The Silence of Witches

Sabrina Orah Mark’s monthly column, Happily, focuses on fairy tales and motherhood.

Edmund DuLac, illustration for The Little Mermaid, 1911

I have a dream my mother is standing at my front door crying. Her hair is wet and tangled in seashells. She’s read a story I’ve written. “How could you,” she says. “Your own mother.” She opens her coat and out march my husband, his daughters, my brothers, my sons, my father. I try to run away but they catch me by the collar. “How could you, how could you, how could you?” they chant. “Your very own mother! Your very own us!” I’ll stop writing. I’m sorry. And I do. I stop forever, and instantly my lips and hands are dotted with mold. White threads spread across my face where mushrooms begin to swell. I grow wild with silence.

“Oh, for god’s sake,” says my mother. “Forget it. Enough with the drama.”

“But my silence is real,” writes Maurice Blanchot. “If