Susanna Rich
Knock on Wood,
Grandmother Mumchy taught me, if anyone says anything good. And not just any wood. Can’t be a door, its jambs, or a windowsill. Knocking on doors or windows (as others might to be let in) is to invite Satan to whoosh your good luck away. A table works, a shelf or tree, but never a cane, for obvious reasons. Best to use a wooden pencil, one of those miniature golf ones, or a toothpick, which you should carry, anyhow, for your gums. Keep them in a snapping change purse, car ashtray, or the bottoms of pockets for when there is only chrome and glass, as in a supermarket, bus, or, especially, a doctor’s room.
Has to be upward, the knocking—send your luck toward heaven, where Satan will not go. To knock downward is to send your good luck to hell. This is where most Americans go wrong: knocking downward. And on their heads, would you believe?
The knocking has to be after the saying of something good—not before. Otherwise, really, how can you seal the goodness in when the words fly out with nothing to stop them from flying away. And the knocking has to be three times, the magic number, to call on the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Wouldn’t hurt to Father-Son-and-Holy- Ghost more than once, either. If someone is saying something good about us, we need all the nailing down of it, all the God-help-us we can get.
Better still, don’t say anything good about you or a loved one—not “you have beautiful teeth,” not “you’re going to get well,” not “there’s not much traffic today,” not anything about having or getting anything good. That’s just an invitation to all the deeply jealous Lucifers, Heras, and Medusas, who resent you your life and want to mess it up. Better to bite your lips bloody than to brag like a trumpet about your new phone, your Pilates, your climb up some mountain. Best not even think it—the it of life and wealth and happiness—evil spirits can smell your thoughts through your skin. And wham.
Never predict anything good about the future—all the would-bes—the I-guarantees—the don’t-worrys that might be so reassuring in times of trouble. To predict something good is either to place it on hold in the never-happens, not-now, if-only-if future, or, to dash it, outright, in the present. Meanwhile, avoid people who say or predict what you want—the seeming well-wishers who are only trying to make themselves look generous and good. They know what they’re doing or they’re stupid. Stupid to be saying good things, raising a flag, a blood arrow, a cosmic pointing finger for the demons to come: “Here. Here’s something for you to feast on.”
And Mumchy and I created our own out-smartings—say something good and knock it on wood to make it so. Or say something bad, and knock it on a windowsill—three times down—and fool the Devil into throwing it out.
And there were other ways-to-power Mumchy taught me: if you step on someone’s heel, you will be at that someone’s wedding. So, if a friend is deathly ill—step on her heel to guarantee she will live long enough to married. Whether she is already or wants to be, doesn’t matter. And I cannot sit at the corner of a table for a meal, cannot even stand or sit for long with a corner pointing toward me for fear that I will never get married. Of course, I am married, have been for decades, and feel vindicated of my shameful rituals, my assumptions of witchy powers when I learn that, by the lights of Feng Shui, corners are poison arrows, have to be blunted by trees, in the case of neighbor’s gables; doilies, in the case of end tables.
While we’re at it, when the new moon slices, at last, through the night, like a secret, I rattle coins I keep in my pockets and repeat Your mama and papa come here, Your mama and papa come here—meaning of course, make me rich, make me rich. And I wear red, like the robe Jesus wore (not that that saved him, I once said to Mumchy). And never yellow, for that’s asking to be sick. And if someone says something mean, pull down your eyelid and spit three times—like this, this, this.
Mumchy was my magician and seer, lending mystery, for sure, and a tentative power, at least, to my life. To this day, despite my—Father-Son-and-Holy-Ghost career and Father-Son-and-Holy-Ghost marriage, I stand in front of stairways calculating whether there are an odd or even number of risers, so that I will land on the top step with my right foot. As if that might guarantee that my day would turn out, as they say in Hungarian jobb meaning better or right—the right foot forward. And not left. Sinister. Left behind.
Can’t help myself. Literally. That was Mumchy’s message, for, for her, there was no helping herself beyond these conjurings. She couldn’t help herself to a life she wanted: to be a ballerina or pianist—the center of attention for virtue or virtuosity, for beauty or beaux. Her superstitions—which literally means standing over (instead of being stood upon) are so imprinted in my muscles, that they form a kind of ghostly halo, an invisible armor—this then that, this then that—Mumchy’s spells that keep her with me: Stay sad, stay mad, stay bad about your own life if you want it to be good.
Susanna Rich, twice an Emmy Award nominee, is a Fulbright and a Collegium Budapest Fellow in Creative Writing. Founding producer of Wild Nights Productions, LLC, she tours her musical, Shakespeare’s *itches: The Women v. Will. Susanna is recipient of the Presidential Excellence Award for Distinguished Teaching at Kean University and author of five poetry collections, most recently Beware the House and SHOUT! Poetry for Suffrage. Visit at www.wildnightsproductions.com.