And Rudi had gone.
Gloria dropped the doll and closed the drawer, and sat back, smiling
gently. It was wonderful to be able to help people.
It was just wonderful.
_Find work. Find a job._
_Go to the employment agency._
_Start looking for work, right now._
_Get a job._
_It will be nice to have a steady job._
_Nice--_
Somehow, Mrs. Wladek fought off the voices in her mind. It was so easy
to succumb to them and to drift into the terrible things they wanted.
Mrs. Wladek did not want them at all.
A job, indeed!
But it took effort, all the same, to concentrate on herself instead of
the work, the job, the employment agency. It took effort to sit down on
a bench in the park, near the building where the case workers were, and
plan out the next step.
A witch, certainly. The girl was a witch and she had put a hex on Mrs.
Wladek, and that hex had to be removed.
How?
Mrs. Wladek thought first of the old woman in the store.
Certainly a gypsy woman would be able to take off a hex. Mrs. Wladek
remembered gypsies from the old country, laughing people with the
strange gift, witches themselves but always available for a price--
The gypsy woman.
Mrs. Wladek stood up and began to walk toward the park's exit. She
forced her legs to move, creaking, one step at a time, thinking to
herself: _The gypsy woman, the gypsy woman, the gypsy woman_--and trying
to ignore the voices in her head that went on and on:
_It would be good to find a job._
_Go right away to the employment agency._
_Right away--_
There were those who laughed--Marya Proderenska thought--and there would
always be those who laughed, but that did not injure her; for scoffers
she felt only a vast contempt. Had she not been shown in a dream that
the power was hers? Had not each of her husbands, even the third who had
contracted the fever and died with great suddenness in three weeks,
admitted to her that she had a power beyond that of any normal woman? It
was the power of vision and movement, the power of spell and
incantation.
The others called it magic, though no gypsy would call it so.
Marya Proderenska sat quietly in the back room of the little shop and
waited. A woman would come; she knew that, and the knowledge was another
piece of her power, and a proof of it. Farther she could not see, but in
the cloud of the future the woman was clear.
(What power Marya Proderenska had, a blond social worker had, too, and
other people; she had never been able to clear her mind of her own
superstitions enough to train the power or work very effectively with
it. The power was sufficient for her.)
Marya Proderenska sighed. The power demanded its own responsibilities.
She could not marry outside the clan into which she had been born. She
could not be seen on certain days of every month. During those days many
foods were forbidden her.
Thus the power worked, and thus she lived.
The woman would bring money for her, Marya knew. So she sat in the back
of the shop and waited, and sighed, until the front door sighed open and
Marie Wladek called: "Old woman, old woman!"
"Do you call me?" Marya said in her proud baritone.
"I call you, I call the gypsy woman."
Marya stood up and smoothed her old dress over the big-boned frame all
of her husbands had admired. "Then come to me," she called.
Marie Wladek crept into the room, her eyes saucers of awe. To speak of
witches was all very well, and a fresh-faced girl could give one fright;
but here was the authority and power of witchcraft, in this woman with
the fuzz of hair on her lip and the great trumpeting voice.
"I come for help," Mrs. Wladek said.
"I know why you have come," Marya Proderenska said. "You have a great
trouble."
Mrs. Wladek nodded. "I am bewitched. A witch has placed a hex upon me,
and I come to you to remove it."
There was a little silence. Then Marya Proderenska said: "The powers
will not do work without payment."
Mrs. Wladek dug into her ancient beaded purse and found a crumpled
dollar bill. She handed it over and the gypsy woman smiled and ducked
her head.
"It is enough," she said.