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Charms

by Shweta Narayan

Old Mrs. Farley waves the Daily Mail in Edith’s face and shouts, Did
you see this, dear? She always shouts. She’s half deaf, bless her.

That I did, Edith shouts back. She doesn’t add, When I put them up this morning, stiff as I was from the cold, and again every time another customer asks. Wouldn’t be Christian. Wouldn’t be good business, either. But how the old biddy thinks the papers got on the rack without Edith putting them there, the Lord only knows.

Mrs. Farley slaps the paper onto the counter, rotogravure picture up, next to her packets of willow bark and powdered mummy. Edith tries not to look at it. Fails. That smirking girl staring back with her cigarette, that ugly short hair, the shapeless dress with its silly fringes and its shameless show of calf, frivolous before the great dark mass of Flamel Hall. Girls these days, says Edith. What they wear. Her voice stays steady, but her eyes go to the headline. SPELLCASTING SUFFRAGETTES! And below that some inane babble about the wizards lost in the war, the London College opening its doors, that child dancing right in as though she belongs. . .