Shrinking Violet

There was once a girl so quiet, she ceased to exist.  

It was the stale crescendo of suburban summer. Molten mornings unfolded into golden afternoons. Each day was indistinguishable from the last. Outside, kids from school were biking to the abandoned lot behind the high school or drinking beers knee-deep in the neighborhood creek’s sauntering waters. Skipping stones as the current tugged at their bare legs and drying their browning skin in the grassy bank’s tall weeds. 

Violet hadn’t left her room for five days. 

In fact, Monday morning’s grueling march to and from the mailbox at the end of the pavement would be her last trip outside. She hated the way the white walkway parting the oak trees left her exposed. The hot concrete scorned her bare soles. But the brown paper parcel tucked among the junk mail alleviated the sojourn.  

Now, Violet sat vigil. Criss crossed on the tufted carpet, splayed across the morass of throw pillows on her bed, in front of herself in the arched vanity mirror. She watched the clock tick. She followed her goldfish as it wound like a carousel in its tank. She glued cutouts from gossip rags into her diary. She had no stories of her own to fill its pages. 

Twice a day, her mother knocked on her door frame to drop off meals so bland, Violet was sure she wouldn’t miss them. She kept the entrance to her blue chamber open, but on most days her mother dared not pass the painted threshold. Old dolls draped in doilies were Violet’s sole devotees. Their watchful eyes, placid pools. Peeling prints, windows to the world outside, plead with her to join. 

“I really don’t want to see you still sitting in this room tomorrow,” her mother chided during a lunchtime delivery of listless chicken and soggy green beans still bathing in their own juices. Violet answered in her usual way: steadfast silence.  

Violet was born quiet. She didn’t cry out in the delivery room at birth, much to her mother’s chagrin and the doctor’s discomfort. In school, she was never asked to lower her voice during lectures. As you might imagine, she was regularly likened to all manner of silent flora and fauna. Wallflower, shrinking violet, church mouse. If she raised her hand in class, she was a crustacean coming out of her shell. Violet liked the way it felt, hidden in the underbrush. But, her mother needn’t worry. By tomorrow, Violet's small frame would cease to occupy the powdery bedroom.    

 Charm School:  

Training Tome  

Spells, Incantations, and Enchantments for the Amateur Witch 

Violet had spotted the handbook two weeks ago in a mail order catalog. She promptly called in to have it delivered directly to her house. She hoped it might contain a remedy to the ailment of her existence.  

She cracked its bruised, purple spine. Flipped past a page labeled “Hex Your Ex” and another instructing “7 Ways to Spell Love,” until she reached “Occult Theater 101: The Disappearing Act.”  

“Admonish enemies, malevolent spirits, and unwanted admirers.”  

The guide made no mention of making yourself disappear, but Violet figured the chant was adaptive, considering the script was a fill-in-the-blank Mad Lib.  

From under her bed, wrapped in a dishtowel, Violet unearthed her mother’s ivory special occasion candlesticks. They had never been lit. Violet had stashed them away along with a box of restaurant matches. She felt a tug of guilt as the match’s flame stirred to life and she touched it to the first candle. She watched its waxy wick blacken and quickly moved on to the rest of the set. 

The booklet instructed that the witch in training acquire an item belonging to the desired disappearee and place it at the center of a candle-lit circle. Violet peeled the limp, fleshy bandaid from her scuffed knee and stuck it to the carpet.  

“Rattling winds, earth and sea,” she began to read, and the white flame flickered.  

“Accept this humble plea to thee” she thought she felt the carpet quiver against the prickle of her unshaven shins. Like blades of grass wrinkled by a breeze.  

“Your bounty swift, your love divine (the speaker gestures to the sacrificial item) 

Bestow your hands’ gift unto mine.  

From clouded sky to frothing shore 

Ensure (name of loathed one here)’s form is no more.”  

Disappearing felt like the moments before falling asleep. Or like when Jonathan Davies had given Violet a piece of weird smelling brownie at the spring dance, and she lay across the bleachers counting the paper stars below the gym rafters. The room around her wasn’t gone entirely. She could still feel the shadows of its girlish blues and purples, blurry and buzzing around her. She wanted to stay there forever. Encased in this cloud that seemed to be moving further and further away from the life she knew.  

Then a slam from downstairs yanked her from the reverie. Violet was back in her room with a thud. She hadn’t noticed her mother leave nor did she hear her car growl into the garage. Violet suddenly hated her bedroom, with its posters of places like Paris, beckoning her to join the world outside, and the purple printed flowers growing up the wallpaper. The firm floor hurt the back of her legs more than ever.  

She began again.  

“Rattling winds, earth and sea, 

Accept this humble plea to thee, 

Your bounty swift, your love divine  

Bestow your hands’ gift unto mine.  

From clouded sky to frothing shore 

Ensure -”

“Violet honey,” 

Uneasy feet were croaking up the hardwood. Her mother was using her birthday voice. The one she borrowed for special occasions when no one showed up but the neighbors’ begrudging boy with the freckles smeared across his pink face. 

Violet hastily bowed towards each candle and whispered out the nervous flames. Their smoke fled to the corners of Violet’s room just as her mother appeared in her doorway. She was cradling a box swaddled in silver paper. Violet winced as her mother pushed the book aside to sit on the floor next to her. She looked stiff and out of place in Violet’s unchanging bedroom. 

“I have a surprise for you,” she cooed, forcing a sad smile, and Violet almost forgave all the miserable meals. “I thought you might like to wear this to the rec center pool sometime.” She held the package out towards Violet. So it wasn’t really a surprise. Violet unfolded the metallic wrapping. She painstakingly lifted the paper lid of a recycled department store box to reveal a square bathing suit top and matching bottoms.  

She tugged on the pink, stretchy material covered in optimistic strawberries. The fabric snapped back like bubblegum on the sidewalk.  

“Thanks, Mom.”  

“I saw it and it reminded me of my sweet girl. I thought it was about time you got a two-piece.” It was quiet. Her mother looked around the room. She picked up a matted teddy bear from the foot of Violet’s bed and patted down its fur. Then she put it back down, propping it upright against the bed frame. Violet chewed her lip.  

“Okay then, Honey.” 

“The swimsuit’s pretty, Mom.”   

“I thought you could wear it with those cute red sandals I got you,” she said, getting up to excuse herself. 

“Yeah, good idea.” 

Her mother hovered in the doorway for a moment as if thinking of something else to say. When nothing seemed to come to her, she retreated down the stairs.

Violet hadn’t really considered what her mother would do all day once she was gone. Her mother who bought her things she didn’t want. Things for a different daughter, the kind who drove around in the sun with her girlfriends and lay by the pool socializing with boys. Her mother who prepared three meals a day, as if she were overseeing a regular family of four. Maybe if Violet were gone her mother would continue to shop for this daughter who never existed. Violet shook her head, trying to rattle the thought out. She stuffed the tissue paper back into the box and shoved it under the bed. Violet relit the candles. 

“Rattling winds, earth and sea,”  

She began to recite the spell again. She tried to focus on the light feeling of disappearing. But her mind kept pulling back to her mother. Alone in that big stupid house. Petting Violet’s teddy bears. Grilling chickens for no one to eat. Going up and down those stairs.  

“accept this humble plea to thee,”  

Violet was begging of the universe to take her away. 

“Your bounty swift, your love divine,” 

Would her mother eventually find the bathing suit under her bed? 

Bestow your hands’ gift unto mine.  

Violet longed to be gone, to feel glittering oblivion,  

From clouded sky to frothing shore 

But her mother- 

Ensure Violet’s form is no more,”  the last words of the spell tumbled from her lips.  

Violet felt herself wilt into the dead meadow of her floral wallpaper. 

The mausoleum of her girlhood locked around her. Violet had vanished, but not completely. Here she would remain in the walls of her mother’s home.  

---

Violet shortbread

Ingredients 

• 1 cup salted butter (softened)

• ½ cup granulated sugar

• 1 ½ tsp violet tea (room temperature) 

• 2 cups flour 

• 2 tbsp violet tea (dried violet) 

• 1 tbsp sugar  

Instructions 

1. Beat butter on medium for one minute. 

2. Add sugar and violet tea and beat for another minute.

3. Add flour and mix until just combined. Roll dough into a disk. Cover and chill in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. 

4. In the meantime, grind dried violet with a mortar and pestle. Add to 1 tbsp sugar. Set aside. 

5. Slice or cut out cookies with floral-shaped cookie cutters. Return to refrigerator for 10 minutes. Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes. Rotate tray halfway through. 

6. Sprinkle with violet sugar immediately after removing from the oven.