad and scrawling in that annoyingly barely legible text. “Here is a referral. Go and see this specialist.”

Obviously, I demanded to know what the hell she thought it was. But no matter my pleading, she just said that she wasn’t qualified to say. She said that the specialist would do some investigations and let me know what was going on.

The doctor had cautioned against touching the leaf, but I couldn’t resist. The moment I was home, I went on a rampage, attacking it with everything I could find. Safety pins, tweezers, alcohol swabs, a knife, and eventually a pair of pliers. But all I managed to do was create a bloody wound all around the exposed cyst with its tiny, incandescent leaf.

So, I made an appointment with the specialist witch.

Over the next few days, the wound healed, but the leaf continued to grow. Soon, it was joined by three more leaves on a stem about half as long as my finger, with a tiny flower in the middle. If I didn’t keep it covered, the whole thing would stick out sideways from my leg. At first, I put a Band-Aid over the top, but it kept falling off as the weed grew, so I wound a bandage around my leg and flattened it. I tried to ignore it, but how could I? It was this great, big, scary sign that something was alarmingly wrong with me. I felt sick when I looked at it. By the time I was finally able to get in to see the witch, I had become a recluse who spent all day sleeping, avoiding calls, burying myself in tubs of ice cream and wallowing in days-old tracksuit pants. My normally fine-tuned control over my life was crumbling before my eyes.

I was desperate.

Part II. Assessment

Nonae the witch opened the creaking front door of a terrace house that sat between a physio and a therapist. She was short with small eyes behind wire-framed glasses and a mound of grey curly hair. She had an accent when she asked for my name, but I couldn’t place it.

“Rose. Rose Rundle.” I mumbled and handed over my referral.

She welcomed me into a bright living area adjoining a kitchen. The room was busy with bright colours and every surface held something. There were plants everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, running along the windowsill, and vines draped over the curtain rods and a bookshelf. Any surface which couldn’t fit a pot had books and small jars. Some of the jars were colourful and some were transparent glass, revealing powders, herbs, seeds, and things inside that I couldn’t identify. There was a deep, floral-print couch on one wall and a day bed placed under the front window.

“Sit.” Nonae said and gestured at a large round table in the centre of the room, with wooden chairs that looked like they had come from eight different dining sets. She read the referral from my doctor with a raised eyebrow, then looked at me with an unreadable expression. “Okay, let me see it.”

I rolled up my jeans and pulled the bandage off. Green leaves and pink petals sprang up, waving gently in the warm, spiced air.

Nonae crouched down, her voluminous skirt billowing on the floor rug around her. With short, wrinkly fingers, she reached out and tenderly stroked one of the leaves. Even though I couldn’t feel anything through the plant, I shuddered at her touch. She pursed her lips and blew softly on the leaf, then watched intently.

“Hmm.” She said, standing back up. “What do you think?”

“What?” I was confused. What did I think about what?

“What do you think this is?” She motioned at my leg with a wave of her hand and jangle of bracelets, then pushed herself stiffly into a chair across from me.

“I think it’s a flower sticking out of my leg. I think there shouldn’t be a flower coming out of any part of my body.”

“Well, yes, that appears to be so.” Nonae raised that eyebrow again. “It is indeed a flower. But what kind of flower do you think it is?”

“I don’t know anything about flowers. A pink one? What do you think it is?”

“Oh, it’s definitely pink.” Her smile was oddly reassuring for someone so frustrating. “But I can’t see so well. Why don’t you tell me what it looks like to you?”

I stared at her, but she just leaned back in the chair, unwavering. With a sigh, I pulled my knee up and looked closely at the thing. “As far as flowers go, it’s small. Like a ten-cent coin or something. It has six petals. Four at the top and then two sticking out the bottom.” I looked up at the old woman and she nodded, so I kept going. “The leaves remind me of roses, but softer. The green is a deep lime colour. That colour which was fashionable for kitchens in the 70s or 80s. Well, in the house I grew up in, anyway.” The flower started to sway as I continued.

“Go on, tell me more.”

“Um. It’s moving, but it’s kinda stiff. The petals are round, like cushions. They almost look like flushed cheeks.” A strange sense of nostalgia washed over me, of the familiar-yet-not-quite. I realised that I hadn’t really taken the time to look at the plant before then. I had been so afraid of it and so desperate to get rid of it that I hadn’t paid attention to its shape, dimensions and colour. “The leaves are veiny, too, when you look close enough. The make me think of my mum’s hands.”

“Your mother’s hands?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about your mother.” The old woman’s voice seemed distant, and I hardly heard her as more leaves emerged from the stem before my eyes. As the flower unfurled and grew bigger.

“My mother. She lives interstate, in a small town, with my dad and their dog.” Another bud emerged from the left side. “Dad’s retired but mum still works as a lawyer. She was the first woman to head a law practice in Australia.”

Nonae stood up and crouched down low next to me so that her head was at eye-level with the plant. “You sound proud. How do you feel about her?”

“She’s fine. She’s a good enough person. She’s strong. She had to do a lot to get where she is. She’s very respected, from what I gather.”

I felt lightheaded and thick. Nonae brought held her hand just over the plant, the way my grandmother used to hover her hand over a frying pan to see if it was hot enough to cook. Nonae nodded for me to continue.

“Mum hates cooking, but she used to like painting. I don’t know what she does these days for fun or as a hobby, now that I think about it. She’s always presentable, well dressed and made up. She wanted me to be the same, too.” The flower continued to sway woozily, and Nonae matched its movements with her hand. “She was good to me, though. She just wanted me to fit in and be accepted by what she thought was good society.”

Nonae slowly closed her hand around the plant and began to tug. Deep inside my leg, I felt pinching as its roots gripped my flesh against her pull, then slid free the more she drew it out. Pure white roots came away as she pulled, until there was nothing left. I gasped out a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding and leaned over my leg to look closer. Where the cyst used to be, the plant had left behind a raw, gaping crater.

Nonae carried the plant gingerly in the palm of her hand to the kitchen bench. I put my foot down to stand up, but pain shot through my leg and Nonae jabbed a knobbly finger out behind her, telling me to wait. I sank back into the chair and continued to watch. I was light-headed. Dizzy and near exhausted.

She held the flower up into the sunlight and looked back at me, assessing something on my face, but I couldn’t tell what. “It looks like you have a curse on you, young lady,” she said. “I’m guessing you’ve had a small lump on your leg for some time?”

“What? A curse?”

Nonae shook her head and used her free hand to get the referral from her pocket and read it again. “Yes, I thought so.” She put the paper back in her pocket and returned her attention to the plant. She tipped it over and tapped the flower until tiny seeds fell into her hand. The plant shrivelled and stiffened, and she placed it in a mortar bowl.

I think I would have felt frustration or even anger if I had had my wits, but it was an effort even to speak. “What do you mean I’m cursed?”

“Cursed. And your body is trying to get rid of it now for some reason.” Nonae put the seeds in a tiny pot with dirt, then ground the remainder of the plant into a fine powder. “Whatever that reason is, you’re going to have to help it.”

Cursed… I was so out of it. I thought my body might melt into the chair and become part of its structure. “Who curses people?”

“People curse each other all the time, even you.” The witch’s tinkling laugh was full of kindness. “I’m sure you’ve cursed the odd driver who cut you off on the road. The neighbour playing loud music. Often, though, the most powerful are the ones made by those who love us most.” She added a pinch of a black powder to the crushed-up plant in the bowl, then a shake of some fine flakes and a spoon of something that looked like red salt. She ground everything together, put the mixture into a jar and sealed the lid. “It doesn’t always stick, but it’s very common to curse people.”

I stared at her as she put a splash of water onto the seeds in their pot and brought it around to me. It was hard to take anything she was saying seriously. Honestly, it was hard to take any of what was happening seriously.

“Don’t worry.” She handed me the pot and motioned for me to stand up. “You will tend to this, then come back to me in a month, and hopefully we will know more then.”

Before I knew it, I had floated to her front doorway and found myself walking back to my car. The pain in my leg was gone, but I felt dumb. Unable to process anything.

But I was also furious. I had so many questions and she hadn’t answered any of them. She had only created more questions. What kind of specialist was she, anyway? Who even heard of witches in real life? The more I sat there in my car, and the more I stared at the pot of dirt, the more I didn’t care.

I pulled up my jeans again to reassure myself that the plant was still gone.

I decided that it didn’t matter who this old woman was. My issue was solved.

Part III. Treatment

Not even close. The following month was awful.

All manageable stuff to begin with. Like finding it hard to concentrate at work and with friends. I would catch myself staring into space during meetings, missing important information completely. Then random physical ailments started around when the seed sprouted. Crippling back pains, itchy skin and hair falling out. That was when I could even stand to leave the house, when I could keep my emotions under control.

By the time the shoot in the pot had become a small seedling, I was a mess. I flew off the handle when I dropped a mug, as though its demise was its own fault. Later, I would be crying at the beauty of the sound of a brittle leaf dancing across the driveway in a summer’s breeze. Somehow the poignance of its solitude overwhelmed me. My ice cream bingeing-then-purging coping mechanism was out of control. And then there were the days where I would find myself staring at the “Are you still watching?” prompt on the TV, unable to bring myself to answer. Just desolate. Exhausted.

Meanwhile the plant was thriving.

Reluctantly, I had to go back to Nonae.

“Ooooh!” Nonae smiled when I handed it back to her at our next appointment. “Well done, Rose! The flower with a flower problem.” She chuckled, then stopped when she saw my expression. “Come, come. Come inside and sit.”

I followed her and slumped back down at the dining table. “What now?” I urged, barely holding back tears.

Nonae shushed me and sat down. She turned the pot around in front of her face, staring intently at the little seedling. She petted one of the tiny leaves with a finger and hmphed under her breath. She looked up at me. “Have you been watering it? Taking care of it?”

I stared back. How could I express just how much I hated that thing? How many times I had wanted to throw it in the bin? How I had barely looked at it the whole month? “Yeah, sorta.” I eventually said. “I forgot for the first week or so, but then I remembered to water it a few times.”

Nonae looked at me like I had just patted a baby on the head. “I see.”

“Was I supposed to do something more?” I felt myself getting defensive, anger welled up from deep in the back of my throat.

“No, no.” Nonae went to her kitchen and brought back a small jar of powder, then sat back down again. I immediately recognised the jar as the one she had ground the old, dried plant in with other ingredients. “It’s your plant, you manage it how you know best.”

“What do you mean? Please, tell me what this all about.” I pulled my pants up and waved an exasperated hand where a scar had puckered the skin over the wound left by the cyst. “Why did a plant grow out of me and why did its seeds grow another plant? What’s going on?” I was all but shouting by the time I stopped and took a breath.

“You are cursed, lovely Rose.” Unfazed by my fury, she leant forward on her elbows and looked at me intently. “You have a curse on you, and if what you said when you first came is anything to go by, I would guess that it was your mother who put that curse on you.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Like a spring, my rage pushed me up onto my feet and I loomed over the old woman, but she didn’t react. “People don’t get cursed, and they don’t get plants growing out of their skin!”

“But you did, didn’t you? And if you’re not careful, you might end up with more.” She pointed at my arms, and I looked down to see that I was covered in new cysts.

I staggered backward and rubbed furiously at my arms, but my skin only bubbled more. I realised my legs were also alive with lumps. I looked at Nonae, wild with fear and anger, but she just regarded me with this utterly calm expression of care and concern. “What’s going on!?” I screamed, unable to control myself.

“Listen to your body, Rose. It wants to help you.”

“What?!” Several of the cysts had grown so quickly that they had already burst, tiny leaves popping out of each one, followed by little shoots snaking out. “Tell me what to do, please!”

“Take a breath, it’s alright.” Nonae stood up and held her hands out to me. “We can talk this through together.”

“TALK??” I tried to grab the shoots springing out of my skin, but, as with the first one, I couldn’t pull any of them out. And there were just so many of them. One shoot on my ankle grew so long, finding its way under my shoe, that it tripped me up. I fell with a thud to the floor.

Nonae rushed over to me. “Here, quickly, come and lie down here.” I got up and followed her to a daybed along one of the walls, stumbling several times as the vines hanging off my body dragged underfoot, at least a metre long by this point. I sat on the couch and watched the stems get bigger and longer, twining in and around each other, with more and more leaves unfurling. “Breathe, Rose. Just breathe.”

“Why is this happening to me?” My shouts gave way to sobs.

“Lie down, honey. Lie here.”

I did as she said, trying to ignore the panic coursing through me. Nonae’s hand on my lumpy hand made me realise that my fists were clenched into balls. All my muscles were clenched, in fact. I tried to relax, but how could I while vines crept over my skin, and wound around my legs, torso and arms? They were even going through my hair.

So, I lay there on the daybed in that strange woman’s house, completely at the mercy of some process that she seemed to understand, but which utterly terrified me. I stared at the ceiling, trying to concentrate, but it was impossible to relax knowing that plants had taken root inside my body, were growing out of my skin and getting bigger by the minute. Nothing could have distracted me from the way the vines kept enclosing my whole body, pulling my limbs closer together. I looked down, I realised I could hardly see my legs underneath layers of vines and leaves. My arms were pinned to my sides, and the plants were still growing and moving, mummifying me completely.

That was the last straw. Had Nonae drugged me or something? To hell with relaxing and breathing, I needed to get free! In an opportunistic burst, I pushed back against this thing, this curse. I squirmed and struggled, trying to wedge my elbows between the layers or to grasp something with my hands.

That was when something pierced the skin between two ribs, and I screamed in pain. I don’t know if it was a thorn or root or something else, but it caused an agony I hadn’t felt before. Another one stabbed my thigh, and I yelled as it wormed deep into my flesh. My screaming turned into whimpering sobs as two more speared me, then another. It was torture every time I moved, so I slowed down and tried to keep still. I couldn’t contain a flinch when one more penetrated deep into my shoulder. Then a moment later, when I thought it was over, and another one skewered my breast.

Finally, it all stopped.

“Shhhh. Be still now.” Nonae sat patiently next to me and stroked the last exposed patch of skin on my forehead. The vines squeezed me tight in my cocoon, slowly creeping over my neck and up towards my mouth, but there weren’t any more thorns cutting into me. Leaves brushed against my lips and cheeks before they finally covered my face. Helpless tears crept out of my eyes, and warm blood oozed out of my skin where the thorns had pierced me. I couldn’t feel Nonae’s hand anymore and I couldn’t see a thing.

At last, the vines had become still.

In the quiet, Nonae shuffled around the room, but I couldn’t tell what she was doing. I was utterly trapped. At the mercy of a stranger and an unreal experience.

“Just lie there, you’re okay, lovely.” Nonae’s disembodied voice came from the other side of the room. “I’m putting some music on, now. Just relax and focus on the sound of Luke Howard.” A click, silence, and then piano keys. Nonae’s big skirt rustled as she came closer and sat down next to me again.

I gave in.

I could almost see the melody and notes behind my eyelids flowing and dancing, swaying and pausing, then diving and swirling away. I let my muscles go and more tears flowed from my eyes; this time full of shame that I had given up. I knew I didn’t have a choice, but I hated myself all the same.

Part IV. Breakthrough

“It’s okay. You’re okay.” The weight of Nonae’s hand on my arm under the vines was a comforting tether to the real world. “Keep listening and breathing. Relax.”

I listened. Violin washed over me and I let myself be swept along by the music. I breathed.

“That’s good, you’re doing great.” Nonae squeezed my arm through the tangled plant.

Slowly, the vines began to loosen around my face. The leaves over my lips pulled away as a piano crescendo crashed into a calming lilt.

“Do you think you can speak now?” Nonae asked softly.

I didn’t think I would be able to, but when I moved my lips, more vines withdrew from my mouth. “I think so?” I whispered.

“Wonderful! Well done, lovely Rose.” The old woman leaned closer. “Now, are you ready for the next step?”

My gut churned and my heart raced, but what could I do? “Yes.” My voice cracked, raw and quiet after all the screaming.

“Good girl. Now, I want you to keep listening to the music and focusing on your breathing. But I also want you to tell me again about your mother.”

I lay still and neither of us spoke. Images of my mother flashed into my mind. I remembered her coming home long after dinner when I was a child, visibly exhausted and not able to engage with my baby brother or me. I remembered a cocktail party she hosted with caterers and fancy champagne. How she had booked a beautician because I couldn’t be trusted to do my make up.

“Talk to me, Rose. Don’t just think about her—tell me about her.” Nonae’s words were peace and lightness. She had all the time in the world.

“My mother was strong. She…” I didn’t know where to begin, but repeating the same old stories I had about her didn’t feel right. I took a breath, pressed against the cocoon wall, and started again. “I think she had a tough time with her mum. Her mum was a migrant and dad once said that grandma had been pretty cruel to mum.” Dad’s kind face in my mind’s eye was a relieving balm. “I never really understood why dad stayed with mum. He was always so chill, and mum was so wound up. But now that my brother and I have moved out, I think she’s mellowed a bit. They make more sense to me now.”

“He must have seen something in her.”

“I guess so. I know she didn’t mean to pass her neuroses on to me, and I think it was harder for her to let things slide when I was a teenager. Teenagers can be so nasty.” The vines began to loosen, but I was absorbed in my reflections about my mother. “There was one time when I accused her of being like her mother. She was asking me if I really needed the extra helping of dinner, I think. Or maybe she was telling me that I ought to be more self-sufficient, because good men are attracted to independent women. I don’t remember exactly. But I told her to stop being like her mother, and then she slapped me. Out of the blue. She had never hit me before. I think I would have said something even more awful to her, but the look of horror and guilt on her face stopped me. I knew right then how important it was to her to not be like her mother. She had never been more human to me than she was in that moment. Vulnerable.” I stopped speaking, but the memory continued with the sound of her and dad talking down the hall, of mum’s voice high-pitched through tears.

“She was human, after all. With all the imperfections that come with that.” Nonae offered.

My heart swelled with emotion, but instead of wanting to cry more, I felt relieved. My tears began to dry, and the vines slipped away from my fingers. “She tried her best with what she knew.”

“Have you thought about this before?”

A weight sat on my chest, heavy, then slowly seeped out of me. My silence was answer enough. The vines, along with the weight, began to fall away. The thorns in my flesh dissolved. The leaves around my head receded and I blinked at the light. I carefully flexed my fingers, then hands, then my other joints. The vines hardly resisted this time. They fell from my body completely, turning to a thin layer of clear ash beneath me.

I rubbed my face, grateful to be able to move again and that the cysts were gone. I rubbed my ribs and the spots where the thorns had been, and felt no pain, just spots of dried blood. I went to sit up, but a wave of dizziness pushed me back down.

“Give it a minute.” Nonae smiled something that looked like a mixture of pride and relief. I could have been projecting, though. “You’ll be able to sit up shortly. Take your time.” She stood up and got a glass of water from the kitchen, then sat it down on the dining table.

I lay for a moment more, listening to the music. It was more distant with my eyes open, but it was grounding all the same. After a time, I sat up and carefully swung my legs over the edge of the daybed. I took a breath and stood up. I cautiously walked over to the table and took a sip from the glass of water, then, suddenly thirsty, downed the whole thing.

Exhausted, I watched Nonae go back to the kitchen. She tipped the jar of the old, powdered plant into a small watering can, then poured the liquid over the seedling that I had been tending for the previous month. I could have sworn that the plant shuddered in response. Nonae nodded, then took it out the back door. I rolled my head to the side, but I couldn’t see her. I just felt grateful that I would never see that plant again.

She came back, sat in her chair and crossed her arms with a pleased smile.

“I still don’t think I get it,” I said tentatively. “Is it that mum cursed me in some fit of rage? And that seeing things from her perspective is what it took to make it go away?” The word ‘cursed’ felt uncomfortable in my mouth, awkward, like a giant gumball.

“Not exactly.” Nonae shook her head. “Not all curses actually stick. Maybe when your mother made this one, she was upset with you for not seeing her side. Teenagers can be terribly self-absorbed.” I nodded firmly in agreement, and cringed internally as I tried not to think about how I had been as a teen. “For some reason, you held on to this curse, too. You held it tight inside you and it festered and grew. I don’t fully know how these things work, but it had to come out of you somehow.”

“But… A plant? Like that?” I looked back at the daybed. The thin coating of ash was barely visible anymore.

Nonae shrugged. “So it would seem.”

I looked at my hands wrapped around the glass of water. I felt light and heavy at the same time. Heavy with a renewed sense of connection to my mother. But also light, as though a darkness had been cleaved off me. I had known it was there, but not known anything about it. I had just carried it around, avoiding doing anything about it.

With the new sense of lightness, maybe I could also deal with the other dark stains inside me, too.

I lifted my head up and looked at the old woman. “I don’t really understand, but thank you.”