The summer I leave home, I find the snake on the threshold of Baba Yaga’s property. Blue, belly-side up, and curled perfectly like those rings Rumpelstiltskin spun his wheat with. It’s black eye melts under my tongue like a long-forgotten chocolate. I skirt the poor creature and continue my way through the neighborhood, careful not to look at the door of my former employer, lest she see me and draw me back into her home.

*

The neighborhood once resembled a Maud Lewis painting—feverishly bright with the hills and trees stacked on top of each other. In the summer, neighbors gathered at intersections, to laugh and drink. Commune. The evening let out the adults the way recess did for kids. Preteens ran wild with sparklers in their paws. Children rolled down hills, grassy knees and dirt elbows. Parents chatted with the older folks tending to gardens. Everyone knew each other’s names and had stories to share and memories to build.

That was my sister’s youth. Their eternal summer stretched into autumn, when kids bobbed for apples and dressed as animals. Adults bestowed handfuls of candy to eager treaters. My mother pushed a stroller up the hills, the cart loaded with dry ice and thermoses of Irish coffee. Her trail bubbled with a sugary fog that promised good and cheer.

My generation was different. Cold and shuttered. There was less money in the recession. Somewhere in there, my mother lost her job while my father had to work more. What children there were, stayed inside. Sometimes I remembered the warmer days and the excitement of Halloween, a wisp in my vision as I climbed the steep hills to the bus stop perched there.

The bus promised to take me far, far away from the frosty windows of my home—only to deliver me into the dark forest of middle school. Children threw rocks at me, morning and afternoon, each pebble nipping at my neck like a crow’s beak. Running, the ashen pine needles on the road left crumbs for me to follow to home, where my mother was entranced with her work, my father consumed by meetings in the city, and my sisters on adventures too mature for me. I was left alone and left behind.

One crystalline afternoon, the blinding autumn sun cast the tall trees in fugues of green honey. There were no puffs from the brick chimneys yet, but I felt the chill on my cheeks from the encroaching winter. Luckily, my red pea coat with its black-fanged buttons protected me from the worst of it, from the worst of everything.

That’s how I found her, the old woman in the belly of that charcoal road. With her, came the smell of freshly baked bread and rosemary. It was easy to fall under her spell when no one was there with me. In all the movies, kids walked home hand-in-hand with their parent, chipper as can be. My mother could’ve been waiting for me at home, but more likely, she was at her computer, staring endlessly at the news.

The old woman said she’d seen me coming and going, wondered if I lived nearby, and asked, “Would you help a dear old woman?”

I was a young girl, eager to be cared for, and if not cared for, then needed in whatever way I could get, so I made a promise—a deal—one that’s followed me for years to come.

For twenty-eight days, I followed the old woman into her home, the one that sat atop concrete stilts, grayed chicken legs, and she would lead me through her mirrored tower into the throat of the beast—the insufferably yellow laundry room, and showed me what needed washing and what needed folding. Her arms were brittle and I was young and able, so I cleared lint from its snare and pinched my nose against mothballs.

Between folding socks and sweeping halls, I milled through piles of eighth grade homework. Sometimes I sensed a husband in another room, sometimes a grandchild, but I tucked myself into the corner like a ghostly intruder. I never spoke to them because I didn’t know how; at home, the silences coiled tight around our mouths and the only noise I made was from the creak of the stairs on my way to my bedroom.

At dusk, the old woman freed me from my duties and warned of the lightless path and prowling wolves. The home next to hers had been abandoned for quite some time and she knew I was afraid of it. Even now, I don’t think she knew it was her kin that threw rocks. I sometimes wonder what she would have done if she knew, if anyone knew other than my closest friends.

The old woman paid me in twenty-dollar bills, gold for a child without allowance, and sometimes she’d press more into my palms, and I would feel guilt clog my veins. All I did was fold her laundry and feel worse for it. I could be doing more, I would think when observing the old woman, and then I would go home to the cold fireplace and dirty floors, and do nothing to help my parents. They never asked for me. I tucked sickles into drawers where no one could see, and wished upon stars for less work and more hugs. I knew from a young age disappointment was a curse worse than death. It bittered memories and made it difficult to talk of the past.

For twenty-eight days, I worked for the old woman, and then my foolishness seized me by the ankle. In an attempt to befriend my cold classmates, I joined them in a game of field hockey, which we played on the sickly green tennis courts of our middle school. In a tangling of snakes, I tripped and landed on my elbow. The milky bone fractured and with it, so did my employment with Baba Yaga.

*

Would it be a better tale if Baba Yaga had been furious? If she dragged me into her den, took my bones, and made a hearty stew with it? Fairytales require consequence, it’s why parents read them to their children. But I did not know this story at thirteen and my parents stopped reading to me long before that. I was not a teary-eyed Vasilisa clinging to her dead mother’s doll. There were tears in my eyes because the long afternoons spent with the witch up the road were better than the hours of silence waiting for me at home.

If the witch had been furious, downright scornful, wielding a pestle at my head, and branding my soul with curses—then I would have a reason to come back and make amends. But at home there was nothing for me to do; I could wash a million dishes and ace a million tests, but I would still be alone at the dinner table. There aren’t fairytales written for the adults to learn. The children will go on, unnoticed.

The truth is, the old woman up the road was not a witch. Like Baba Yaga, she was a nice woman. Her name was Rosemary, and she paid me too much, and after I broke my elbow, she brought me a golden tin of Whitman’s chocolates with flowers printed on it. I ate each one for every day I had worked for her and for every day it took me to recover, pretending I was the luckiest kid in the world.

*

I still have that tin. For years, I wrote wishes on sticky notes and sealed them with lipstick kisses. I want Ivan to like-like me and I want to be skinny. Damning things: I want to be famous. I want to write. I want to be loved. When I gave up on paper wishes, I emptied the tin into my recycling bin and realized I hadn’t spoken to Rosemary in ten years. Maybe that was a good thing; relying on fairytales kept me from taking an active role in my story—wishes can only take you so far.

*

As I walk through my neighborhood, a new chapter inks itself onto the next page. I am leaving soon. I don’t know when I’ll be back. I will take everything of importance with me, including the tin, which now stores pens, and my memories, which will find their way to the page.

A child screams in the distance. A dog barks, once, twice, ushering the burning sun away from the sky. I step gently through the amber pine needles. Trudging up the hill, my lungs remember their painful coil, a snake constricting in my chest. Fall is coming soon, and with it winter, but for now it remains summer. There are no puffs from the brick chimneys yet, and if I’m lucky, the cold won’t come so soon.

I turn around at the bus stop. No one with stones waits for me there. Our neighborhood is quiet, stories tucked behind curtains and doors, but still, my eyes peer into each crevice, searching, wondering if I’ll see pieces of myself in these weathered homes. Sometimes I see Baba Yaga in a big red coat. Sometimes I see her tending flowers and I look into her aged eyes, feel the weight of them like the chicken legs holding her house afloat. She waves at me on those days. Does she remember? I almost follow her inside, but then, before it can turn to night, I make my way home instead.

My mother is waiting for me at the kitchen table with a freshly baked batch of focaccia. She asks me about my day as she breaks bread, and I take it, eager for any crumb if it comes from her. The focaccia tastes of garlic, salt, and rosemary. Like home, and all the stories waiting there.