Salley Shannon

4 weeks ago | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Salley Shannon

Mama would take the petitioner into the back yard and ask him for a penny. It had to be copper, she would explain, and it had to be one the petitioner had on him, not something contributed by a bystander. She would spit on the penny, rub it on the wart, and then ask the petitioner to close his eyes and throw the coin far into the yard. That was it. “It will disappear soon,” she would say. And almost always, the wart did. Such is the power of the mind.