Now You Eat Dirt: How and Why I Killed the Wicked Witch
an excerpt

It was Pat’s story that intrigued me. Married to the attorney, she was pretty well off and had a housekeeper. This wretched woman decided she wanted John, the husband, and decided she’d just get rid of Pat and then take over John and the house. I loved it when she narrowed her eyes and started scheming.

She was a genius, very clever. She had little white packets of powder that she doctored Pat’s tea with on a regular basis. Whenever possible, she offered to make Pat a cup of tea. This made Pat sick, and in my opinion, really stupid since she couldn’t put together the busty housekeeper who always made her tea with the fatigue and melancholy she begin to suffer.

It nearly worked, but Pat being the blonde star of the show, the housekeeper was always doomed. She was around long enough to give me ideas. I spent some time over the Encyclopedia Britannica looking for information about what kind of powder could be put in tea and where I could find it. These essentials the housekeeper had managed to leave rather vague through all those weeks of tea-making. I imagine there were lots of kids thinking it might be a good way to off a parent or sibling, and the soap writers didn’t want to make it too easy.

I started slow, just offering to make the witch a cup of tea, now and then. It was painful to take things so slowly, but she mustn’t ever catch on, or I'd spend the rest of my life in the closet.

Convincing the witch to drink a cup of hot tea when outside temperatures reached 100+ each day, was a bit of a stretch. I decided iced tea might work as well. She not only went for this, she actually enjoyed it. I’d finally come around to her idea of a truly subservient child.

I worked on her for weeks, and all the while kept looking for the right kind of poison. The witch thought me highly motivated because I spent so much time at the neighborhood library. The Britannica was slim on ways to poison someone.

I began to experiment while still searching for the true ingredient. Dish soap was the best. Who knew it could cause rather serious diarrhea? It didn’t kill the witch, but I tucked it away for future use.

Other secret ingredients that made it into tea included cough syrup (tasted “funny”), shampoo (another great route to serious diarrhea), dirt (there was some justice in this and besides, it just sounded like a good idea), and even Elmer’s Glue, which didn’t really mix in well, and while a dash of cream helped fool the eye, not so the tongue. It got a mixed reaction. Research was going slowly. I was losing interest.

Until the night at the dinner table when the witch and “oh him” were discussing health issues. Cholesterol, high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, and such. Apparently the doctor she seen that afternoon (I hoped she'd decided to dress for the occasion) had suggested the witch cut back on some foods that might be causing her problems. Bingo!

The direction of my research changed. What foods would aggravate high blood pressure, for instance, I smiled sweetly and asked the librarian. She took my interest to be an effort to help a loved one avoid those foods and kindly helped me find lots of material on the links between salt and fat and high blood pressure and high cholesterol. The hardening of the arteries bit, I knew, was well handled by the copious amounts of black mountain raspberry swirl in the freezer.

During this time, the kid took to disappearing for hours. I think she knew something was up, and she knew the price to pay for having any part of it. She’d take her big, red, stuffed dog out into the side yard and play Hansel and Gretel. Cooking in the oven. Little kids are strange.

In an effort to add salt to the witch’s food, I began to offer my services as a dinner cook. Goodness! What a good girl I’d become, so helpful in the kitchen! Tea in the afternoon and dinner at night! I smiled and wore a little apron, planning whole meals around eggs yolks, salting freely, and serving gravy with everything.

The witch decided a nice reward for my change in personality would be driving lessons. Professional driving lessons so I “wouldn’t pick up anyone’s bad habits.” Like running over a fire hydrant.

I was already nearly a year behind every other teenager I knew who got a learner’s permit at 15-1/2 and a driver’s license at 16, not a day older. I had a lot of catching up to do. So, I started driving lessons and for two weeks went out daily for a couple of hours with a nice man from the A-1 Driving School who taught me all kinds of things—not so much about driving, but just the stuff the examiners looked for so I could pass my test and get my license, like "both hands on the wheel in the 10 & 2 positions," "make turns hand over hand,” and "use the side and rear view mirrors a lot." During this same two weeks, I was to practice as much as possible in the car I would be using for the actual test. Alright! The witch owned a sleek ’63 Chevy Impala drop top that I’d look pretty cool driving around town.

There was, however, the nagging issue of needing to have an adult in the car until I had my real driver’s license. Somehow I couldn't see me driving that fancy car with a naked passenger. I should have seen this one coming. The state and the witch had cooked this up as another means to torture me. “Oh him” was never around to take me driving and I wanted so badly to get my license that I finally caved and asked the witch to take me out a couple of times.

Just as I’d reach thirty miles an hour, without fail, the witch would shriek, and from the passenger seat grab the wheel and scream “slow down!” Slamming on the brakes and throwing her into the dash, I’d check my speed to see that I was going the exact speed posted. I’d try to tell her she had a skewed view of the speedometer from across the car but for the two or three miserable times with the witch as my co-pilot, it was always the same. She screamed and I screamed back. “I AM going the speed limit, look!” “You’re trying to kill me!” (She knew!)

She had a mean right swing. This I knew from years in the back seat as she drove and disciplined simultaneously. Now I could confirm that she also had an effective left swing from across the console to the driver. Just as powerful. Just as effective. The witch was ambidextrous. She had to die.

The professional driving lessons were easy; the test not so. I failed my first attempt. We started with parallel parking and despite the really good tricks I’d learned in lessons (like imagining a piece of tape in the rear window), I managed to bungle it and the examiner called off the rest of the test. I think it took me two tries, but that was one too many for him, even though I’d smiled and been sweet and everything like the instructor coached me.

The witch must have assumed I’d fail because she planned a really special dinner that night—liver and onions with cooked cabbage. I hated her. I hated liver and onions almost as much, and cabbage, equally as much.

Next time out, I passed with a perfect score, as my driving teacher told me I would, and came home the proud owner of a REAL driver’s license. I was so happy! Freedom! Oh boy!

The witch let me drive around the block. Over and over and over. Then, two blocks. At three, I took the wheel in my own hands and drove the kid and me to Vic’s for hot dog sandwiches and ice cream. We were gone nearly two hours. I couldn’t see out of my left eye for two weeks. The kid slept under her bed and wouldn’t come out for meals. It was ok, they were too salty anyway.

Cross salty, fatty food, and poisoned tea off the list. Slamming her into the dashboard, as well. There had to be another way and I would find it. I took to sitting on the floor all day just outside her line of sight, staring at her naked glory and listening to her slurp the blackberry swirl.

She was going to die; the only question was how and when.