Hawthorn

Photo by Chuck G on Unsplash

“Are we Irish?” She’d asked.

“Well, my grandma was half Irish, so that makes you…” Her mom paused. “One sixteenth Irish!”

Is that enough? she wondered, under the red-berried Hawthorn, wrapped in the black witch’s cape and hat her mom wore every Halloween. Except this one. She could hear shouts of the last trick-or-treaters—middle schoolers emptying bowls on porches with signs instructing: “Please take one.”

She reached into her pumpkin candy bucket, which contained no candy, and pulled out a warm, wax-paper-wrapped package. She unwrapped it and gently placed the lump of mashed potatoes on the ground at the root of the Hawthorn tree, a ghostly blob in the deep dusk.

“It’s an Irish tradition,” her mom had told her, “to put mashed potatoes under a Hawthorn tree on Halloween night, for the fairies.”

“Fairies,” she whispered. “I brought you potatoes. Will you help my mom come home from the hospital?” The night grew darker.

Silently, someone appeared.

The gray kitten from across the street. He sniffed the potatoes, licked them with his tiny pink tongue, then butted his head into her hand. She lifted the warm, purring creature and they flitted home.

My first time entering the #FallWritingFrenzy!