“The Witch”

For as long as I can remember I was just like anyone I knew. My aunts and uncles were stereotypical and my parents and older sister drove me crazy once I reached a certain age. My friends came and went and after I reached a certain age, they stayed. But for my whole life, despite the fact that my outer shell was just like every other girl in my generation, I didn’t feel like them. On the inside I thought I was supposed to be made of sugar and spice. The other girls wore pink sweaters and cute denim flares. I thought for the longest time I was supposed to be like them. They were the happiest and they were the most looked up to throughout my life. I was happy. My parents got along and we did family things and my sister was pretty decent. I took up ballet and tap when I was six and continued with it, like the other girls. At eleven, I started wearing the quaintest of lip sticks, like my peers. In middle school I tried out for cheerleading, and got selected, just like the other girls. In high school, when my friends and I grew closer to one another, I still didn’t join Drama Club with them. I went to football games every night because I was cheering. On the outside I was them but on the inside I was something very different. My whole life, I acted pink and cute but I felt gold and blue and wanted to be strong. I thought that I would grow out of it. When I didn’t, I thought that I was just going through a phase and I went back to cheerleading and my dance classes. I was always pleasant and giggly, bubbly and bouncy. Under my skin I was curious and smarter than what people saw. I felt like I could do better, do differently, feel better. But why?

I was born into a Greco-Italian family: The Morucci family. My mom has black hair and my dad has black hair and my sister has black hair. I have chestnut brown hair. That’s brown with a lot of red highlights in it. My mom has brown eyes and my dad has blue eyes, because his family is northern Italian. I have green eyes that are nearly gray. I have pale skin that itches in the winter. My relatives do not. My mom is Greek and my dad is Italian. What am I? My name at birth was Amanda. Amanda Morucci. I don’t feel like an Amanda. But then again, how do you feel like your name? In this case, it was hard to explain to my mother that I wasn’t Amanda Rose.

“Who are you then?” she would ask, bending down to my five year old level.

As to which I would respond, “Hazel!”

This later became a bit more involved when I started to understand more about myself. After I learned how to better explain myself, the simple mother to small child conversation turned into this:

“You’re name is Amanda. I’m not calling you Hazel or Rhiannon or whatever that is.”

This was the most recent of our identity crises. This was the climax. It was all downhill from there. After that, I shut-up about who I thought I was and I became permanently Amanda. When I became more independent in high school I began to feel even stranger and more different than in the previous years of my life. When I was a junior, two twin boys came to school. They were juniors too. They were cute although I felt weird when I thought that I might have a crush on the taller one.

When I was a senior, I still saw the twins at school and wanted to talk to them but I just never did. They were not jocks like my friends and they were quiet and didn’t really talk to anyone. Although they were cute, some still called them weird. My friends, who at the same time thought they were hot and weird, pointed out how much they thought I looked like the twins.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, although I shared their views. I did look remarkably like the strangers.

“They have reddish-brown hair. No one has reddish-brown hair. It’s like having a brown eye and a blue eye,” Kayla went on as we all watched the twins converse in the lunchroom with another girl.

“They have that same piercing stare,” Hailey commented.

“I have a piercing stare?”

“Yeah, oh my god, when you get mad at someone you look at them and, like, daggers shoot out of your eyes. You’re eyes are funky, like they’re almond shaped or something. It’s weird,” Sam babbled on like the loveable flake she is.

“Hey, who is that girl they’re talking with?” I asked observing her. “She looks familiar.”

“Oh, that girl?” Sam sneered, staring the girl down. “Freak.”

“What’s her name?” I asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen her around before.”

“Well, no, it’s her first week of school but she doesn’t talk to anyone except those twins. She’s in my English class,” said Hailey.

“Maybe she’s just shy,” I reminded. “So, she’s a senior then?”

“Yeah. And she’s not shy. She argues with our history teacher. It’s funny, she gets so into the discussions she corrects the teacher.”

“I think she’s, like, related to those twins or something. They only talk to each other really,” Kayla said. “I don’t get why they came here a whole year apart though.”

“Well, maybe they’re not related,” Sam pointed out.

As they went on about the three strangers, I noticed something. I figured out why that girl looked so familiar. Her hair was blonde save for the chestnut roots. She had my hair. I watched them talking some more and I noticed that they all had the same nose. It was normal length with a slight, attractive bump in the middle. It was the nose of European royalty, or so I read. Even more than the twins, she looked like someone I knew very well. She looked like “Hazel.”

“You sure you don’t know what her name is?” I asked.

“I think the teacher called her Rose,” Hailey said.

“Rose,” I repeated to myself.

Bravely, I got up and walked over to them. Before they saw me approaching, a bunch of kids cut me off and bumped me back. When they had passed, the twins and Rose were no longer sitting there. I scanned the cafeteria but many other students were standing and there was a crowd starting to leave as the bell rang.

The following afternoon, I was walking home after cheerleading practice when an eerie feeling came over me. You know the feeling you get when you feel someone behind you. You get a tingling up your back. That’s what I was feeling for about ten minutes upon leaving school. Every time I thought I was going to jump out of my shoes from the tingling, I scanned around me. There was no one. Finally it got to the point where I was getting scared.

“Hello?” I asked, suspicious that a few rogue football players were being punks and following me.

When there was no answer, I sat down on the sidewalk of the near dead road. I had no answer for the feeling up my back or why I thought I was being followed. I tried to ignore it and eventually it went away.

For the rest of the day, I practiced my cheerleading routine in the driveway. I still had those twins on my mind. Finally I just said sod it and went into the office where my parents’ had a filing cabinet. I searched the folder until I found the one with “Amanda” written on it. In it were medical records and a birth certificate and hospital papers. I looked over the certificate at first and thought that it had been misplaced.

It read: Rebecca Chloe Hamilton

“Oh,” I replied nonchalantly, too startled by my discovery to think anything more.

The certificate further identified my mother being named Aster and my father being named Eoin. It also further said that I was born in Manchester-By-The-Sea, in Massachusetts. It’s a town I guess to be about two thousand miles from where I was standing at that moment. I was standing in Yorkville, Illinois, outside of Chicago.

I searched more and that name kept coming up more. Then, “Amanda Morucci” appeared again. After my search was finished I took the birth certificate and ran out the door, almost forgetting to shut the filing cabinet. I ran until I got to Hailey’s class, almost two miles away.

“What are you doing here?” She asked.

“I have something to show you,” I said, huffing and puffing so much that I was almost unclear.

“What? What?”

Still trying to catch my breath, I displayed the birth certificate and she took it. She read it and looked immediately up at me, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. I nodded, concurringly.

“Rebecca?”

“Yes.”

“Rebecca Hamilton?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Oi.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“What do I say to my parents?” I asked.

“Demand they tell you what this is all about,” she replied handing back the certificate.

“I’ll do that.”

That night, after I showered and had time to think about the mess I would soon find myself in, I went into the dining room where my parents had a surprise waiting for me. It was the last thing I needed and the first thing I expected from them.

“Happy Birthday!” They announced as my mother brought out a red velvet cake painted in frosting.

It was my eighteenth birthday. It almost made me forget about the birth certificate sitting in the pocket of my bathrobe. I didn’t want to ruin birthday desert so I was gracious and ate cake and opened my presents from my parents and sister. Afterwards, although I wanted so badly to tell them what I discovered, I felt bad for them. They gave me everything and I was their daughter. But after I found that birth certificate, I felt like a lost child in a stranger’s house. I didn’t know this odd, middle-aged Greek woman humming to herself over the sink full of dishes. I felt strange around my older sister as we munched quietly on French fries. Did she know what I did? Or was she still unaware, still taking me for a blood sister, the only other person in the whole wide world that shared her exact genealogy.

“Mom,” I said finally.

“Yeah?” She called from the kitchen.

“I have something I need to tell you.”

“What is it?” My dad asked as my mom came in from the kitchen, drying her hands on the dish towel.

I took a deep breath, and pulled the birth certificate from my fluffy pocket. Their eyes widened at the sight of it.

“I found this today,” I said calmly, and then I realized how irritated their secret had made me. My voice grew sterner and I faced them both with a stony glare. “I want you to explain this to me.”

Neither spoke. My sister sunk lower into her seat, burrowing deeper into her hooded sweatshirt.

“Amanda-,” my mother proceeded.

“I’m not Amanda!”

“Don’t you talk to me like that!” She snapped back.

“Explain this to me!” I announced powerfully, “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“We didn’t tell you because we didn’t think-,”

“Didn’t think?” I repeated. “Didn’t think what? Didn’t think I should know? Care? Want to know? What?”

“Your father and I chose not to tell you about this because,” there was a pause, “We did not approve of it.”

“What’s there to approve of?” I asked sliding my birth certificate on the table before my father, who was still sitting there, motionless, nervous.

“Your birth parent, Aster and Eoin Hamilton were different. They had you and put you up for adoption and we adopted you. We changed your name and kept this all from you because we didn’t approve of the way they lived.”

“How did they live then? What was so bad? Were they part of Manson’s Family? Huh? Are they drug fiends?”

My anger was building up. It was one thing to not tell me about my birth parents. It was another thing to decide you didn’t agree with the way they lived. I could feel my face burning. I turned and looked to Jacqueline, the strange sister on the couch who had black hair and brown eyes. Feeling sorry for what she was also going through by chance and not choice, I smiled at her. She had done nothing wrong so a smile would have to be the only thing to tell her that.

“What. Were. My. Parents?” I asked turning back to them.

“Your parents were pagans. After we adopted you, we found out about your background and thought it would be good for you not to know. We’ve always tried to tell you that witchcraft is no good. It leads to drugs and black magic. These witches that you came from were probably satanic devil worshippers or cult members. We thought that by adopting you we could save you from it. It’s no good, Amanda, it’s no good.” That man said to me, standing up to face me.

His blonde hair disgusted me. I know my real father didn’t have greasy blonde hair like that. He probably had chestnut hair like me. I wanted to rip all of that hair out.

“So. You thought you’d keep me from knowing. Knowing about my birth parents!”

“We did it for your own good!” He snapped at me.

“Amanda, don’t act like that. You know you’re probably better off this way!”

“I’m not Amanda you freaks! I’m not your daughter! I was never your real daughter and now I’m even less a daughter to you because you lied to me! If you really cared about me you would have brought me up knowing the truth!”

“Okay, okay, you’re upset and I understand. We should have told you,” the woman said, trying to calm me down.

“You’re damn right you should have told me. Now, I’m leaving now and I am not coming back. Do you understand that?” I said calmly, but still with that growl in my voice.

“No, you can’t leave. You’ve got no place to go,” The blonde stranger said.

“I’m leaving right now. I’m packing my things and I am walking out that door tonight.”

“It’s after eight o’clock,” he said.

“I. Don’t. Care.”

With that I stomped up the stairs and into my room. Jacqueline followed me closely, nearly in tears over the adrenaline rush that had just taken place in the dining room. Miraculously calm, I pulled all the clothes and underwear from my dresser and piled them into my two suitcases. I didn’t have many clothes; I had just done my summer organizing. I took two other travel cases and quickly but carefully packed every single book, stuffed animal, souvenir, and trinket that I could fit. The others I lay in my backpack. Jacqueline stood by my bed, watching me, speechless.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t. I’m sorry you had to be there.”

“I can’t believe they wouldn’t tell you something like that. You’re a witch by heritage and I think that’s awesome. It’s, like, exotic and special.”

“Is it now?”

“Yeah, I know mom and dad never cared for or even understood the religion and lifestyle but I read that it’s, like, the oldest religion on the planet.”

I nodded, grinning slightly.

“Do you want to come with me to Sam’s house? I have to ask her a question.”

“Yes, I’ll drive you.”

The two of us carried my things into the car, ignoring the two baffled and saddened parents watching us from the living room. After all my things were packed, and after I had put on shoes and a jacket, we left. I waved to them, straight faced, from the car and they waved back. I think I saw them wanting to cry. I didn’t care. Jacqueline didn’t even wave or smile in their general direction. I felt sorry because I knew it would taker her a while to be able to look at her parents again. For me, I don’t think I could ever trust them again. If I ever wanted to see Jacqueline, I don’t think it could ever be at that house again. I wasn’t even sure I was doing the right thing. I felt like I was doing something very wrong or even illegal. The day before, if I was doing it, it would have been wrong. The day before I was seventeen and still unaware of what was going to happen or what had happened to me eighteen years before. I shut my eyes for the whole ride to Sam’s, on the other side of town. We didn’t speak. Jacqueline only sighed a few times, and sniffled, as she was getting teary eyes, respectfully and understandably. When she pulled into Sam’s long driveway, she stopped, put the car in park and stared aimlessly out in front of her.

“What do you think you’re going to do now?” She asked me finally.

I turned to her, still quiet.

“You just left your house and you don’t have a plan. Sam didn’t even know you were coming. I would feel odd just dropping you off here with everything you own.”

“Well, what choice do we have?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I guess we don’t have a choice. I suppose this is our only choice.”

“Yup.”

“It’s going to be hard. You just up and left suddenly. Who are you going to stay with? I don’t think Sam’s parents would let you.”

“I think I have an idea.”

Jacqueline helped me unpack my things from the trunk. After a minute, Sam came running out.

“Amanda, what the hell is going on here? What are you doing with all your stuff?”

“I left.”

“Left? What do you mean left?”

“I mean I left. I packed my things and left. I found my birth certificate today. I’m not their daughter. My name isn’t even Amanda by birth. It was Rebecca.”

Sam cocked an eyebrow and stared at me funny. She didn’t even say a word, she just picked up my suitcase and brought it in. Her parents looked at me funny. But she just told me to bring my things to her room. Sam pulled her parents into the kitchen and explained to them what had happened. I heard some raised voices, but it was mostly Sam getting excited and upset about the sudden load on all of our backs.

The night was long, and Sam, Jacqueline, and I were up for most of it talking. Sam’s parents came in every so often to see if we were okay. Apparently they had understandably called back to my house and talked to my “parents” for sometime. Although neither couple spoke much to each other, Sam’s parents were greatly irritated about what they had done, or in this case, not done for me.

The next morning, I got up for school as I normally would. Sam and I pretended nothing had happened. For the whole morning, I searched for the twins and for the blonde girl with the chestnut roots. But I couldn’t find them. I wanted to cry. I was worried that they were not going to be there that day. But then relief came at lunch. The girl with the chestnut hair came up to me and sat down right beside me. Following her were the twins.

“Rebecca,” she said. “I know what happened last night. And I know what you know now.”

“I know, Rose. I had a feeling you would,” I said. “I’m just glad it went as smoothly as it did.”

“You won’t have to say with Sam anymore. I think she had a feeling about the three of us this morning and found me. She told me that you were at her house,” the taller twin said.

“What am I supposed to do? Where do I go after school?” I asked, my face getting red with anxiety and irritation.

“After school, we’ll need to talk some more,” the shorter twin said.

“What do you know already?” Rose asked. “I know that you know more than you think.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The three smiled. I still couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. I didn’t know anything. And then, something hit me. All of these thoughts were running over my brain. And then…

“We’re quadruplets. There was a fifth one who died a few hours ater she was born. Her name was Aurelia. You’re Rose, the second born. I’m the third born,” then I looked to the taller boy, who was not in fact a twin. “You’re Eoin, jr. You’re the oldest. Then there’s you, Teigan, you’re the youngest. How do I know all this?”

“It was our mother’s blessing. She died after Aurelia died. Our father was already terminal and she said that if anything ever happened to us, we would find each other and already know each other,” Eoin, jr. explained.

“Our mother was a witch?” I asked.

“And our father,” Rose said.

“We know you were raised in a Catholic house so we don’t expect you to change your faith so suddenly,” Teigan said.

I shook my head furiously. “No, no, no. I don’t want anything to do with it. I never did. I always knew I belonged somewhere else.”

After the bell rang, the four of us left, talking, as if we had been together all along. They took me to Sam’s house to get our things and then we went to their house, where they had been living with our paternal grandmother.

I went through a lot changing my residencies and I had to share a room with Rose, which was no big deal. After only a few weeks of living with them, it was all I knew. It almost felt like I had memories of being there for eighteen years, although at that time, it had barely been eighteen days.