On procession days, the elephants get dressed up in bright colours and parade through the city. I’ve never seen one up close, but I can imagine them, with their trunks as friendly as a human hand. My mother tells me that when she was growing up she kept an elephant as a pet. It waited for her every day after school. They were best friends.
We went to the temple once, my mother and I. Everyone was burning incense, standing next to each other at these huge shrines. The smoke was so thick that my mother started coughing, and then we had to go back home, because if my mother coughs too much then she might spit up all sooty black, collapse in to herself, and die. She’s one of those people, where you don’t know if they’ll be around for long.

My mother was in bed for a week, after the temple happened to her. That whole week, I stayed home from school. My aunt came over and brought vanilla yogurt and canned peaches. She fed me peaches with the tiny spoon I like a whole lot, the one that’s my favourite. Sometimes she went to check on my mother. She lit incense and waved it all around the room. I know because I saw her. I was standing in the doorway. There was so much blue musk. I don’t know why she did it. I thought my mother would wake up and splutter, would swallow her own tongue. I thought my mother would die. But she just lay there, sleeping, and sometimes her nostrils wrinkled.

My aunt would come out of the room and sit on the couch with one knee folded over the other. She always wore a skirt cut short so I could see her big legs, and pantyhose with ladders in them, wide enough for ants.
I watched my aunt carefully that whole week, because I didn’t want her to kill my mother and make me an orphan. My aunt had short black hair and big cheeks and she watched a lot of game shows on television. She ate tubs of yogurt in a single sitting and was always laughing, even when there wasn’t anything to laugh about.
I realized that my aunt was a witch.

I stopped watching television and stayed in my room. I kept the door closed, just in case. Around nine o’clock, right before Double Jeopardy, she’d knock twice. When I didn’t answer, she’d leave a mug of coffee outside my door.
It was how she cast her spell. Every night, after I heard my aunt’s snores deep and heavy in the living room, I opened my bedroom door. The mug of coffee was always chipped, filled to the brim with brown-black sludge. I’d take it in both hands so it wouldn’t spill, and I’d go to the kitchen, and out the back door.

The grass in the backyard was wet and cold. No matter what night it was, the grass made the same squelchy sound under my feet. It felt like hundreds of little hands were pulling at my toes, trying to drown me in earth. I couldn’t stay in one place for too long, or they’d get me.

The monkey-puzzle tree was in the farthest corner of the yard. Its branches stuck out, sharp and spiky. It was the only tree that wouldn’t die when faced with so much poison. I wanted it to forgive me, so I closed my eyes and hummed an elephant procession song as I poured the coffee into the ground.

I had to leave my bedroom every night, because no matter how much money the contestant could win my aunt never forgot to set her trap. She never forgot to poison me, just like she was poisoning my mother. She brought me seven cups of coffee.

On Saturday, everything changed.
I woke up really early. It made me worried, because it meant that something big was about to happen. It was one of those cool mornings where the sky looks as pale and runny as an egg. Nothing was moving, not the sky, not the sun, not the squirrels that usually wrestled outside my window. I couldn’t even feel my own body moving.
I got out of bed. My feet were cold but I didn’t want to open the door of my closet, in case it was a trap. I went outside in my bare feet.

The hallway was empty, and the clock wasn’t ticking.

Everything looked preserved, like someone had coated the room in plastic wrap.
I went to the living room first. The TV was on, but there was no sound. It was the weather report. On the screen, it said that we could expect sun with clear skies. The couch was empty. There was a plate on the coffee table, covered in crumbs. There was another plate next to it, and it was coated with grey ash.
I walked to my mother’s bedroom. Her door was closed, the way it had been for the whole week. She wouldn’t let me come and visit her because she said that I wouldn’t understand.

I knew that she was trying to protect me.

I stood at the door with my hand on the knob. I couldn’t hear anything. When I turned it, it squeaked. I pushed the door open.
The curtains were drawn. They were different curtains, white lace this time. The sun was out. It poured through the windowpanes. The glass was clean and shiny.
My mother sat on the bed, propped up by pillows. Her cheeks were pink.
My aunt lay next to her, holding a plate of cookies, laughing at nothing.
They both looked up. My mother’s eyes crinkled at the corners and she smiled. “Come here, my little elephant,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”
I took a few steps forward. My aunt set the cookies down on the bedside table and stood up, stretching her limbs. She looked at me, but didn’t smile.
“You’re up early,” my mother said. She pointed to the steaming mug on the table next to her—blue, chipped. “Would you like a sip of my coffee?”