Voodoo(Tammy Ruggles) VOODOO
By Tammy Ruggles


Croy was 16. She stood nervously in front of the class with a book report in her hand. Not stylish, she wore unkempt clothes, had stringy hair and dirty fingernails, all of the things that flashed a green light to would-be bullies.

She was nervous. She’d been picked on before.

Students stared at her. She looked from face to face, book report trembling in her hand.

Among the students sat her star tormenters: Aisha, Kelsey, Jasmine, and Ruby.

The teacher cleared her throat.

“Croy, it’s your turn.”

Aisha leaned across the aisle to speak to Kelsey.

“Who would name their kid Croy?”

Titters from the kids.

Kelsey said, “Her clothes look like they were found in the dumpster behind the Goodwill store.”

Jasmine added, “Her mother’s a psycho. In and out of the bin.”

Ruby: “Dad killed himself.”

Aisha: “I can see why, with her for a brat.”

More titters.

The teacher slammed her book onto her desk.

“That will be quite enough!”

To Croy she said, “Continue.”

Croy opened her mouth.

“My topic is the media and how it…”

Titters, titters, titters.

The teacher gave the tormenters a stern look.

Nervous, Croy swallowed, her fingers trembling.

“How…how it influences…”

Jasmine’s whisper: “Trailer trash.”

A handsome male student named Craig looked at the tormenters.

“Hey, ease up, she can’t help it.”

With her finger, Ruby made crazy circles at her temple.

Croy dropped the book report on the floor and ran from the classroom.

The teacher put her hands on her hips.

“Aisha. Kelsey. Jasmine. Ruby. To the principal’s office.”

Groans and grumbles came from the girls—laughter, high fives, and wolf whistles from the other students as the girls rose from their desks and exited.

The teacher’s eyes followed them.

“Didn’t your mothers ever teach you not to make fun of those less fortunate than yourselves?”

The perpetrators walked down the hall, past the principal’s office, and into the girl’s restroom, where Aisha lit up a cigarette.

“Put that out,” Kelsey giggled. “We’ll get in trouble.”

Jasmine lit a cig too. “We’re already in trouble. Might as well have a smoke before we’re sent home.”

Ruby sneered.

“All because of that skank. Anybody ever show her how to wash her hair?”

The door opened and Croy stepped in, red-eyed from crying.

Aisha’s eyes raked her.

“Boo hoo. Why don’t you clean up?”

Croy opened the door to a bathroom stall.

Aisha grabbed Croy’s hair and roughly jerked her back.

“Are you IGNORING ME, skunk?”

Croy’s teeth gritted, and she silently cried as Aisha pulled her over to the wash basin.

“ROY, since your mama didn’t teach you how to wash, I will.”

Aisha shoved Croy’s head under the soap dispenser, pumped the soap out all over Croy’s head, turned the water on full blast, then shoved her head under the force of water.

Aisha cackled.

“Try being clean for a change! You might like it!”

Croy grabbed Aisha’s hands, tried to escape, but the other girls held her head under the faucet.

Croy cawed with pain.

Aisha pounded Croy’s head against the porcelain sink.

“Shut up, Roy!”

Croy sobbed quietly.

The door opened with a creak, and the tormentors scrambled for stalls as someone came in.

Croy was left sobbing at the sink, hair and clothes drenched.

Croy’s teacher pulled paper towels from the dispenser and helped dry Croy’s face.

“Come on, honey. I’ll take you home.”

The teacher put an arm around a tearful, disheveled Croy and led her from the restroom.

A few minutes later Croy sat damp and silent in the passenger seat of her teacher’s car, staring out the window at the rural scenery passing by.

“That was cruel of them,” the teacher said. “But sometimes…you can improve the situation yourself. If you’ll let me help you…I think we’re the same size. I have some new clothes you may like. Tags still on. We can have fun with it. Girl’s day out. Makeover. Hairdresser. Jewelry. Whatever you want. You’re a very pretty girl, Croy. You just need to…fit in more.”

Silence.

The teacher stopped the car in front of Croy’s house, a run-down trailer with a raggedy clothesline in the back yard. There were broken windows, rust stains on the siding, and bird droppings on the stoop.

Croy opened her car door to get out.

The teacher smiled sadly.

“I really am sorry, Croy. If there’s anything I can do…”

Croy walked toward her trailer, up the steps, and inside.

The teacher gave a lingering look at the rusted door, then drove away.

Croy stepped inside of the trailer to find her mother, a tiny, frail woman, sitting in a wheelchair and drinking from a bottle of whiskey as she zoned out to a soap opera on TV.

Croy walked over to her, gently took the bottle from her, and carried it to the kitchen. The room was a reflection of Croy: Crusty dishes were piled in the sink, roaches crawled over the countertops, and trash mounted in the corner. Ceiling-high stacks of her mother’s old yellowed books towered everywhere like weaving sentinels. History, anthropology, world religions, dark magic. All lived with them.

Croy poured the whiskey down the drain, and headed back to her mother.

The woman crowed heartily.

“Did you see that?! She kissed that married man! I told you they were into it!”

Croy smiled a little, covered her mother’s lap with a shawl, then went to her bedroom and closed the door.

She opened the bottom drawer of her dresser and took out a backpack, opening it to find some clothes and accessories.

But not her clothes and accessories.

Nice things. Like her teacher had meant. Nice things that belonged to Kelsey, Aisha, Jasmine, and Ruby.

Croy had taken the items over the span of six months while the girls were showering after gym class.

Stealthily, one piece at a time, so as to go unnoticed.

A sock here, a handkerchief there. A hair ribbon. A feathered bracelet. Buttons. Stocking.

Croy’s mother began a drunken rage in the living room.

Her show was over. She was yelling at the tube now.

A lamp shattered to the floor. Furniture toppled. Glass broke.

Croy knelt next to her bed to make a doll. She stuffed balled-up socks into a stocking, sewed on button eyes, wrapped strips of the clothing and ribbon around it, used feathers for hair, then stitched the name “Aisha” along the length of the doll.

Two things she learned from taking care of her mother; patience, and sewing.

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One week later…

The classroom was quiet because the students were taking a test.

The teacher was engrossed in a book at her desk.

Finished with her test, Croy sat in the back of the classroom, put her pencil down, and opened the backpack. She pulled out the Aisha doll, along with a stickpin, then, satisfied no one was looking, because no one ever did, stuck the pin into the doll’s head.

The silence of the classroom was pierced by Aisha’s cry of pain.

The teacher looked up from her book.

“Aisha?”

Aisha fell from her desk and onto the floor, holding her head as she writhed and groaned.

Craig and Kelsey knelt to help her.

The teacher rose from her desk and said, “I’ll get help,” as she left the classroom.

Croy pushed the pin in harder, and turned, smiling as blood dribbled from Aisha’s ear.


The End

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