8 o’clock Witch

by Sophia Wiseman-Rose

She said she turned into a witch after 8 o’clock.

And she did.

After the sapphire gin and tonics and the bottle of Château Margaux

She called me names.

As her nails clawed at the flesh of my cheeks.

She called me a “cock-sucking motherfucking bitch.” Always the same. 

At 3 years old, I knew the words.

I knew the pain.

I knew her crooked hands, malevolent twisted face, her lips showing her crooked teeth.

Like a monster Picasso.

The feeling of my hair nearly pulled out as my head was tilted up and thrust towards the clock.

I couldn’t read the Roman numerals.

I tried.

“It’s fucking 8 o’clock. And I am a witch.”

I would cry. 

And she would laugh.

Adopting a fake Brooklyn accent, “It’s not so bad! It didn’t hurt that much! You’re so melodramatic!” And the refrain, 

“Look, tough shit, kid.”

This was the cruel personality. The one who told grotesque racist jokes to her own biracial daughter. The one who told me no man would ever love me, but just lie to me to “screw” me.

The angry butch tough guy with the sneer and no pity.

Not like the kind lavender mother in the morning in the blue flowing dressing gown and the Valium eyes.

Not the Jackie O. personality, who bought me wedding china when I was 7, taught me how to taste wine and how to properly dine with a five-piece dinner set. 

Not like the professor so erudite and worldly, far too important and distracted for a child.

But so much better than the witch, who called me a cocksucker with her hair ripping and biting nails.

Now, I’m a grown woman and she’s mercifully long in the ground. 

And, I wish I could stop hearing her

Sophia Wiseman-Rose, is a paramedic and an Anglican nun in the UK. These two vocations have shown her some of the best and the worst of humanity. Sophia is an avid painter and illustrator who is obsessed with poetry, both reading and writing it. She finds poetry cathartic, the best means of self-expression and the best way of making sense of what goes on inside of our heads.