Night has come again, blanketing us in darkness and we sit, my sister and I in our matching rockers rocking, and mixing our tinctures, crooning the words that will bring about what we seek within the ingredients. The light of the fire is bright and burning red, swathing the walls in its rudy glow and making Etta when her face is mostly in shadow appear as she once had when she was young and all the men followed her with their eyes, their bodies springing to attention. She feels my eyes upon her and she glances up and smiles through her words at me exposing her toothless mouth. I smile back and my mind wanders back to long ago when we were both young, when our bones didn’t ache and our muscles could bend quickly and resiliently.
Next to me, Etta's rocker stops and when I turn to her, I can see her pale eyes staring at me, into my mind, perhaps envisioning herself through my memory. "Why do you travel there, sister?" She asks, her voice a mumble. "Those days only lied to us, spun our lives out from under us and burnt what was left."
"I was only remembering you." I say, glancing furtively at her, hoping that the anger that accompanied her in those years is not leaking back into her.
She simply shakes her head. "I don't remember who I was then." But I know she remembers. Sometimes I watch her pull out the paintings that painters came from miles around to paint of her, painted as the Madonna, the whore and Eve. The roles those painters cast her in never were simple, never bore a resemblance to who really lived beneath the sheer white skin and sky blue eyes. When she looks at those pictures, her eyes grow distant and somewhat dreamy, and I wonder if she is thinking of John or her children.
"Stop!" Her rocker has stopped altogether and she is staring at me, reading my mind, following me down the echoing caverns of time. "I can not go there, ever. Again!"
I look at her and nodd, pressing current concerns into my head, hiding my face from hers'. But time has grabbed me, has yanked me back in its sprialling circle and refuses to let go.