“I’m Artemis and I’m a princess,” Patience said in a falsetto voice, even higher than the regular tone of a six-year-old.
“I’m Apollo, and I’m a princess, too!” Jezebel added in her own play voice. She shifted the doll in her hand partly sideways, as if the entire figure was cocking its head at the doll in Patience’s hand. “Are you my sister, Artemis?”
It was a storyline from Twitches, an old Disney channel movie their father had shown them for Halloween years before, and a game they’d played many times before. Of course, the movie held little water in the face of Barbie dolls in ball gowns that were highly unsuited to the task of fighting an evil king.
“I think we’re twins!” Patience replied, bobbing her doll to indicate speaking. Then, in her regular voice: “Can you reach the bow from the box?”
Jezebel turned as far as she could from her position on her knees, but couldn’t see any bows. Handing Apollo to Patience, she pushed herself to her feet and padded across the carpet to the toy box with the doll clothes and accessories.
“This one?” she asked, holding up a purple bow that matched Artemis’ dress.
Patience shook her head, grinning. “No. Bow.” She lifted her arms to imitate shooting an arrow, despite the dolls in her hands, and Jezebel raised her eyebrows.
“Why do you want a bow?”
Patience cocked her head. “So they can fight the king. That’s how mama played it with me when you were gone.”
Jezebel’s stomach clenched and she shifted her weight to retrieve the tiny, doll-sized bow from the toy box. “Did mama play pretend with you a lot?” She took a seat again and traded the bow for her doll back.
Patience shook her head. “No, not a lot. But I played at school, and mama said a bow would be better for school.”
“You can’t take weapons to school or fight at school,” Jezebel countered. “Plus, they don’t need it. Artemis and Apollo are magic.”
Patience shook her head again. “No, mama said they shouldn’t do magic anymore. She said that the kids at school might get afraid.”
Jezebel’s hands were cold, and her throat felt thick. “Mama said that?” It wasn’t really a question, and Patience was too focused on trying to get the strung bow over Artemis’ head to answer anyway. “But they’re witches.”
“Now they’re arches.”
“Archers?”
“Yeah, arches.”
“My sweet girl,” Ekene Reed interrupted from the doorway, startling both sisters. “Come talk with me.”
Jezebel followed her mother down the hall and outside. Her breath plumed around her face and she wrapped her arms around herself. She blinked hard to clear her eyes and looked down at her feet, wrapped in slippers she’d had for years. They were familiar, and that stood out to Jezebel.
“My sweet child, why do you look sad?” Ekene asked, her strong arms copying Jezebel’s movements and wrapping herself in warmth as well. Jezebel was not surprised about the space; her mother was not prone to shows of physical nurturing until everything else had been said and done.
Jezebel scuffed her foot on the ground before answering. “Are you mad at me?” she finally asked in a quiet voice.
“Never mad,” came the thoughtful reply. Jezebel wondered at the hesitation. “I am scared.”
Jezebel looked up at the sound of warmth and sadness in her mother’s voice. It was the sort of tone that made her cheeks sting, even if she knew she wasn’t to blame for whatever was wrong. It just hurt to hear.
“Scared?” she confirmed, never having heard her mother admit to being scared before.
Ekene nodded. “I have never met a witch who could not help being a witch before. I do not think it is a sin to be who you are, but I am scared because I do not understand who you are.”
Ever prone to thoughtfulness herself, Jezebel considered for a moment. “I’m still your daughter,” she promised eventually.
A smile brushed the corners of Ekene’s mouth. “And you are a sister, too. I do not want that your brothers and sisters have a hard time in school, or that you do. I have four babies to keep safe.”
“Do you still love me?”
Ekene looked stung, her mouth opening part way and her eyebrows coming together sharply. With a jerking movement, she uncrossed her arms and put her hands on Jezebel’s shoulders. “You are my pride and joy. You are my first-born girl. I will love you forever, and I pray everyday that I am doing this right.”
Jezebel’s chest let go of the tension that she didn’t know she’d been carrying. “Doing what right?”
“Being your mama, my sweet girl.”
The world seemed a little warmer then, and Jezebel smiled as she reached forward to embrace her mother. “You’re doing great.”
A shout from inside broke drew both of their attention, interrupting the moment. Anthony, Jezebel’s father, came to the back door with wide eyes. He tugged the sliding glass open and pointed back towards Jezebel and Patience’s shared bedroom. “You’ll want to come see this,” he said in a hollow, strange voice.
Jezebel and Ekene exchanged a look before Ekene rushed inside, Jezebel close behind. Anthony followed lastly, walking behind them with some sense of resignation. He rubbed his hands on his face and took a deep, steadying breath.
“Look, mama!” Patience exclaimed, glee on her face as she ran into the hall to take her mother’s hand. “Jazz, look. Artemis and Apollo do have magic!” She led them back into the bedroom and pointed at the floor, where Augustine was sitting, watching the dolls with a mesmerized face.
Apollo and Artemis, for their part, were walking around their dollhouse, entirely of their own accord. They hugged before laying back on the floor and remaining still, as doll-like as they should be.
“Did you—?” Ekene started to ask, apparently not sure which of the two girls to direct the question at. Jezebel shook her head, and was surprised to see Patience do the same.
“Bubba did it,” Patience insisted, pointing to her brother.
Augustine blinked once, and then burst into tears. “I don’t want to be a girl,” he sobbed. “Marcus said witches are girls, I don’t want to be a witch.”
While Anthony and Ekene exchanged fairly panicked expressions – although whether they were for discovering a second vein of magic in their family, or for discovering a need to sit down and discuss this further with the oldest of their children, Marcus, who was definitively not magical wasn’t clear – Jezebel couldn’t help grinning.
“Boys are called wizards, Bubba,” she reassured him. “You’ll get to come to school with me.”
Patience maintained the cacophony by bursting into tears as Augustine's faded. "I want to go to school with you instead!" she demanded.
"Knock on wood," Anthony muttered. The room was quiet as three of the four Reed-Fischer children and Anthony's wife turned to look at him, surprised by the quiet man's sarcasm. Then, even more surprisingly, Ekene giggled, followed by Jezebel, and then the two youngest children.
An exasperated sigh from further up the hallway indicated Marcus' arrival and he scowled at his family, pushing his glasses up his nose. "I'm trying to study," he said. "I've got science homework over break."
Jezebel couldn't have said whether it was her muggle brother's love of science, or the fact that the universe had seen fit to put them on opposite sides of cosmic explanation, but his arrival only made the whole thing funnier for her and she doubled over. Ekene had to wipe tears from her face as she reached out to hug her oldest boy, ignoring his confused expression. Eventually, he too began laughing. Jezebel laughed until she couldn't, and hugged everyone as many times as she could, glad to know that she'd only mixed up her family, not broken it.