The unnamed narrator, an obstinate and sensitive fifteen-year-old girl, is arguing with her mother about her new boyfriend. She believes that her mother is evil and also probably a witch. The two of them live alone and it isn’t clear how the mother supports herself without a husband, though the narrator suspects it has something to do with her mother’s strange potions and the counseling she provides other women. The neighbors and children at school call her mother crazy. In her defense, the mother explains that she is trying to do what’s best for her daughter. She has read the boyfriend’s Tarot and learned that he will die in a car crash. To save him and herself, the narrator must break up with him. The daughter tries to fight back, but she’s afraid to test her mother’s powers. As instructed, she breaks up with the boyfriend. Later, she finds out the boyfriend became a drug dealer and was gunned down in the street. The mother convinces the daughter of other supernatural occurrences, like turning her father into a lawn dwarf. As a child, the narrator would visit her father perched in the yard and ask him for an ice cream. As a teenager, she’s outgrown this childish belief. She hears rumors that her father abandoned them and begins to question her mother’s stories.
After college, the narrator learns that her father is alive and they arrange to meet. Aside from being a recovering alcoholic, he's disappointingly normal. Their reunion doesn’t lead to a warm and loving relationship because her father hasn’t told his new family about her and is afraid of what her mother might do. Not long after, he dies of cancer. Her mother cries at the funeral and says that she was once very in love with the father. The narrator marries and has two daughters of her own. She keeps them away from her mother because she wants them to have a normal childhood. As her mother ages, she stops caring about her appearance; she isn’t cooking or making potions anymore. The daughter worries that her mother’s delusions have gotten worse. Then her mother suffers congestive heart failure. The daughter visits her bedside and asks her to admit that she made up all those stories about being a witch. The mother says that she did it to protect her and the daughter is moved by this. Now, the narrator’s eldest daughter is fifteen. She’s defiant and melodramatic, like her mother. The narrator tells her she cannot go running at night with a boy from school, but the daughter insists that she’ll be fine. The narrator explains that the daughter’s grandmother was a witch and that she might be one too, so she must be careful not to abuse her power. The daughter is thrilled by this prospect.