The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The children were the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe.  The oldest one was the lion, mean, pacing back and forth, as in a cage.  He roared at them, and he told them what to eat and for how long to stay in the bathtub to be sure they were clean.  He let them use bubble bath, the purple kind the witch liked because it smelled like their mother when she used to tuck them in bed at night.

The witch was the middle child.  Sometimes she dressed in a pink dress and wore a silver crown to blow bubbles on the front steps with the neighbors.  More often, she painted her face with green poster paint and ran around the house, breaking her grandmother’s glasses and dishes.

“I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too,” she cackled, clicking together her red shoes.

Now it was the lion who went out to bring them Chinese food from around the corner.

“Come.  Sit and eat,” said the lion.

“I’m not hungry,” said the witch, galloping around the table.

“I got your favorite, Pork Fried Rice.”

The witch sat down at the table and took a few bites.  Then she got up again and ran around the table.

“Kung pow!” she shouted, kicking the kitchen chair over to the floor.  She sat on the other chair and took a few more bites.

Oh, but it was the young one who played his part best of all.  He was quiet, and sat at the table still as an armoire with the side arm upholstery thinly clawed by the cat, and the stuffing just barely showed through.  The lion helped him cut up his meat.  After dinner, the wardrobe sat on the couch and the television blared, or sometimes he sat at the front window looking out even when there was nothing to see.

Their parents were gone.  Long gone.  The wardrobe never knew the father because he had been shot dead before the wardrobe was even born.  And their mother had been gone so long that the witch didn’t think the wardrobe remembered her anymore. 

 The witch remembered her mother would tuck them into her big bed on the nights she wasn’t working as a nursing assistant for the old ladies at the personal care home.  She let them fall asleep there as she read Where the Wild Things Are and Goodnight Moon and then The Chronicles of Narnia when they were older.  Together, they watched their mother’s favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz, from their pillow fort on the couch.  They watched it every year when it was on television.  Their mother’s eyes were red from crying when the movie started, but by the time the black and white part was over, they were all eating popcorn and popsicles from the Pop’s Market on the corner.  The witch was usually asleep on the couch by the time the flying monkeys appeared. 

*

Once, their mother took them along with her when she went to see the doctor.  The lion sat calmly, filling in a grade one mathematics workbook.  The witch, wearing a bright orange ballet dress, opened and closed all the drawers in the examination table.  She played with the lid of the red trashcan.

“Stop it,” said her mother.  “Please sit down.”

The doctor knocked and came in the room.

“Well, hello.  And what brings you in today?” said the doctor, his voice lilting up and down.  He sat down on his chair.

“I have these spider bites on my body,” said the mother.

 “I never saw no spiders,” said the witch.  She jumped up on the table.

“Any spiders,” corrected her mother.  “Well,” she said, laughing nervously and turning her arms and legs over for the doctor to see.  “It seems they’ve bitten me all over.”

The lion erased a mistake with a fat, pink eraser while the doctor prescribed antibiotics for the infection.  The lion scurried to finish his page while the doctor finished his notes. 

“C’mon, let’s go,” said their mother, putting the prescription in her purse.  “Now.”

The lion stuffed his workbook, the pencil, and his eraser in his red and blue backpack.  The children followed their mother down the long, dim hallway.  The witch skipped ahead while the lion turned to wave goodbye to the doctor from the end of the hall.

The mother stopped the car on the way home.

“Where are we?” asked the witch.

“At my friend’s house.  Keep the doors locked and wait here in the car.”

The sun was going down, and the witch shivered in her ballet costume.  The lion covered her with a blanket, and she fell asleep in his lap. 

“Who wants hamburgers and French fries?” said their mother, getting back in the car. 

At home, the mother turned the television to cartoons and left the McDonald’s bag on the kitchen table.  She took her own bag back to her room, slamming the bedroom door behind her. 

A few minutes later, the lion walked quietly back the hallway.  The door wasn’t shut the whole way.  He pushed the door open.

“Mom, do we have any more ketchup?  I used mine all up.”

His mother was sprawled across the bed.  Blood dripped from her arm.

“Mom!”

She startled awake and looked up groggily.

“What?” she said.

“I just wanted some more ketchup is all.”

“It’s in the cupboard behind the peanut butter,” she said.

“OK,” he said.

The lion padded back down the hall to the kitchen, got a chair to stand on to reach in the cupboard behind the peanut butter to take out the ketchup.  He took the bottle and some more napkins into the living room.  He turned the volume up on the television and sat on the couch next to the witch.  He settled back to finish his French fries.

*

Not too long after that was when the mother lost her job as a nursing assistant and went to work nights at Pop’s Market.  She was pregnant again, and that was how the wardrobe came along.  Once there were three children, she didn’t take them with her anymore.  By then, the lion was old enough to stay at home with the other two.  She told them not to answer the door for anyone.  If the baby cried, the lion gave him a bottle.  She left food for them, and the lion was old enough to make sandwiches or to heat up soup in the microwave.  She would be back by the morning to get them up for school.

“It’s almost bedtime,” said the lion.

The witch was dressed in a princess costume.  She had dressed the wardrobe in a hat and scarf.

“He’s my prince,” she said.  She sang a song to him, and he smiled at her.

“Let’s get your pajamas on, and we’ll all get in the bed,” said the lion.  “What story do you want to read?”

After the baby fell asleep, the lion put him in the crib and climbed back in the big bed to go to sleep next to his sister.  In the morning, he awakened to find himself alone in the bed.  Their mother wasn’t home, and the witch wasn’t in her room either.  He found the witch asleep, curled up in the crib next to the wardrobe.  He woke them both up.

“Time for school,” he said.

He got them all dressed and got them cereal to eat.  He put the baby in the stroller and walked with the witch to their school.  He had to take the wardrobe home because there wasn’t anyone else to stay with him.

A woman came to the house that afternoon after they picked up the witch from school.  She opened the screen door and knocked loudly on the wooden door.  The lion and the wardrobe looked out the front window.

“Don’t open it!” shouted the witch.  She skipped around the house in her pink witch dress, yelling again and again.  “Don’t open the door for anyone.”

The door bell rang, and the young woman rapped on the glass.

The witch went to the front door, pushed the curtain aside, and licked the glass.  She threw a naked Barbie doll at the window.  She crossed her eyes, stuck her fingers in her ears, and screamed with her mouth wide open.

The lady smiled a tight smile, waved her hand good bye, and went away.

The next morning, the telephone rang.  The phone never rang.  The witch hadn’t been sure it even worked.  The phone rang again.  The lion picked it up.

“Hello?”

It was social services calling to say that they were being moved from their mother’s house to live down the street with their father’s mother.  The children hadn’t seen their mother since.

*

The grandmother raised them as she had her own children.  She had a heavy hand and believed children should be quiet.  When she prepared dinner, she did not listen as the lion told her which foods the witch preferred.  Her fingers were gnarled and her knees were always stiff.  She had difficulty climbing up and down the stairs, so she mainly stayed in her bedroom on the second floor where the toilet worked.  The children did what they wanted when she was upstairs. 

When the lion couldn’t find the witch, he often found her in the big closet in the kitchen.

“I’m having tea with the fawns in Narnia,” she said.  “Have some eggs and cake.”  She offered him half of her Pop Tart.

“It’s time to go to school,” the lion said.  He put on the kids’ jackets and put the wardrobe in the stroller.  The witch and the lion dropped the baby off at the daycare and then walked to school.

For several years, a social worker came to check in on them.  Those days the grandmother bustled around the house cleaning.  She sent the witch around the corner for groceries.  She told the witch to bring back bananas and a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, dry pasta and a can of tomatoes.  The witch liked bananas on her peanut butter sandwiches, so she did as she was told.   The smell of spaghetti and meatballs wafted around the house every time the lady arrived.

The last time the social worker visited, she told them she was leaving the agency to go to another job.  Her position had been eliminated due to funding cuts.  Her final report would say it seemed the children were doing quite well under the care of their grandmother.  They were clean and well-fed.  Their case would be closed.  The oldest was very nearly old enough for majority. 

They all stopped going to school after the grandmother died.  The lion called the ambulance to take her away.  Even before that, the lion was only going to school a few times a week, and the witch went to homeroom to check in, and then left class to sit behind the school.  The wardrobe had been going regularly, but now he was ten, and no one could make him go, so he stopped too. 

            *

The lion paced.  He slept on the couch, waking suddenly in the night to watch the door.  He held guard against an unseen army that might attack at any moment.  He took his mother’s old job at Pop’s Market.  It was still just enough money for them to get by.  He made the wardrobe go back to school again.

The witch mostly did her own thing.  As she got older, she ran in the streets or stood with some kids she knew from the school in front of the Chinese restaurant around the corner smoking cigarettes.  Occasionally, she sat on the couch next to the wardrobe watching the television.  Most nights, she stayed over at a friend’s house. 

At the friend’s house, they listened to music and danced barefoot, singing the songs they heard on Showtime at the Apollo into a hairbrush.  The witch didn’t like talking on the telephone, but her friend called for information about auditions for Amateur Night.  They needed identification to prove they were 18.  The lion didn’t want her to deal with the guys who made fakes, but there was a kid from her year at school she could ask.  His brother could do it. 

They practiced in front of the mirror for each other, putting on wigs and heavy eye makeup.

“This could be it, our big thing,” said the witch to the friend the night before the audition.  “We’ve gotta do it.”  She looked in the mirror, pulled the brush through her long blonde hair.  “Let me see your lipstick.”

Early the next morning, they caught the first bus to New York City, and then they caught the train the rest of the way to Harlem.  They huddled in the back seat, checking their profiles in the foggy window.

“Should I wear my hair up or down?”

“Do I have lipstick in my teeth?”

The girls tripped in their heels walking the last two blocks to the theater.  When they finally arrived, the witch tossed her pony tail over her shoulder.  She tugged on her skirt and folded the top band over so now it barely covered her hips.  The friend flipped her head so her hair spiked up.  They took turns with the compact mirror to put on more eye makeup.  People were lined up around the block.  They could just hear a man with a megaphone at the open door of the theater giving out instructions.

A door opened just behind where they were standing at the end of the line.  A tall man came out and started to appraise the line.  He looked the girls up and down and moved on.  Someone in front of them did a handstand, but the bouncer only rolled his eyes.  A man with a monkey wearing a striped hat got tapped on the shoulder.

“No animals permitted,” said the bouncer.  “Only singers, dancers, and comedians.”

The witch’s stomach rumbled as they got to the front of the line.  The friend hopped on one foot.

She hopped faster when they got inside and spotted the show’s host at the front of the audience.  Both girls squealed and jumped up and down.  Only a few performers were ahead of them.  They watched the performer with the handstand trick.  The man in front of them rapped a few lines and was sent off stage.

At the steps to the stage, they handed in their information cards.

“You get twenty seconds each,” said the assistant at the table.  “We’ve got your numbers here, and we’ll call you if we need you to come back.”

The friend went first.  She stood at the microphone and belted out a ballad from a singer who had recently died.  She hit most of the high notes.

Then it was the witch’s turn.  From the stage, she peered out into the dark audience.  She could see the producers sitting in the front row.  She said her name into the microphone and was just about to sing.

The door on the other side of the theater opened.  The late afternoon sunlight shined in from the street.  She saw a man walk in the door, and an assistant approached him.  She watched their quick conversation.  The man motioned to her on the stage, and the assistant let him stay.

The witch sang her song and was ushered off the stage.  She saw it was the lion standing at the stage door waiting for them. 

“You girls need a ride home?” he said.  He had missed work to drive his car up to get them. “We can stop on the way home for burgers and fries.”