You Put a Spell on Me:

How I Became an Emancipatory Writer

 “…a magic spell is a discrete event in which the actor carefully plucks at the invisible strands of raw magic suffusing the world, pins them in place in a particular pattern, sets them vibrating in a specific way, and then releases them to unleash the desired effect--in most cases, all in the span of seconds.” Dungeons and Dragons

I remember vividly the day I discovered my writing voice. I was just under five years old. The sound of the West Texas wind scraping across the metal roof of the house woke me early. I sat up in bed and peeked out the window to see the hot sun bullying the wind into a squall that lifted and twirled sand devils across the desert floor. I got up, threw on my cotton pinafore and tiptoed across the house, out the screen door, and down the porch steps. I had crucifixion on my mind. A little over a year and a half earlier, shortly after my mother married him, my stepfather had driven us three hundred miles across the desert to the old, shingled house on the oil and gas refinery camp. Away from the home where I was born and lived with my family until my sister’s death and my father’s sudden departure. Everything had changed so fast that year, I still can’t remember who disappeared first. My sister, who died of cancer, my father, my home, my puppy, or me. I was sure of one thing: my stepfather was a sorcerer who was somehow connected to all these disappearances. This morning I would take away something from him.

The torturous trip across the desert to the camp was still fresh in my mind. We travelled for the better part of a hot day, my little brother and I sitting in the back seat of the purple ‘54 Ford, the car my stepfather called “Baby.” No air conditioning, no seat belts. We drank orange crush out of glass bottles, raising them above our heads to poke holes in the circles of cigar smoke that drifted above. Hot gusts of wind broke in through open windows, slapping me in the face. I was too young then to have a good grasp on language, the way I would thirty-five years later when I became a writer. But I understood what was happening; this charlatan had charmed my grieving mother into marrying him. A vulnerable woman whose oldest child died and whose husband left her with two small children. Now, he was going to make me disappear further into the endless, vast desert, so far away I’d never be seen again.

This morning, conditions were just right for casting a spell of my own. I’d conjure up one that would banish him forever and hopefully make my own family re-appear out of thin air. Just like the magician on the Howdy Doody Show who pulled the little bunny out of the big black hat. Crawling under the front porch on my hands and knees, I grabbed the big rusty nail I had hidden in the corner the previous day, backed out into the daylight and stood before the purple car. The sun was growing hotter. The wind stopped howling. I lifted the nail overhead and stood, perched above “Baby.” I might have said, “Abracadabra,” but, honestly, I don’t remember.

Plunging the nail into the passenger door, I slowly slid it down, opening the surface paint, revealing a deeper wound. There, I thought, now “Baby” would experience the pain I was feeling and, just maybe this would make my stepfather so angry he’d leave us. Anything felt possible to a child who’d been disappeared.

The funny thing is he didn’t notice what I had done to his car. Years later, when I told my stepfather about it, I’d hoped he’d seen my talent for wizardry, but he said he didn’t remember the event. I knew, and I had proof. The morning of the attack, the kids in my neighborhood gathered and we posed for a photo with the scarred car. See the photo above—that’s me, the little girl in the short dress, with my hands raised in the air—the same way I had stood over “Baby” before pouncing on her. My spell didn’t get rid of my stepfather but, looking back, I think my offensive strike on “Baby” was a first step in claiming my agency, by releasing my feelings into the world. If words are incantations, capable of casting magical spells, I’d mastered the first part of the trick that morning, using a nail as my wand.

For several years I continued to do things to drive away my stepfather and, eventually, he began to tell people he was afraid of me. “She can become a dangerous little tyrant in a second,” he said. “Her eyes widen just before she launches into a verbal assault.” Telling this to a young girl who believes in magic was not wise. Really, it only encouraged me.

Once in school, several gifted teachers directed my energy into learning how to read and write and, over the years, I grew pretty proficient at expressing myself in language. I learned to hurl words out into the air when I felt threatened or cornered and imagined them assembling themselves into a metaphorical shield. Each time I spoke up, something like an electrical charge ran through my body, a sensation I grew to love. After college, I put my gifts to work as a journalist where I was mysteriously pulled toward stories about exposing powerful people who took advantage of others. Or perhaps these stories were drawn to me. Either way, working as a reporter allowed me to indulge my need to express myself and perfect my craft. And like the nail-carrying child who attacked her stepfather’s car, I had an audience of readers who appreciated me.

In the 1980s, my first big job as a journalist placed me in the center of a political storm while I was working for a major newswire at the state capital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Ten years earlier, I had moved to the keystone state with my first husband and remained there after our divorce to raise my sons. As much as I disliked the cold, damp winters, there was an otherworldly feel to the southeastern part of the state, an area originally settled by the Susquehannock and the Leni Lenape Tribes who warred with each other until they encountered Europeans who came to the area, fleeing religious persecution. The cross-pollination of the tribes with the English, Swedish, and Dutch colonists left a cultural legacy that was present everywhere; in artefacts such as petroglyphs carved on rocks along parts of the Susquehanna River, as well as names given to small towns and creeks. Much of the history, though, was marred by tragedy. By the 18th century, a frontier vigilante gang, known as the Paxton Boys, launched a series of genocidal attacks, massacring several members of the Susquehannock Tribe. Those who survived, died of smallpox.

Photo by Tobias Keller on Unsplash

The Pennsylvania Dutch, German, Amish and Mennonite farmers who settled the area, planted corn and tobacco in soil that contained remains of the indigenous inhabitants who died on the land. Today, locals refer to this county as the “Garden of Eden,” an expanse of verdant countryside that yields extraordinary vegetables and flowers. The town of Paradise is one of the most popular tourist destinations and those who tour the idyllic farms in the area speak of the heavy air, filled with the odor of pig manure spread over the fields. I believe the air is tainted with the history of the brutal attacks that took so many lives years ago.

On evenings when I drove home from work, I often took the back way, crossing county boundaries on roads that zigzagged around farms, set against the Blue Mountains and marked with huge barns decorated with Hex Signs. Some historians believe the hex signs were more than Germanic art, interpreting their geometric star designs as talismanic emblems. As I passed them, I imagined small groups of farmers gathered inside, standing around a fire conducting pow wows or doing hex work, a Pennsylvania Dutch (German) folk magic healing ritual. I knew some of these rites involved the use of Biblical scripture, words that were charged with sacred meaning. Each night, my drive took me into liminal space that left me feeling hypnotized by the combination of the presence of spirits of those killed in the atrocities, and atmospheric changes caused by gasses and carbon escaping the gabled roofs of the barns, generated by the smoke and the recitation of incantations.

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I was transformed by this nightly commute, arriving home prepared to step out of the role of journalist, into that of the single parent of young sons. Things were tight and lean in those years: child support didn’t always come, and I lived on a strict budget. My children struggled with problems created by living in a single parent home. I was grateful to go to work each day at a job that allowed me to indulge in self-expression. To practice my magic—as it were. Soon, my presumption of privilege was thrown into question when I was assigned a news story so bizarre, it would cause me to fear for my safety.

On the heels of the Abortion Control Act of 1982, sponsored by Pennsylvania State Representative Stephen Freind of Philadelphia—-a law that was largely upheld by the Supreme Court— another debate on abortion erupted, setting off a controversy that pulled me onto the stage in a very public fight. Freind proposed legislation that would punish welfare recipients who used federal and state money to cover the cost of the abortions. A former district attorney from the City of Brotherly Love, Freind was threatening welfare recipients with jail time if they broke the law. The way his scheme rolled out in the halls of power was more like a curse against women than a sincere effort to protect life. One afternoon the debate heated up in the state house of representatives, tempers flaring between Freind and his colleagues when he refused to include an exception for rape and incest. His reason: “Women who get raped do not get pregnant.”

I was sitting at my desk in the Capitol newsroom, editing reports, listening to the session as it was broadcast on speakers. Several other reporters–mostly men–listened in but didn’t seem to be particularly interested in Friend’s points. As soon as I heard his crazy claim, I stopped what I was doing and walked over to the speaker. 

Did he say what I thought I heard him say? “Victims of rape don’t get pregnant.” 

I listened more closely as one or two lawmakers challenged him. He held his ground, repeating that it was “almost impossible” for a woman to become pregnant through rape. His proof? In a report published weeks later in the Allentown Morning Call, Freind said the stress from sexual assault “causes [a woman] to secrete a certain secretion, which has a tendency to kill sperm.” "A Canard that Will Not Die"

His argument triggered a deep, primal response in me. As an underpaid, single mother, trying to feed her children, I was not much different from the women he wanted to target. His political warfare felt personal, and it pushed me close to crossing the line of the professional standard that separated the journalist from the story. It was too close.  

I grabbed my microphone and ran out of the room, racing down the marble steps, across the rotunda and into the House of Representatives, hoping to get a statement from Freind before he disappeared into his office. When I got to the door of the House Chamber, I stood in the rear, listening for the speaker’s gavel. Bang! I ran down the blood-red carpet, past rows of ornate desks, past lawmakers dressed in expensive suits, to reach Freind. He was talking with a staff member, so I waited. 

Glancing up at the ceiling, my eyes focused on an ornate painting, splashed with gold leaf. I had not noticed it in the past. Called The Hours, the painting represents the passage of time illustrated by 24 maidens circling, endlessly, around the moon, sun, and the stars of the Milky Way. Here I was, standing in the hallowed hall of the massive chamber built for the 130 members of the legislative body of state government, a hall dominated, for the most part, by white men. I had stepped onto their stage and wondered if I was also dancing in a circle by chasing this news story? Trying to expose such a cruel attempt to punish women.

I wondered, did Freind believe himself to be an oracle or guardian of purity? I remember even being a little scared that he’d get angry at me for asking him to explain his beliefs.

“Hi, Jane.” Freind turned to me, smiling. He knew exactly what had brought me into the chamber, and I sensed his excitement about discussing his controversial legislation with a member of the media. The intensity in his voice as he launched into a frenetic explanation of his plans to punish poor women made my hair stand on end. Taking a deep breath, I continued.

“Will you explain your theory of rape and pregnancy?” I asked.

“Sure, I’d be happy to do so,” he smiled again as he spoke. I swear I saw saliva forming at the corner of his mouth.  “First, let me say I’m only doing this to keep women from killing babies as a form of birth control.”

Killing babies? What is he talking about? I was growing uncomfortable as one of only a handful of women in the large hall, but I pressed him to say more. It didn’t take much. “Please, Representative, explain your theory.”

“Oh, it’s not my theory,” he responded. He pulled a paper from his briefcase, waved it in the air and said, “Here’s a medical report that supports my statement.” Then, he repeated, “Women who get raped very seldom get pregnant. That’s because when a traumatic experience is undergone, a woman secretes a certain secretion which has a tendency to kill sperm.” His face contorted into that of a mad scientist—my apologies to scientists. ( "Freind backs off from Rape Statement")

“Can I have a copy of this report to use in my story?” I had to see this outlandish claim in writing. But he declined, quickly pulling it away and stuffing it inside his briefcase. This man is either delusional or he’s lying. “Will you tell me the name of the doctor who made this assertion? I’d like to speak with him.” 

“I will release everything when I’m ready to put forth the proposed legislation,” he said. 

When I’m ready, I thought. The arrogance! The privilege.

Not interested in arguing with him, I wrapped up the interview. He’d said exactly what he believed–that welfare women not only had no rights, but those who were assaulted possessed a magical, supernatural power that could kill. The very idea gave me chills, as I thought how closely his words parallelled the chants that must have filled the courtrooms during the Salem Witch Trials nearly 300 years earlier when nineteen people accused of witchcraft were hanged. They also had been the victims of Puritans who blamed women for economic hardship, political conflict and social unrest.

I turned and quickly left the chamber knowing that his plan was to generate consensus for his bill by construing abortion not as healthcare but as a practice used by women who concocted exotic brews to end pregnancies. In my mind, this was how vigilantism began and I was reminded of the history of the Paxton Boys who murdered members of the Susquehannock Tribe living in the county where my own house sat. But I did not fully grasp how his proposed legislation had the potential to touch my own life—as both a professional journalist, as a mother, and as a woman.

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

Back in the newsroom, my boss was excited about the story and made the decision to run it for days. Unfortunately, my male colleagues did not respond as positively to the idea. In fact, I was grilled. “Jane, why are you doing this? You’re ruining his career.” This, from a reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer, a cigar puffing, sharp-tongued journalist. What could he know about being a poor woman? I, who was supporting children on a single salary, understood all too well.

“No,” I argued, “he’s ruining it and I’m trying to stop him from constructing a legal attack on poor women who have been assaulted.” I must have yelled, gauging from the looks on the faces of the other men in the room, who stopped their work, got up from their desks, and began to listen to us. I knew I was being judged by them. For days when I walked into the main newsroom to pick up my mail, they stopped talking and stared. I knew they thought of me as a feminist, which, at that time, was pretty much like being called a witch.

Gradually, one or two newspapers picked up the story and eventually, it got more play. The major television networks covered it. Even the famous newspaper columnist Ann Landers wrote a piece about Freind’s sexist claims. Then he came under attack by educators and providers of rape counseling services in the area. Within a week or so the Kaiser Permanente Health Care Program in Reston, Virginia issued a statement on behalf of Dr. Fred Mecklenburg, an obstetrician/gynecologist, whose research had been the basis of Freind’s bill. The statement read, “He [Mecklenburg] regrets that his opinions were used to support Mr. Freind’s position.” "With Some Imprecise Remarks on Sexual..."

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Freind eventually addressed his misstatements, but he never apologized nor admitted his intention to re-victimize rape victims.

Although relieved when the amendment was finally abandoned, the whole experience left me feeling very alone. I was shaken by my choice to speak up, to step into the debate by pointing out Freind’s efforts to demonize impoverished women. A few weeks after the story died down, I ran into Freind in the hallway of the Capitol Building and he walked over to me and yelled.  

“I know what you’re trying to do. You want to ruin my re-election effort, and I won’t forget it either.” His words echoed under the huge dome of the rotunda, making me wonder, is this a threat? Suddenly, I began to feel the force of all the women whose lives had been sacrificed because they had dared to speak in halls of power. Women like Joan of Arc, those who were killed in Salem; Quaker Dorothy Waugh, who was arrested for publicly preaching in 1655. It struck me that I could be punished as well. As a journalist, I was perceived as a pawn whose voice needed to be diminished.

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I didn’t sleep well for weeks. I watched over my shoulder as I walked to my car in the parking garage near the Capitol each evening. Perhaps it was fear. Perhaps it was a collective anger bubbling up inside me, one shared by all women. The heightened emotion of covering the story made it hard to see the importance of stepping away from traditional journalistic writing, to take on the role of an emancipatory writer. Now, as I look back, it’s clear that I was writing to loosen the chains on my own voice, to free myself from the miasma of sexism and misogyny that hung in the air of the newsroom. I was punching holes in the metaphorical fumes of discrimination that polluted the space. As important as reporting the story was my need to address traditional media’s power to cultivate and maintain the mesmerism of manipulated passivity. If I’d allowed myself to be silenced as a reporter, I would have been contributing to the practice of upholding existing power structures, particularly patriarchal power. I’d be complicit in the continued silencing of women.

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

Years after this experience, I returned to graduate school, where I read the words of poet and feminist, Adrienne Rich who observes,

“No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness. When we allow ourselves to believe we are, we lose touch with parts of ourselves defined as unacceptable by that consciousness; with the vital toughness and visionary strength of the angry grandmothers, the shamanesses, the fierce market women of the Ibo's Women's War, the marriage-resisting women silk workers of prerevolutionary China, the millions of widows, midwives, and the women healers tortured and burned as witches for three centuries in Europe.” Blood, Bread and Poetry

Rich’s words helped me see the collateral damage inflicted on me as a reporter covering the story. On a personal level, I had always been aware of the potential to demonize, diminish, and silence women. As a professional who had questioned the human rights violations imposed on poor women; indeed, on all women, I was perceived as a threat to the established system. Now, I understood how important it was for me to be present, to be part of this debate—even as one woman with a small voice. I had stepped into a policy-making space where very few women were invited, and speaking up was a moral imperative. My work may have helped poor women, but it didn’t even touch the violence forced on women of color, whose voices were not represented in the debate at that time. Fortunately, as I write this, there are many more women involved in the movement for Reproductive Justice, including an organization working with women of color, called the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. But at the time, the field was pretty empty.

For years I’ve carried the traumatic memory of this experience, wondering if women would be targeted again. When I came across UCLA researcher and professor, Shelley Taylor’s 2000 study that contradicted the claims in Freind’s original bill I was encouraged. The study showed that exposure to stress caused women’s bodies produce “endorphins and oxytocin, which can lead to ‘tend and befriend’ behaviors.” The myth that women, like men have a “fight or flight” response was found to be untrue, “yet it is the standard to which women are held.” (Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females). Maybe, I thought, times have changed.

But my hope was vanquished by the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade. My initial shock and anger at the justices exploded into a rage when a month later, I read a report published by Poynter.org, stating that 15 states had abortion bills pending that did not contain exclusions for rape or incest. Poynter. All these years later, the realization that my role in trying to stop this out-of-control train ravaging women’s lives had been undone. The awareness of my lack of power came back to knock me over and it released a fury I carried in a deep subterranean place. Now, older and more seasoned as a writer, I decided to allow my anger to flare under its own force. I seethed with fury for days. Weeks. Eventually, my feelings boiled; then, bubbled and transformed into something stronger. A sense of belonging to a sisterhood, a feeling of solidarity. I knew my feelings about my experience with the news story all those years ago had alchemized, forging in me a determination that would not allow me to walk away from a call to use my power, to practice my magic.

I remember how my life changed in the weeks following the final filing of stories on the Freind antiabortion story. Each evening, I drove home more slowly, studying the landscape, using the silence to discharge some of my anxiety and residual anger. One evening, as I exited the highway, crossing into the rural area, things began to look different to me. As I drove past the red barns and farmhouses with candles flickering in the windows, I shuddered to think just how easily the air can be befouled with hatred. How easily words can be infused with power and spoken like incantations that are not meant to heal but to harm. How easily laws can be used to alter reality, to make targeted groups of people vanish. To make them invisible.

Photo by Bee Felten-Leidel on Unsplash

“A spell's duration is the length of time the spell persists. A duration can be expressed in rounds, minutes, hours, or even years. Some spells specify that their effects last until the spells are dispelled or destroyed.” Dungeons and Dragons 

To read more about this experience and the impact it had on my life, follow me on Story Carrier. You can also now pre-order my memoir, Story Carrier: A Collection of Tales of the Disappeared.