No, its Pagn, actually; theres an accent on the second a.

And if were being really

technical, its Pagn.

Or Pagan, I guess, if its in English.

My grandmother was a witch.

She could make us feel better after scraping a knee or being sick with a quick chant,

sana, colita de rana, si no te sanas hoy que te sana maana, sana sana sana, which

loosely translated, was her calling on the power of a frogs tail to heal us, if not today,

then tomorrow. And no matter what our family might have been going through, it only

took a table-full of her cooking on Christmas or Easter to calm the waters for enough

time to forget why the grown-ups were mad at each other to begin with.

She used to speak in tongues, you know, my sister tells me one day, during the

ceremonies. I think thats why Titi Di is so okay with me practicing. She is telling me all

about her new religion Santeria.

She tells me that my grandmother practiced Santeria decades ago on the island a

religion that many people from old world/old school Puerto Rico including my own

father saw and still see as brujeria. Witchcraft. In reality, the Roman Catholic church

didnt like that Santeras were paying homage to so many different saints and deities so

they turned the magic of seeking guidance from ancestors into something ugly and evil.

I wonder what my grandmother thought. In addition to being a witch, she was a gives-no-

fucks retired educator who did and said whatever she wanted. She strikes me as the type
who would have embraced that label. And it turns out, if you go far back enough in my

familys blood line, youll find African shamans, Tania medicine women, and other

practitioners of magic leading all the way up to my sister and me. Witches. Pagans.

Pagns.

My sister, it turns out, is also a witch. I see signs of her ritual everywhere. The spirit

figura at the front door; the photo of gramma on her alter; the roses and pearls she

tattooed on herself after gramma died.

I start to wonder if/wish/hope its in my blood.

There is a box, somewhere in my grandmothers basement, that holds the recipes

passed down to her from her mother and her mothers mother, and her mother before

hers. Cards and scraps of paper in English and Spanish that were committed to memory

and evolved over time. My mother and aunt tell me its lost.

A witchs tome, the place where she holds her most important spells and potions passed

down from generation to generation, is called her Books of Shadows, and this box was

my grandmothers. According to the women in my family, its lost. But I know one day, it

will find me.

I stand in my small apartment kitchen.

I turn to page 294 to double check the rules of converting instant yeast to active dry. The

book is balanced precariously on the edge of the sink and has somehow miraculously not

fallen in. The pages are spotted with flour and handwritten notes from that first foray into
these breads during that magical week when I bathed in love and good energy. It seems

like it was millennia ago, though it was only a few moons.

I look at the ingredients. Four things. Yeast. Flour. Salt. Water. Used in different ways,

these four things can become transformed to endless end products that I, slowly but

surely, am starting to grasp and experiment with. A lavender and honey sweet roll for

relaxation. A rosemary ciabatta for mental clarity. A chocolate and rose lava cake to

share with a lover.

Its a matter of chemistry really. Or rather, something else something more ancient.

Potion-making. Alchemy. Witchcraft.

Vince: brujo de la cocina.

Vince the Kitchen Witch.

Has a nice ring, doesnt it?