The Wizard on 114th

Late Summer afternoons had always painted the buildings along 114th Street in a haze, and there was a particularly orange hue today. Sumaya, swinging her legs over the edge of the fire escape at the back of her family’s apartment, imagined herself on a foreign planet. She had learned in science class this year that not all stars were yellow like our Sun, and she thought the idea of days being blue or orange or even green with neon pink stripes was very exciting. The orange, though seen before, still played upon her imagination.

She had lived in this apartment for nine years – all of her life – and knew everything there was to know about her block. She knew Qassem, the mailman, who loved chomping pickles as he delivered the mail, so the letters always smelled like vinegar. She knew Marvin, the barber, whose loud laugh could be heard whenever his shop door swung open. She knew the Sullivan, Montez, Fontaine, and Greige families who all lived in her building and said hello to her and her family, and she knew the Erickson family, who did not. She knew the smells of the street: the grilling meat from the park around the corner, the steam from the subway exhaust in the middle of the street, and the fresh shawarma slowly rotating in the food truck right beneath her feet.

She had sat on that fire escape every day she could to watch the people, listening to their conversations, inspecting their clothes, watching them kiss and shout and – on occasion – fight. She even had names for the usual characters on the block she hadn’t met formally. There was Gertrude, the lady with the crazy fingernails and always wore a fancy hat. Celina and Fernando were the couple who would always fight with each other in the street, but you knew they loved each other because they didn’t close their bedroom blinds at night. And of course, Ike, the trashman who grunted and grumbled as he heaved boxes and bags into the chomping jaws of his truck. During the Summer, when school wasn’t in session, this was Sumaya’s world – 114th Street, and she loved watching it all happen beneath her outstretched legs.

However, in the fading orange glow of this evening, she saw something she had never seen before – a small figure, fully covered by a cloak, limping its way out of the alley between the bodega and Marvin’s barbershop.

“I wonder if that’s a magical wizard,” she thought to herself, recalling her favorite story from English class this year. Sumaya had really related to one of the characters in that book; she was the smartest kid in her class, too.

As she watched the unfamiliar character hobble down the street, they did an unfamiliar thing. The cloaked person wandered into the middle of the street. Now, people were always walking into the streets of the city; it was almost a right of passage to cross outside of a crosswalk, but they were always just in a rush to get where they were going. To Sumaya, this cloaked figure didn’t seem in a rush at all; instead, they were sort of stumbling in circles in the middle of the street, and cars were beginning to honk. Eventually, the cloaked wanderer seemed to gather their balance and, to Sumaya’s great delight, sat down in the middle of the street.

People were getting out of their cars now, shouting at Sumaya’s little wanderer. After some time, he scampered to his feet and slowly turned around, returning the stares of his onlookers. He shouted something that didn’t even sound like language to Sumaya.

“A magical spell?” she thought to herself, excitedly.

The cloaked figure then moved out of the street and traffic resumed to normal. She watched him enter the bodega and exit a few minutes later with a paper bag in his hand. Sumaya assumed it must be a snack or perhaps magical ingredients, but, instead, the stranger drank from the paper bag.

Sumaya stared, hard, after that; she was shocked to see that the bag did not leak.

“That’s got to be magic,” she said aloud to herself. She had never seen anyone drink out of paper before – not without it spilling and leaking. She ran into the apartment and fumbled haphazardly to get her shoes on. Poking her head back out the window, she was just in time to see the back of the wanderer’s cloak flutter into the alley from where it first emerged.

She lingered in the windowsill for just a moment, looking out over 114th Street, her world, but now it looked different and new. It shined bright in the magical glow of the final few minutes of sunlight. The dogs in the park were no longer barking, they were whispering old spells to one another, chanting and reciting. The stranger had transformed her would, and Sumaya knew this was magic.

As she sprinted down the stairs, she thought of the spells she’d want to learn. A laughing spell to make people always as happy as they were in Marvin’s barbershop. A love spell so people could always get over their fights like Celina and Fernando. A no-stinky-smells spell to prevent Qassem’s pickle-fingers from stinking up their mail. Most importantly, a friendship spell to help the Erickson family and her family get along. The Ericksons had a daughter a year younger than Sumaya, and she would very much enjoy having another friend to play with in the building. She had always loved her home on 114th Street, but if she could learn magic, it could be even grander.

As she walked out of her building, she was surprised to see that the sunlight had faded, and the streetlights had buzzed into existence across the street. She snapped a branch off one of the bushes that lined the sidewalk in front of her apartment building. Brushing off the leaves and pulling off some of the pointier stems, it looked to be a good wand. Better painted purple, covered in glitter, and topped with a star? Perhaps, but it would do for her meeting with the wizard in the alley. At the very least, he would see that she took magic very seriously.

She waited at the crosswalk for the orange light to change to green and imagined being able to change the colors to something more interesting. She flourished her makeshift wand in the air and was very pleased with herself that the light changed just in that instant. As she crossed the street towards the bodega, she saw Marvin locking up the door to his barbershop. Even though no one was with him, and no one was around him, he was still smiling and laughing to himself quietly.

“His laughing spell must be very strong,” she thought to herself. “It’s still affecting him.”

“Susu!” He exclaimed, upon seeing her walking towards him.

“It’s Sumaya, not Susu,” she insisted. This was a little game they always seemed to play, and no matter how many times she corrected him, Marvin always called her Susu. She would have to fix his memory once her magical training was complete.

“Do your parents know you’re out across the street? It’s getting late.” Marvin looked across the street at Sumaya’s building to try and catch a glimpse of her mom or dad.

“They know.” Sumaya lied without knowing why she did it. “I’m just grabbing something from the store.”

“Ok, but make sure you hurry back. There have been some weird people on the street today.”

“Yeah, like the wizard!” She said out loud.

Marvin looked at her for a moment before throwing back his head and giving a great, big belly-laugh. She could still hear him laughing as he walked around the corner and off 114th.

She walked over to entrance to the alleyway and gave a few looks around. She knew wizards were sometimes very quiet people and might not want to be seen, especially this wizard after all the trouble he had caused in the middle of the street earlier.

Sumaya took a few cautious steps into the alley. It didn’t look like the sort of place a wizard would hide out; there were old boxes and bottles and tiny plastic bags all over the dirty alley. At this particular moment, she would have much preferred Qassem’s pickle smell to the combined trash of the barbershop and bodega.

“Who’s there then?” She heard a voice call out from what looked to be just another pile of garbage.

“Who’s there?” The voice said again. It was more emphatic and sounded angrier than the first time. Sumaya thought he must be a very private wizard. She almost turned to run home, but she felt the wand in her hand. She sensed its magical potential and knew she had to see if she had the same potential as her wand.

“It’s only me.” She said, steeling herself against the gruff adult voice.

“And who is me?” Returned the wizard. Just then, the small, cloaked figure took a stumbly half-step out of a tarp that had been hanging over what Sumaya thought was a trash pile. Clearly, this wizard had a camouflage spell. Her older brother had told her about camouflage one night and she was eager to learn to use it for games of hide-and-seek at school.

“Me, Sumaya, and I want to learn to be a witch,” she confidently declared.

The stranger pulled the hood of his cloak down from over his face. He seemed to Sumaya to be a very old man, perhaps thirty or even forty years old. His beard was long and messy, and his hair was longer and messier. His face was blotchy and marked with red spots; his lips were cracked and bleeding, and his eyes had a glossy, faraway expression to them.

“If he was a wizard, maybe he wasn’t a very good one,” Sumaya thought.

“A witch? What do you wanna be a witch for?” The man asked, now sounding more confused than scared or angry.

“Well, Mr. Wizard, I –” he cut her off.

“Mr. Wizard?” he asked. “You think I’m a wizard?”

“Well, yes.” She innocently replied. “You have a cloak, and a long beard, and a secret hideout.”

The man took a moment to consider that. He looked down at his appearance and gave a sort of nod and smiled to himself, which Sumaya took to be an admission of his magical status.

“Could you teach me some spells, Mr. Wizard?” She asked him. “I promise I will practice them every day, and I won’t tell anyone where I learned them from.”

The man opened his mouth to respond, but he took a moment. His eyes seemed to take on a new life; his expression had now completely softened, and even his voice seemed warm when he replied to her.

“No, my dear young witch, I cannot teach you any magic.” The stranger said. He did not miss the crestfallen look on his unexpected guest’s face.

“I cannot teach you any spells because I am too old, and I have used up all my magic. Magic is something that is strongest when people are young, like you. Do you have a strong imagination, my dear?”

Sumaya thought about this for a moment and nodded doubtfully at the stranger before he continued.

“The most powerful magic comes from our imagination, and it is something that young people have plenty of. If you want to learn spells, you must practice with your imagination every day and see what a wonderful world you can make for yourself. Anywhere, anyone, and anything can be magically transformed with your imagination. Do you understand what I am saying?”

Sumaya said she did, but she didn’t quite understand why the wizard’s lack of magic meant that he couldn’t teach her any of the spells he knew. However, as she thought about her afternoon on the fire escape, she remembered how the world began to change for her as soon as she had seen this cloaked man. She remembered the light that changed with the wave of her wand, and she smiled.

“I will practice my imagination spells every day, Mr. Wizard. I promise.”

“There’s a good girl.” He said. “Now you run home; it’s getting late.”

She turned and started skipping towards the exit of the alley. When she had gotten back to the sidewalk of 114th Street, she turned around to yell her thanks, but the cloaked man had vanished. Sumaya made a pout over him clearly having enough magic to disappear, but she shrugged it off and continued back to her building.

The next afternoon, Sumaya was again at her spot on the fire escape, swinging her legs back and forth over the edge and watching the people of her little world go about their days. Qassem had just walked out of the bodega, pickle in one hand and some letters in the other. Marvin was standing outside his barbershop laughing with various passersby, and the lady with the long fingernails was trying to text on her phone directly beneath Sumaya, but she seemed to be having trouble pressing the buttons.

The next person out of the bodega surprised her; it was the wizard. She didn’t think she was going to see him again; she thought that her finding his hiding spot would have made him move along a different street and a different person’s world.

As he walked out the door, he reached in his brown paper bag and removed a wet hand.

“There he goes again,” Sumaya thought. “Using magic to drink out of a paper bag.

He tilted his head back and took a big gulp of his magical potion. He looked immensely satisfied as he took it away from his lips. As he went to take another, his gaze went up and across the street. He saw Sumaya, and Sumaya waved enthusiastically at him. He stood there for a moment as if he were trying to remember her, which she felt was very rude after she had introduced herself to him so politely only yesterday.

After a few moments, he must have placed her because he returned her wave heartily and had a big smile on his face. From this distance, she couldn’t see how messy his beard was, or his yellow teeth, or his cracked lips, or his pock-marked skin. All she could see was her friend, the wizard, with his magical potion.

Suddenly, in the middle of their exchanged wave, he stopped and put his paper bag on the ground. He looked carefully all around him. Sumaya watched as he slowly put a single finger up to his lips as if to swear her to secrecy. He took a small stick out from under his cloak. Sharply, he flicked it at the street lamps which, to her amazement, immediately turned on. She looked up and down the street to make sure they were all on, and when she turned back towards the bodega, the wizard was nowhere to be seen. She stood up from her seat and looked and looked, but she couldn’t find him anywhere. He had simply disappeared.

As she sat back down in her spot and slid her legs through the slats of the fire escape, she saw the entire world of 114th Street become magical again, and she couldn’t help but imagine what magic she might find on other streets throughout the city as her world grew. With that thought towards her own future, she smiled to herself, thought of her wizard, and whispered one word out loud.

“Abracadabra.”