Evil Eye
By Jane Shore

When my daughter was two,
watching The Wizard of Oz on television,
the moment the Wicked Witch appeared in a scene,
Emma would walk, as if hypnotized,
to the glowing screen and kiss
the witch's luminous green face
in the same placating way
my mother used to kiss the little silver hand,
the charm she wore on a chain around her neck.

The day Emma was born, my mother
bought a yard of narrow red satin ribbon.
She tied a bow, several bows,
and basted the loops together in the middle
until they formed a big red flower
she Scotch-taped to the head of Emma's crib
to protect her while she slept.
My mother made a dulpicate,
in case I lost the first one,
to pin onto the carriage hood.
"You can never be too safe," she said.

My mother used to coo in Yiddish over the crib,
"Kine-ahora, kine-ahora,
my granddaughter's so beautiful."
And then suddenly as if remembering something,
something very bad, she'd go "pui pui pui,"
pretneding to spit three times on the baby's head.

My mother wasn't some fat bubbe from the shtetl.
She owned a business, drove a car.
I'd never seen her act this way before.

Sitting at her kitchen table, she lit another Kent.
"You should have given Emma an ugly name
to ward off the evil eye.
Harvey Lebow, the brilliant young concert pianist?
The evil eye was jealous, so it killed him.
Mrs. Cohen, who won the lottery
and went on a spending spree?
A week later, she had a miscarriage.
Remember Bonnie, the doctor's daughter,
you friend who died of leukemia
when you were growing up?
Her mother wore a floor-length mink;
they had a pinball machine
in their basement rec room.
That's like an open invitation."
My mother stubbed out her cigarette.

My hand fanned the smoke away.
"Ma, You don't really believe
in that hocus-pocus, do you?"

"Maybe not," she said, "but it doesn't hurt."