I LEAVE THE ADAM AND EVE LOVE ATTRACTING CANDLE BURNING IN THE BATHTUB FOR 8 DAYS
I wasn't trying to find a man. At first.
I was hoping to get rid of my boss. I knew this would take some serious mojo, so I headed to the botanica – the one that's nearly a hundred years old, the one that Zora wrote about.
I asked the proprietor, Miss Clarice, the best way to go about it. Her first suggestion was Peace Powder. I could sprinkle it on the carpet of the conference room, and then my boss would track it out on his shoes. I thought about it, but the truth was I didn't want peace. I wanted him fired. That called for Boss Bend-Over Oil.
I put the bottle on the counter and just on a whim, I mentioned to Miss Clarice how lonely I'd been lately. Suppose, just in theory, that I wanted a man. How would one go about accomplishing that?
“Wait here,” said Miss Clarice, and disappeared through the curtains into the backroom. I'd seen other clientele enter the backroom, but clearly it was Invitation Only. Soon enough, she came back with a shoe box filled with crumpled tissue paper that cradled a candle, what’s known as a talisman candle or saint’s candle. It was scarlet.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” she asked me. “Are you sure you can handle
what's going to happen?”
“What is going to happen,” I asked with some trepidation.
Miss Clarice looked at me as if I were a fool. Well, fair enough.
A long pause ensued. She returned to the back and brought a different candle, this one rose-colored.
“This one's for romantic love, everlasting love,” she told me. “Do you have someone in mind? If so,
write his name here on the part that looks like a scroll and says ‘My Beloved.’ Otherwise, leave it blank.”
I could tell she knew that I would leave it blank.
“It has to burn for eight days,” she emphasized. “Day and night.”
“That, uh, that sounds dangerous,” I said.
“What you do is put it in the bathtub if you have to leave the house.”
Oh, of course.
“There's a prayer to Venus printed on the back. Read that every morning and every night,” she added.
“Silently or out loud?”
She rolled her eyes. “Out loud.”
Ten days later, I was at a jazz club and ran into a man I used to know.
Back to the botanica. “Miss Clarice, now I know which man it is, but I feel as if I need a little something more.”
She gave me a small cloth bundle – something that looked home-made – and told me to wear it inside my bra.
The first time that man and I tumbled into bed, it fell out onto the coverlet. When he asked what it was, I just smiled.
Sharon Weightman Hoffmann is a writer based in Atlantic Beach, Florida. Publications include The New York Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Banyan Review, Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives (Harvard University), and Isle of Flowers (Anhinga Press). Previous awards include fellowships from Atlantic Center for the Arts and Florida’s Division of Cultural Affairs, and two Pushcart Prize nominations.