The Undertaker's Assistant

by Amanda Skenandore

  “Have you ever been back-of-town? Deep back-of-town where sewage mixes with swamp water in the streets? Where entire families live in shanties smaller than your parlor and draw water from drainage canals? That’s poverty.”

  Adeline closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. A long breath whistled in and out of her nose. “I’m not like you, Effie. I’m not smart like you or strong like you.” Her voice cracked with a sob. “I don’t have any skills besides table-rapping and . . . and flirting.”

  Effie looked down at her hands. Perhaps she’d been too harsh. Again. “That’s not true. You’re good at . . . making burn ointments.”

  Adeline laughed in between sobs.

  “And you’re far better at making conversation than I am. At not saying the wrong things.”

  “Hardly a feat.”

  “And your sewing. You could open your own dress shop if you wanted. The only thing I can sew is . . . well, you see my point.”

  Adeline wiped her cheeks and stared up at the second-story windows of her grand house. “I’ve got Mamm to think of. And my chucklehead brother. Monsieur Chauvet can take care of us all.”

  What could Effie say to this? She had no family, after all. No one to worry after. No one to constrain her ambitions or affections. She ran a hand over her dress pocket, feeling the raised outline of a button, and beside it, the returned letter. Stupid she should carry the letter still. It had no use now but as a taper for her bedside candle. “I think our admixture is done heating.”

  She stood and started toward the kitchen.

  Adeline grabbed her hand. “You must think me perfectly wretched.”

  But she didn’t. That was the trouble. Yes, Adeline was vain and flippant and conniving. She was also vibrant, generous, and tender. Effie wished she didn’t find her company so altogether tolerable. Wished she didn’t care whether Adeline wasted her life on a man she didn’t love.

  How had their arrangement gotten so . . . messy?

  She tugged Adeline up without answering. The fire in the kitchen hearth had dwindled to a few smoldering logs. She covered her hand with her apron and pulled the flask from the sand.

  “It looks the same,” Adeline said.

  “Nonsense.” Effie held the flask up to the sunlight streaming in through the open door. “The phosphorus has dissolved into the oil.”

  “And?”

  Effie stoppered the flask with a piece of cork. “Close the door and shutters.”

  Adeline did as bidden. The room went dark, save for the crackling embers in the hearth and a faint, greenish light emanating from the liquid in the flask.

  “Mon Dieu! It’s glowing.” She crossed herself and whispered a prayer.

  “It’s only the phosphorus reacting with the air in the bottle.”

  Adeline’s green-lit face remained wary. She reached a trembling hand toward the light, then shrank back.

  Effie unstoppered the bottle. She poured a few drops of the liquid onto her palms, rubbed them together, then held them up. They shone milky green in the darkness. “See. It doesn’t hurt. I thought this might impress your sitters. You could say it’s the spirits working through you or some such nonsense. Or keep it in the bottle and use it as a divining lamp of some sort.”

  “How did you . . .”

  “I read about the luminescent properties of phosphorus years ago. But it wasn’t until a few nights ago when I saw a firefly blinking outside my window that I thought there might be application . . . well . . . beyond the purely scientific.” No need to mention why she’d been awake in the dark hours of the night, gazing listlessly out the window. How, through her bleary, sleep-starved eyes the bug’s light appeared strangely spectral.

  Adeline pushed wide the shutters and opened the door. Her expression was that of the marble angels in the St. Louis cemetery—somber and reflective. She stared unblinkingly at the bottle, then accosted Effie with a hug. “It’s genius! Madame Desâmes will be the envy of every medium in the city.”

  Effie extricated herself from Adeline’s embrace and looked around for her bag. “Keep this corked and stored someplace dark. Let me know if you run out of phosphorus powder. Better I get it from the pharmacist than you. He’s used to my . . . unusual requests.” She found her bag slouched beside the cupboard and started for the door, but Adeline blocked her path. She looped an arm through Effie’s. “I hope you don’t presume to be leaving, chère. We’re celebrating with a glass of sherry.”

  “Celebrating what?”

  “Ma foi, you Americans are so blue. Monsieur Chauvet, your little admixture, rien du tout. And then you’re going to tell me why you’re so dreadfully glum today.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The deeper she and Adeline ventured into the Quarter, the more Effie’s misgivings stirred. The street pavers grew worn and cracked, the houses smaller. Blood-red brick showed beneath the crumbling stucco. They stopped before a small cottage with faded blue shutters. Leafy tendrils sprouted between the clay shingles like stray whiskers. Not for the first time that afternoon, Effie chided herself for agreeing to such a foolish errand.

  She blamed the sherry Adeline had insisted they drink two days before. Even with the liquor’s aid, Effie couldn’t bring herself to talk about Samson and that woman. Instead, she blamed all her glumness on the returned letter she’d written inquiring after Elijah Jones. Adeline, it seemed, had taken on the search for her lost kin as a secondary project, an addendum to their agreement, and suggested they visit a woman she knew, a healer with experience dislodging old memories.

  By then, the sherry must have taken effect, for Effie agreed to see this woman before learning just what sort of healer she was—a Voodoo queen.

  Now, Adeline knocked on the cottage door. After several moments a woman about Mrs. Carrière’s age opened the door. Effie wasn’t sure what she’d expected—wild hair, bare breasts, animal bone jewelry—but this woman had none of these. She wore a blue tignon, dangling gold earrings, and simple cotton dress, not unlike many in the Quarter. Adeline said something in French Effie was too distracted to make out. The woman replied in thick Creole patois and let them in.

  Cracklings glowed in the hearth, and sunlight slipped in through gaps in the vertical shutter boards. Otherwise the room was dark. The woman motioned to a worn velvet sofa that creaked when Effie and Adeline sat down.

  As Effie’s eyes adjusted to the low light, she noticed a large clay statue of the Virgin Mary on a table in the corner. Finely woven lace covered the table, and two tin frames leaned against the base of the statue, each holding a watercolor drawing of a saint. One, having wings and armor, Effie guessed to be the angel Michael. The other, a robed figure holding a set of keys, she didn’t recognize.

  “Those represent the spirits Blanc Dani and Papa Limba,” Adeline whispered. She pointed to a wooden carving of a snake curled into a circle with the tip of its tale inside its mouth that stood next to the drawings. “Le Grand Zombi.”

  The queen lit the four white candles surrounding the statue and another on a round tea table she pulled before the sofa. A few more words of patois and Adeline opened the large linen handbag she’d brought today in place of her dainty silk reticule. First, she withdrew a pint of rum and handed it to the woman. Then a boiled egg and sugar-dusted roll wrapped in cloth. The queen placed the food on the table beneath the statue. The rum she poured into a clay cup.

  “Offerings,” Adeline whispered.

  “To whom?” Effie said, and then, seeing Adeline’s scowl, more quietly, “The Virgin Mary?”

  “The spirits.”

  And just how were these incorporeal beings supposed to ingest an egg? Even if they had a digestive tract, wouldn’t the egg slip right through, like a hand through fog? Effie knew better than to ask these questions and tried not to let her derision show on her face. But another scowl from Adeline told her she wasn’t succeeding.

  She turned her attention back to the woman, who dipped her fingers in the rum and splashed a few droplets on the st
atue table. The candle flames hissed and sputtered. She turned to Effie and Adeline and sprinkled them with rum as well.

  Effie flinched as the liquor peppered her face and dress. “What in—”

  “It’s a blessing,” Adeline said, resting her hand on Effie’s forearm, as if sensing her urge to leave.

  The woman left the cup beside the other offerings and sat down opposite them in a wicker-backed chair. She leveled her brown eyes on Effie and said in heavily accented English, “Why are you here?”

  Effie turned to Adeline. Hadn’t she already explained the nature of their visit? What had the two of them been saying if not—

  “I want to hear it explained from you,” the woman said.

  “Well, I . . .” Effie shifted, the sofa creaking beneath her. “I’d like help remembering.”

  “Remembering what?”

  “My childhood. My life before the War.”

  The queen pulled a small pouch from her pocket along with a shortened palm stem, frayed like a brush at the end. She wetted the bristled tip in her mouth and dipped it in the pouch. More spirit offerings? Then Effie caught the sweet, nutty smell of tobacco. Snuff. The woman rubbed the dark powder onto her gums before fixing her gaze on Effie again. “Perchance you disremember for a reason. Perchance you ought let that which is dead stay dead.”

  Effie glanced at the shuttered windows. How nice a cool cross breeze would feel right now. A stirring of this damp, pungent air. Why must it be so dark anyway? Was that some requisite put forth by the spirits? Likely this woman preferred the dark for the same reason Madame Desâmes did: to better confuse and manipulate her patrons. Effie straightened. Let the dead stay dead. She could almost laugh. No one knew the dead better than she.

  “It’s the living I’m concerned with. My kin. I’d like to remember so I can locate them.”

  The woman stared at her a moment and then nodded. “How old are you at your earliest remembrance?”

  “About seven.”

  “Seven? Mo Djé.” She made a tsk-tsk sound with her tongue. “And you remember nothing before that?”

  A bead of sweat trickled down the back of Effie’s neck, causing a brief shudder. “Are all these candles really necessary?”

  “They’re for your protection.”

  “From what?”

  “Evil.”

  Beside her, Adeline nodded, her face grave, as if she really believed in this nonsense. Effie wiped her neck. Why weren’t the other two sweating? A lifetime of exposure to the city’s cursed heat and humidity no doubt had inoculated them.

  Adeline squeezed Effie’s arm. “Tell her.”

  If for no other reason than to get this whole silly ordeal over with, Effie did. She told the Voodoo queen of her memory of the shed, of the brick wall, and even of those eyes. The woman bobbed her head as she listened, her gold earrings swaying, now and then catching a glint from the surrounding flames. Her silence held even after Effie finished, stretching on for several moments. Then she said, “Open your mouth.”

  Her mouth? Surely Effie had misunderstood on account of her accent.

  “She wants you to open your mouth,” Adeline whispered, nodding even as Effie flashed her an are-you-mad? look.

  Effie closed her eyes in a protracted blink, then let her jaw fall open.

  The woman stood and lifted Effie’s chin so she faced the ceiling. “Wider.”

  Effie parted her teeth farther, but apparently not far enough, for the woman stuck her fingers in Effie’s mouth and pried open her jaw. Her skin tasted of rum and tobacco.

  She ought to have bit down on those fingers. Ought to have pushed the woman away and left. She wasn’t chattel to be inspected, a slave upon the block. Yet when the woman removed her hand, Effie held still, chin up, mouth gaping. She looked past the woman’s pinched face and dangling earrings at the cobwebs hanging in the corners, at the ceiling’s cracked and soot-stained plaster, trying to ignore a rising sense of dread.

  At last, the woman stepped away and spoke in patois to Adeline.

  “She thinks you’ve been fixed by a curse,” Adeline said. “That you swallowed some bad gris-gris as a girl and that it’s still there, that it burned a hole inside of you and all your memories fell in.”

  Effie closed her mouth. What a ridiculous explanation. That it bore a resemblance to her own likening of the affliction—a grave of sorts deep inside her where she’d balled up and buried all those dark memories—was pure coincidence. Of no greater mathematical significance than rolling snake eyes in a game of dice.

  After another string of patois, Adeline said, “She says for two dollars she can make a special gris-gris to uncross you and your memories will return.”

  Two dollars! For some bogus charm? She might as well drink sugar-sweetened cat piss.

  The queen stood waiting, hands on her hips. “Well?”

  “It is why we came, chère.”

  Effie shook her head and loosened her purse strings. She just wanted to be gone from this place. Her hand shook as she fished for the coins. Likely just the heat. Or the stale air. She paid the woman two silver dollars, hoping it took little more than some grinding of herbs to concoct this gris-gris.

  The coins clanked in the woman’s pocket as she strode to the statue and held up her arms. She chanted more patois gibberish. Something about Papa Limba and a door. She finished with the words ainsi soit-il, which Adeline echoed, crossing herself.

  The woman then busied herself about the room, rifling through baskets, drawers, and crannies until her arms overflowed with jars and pouches and assorted flotsam. Effie’s hands refused to still until she caged them between her knees. She felt strangely unmoored, as if she were at once in the room and somewhere else entirely. Her jaw began to ache and tingle. She realized she’d clamped her mouth shut, molar to molar, after the woman had finished her inspection and held it that way still.

  Overly tired, overly hot, overly vexed by all this tomfoolery—all logical explanations for her disquiet. It had nothing to do with this woman and her Voodoo. Effie forced her attention on the odds and ends the queen set out on the tea table between them and set to identifying each, first in English, then Latin. Dried fig leaves. Ficus carica. Juniper berries. Junipera.

  She’d taught herself the game as a child. Played it when her own screams woke her from a nightmare, or when the ground shook with artillery fire, or when the mention of her name set the Kinyons to quarreling. First, it was just her letters: a, b, c . . . z, y, x . . . Then simple words and their spelling. When that no longer proved sufficient distraction, she added Latin or German. Eventually her mind would still, her heart slow, her panic settle.

  But not today. Mandrake root. Mandragoras. Feather. Pluma. Too many of the items Effie couldn’t name. Were those salt granules or sugar? Crushed shell or pulverized bone? Was that ajar of beeswax or beef tallow?

  A sharp pain rent her concentration. The woman had plucked a mess of hairs from Effie’s head. “Ouch!” She rubbed her scalp and glared at the woman. “I could have done that myself, thank you.”

  The queen ignored her, mixing the hair in with the bits of roots, berries, and leaves. She opened the jar of whitish salve and scooped out a gob.

  Effie’s stomach heaved. Her pulse bounded. It was tallow, not beeswax. She stood, knocking the tea table and nearly toppling it. Leaves and granules scattered. The candle atop the table sputtered out. “Fi donc!” someone said. Adeline? The Voodoo queen? The trader?

  More words. Effie dry heaved again. She could no longer smell the candle smoke, rum, or tobacco. Only tallow . . . Like the stench of suet the trader slathered in her hair . . . She didn’t like the way it made the back of her neck greasy . . . Didn’t like the way the men poked and pinched and prodded when they came.

  Effie squeezed her eyes shut. Rattled her head. A hand about her arm made her flinch. But she was supposed to stay still. Stand up straight. Be gay and lively. She’d get the paddle for sure tonight. When asked tomorrow about the welts and blisters: s
keeter bites, she knew to say. Don’t you cry when he’s a’wallopin’ you, Jonesy had told her in his rumbling baritone. Don’t you give him dat satisfaction. And she wouldn’t. He’d be right proud of her, Jonesy.

  Wait, where was Jonesy?

  She opened her eyes and looked around the dark room.

  Jonesy?

  The Virgin Mary gazed at her from the far corner, candlelight flickering across her pale, mournful face. The weak light of late afternoon stole through chinks in the shutters. The cracklings in the hearth popped. The stale air once again smelled of cheap rum and tobacco. Jonesy wasn’t here. Of course not.

  But Effie knew where she could find him.

  * * *

  She stood before the high brick wall that she’d stumbled upon Christmas Eve. The sudden dread, the phantom smells and ghostly sounds, the strange familiarity that had accosted her that day all made sense now.

  The first blush of sunset showed above the westerly rooftops. Shadows encroached upon the street. A coffee shop stood only a few buildings down at the corner, the scent of roasting beans mixing with that of manure and pigs. In the opposite direction an upholstery shop and cotton brokerage.

  Had they been here a decade and a half ago when this building with its high brick wall hadn’t been a stockyard? What had people thought as they passed by? Men in their top hats and suit coats after a drink and a leisurely smoke, women with their parasols and hoop skirts out to survey the latest fabrics. She remembered the wooden sign above the main door—white with black lettering, though at the time she couldn’t read the words. From within she’d heard its hinges squeak like a rusty wagon wheel when harried by the wind. So they must have known—those passersby—what business was conducted behind these high walls.

  She crossed the street to the break in the wall and clambered over the picket fence, heedless of those out for a late-Sunday stroll. A few of the pigs grunted and lumbered up to her, sniffing her skirt with their mud-covered snouts. Most, however, ignored her. They lay about the yard, rooted at the empty troughs, or plodded aimlessly along the walls.