The Good House

by Tananarive Due

  The smoke kept coming long after what little was left of Art’s cigarette fell to the floor.

  “What’s the tag number on that van?” Rob said, scratching notes on his blank report.

  “It’s a vanity plate.T-A-R-I-Q-1.”

  Rob nodded, taking that down. “Gotcha. I remember noticing that once.”

  Rob was very curious about Tariq, suddenly. And Angela had heard him make a call to have Art transferred to a high-security mental health ward in Cowlitz County. Art’s case had just changed.

  The photograph on Rob’s desk had been there the summer of 2001, Rob and Melanie in rain gear from a long-ago camping trip, probably when they’d been in their mid-twenties. As she always did, Angela wondered again why Rob and Melanie had never had children. Angela had never seen Rob smile the way he was smiling in that picture, which was the only personal item on his desk. Rob’s military training had followed him here, because his books and papers were in neat stacks, and a cup of freshly sharpened pencils at arm’s reach.

  The two deputies and the dispatcher were the only other people in the sheriff’s office, and they stood listening beside a nearby file cabinet, somber. Myles sat at one of the empty desks behind them, on his cell phone. Myles had finally reached Naomi’s assistant, and Angela tried to overhear what he was saying to her, but his voice was too low. Myles had asked Angela for Naomi’s numbers so he could settle the question of her friend’s whereabouts and put her at ease, but Angela knew he was only confirming Naomi’s disappearance. No one was answering Naomi’s cell phone.

  Still, her grief hadn’t broken free. She wasn’t still fighting for hope, not anymore, but some kind of shock had set in, she decided. Something that needed to happen to her now.

  “Has Tariq shown hostile behavior since your divorce?” Rob said.

  “No. I’ve barely spoken to him, Rob. It’s not Tariq.”

  Rob gave her a look that was part pity, part aggravation, a trick of his eyebrows.

  “Naomi’s assistant is back in L.A.,” Myles said, snapping his folding cell phone shut. “She’s calling Naomi at the spa in Victoria, then she’ll get right back to us.”

  “Naomi isn’t at the spa,” Angela said. “Art’s already told us that.”

  Rob tapped his pencil eraser against his desktop in an impatient staccato, glancing at Myles. The voices had been too low for Angela to hear the exchange between Myles and Rob after they left the jail, but she’d seen Myles giving the sheriff the kind of earful a man like Rob Graybold rarely stood still for. Rob’s face had turned bright red, whether from anger or embarrassment. Angela guessed Rob was recalling the same moment now, kicking himself for putting two crazy people in a conference room together.

  “Sorry again about this morning, Angie,” Rob told her. “Liza talked me into it, against my better judgment. She’s got a way of doing that. Always has. Art’s been all but catatonic since he was arrested, then last night he came out of it sounding so…normal,or so I thought. Liza said he wanted to see you. I must have been out of my mind to call you like that.”

  “Don’t apologize, Rob. I was supposed to go there.”

  He wanted to believe her, but his eyes told her he didn’t. No matter. He would soon.

  The room was silent for a long time, longer than six adults usually managed to keep silent without creating reasons to talk. There was chatter on the police scanner, but the deputies ignored it. Angela heard the hum of the vending machine where Myles had bought her a muffin for breakfast, although she hadn’t touched it. She wasn’t hungry. The idea of taking even a bite had made her feel sick to her stomach, and feeling sick to her stomach had scared the shit out of her until ten minutes later, when she was sure the feeling was gone.

  Angela forgot what they were waiting for, until Myles’s phone rang.

  Myles picked up, anxious. When his expression flagged, Angela knew. Suzanne Ross, somewhere down in Los Angeles, was freaking out. Myles thanked Suzanne, apologized, and assured her everything was fine, in a voice that sounded unsure himself. Slowly, he hung up.

  “Well?” Rob prompted.

  Myles didn’t speak at first, his expression lost. The impossibilities were running through his mind, looking for a plausible place to rest. He was two steps behind her, but he was catching up.

  “She never checked into the spa,” Angela said, since Myles wouldn’t say the words.

  “No. She didn’t,” Myles said. “After Suzanne called the spa, she talked to the film director, a Vincent somebody?” Myles shook his head, still perplexed. “A very tall black man returned herdog yesterday, that dog she lost here. He lied about being her brother, and nobody’s seen her since. She left a note saying she’d gone to the spa.”

  If Angela had been capable of grief today, she would have grieved for Tariq, too.

  “Holy fuckin’ baloney,” the younger deputy muttered. His face was chalky.“Art knew.”

  “Darlene…,” Rob began, turning toward the curly-haired dispatcher.

  “On it, Rob.” The dispatcher pirouetted toward her desk. “I’ll get Vancouver P.D.”

  Through the window across the office, which overlooked two drab barges, Angela saw rain spearing the river. Her watch told her it was nine in the morning, but under the thick cloud cover, the muddy sky held barely enough light for dawn. Distantly, just within her hearing, she heard a low grouse of thunder. It was only the third or fourth time Angela had heard thunder in Sacajawea, and she wondered if anyone else had noticed it.

  The thunder might be something they would all remark on when they talked about this day later, Angela thought. If any of them survived to tell.

  Reclamation

  And I’m standing at the crossroad,

  Believe I’m sinkin’ down.

  —“CROSS ROAD BLUES”

  ROBERT JOHNSON

  We paused before a House that seemed

  A swelling of the Ground—

  The Roof was scarcely visible—

  The Cornice—in the Ground—

  —EMILY DICKINSON

  Twenty-Seven

  FROM THE WRITINGS OF

  MARIETOUSSAINT

  WHEN YOU HAVE REACHEDa place of spirits, your bones know it.

  You feel their company in the gentle call of the wind, in the laughter of the creek, in the silent conversations between the trees. I have been to many such places.Grandmèretook me to a bayou a few miles from our home as a child that was thick with spirits, harboring one in each water moccasin, in each dragonfly, in the fissured trunks of the saltbrush trees, in each lick of the marshy water, even in the whining mosquitoes. There, she introduced me to my forebears, calling them by name, one by one, and although I could never see them, I knew they were embracing me.

  Such was my feeling upon reaching Sacajawea, upon finding the Place. How did I find it? The route was a long one! My plump little Dominique and I spent a year in San Francisco after I dreamed of that countryside rife with visual marvels. The beauty of that part of the country alone convinced me that this must be the spiritual home I had yearned for, the place that would heal my soul after Philippe’s death. Yet, after only one short year, during which time I felt both very close to and quite remote from my destination, Papa Legba came to me in my dream and showed me a walnut tree. I also saw a house built on a ridge, but it was the tree I remembered most. It was the tree I was determined to find.

  I was happy to leave San Francisco by then. I had encountered a Chinaman being ridden by abaka,like the corruptions whispered about by Roman Catholic priests dispatched from the Vatican to carry out the dangerous feat of banishing the Evil One. Bakasare perceived in many forms by human eyes, most often as misshapen beasts—so it is rare for one to invade a man in such a way. But any manboknows there is danger of mischievous spirits riding the head in place of the lwasif a curse has been cast, although I do not know why this Chinaman was cursed. Perhaps the spirit followed him from Peking. Perhaps there has been a marriage of demon spirits in this part of the New World. Of
this I can only speculate. The bakaI met when he was brought to me was no more Satan himself than I was the Virgin Mary, but it proved a worthy adversary. It was almost the end of me.

  With Papa Legba’s blessing, and those of Ougu la Flambo and Simbi, I was able to send the Chinaman’sbakaaway from him. Perhaps it flew to one of the forests of majestic redwood trees I visited so often as tears streamed down my face in witness to their beauty. Certainly spirits live among the redwoods, and bakasclaim their rightful place among the spirits. One could not wish for a world without bakasbecause they are willing to carry out the work shunned by the more gentle spirits. But no sound-minded person would invite a bakainto her head, nor her home.

  These are words I should have remembered.

  The encounter with thebakain San Francisco taught me much I had not known about my own facilities, but it wearied me as no other exercise before it. I was bedridden for thirty days, my body covered with a rash that itched almost to the end of my tolerance. I took daily cleansing baths with anise, mustard seed, lavender, and rosemary, to no avail at first. In fact, I feared I had reached the end of my usefulness as a manbo,just as all people are reduced to a fearful state from time to time. Fear is inevitable, as is fear’s parent, death. Moun fèt pou mouri.

  Papa Legba stayed at my side during this trying time, reminding me of my own strength when I chose to see it, when I was not swallowed in my misery. I think Papa Legba was disgusted with me and my tears, or else I might have healed sooner. He conveyed my messages to thelwasin his own time; often my prayers met silence because Papa Legba stood in my way. This made me angry, but it taught me patience, a trait I wish I had learned better. Impatience has been my undoing.

  During this time of rash and fever, as I thrashed in my bed, I had vivid dreams about the walnut tree and the lovely house on the ridge. When my illness left me, I knew I must find them.

  Sacajawea is not as close to San Francisco as it might seem by studying a map. I did not know the name of the town where my tree grew, an obstacle few would hope to conquer. With Dominique on my back, I wandered from town to town, not unlike a madwoman, traversing the northern coast of California, then to Oregon, where I spent three long months; and then, finally, I came to Washington, in our nation’s uppermost western corner. I always stayed near the water, because I knew water was not far from the place I sought.

  I have no memory of why I came to Sacajawea, except that it was not my destination the morning I set out. I came upon it accidentally, as one must happen across all places of great importance in life. I do remember, however, that as I arrived on Main Street in the back of a kind traveler’s wagon, one of the first people I laid eyes upon was the tall, sturdy Chinook whom townspeople had come to call Red John, reducing him to the color of his skin. He saw me right away, given that there were no other people of my skin color in the little town. I think my brashness amused him, because he had a grin waiting for me. I could not have known then that John would soon be my husband, but I knew I was near the Place.

  “Do you know a house on a ridge with a great walnut tree?” I asked John as I gathered my traveling bag on my arm and my child on my back, much like an Indian squaw; perhaps like brave Sacajawea toting little Jean-Baptiste on her trek with the white explorers, arriving before me.

  “Sounds like the Goode house,” John said, and he pointed the way. “He has a few black walnut trees. Do you have business with Mr. Goode?” he asked me.

  “No,” I replied. “I have business with his land.”

  That answer satisfied him, so he nodded and wished me well. I would discover later that John knew of the land’s power, because he had sojourned there to say prayers since he was a boy with his grandparents, who remembered the place when it was a burial site in their own grandparents’ day. When the plague came, John would tell me later, his people’s dead outnumbered the living, and there were barely enough men with the strength to hang the burial canoes from the trees. Once, he told me, there had been a forest of canoes in Sacajawea, until the white men removed them.

  I saw the tree immediately, precisely as my dream had promised; a large tree with a broad trunk and a large canopy across its crown, although I could tell the tree still had growing to do yet. The tree was young. Like me, the tree was a transplant, brought out of its natural environment to make a new home in the West. The house also appeared as promised, and my dream’s vision was fulfilled.

  And imagine my surprise!Grandmèrewas waiting for me in the tree!

  You have done well to find me,chérie, she called from its branches. This will be our new home.

  Dominique and I slept in the forest that night, and I felt the rumbling beneath the soil of all the souls that had passed this way. There was so much life, and so much death, that I had to shut my ears so I would not go insane. Sometimes a very spiritual place will overwhelm you, and I had never visited a place as restless as this. When I thanked Papa Legba and thelwasfor leading me to such a vibrant place, my whispers went directly to their ears with the force of a thunderclap, and theirs to mine. I smelled roses and lavender where there were none. I cried from joy until I slept.

  But while I am a woman of spirit, I am also a woman of practical matters, and I knew I could not hope to live in that wonderful forest undisturbed, not so long as a deed proclaimed it belonged to another. The next morning, I went to the service entrance of the house on the ridge and introduced myself to the man who lived there, a pharmacist named Elijah Goode.

  He was an older man, white-haired and portly, and he walked with an elegant wooden cane. He was very polite, as if he had been waiting for me. “You’ve come in reply to my advertisement?” he said.

  I knew of no such thing, but I nodded my head. Coincidences are commonplace in the life of amanbo,so I took it as a sign.

  He admitted he had reservations about hiring a colored cook and housekeeper to live in his home—that there were no colored people in Sacajawea, and that his neighbors would not understand—but after he’d voiced his concern, he laughed and shook his head. I think he was taken with Dominique, who kept reaching for his cane, callingLeg-ba,because she recognized the symbol of her spirit-father. “Blast them all!” Elijah Goode said. “I’ll give them something to talk about.”

  Well, talk they did. I had been in Eli’s employ for only a month when he complained that he had seen a decline in business. Many of his neighbors assumed I was too young and beautiful to live in a house alone with Eli—which, in the end, perhaps was prophecy on their part. They were quick to attribute lustful motives to him, and more so to me, although our lives were very separate. Dominique and I did not have a room in the main house; instead, we were consigned to a small, windowless room in the attic, where the rising summer heat was nearly unbearable, as if Eli meant to prove to any visitors that his colored domestic understood her “place.”

  Eli was very concerned about his business, which is understandable. He’d been born into some money in New England, which enabled him to build the house and buy the land, but he was not wealthy enough to discount townspeople’s gossip. The solution, to my mind, was simple.

  “Mr. Goode,” I said to him, for that was what I called him then, “if I may say so, you haven’t used your land’s endowments to their greatest potential. I could make you a rich man.”

  I then introduced Eli to my teas from the herbs I grew in my garden, and he was much impressed. He had suffered from arthritis since he was in his fifties, and he noticed a marked improvement once he had tasted my blend. I cured his sleeplessness next; and the last blend, though I did not tell him its intent, restored his carnal drives. From that time on, Elijah Goode no longer saw me as his colored maid, but as a healer in my own right. We became friends, reading our favorite books in his library in the evenings while Dominique played on a quilt on the floor. And we discussed business strategies. He agreed with me that a mail-order company would give him financial security for years to come, if I would be willing to give my assistance.

  “But th
ere is something I must ask in return,” I said.

  “Name your price, Marie,” he said, reclining in his great Turkish parlor chair as if he were President Coolidge himself.

  “You have no wife and no heirs,” I said. “All I ask is that you leave this property to me in your will.”

  The way he stormed! It was blackmail, he said. Preposterous! He had to consider his nieces and nephews in Boston, his brother’s children. Not to mention the scandal it was cause in the town, he insisted. Eli was always preoccupied with the specter of scandal.

  “It’s no one’s concern but ours,” I said. “Once you’re dead and gone, no scandal will touch you. That’s my price, and nothing less.”