Trust me trust me trust me baby—go to Station Six.

  Go to Station Six.

  Go to Station Six.

  Baby, you can save yourself.

  Go to Station Six.

  © Placenta 2018

  LESSON ELEVEN: WITCH TRIALS

  Today is Friday, March 21, 2025

  Calling Jane Vandermaker Cook to the Stand

  Loyalty is a big deal to Vernon. Irony isn’t always funny.

  It’s five o’clock on the Friday before spring break, and I have been summoned to the sitting room for an interrogation. This one has an actual point, unlike most of the others I’ve lived through. Today in the school library, I printed the opera. It was risky but it’s getting too big to work on the iPad and I want to be able to hold it in my hands. It’s almost done. Just a few scenes to go, and with a whole week off, I figured I could lay the pages out and see what the ending will look like. I didn’t expect the after-school bag check.

  “Who have you shown this to?” he asks, shaking my printed opera manuscript in his hand.

  “Literally no one.”

  “You’re lying,” he answers. “You’re hurting our family with this—this thing you’re writing.”

  I look at Finch sitting next to him, performative worry on her face.

  “Is this our family? Really?”

  “Answer the question,” Finch says.

  “I’ve told no one. We don’t really talk about family at school. And if we did, how would I describe this, exactly?” I gesture at Vernon, then Finch, then all of us, and the whole room. “Would I say I have two mommies? Or that you have two wives, or wife-sisters? Like—how do I say it?”

  “You’d say your mother is a workaholic,” he answers.

  “Like you give her any choice,” I say.

  “How dare you! After all I’ve been through!”

  I open my eyes in mocking shock. “Like the big stabbing, eh?”

  This is different from how I used to handle Witch Trials. I was younger then and not equipped for this kind of bullshit.

  Home Movie—05.21.2018

  I am on the sitting room settee next to Finch, who is petting my hair as if I’m a dog. I am ten years old and in fourth grade.

  “Poor dear,” she says. “You deserve better.”

  “I do,” I say. “I deserve so much better.”

  “What do you hate the most about Mina?”

  “Oh,” I answer, with ten-year-old’s sass, “so many things! Like how she sings in the shower and how she tricks me into looking out the window and then takes a piece of my food.”

  “So rude!” Finch says.

  “And how she always wants me to be cleaning something. She’s a clean freak!”

 

  For the record, I do not remember Mother telling me to clean anything but my bedroom when we were young. And I was a slob, so it made sense.

 

  “She was always a clean freak.” Finch nods. “What else?”

  “She won’t let me have a horse,” I say.

  Finch nods. Vernon says, “Terrible!”

  I continue. “The way she meditates. It’s so dumb!”

  “I thought you liked it,” Finch says.

  “I liked—I don’t know—sitting still, I guess. Anyway, I think the thing I hate the most about her is how she’s never here.”

 

  Mother was on the Safe House tour. It lasted the entire year. The more copies the album sold, the more enraged Vernon and Finch became, and the more they’d tell me and Henry that Mother had abandoned us because she loved working more than she loved us.

 

  “How much money do you think Mina’s made so far?” Vernon asks from his armchair.

  “It must be millions!” Finch says.

  “Nothing for us, though,” Vernon says. “Nothing for poor Jane, who wants a horse and who even has room enough to keep it!”

 

  This was during my serious horse-girl phase.

 

  “If there was a way I could get you a horse, I would,” Finch says. “I’d get it first thing in the morning. “

 

  Wait.

  Want to see something terrible?

  Rewind a week. Find Finch sprawled on the patio bench, talking to Mother on her cell phone.

  Home Movie—05.14.2018

  “Of course she does!” Finch says. “She’s ten!”

  While Mother talks, Finch nods.

  “That’s all fine but who would take care of it?”

  Mother says something.

  “I appreciate that, but you asked me my advice and I don’t think she’s ready for a horse.”

  Mother says something.

  “I know she knows how to ride. That’s not my point. Riding and owning a horse are two entirely different things.”

 

  The reality of shape-shifters is that they are, every cell, always shifting. And there’s Vernon, trusting her while she destroys, on an atomic level, the family he insisted on having. Or maybe Vernon is a different kind of shape-shifter. Maybe this is what becomes of those who lie to God.

  Witch Trial (Cont’d)

  Vernon speaks calmly. “When did you first start writing this—this opera?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. Like—back in the fall sometime? It was just a fun thing to write on the side, you know?”

  “Fun songs about how your daddy touches you?” he asks, eyes wide for effect.

  “Your double leg squeeze could be patented,” I say.

  “How many people have you shown it to?” he asks.

  “I only printed it yesterday.”

  “Who saw you print it?” Finch asks.

  “Like—the library aide? She didn’t even see it.”

  “Touching you?! Seriously!” Vernon says.

  Marta walks into the sitting room with a full tea service and places it on the table. I reach for a cup and Vernon slaps my hand away. He makes a cup of tea for himself and makes one for Finch.

  She picks up her teacup and sits back. She looks at me. “Why’d you print it? Who’re you showing it to?”

  I shrug. “No one.”

  “You’re lying,” Vernon says.

  “I guess I learned from the best,” I reply. When his hand whooshes toward me, I’m already heading toward the kitchen.

  “You can’t just walk away!” Vernon shouts.

  As I walk through the study, I look at the tube and consider the relief of self-imprisonment as escape.

  I understand now. I understand.

  Home Movie Mixtape: Mina’s Willing Surrender

  03.10.2012 / Sitting room / All four of us are sitting around a fire, listening to music and reading, and Mother is bouncing Henry on her knee. Vernon asks her to stop. She doesn’t. When he begins to yell, she passes Henry to Marta, who has come to see what’s going on, and walks to the tube next to the TV and gets in, closes the door, and descends into the floor.

  05.13.2013 / Sitting room / Vernon screams, “You can’t just walk away!”

  12.01.2016 / Study / Vernon screams, “You can’t just walk away!”

  06.18.2017 / Study / Mother runs and looks for a place to hide. Vernon arrives a moment later as she steps in. By the time he gets to the tube, she’s closed the door and her capsule has ascended to the second floor. Vernon screams, “You can’t just walk away!”

  09.13.2018 / Dining room / Vernon screams, “You can’t just walk away!”

  Henry’s March Surprise

  An hour later, I am curled behind the mustard-velvet wingback chair with matching ottoman. Henry is testifying in the sitting room.

  “Have you read Jane’s opera?” Vernon asks.

  “Jane has an opera?” Henry answers. “How do you even read an opera?”

  Finch says, “You’re not missing out.”

  There is silence.

  “Can you tell me what you hate most about your mother these days?” Vernon says.

  I can hear Henry exhale in that frustrated way he does. “I hate the way she’s so into yoga or whatever.”

  “Okay,” Vernon says. “But what does she do to you that you hate?”

  “Fuck, man. I barely see her. And when I do see her, she seems pretty nice, if I’m being honest.”

  “Did you just curse at me?” Vernon says.

  “Did I?”

  I don’t know what’s gotten into Henry.

  “Don’t you two have work or anything? Milo and I are working on the hothouse. I only have so much daylight. And I—”

  Finch cuts him off. “Do you remember the time you told me you thought your mom didn’t love you because she worked all the time?”

  “Yeah. I do. I said it because that’s what you told me my whole life. Now that I look at it, I think probably you didn’t tell me the full story.”

  “What’s happened, Henry? You’re so rude!” Vernon says.

  Henry answers, “Maybe you two should interrogate each other and write your own fucking opera. You sure are dramatic enough for it.”

  I hear him get up. I hear him walk right out the double doors.

  “Jane’s done something to him,” Vernon says.

  “Surely,” Finch answers.

  “She’s going to pay for this,” he says.

  They start to make out like groundhogs on the settee and I keep my brain busy.

  Song: “Rodent Love”

  YOU GOT YOU A GIRL

  AND AIN’T SHE SEXY

  ENOUGH TO GIVE

  YOU APOPLEXY.

  YOU GOT YOU A BOY

  AND AIN’T HE HANDSOME.

  WATCH OUT, GIRL,

  YOU MIGHT NEED RANSOM.

  YOU WANT TO BE IN LOVE.

  I’D SAY YOU’RE IN LUCK.

  BUT REMEMBER RATS DON’T KISS.

  THEY ONLY FUCK.

  (unfinished)

  Verdict

  After dinner, Finch goes home and Vernon calls me into the sitting room.

  “I’ve burned it,” Vernon says. “But I’ll need access to the file.”

  I say, “You can’t have it. It’s mine and I’m allowed to have my own art and expression.” I hold a USB thumb drive in my hand—it contains exactly no files. Vernon taught me how to do this. His lies to God have been the only education he was any good at.

  “You live in my house and eat my food and—”

  Henry says from the study, “Get real.”

  “Shut up, Henry!” he says. Then he looks back to me with his hand out. “Give that to me.”

  Vernon is drunk. I am Victorian Jane. “Please don’t do this! I shan’t write any more songs about your leg-squeezing or anything at all that’s bad. It’s just confusing growing up like this!”

  “Give me the file,” he says. I have the drive clenched so hard in my palm, my fingernails are cutting me.

  “Give it to me!” he slurs, seizing my arm and trying to pry my hand open.

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “Vernon, stop!” Henry yells from the study.

  My hand goes weak from him twisting. He takes the thumb drive and walks back to his chair, sits down, and sighs.

  Then, in one move, he tosses the drive into the fireplace.

  “Your expression, as you call it, was terrible. Do better next time. Maybe you could write about things you know about like—what is it you know about?”

  “Not much of anything, I suppose,” I say.

  “Exactly.”

  “May I be excused?” I ask. “I have to study for a biology test.” I don’t wait for him to answer—I get up and head to the kitchen.

  “You wouldn’t have a test if you’d have just stayed here with me and Henry! You wouldn’t need to know anything about biology! Or chemistry! Or anything!”

  As I approach the door to the kitchen, I look into the study and see Henry, bent over a book about tropical forestry with a beer in his hand—a thirteen-year-old man.

  LESSON TWELVE: FROGS

  Today is Saturday, March 22, 2025

  My brother has had a weird life. Sometimes I’m so focused on myself I forget that he’s been locked up for more of his life than I have. The pandemic started when he was eight and Mother was locked up full-time since he was just seven.

  I feel terrible about it. Vernon was so busy controlling me that he scarcely paid Henry any attention.

  Tree frogs are the only solution.

  I found some online that could be delivered next-day and Gretchen ordered them for me on her phone. I’ve been up since seven waiting for whatever truck will deliver them. I told Milorad to be alert, too. I run into him on the patio at seven thirty.

  “You are up early for Saturday.”

  “Frogs,” I say.

  “Yes!” He nods.

  We sit on the benches and face the sunlight with our eyes closed.

  “How did you end up here, Milo?”

  “I flew on plane,” he answers.

  “Don’t be difficult.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, you flew from Serbia to Pennsylvania and that’s it?”

  “I flew Frankfurt to Chicago,” he answers.

  “Huh.”

  “My cousins came to Chicago with me from a refugee camp. They are still there.”

  This makes me open my eyes and look at him. Something in his voice sounds like a long story. “What are they like?”

  “They are good men,” he says. “They do not want anything to do with me now.”

  “Huh,” I say again. “I guess I can see why.”

  A beat passes and I feel Milorad’s eyes on me. “I am hurt by this.”

  “I know it’s hard to face, but there was a time when I was a small child and you fired a shotgun at me and my mother,” I say.

  “Your father is senseless.”

  “He didn’t fire the gun.”

  Milorad fidgets and makes a noise in his throat.

  I say, “I know you love me, but I also can’t trust you because you do whatever he tells you.”

  “I signed papers.”

  “Let’s have a look at those,” I say.

  Milorad chuckles. “I don’t have copies of these things.”

  “I think he’s bluffing whatever he threatened.”

  “I would be tossed out with my rat, he said.”

  “Huh,” I huff. “How long have you had Brutus?” I ask.

  “About nineteen years.”

  I blink my eyes open. “Milo, no rat could live nineteen years.”

  “He is a special rat.” He smiles.

  A sound in the front of the house has us both on our feet. We walk through the passageway to the front driveway. The UPS driver needs a signature, and I sign. The box is big.

  “How many frogs did you get?” Milorad asks as the truck leaves.

  “There was a sale?”

  He wrinkles his forehead.

  “Twenty,” I say. “Mixed sexes.”

  “That’s a lot of frogs,” Milorad answers.

  “I love Henry a lot.”

  “We should get these inside. It’s too cold out here.” He walks toward the house.

  “Should we leave them in the hothouse?”

  He considers it.

  “Let’s wait for Henry.”

  We walk in the front door and Milorad takes the box to the kitchen while I stop in the hall. I listen to hear if Henry is awake, and I hear nothing. When I join Milorad and Marta in the kitchen, she has a cup of hot chocolate waiting for me and Milo is trying to figure out a way to peek inside the box.

  When I try to stop him, he protests. “What if they’re all dead? I do not want Henry to wake up to that!”

  Marta says, “He has a point.”

  “The place has a guarantee. They’re not dead. They only shipped them yesterday!”

  “I don’t hear any movement,” Marta says.

  Milorad reaches into his pocket and comes out with his small, inlay-handled knife.

  Then a sound comes from the box. And another sound. And another.

  “That’s them,” Marta says. “Let Henry open the box.”

  Milorad puts his knife away. He sits and Marta hands him a cup of coffee. The three of us sit staring at the box for a moment or two.

  “What are your plans today, Jane?” Marta asks.

  “I have to study this weekend for a bio test on Monday. And I have to work on the opera.”

  “You are writing an opera?” Milorad asks.

  I hold my finger in front of my mouth. “Don’t tell Vernon. He thinks he burned it.”

  He nods. “No music. Yes.”

  Moments pass. I turn to Marta.

  “Why are starfish your favorite animals?”

  She answers, “When they eat, the eject their stomach onto their prey and digest them from outside their own body.”

  Milorad and I stare at her. The frogs make more noise.

  “I smell Marta’s coffee!” Vernon sings, on his way through the kitchen. Milorad picks up the frog box and moves it to the floor in some kind of reactive protection, then leaves through the back kitchen door.

  “Good morning to the house genius! Did you know Jane is writing an operatic masterpiece, Marta?”

  Marta pretends not to hear. It’s our first defense.

  “I got to read about half last night. I’d only read a few of the songs before. But I got curious and found a copy on your school computer,” he says. “The scene where I send Milorad to shoot at your mother and you was quite entertaining,” he adds. “As if I’d do that.” Marta and I look at each other and say nothing. “Or the part where I won’t let you go to school. Not so accurate now, is it?” He looks around. “Not to mention that your aunt is furious. You drew her like she’s some kind of demon!”