by Lara Parker
During the day, Angelique read from the book. She remembered many things from her mother’s teachings and from the prayers of the nuns at school, but she wanted to know so much more. She asked Chloe if she knew about loas.
“Loas? There be many, many loas!”
“Oh, please, tell me all their names.”
“All them? Well, there’s Brava Guede, who’s the best loa; he care for the chillen. An’ Guede Ratalon. He digs the graves!”
“Who is Legba?” asked Angelique.
“Papa Legba be Maître Ka-Fu. He open the gate so’s all the other loas come in!” Chloe spread her delicate arms when she said “O-o-o-o-open!” then she bowed down to the ground. “But when they call the Keeper of the Gate in this chapel, they say “Kalfu…” and she tried very hard to pronounce the word, Carrefour.
“Yes! I’ve heard them say that!” cried Angelique. “Why is it different here?”
“’Cause the voodoo be bad here … it be angajan!”
“What do you mean … angajan?”
“Baka, here … duppy … evil spirit … take ti-bon-ang, the soul! Like Cochon Gris—eat the pig, and drink his blood!”
Chloe’s imagination ran to the fantastic. Angelique would listen to her and think of the little red crabs scuttling in and out of their holes, so hard to see and even harder to catch.
* * *
Angelique decided to try something from the book, but there were many things she needed she did not have. One night she said to Chloe, “Can you get me a toad, or a little frog, a coqui?”
“Why you want a toad?”
“To make a spell.”
“What you mean—spell?”
“It has to be alive.”
When Chloe brought the toad, Angelique turned it on its back and stroked it until it was hypnotized. Then she took one of the smallest knives and opened its stomach.
“See,” she said, “there’s the heart.”
“That the heart? Oh, yeah! I sees it beatin’ like a little drum.”
“And which part do you think is the liver?”
“The what?”
“We need the liver. We need to eat them both,” Angelique said.
“What you want to eat it for?” Chloe cried.
“For courage and cunning.”
“Well, I ain’t eatin’ no frog’s liver, I don’ care what.”
“You must,” said Angelique, poking in the frog’s insides. “I think this must be it.” She pulled out a tiny slick organ and offered it to Chloe, whose eyes grew wide with disgust as she shook her head vehemently. Then Angelique cut out the heart, and holding the two bloody bits and slicing them into two small pieces, she recited the African words she remembered from the book. With a grimace, she placed her portion in her mouth and swallowed. Chloe watched, her face squeezed like a dried-up papaya. Angelique offered Chloe her share, but she refused.
Angelique tried to force it in her mouth, but she wiggled away, shrieking, “I don’ want none o’ that! Stay away from me! You got the blood and the slime all over your fingers!”
“We’re going to do the spell now,” Angelique said, “but yours won’t work because you didn’t eat the heart.”
“I don’ want to eat no heart.”
“Then take up my doll and let’s begin.” Angelique reached for Chloe’s doll and blew, then breathed on its face. “You are Chloe,” she said softly, “and you are alive.” She looked over at Chloe. “Do the same with mine.” Chloe grabbed the doll with the yellow hair.
“You is Angelique, an’ you is alive,” she said without much enthusiasm. Still, she loved to pretend, so she tried to believe it. Angelique handed her a piece of black string.
“Tie it around the throat,” she said.
“Why?”
“It’s the spell. Do it.”
Chloe fumbled with the string and managed to make a slipknot.
“Now say, ‘Carefore tinginding oo-oo. Me hot me bas-e.’”
“Say what?”
“Just ‘Ting-in-ding-goo…’”
“Ting-a-ding-goo…”
“Me hot me bas-e.”
“Me hot. Me bas-eh?”
“Now pull the string tight. See if it chokes me.”
“Chokes you? Why you want it t’choke you?”
“To see if the spell works, of course.”
Chloe tightened the string, watching Angelique’s face for any sign of choking.
“Tighter,” said Angelique, frowning.
“If I pull it any tighter, it’ll pull off your head!”
“Do it! And say the words!”
Chloe tried her hardest, she chanted and pulled the knot tighter, and just as she had predicted, the clay head of Angelique’s doll popped off and toppled to the floor. Angelique sighed with frustration. “It doesn’t work,” she said. “I’m doing something wrong.”
“What you want to do spells for anyway? That’s for the houngan to do. Spells is dangerous. Besides, you need to make the vévé.”
“What’s a vévé ?” Angelique asked.
“It’s the picture of the loa, made with the white flour. An’ you di’n’t ask Papa Legba to open the gate.”
“Let me try it on your doll.”
“I don’ want to try it. Let’s play sumpin’ else. Let’s dance!” She threw down the doll and, rising to her feet, began to spin. But Angelique was determined, and she took the string and wrapped it around the neck of Chloe’s doll.
She placed the doll on her knees and blew on it again. “You are Chloe. You are alive,” she said. Then she began to chant the spell softly. “Carrrrey Forrrrrey. Ting-gin-din-goo. Me hot. Me bassssey.”
Her hands were still sticky from the frog’s entrails, and she wrapped the string around her fingers to get a better grip. Chloe was still humming and twirling, and Angelique began to pull very slowly, staring down at the little doll, which looked up at her with its pebble eyes and kinky braid. Her hands felt stiff and her mouth was dry, but she said the spell again, pouring all the force of her breath toward the little neck.
Suddenly she felt a sizzling spasm, like the tremor when she touched a certain kind of jellyfish, and then a ripple of heat at her shoulder bones, which seared her back to her buttocks. A flicker of fire curled like a snake in her belly, writhing and then thickening, and her throat burned as a bitter taste soured her mouth.
Chloe stopped still. “It workin’!” she cried. “It workin’ now!” Her eyes flew wide and she reached for her neck and screamed. “It hurts! It hurts my t’roat!”
Angelique froze in disbelief, staring at Chloe, who was truly in pain, holding her neck with her hands and coughing.
“Stop it! Stop the spell! Pleeeese! I can’t breeeeeathe!”
Angelique tried to pull her hands away but her fingers were tangled in the string, and jerking and tugging made the knot go tighter. Chloe made a thin screeching sound, and gagged, tearing at her throat and clawing at the air.
“Ow-h-h-h-h, Papa Guede! It … hur-r-r-rrrts!!!!” she gasped, barely able to make a sound. “Papa Guede … save me…” she whispered. Then she bent over and coughed, a raw, hacking cough, as though she would vomit, but nothing came from her mouth.
Angelique dug frantically at the loop of the string, but it refused to come loose. Chloe moaned and rocked her body back and forth, clawing at her neck, tears popping from her eyes.
Angelique crawled to her knees, scratching the ground for the knife she had used on the frog. Her fingers found the blade and she grabbed the doll. Her hands shaking, her nails digging into the hard clay, she eased the point of the knife under the string and jerked. The first time it slipped, but the second it cut! Chloe fell over in a small quivering heap, and stared up at Angelique with anguished eyes that slowly glassed over as she lost consciousness.
Angelique dragged Chloe into her arms and held her close. She could feel her small bones collapsed beneath her skin and smell her warm, spicy odor.
“I’m so sorry, Chloe. Oh, Chloe, please d
on’t die,” she sobbed, convulsed with spasms of dread. “I didn’t know it would work. It worked so fast! Please, Chloe, wake up!”
But Chloe lay still and unbreathing, her neck loose, and her body as limp as kelp. Angelique grew frantic, and she looked helplessly at the shelves of bottles and vials as she searched through her mind. The spell! Another spell! There had to be one! Something, there was something, what was it? “To revive a strangling beast.” That was it!
She struggled to remember the words. Different words. Christian words. They came to her in part, and then she remembered more, and she began to pray over Chloe’s still form.
“God who was born. God who died. God who came to life again. God who was crucified. God who was in the cave. God who was pierced with the dagger! Save her. Save her!” She sobbed the words over and over, kissing Chloe’s face, wet with her own tears, and breathing into her mouth. “You are Chloe. You are alive.”
There was a faint moan, and Chloe opened her eyes. With a cry Angelique clasped her to her breast and wept hot tears of relief.
“Oh, Chloe. I’m so sorry. Please tell me you forgive me!”
“Them … spells is … evil…” whispered Chloe. And Angelique kissed her again.
“I love you, Chloe,” she said. “I love you!”
Angelique held Chloe while she slept, watching her small breast rise and fall. Her thoughts were spinning. The spell had worked, so easily, and the force had entered her and ignited her energy. What was that power? “Charge,” Chloe called it. Those simple words? Pushing the column of her breath? The book! Some of the rules in the book were correct. The doll with the clothing that had touched Chloe’s skin; the hair was Chloe’s hair. But Chloe hadn’t succeeded with her spell. Why had she?
Her thoughts confused and frightened her. There was something else: Chloe had died, and she had brought her back to life? No. That couldn’t be possible. And yet … She felt exhilarated, astonished by a skill she knew she must possess, but which she did not in any way understand. This was the “something” her father had spoken of. But what did he really know about her? And what did she know of herself?
It was dawn when the two girls crept back through the underground passageway, and morning birdsong was in the air. Chloe clung to Angelique, recovered but still frightened and unable to speak, her throat painfully sore. They emerged from the tunnel, and they were ready to cross the courtyard when they heard horses approaching at a gallop toward the gate to the main road. Angelique grabbed Chloe’s hand.
“Hide! Back here!”
The two girls ducked behind the side of the chapel just as the great iron gate whined open and Angelique’s father and another gentleman planter rode into the central courtyard. She remembered his name. It was Luis Desalles. He had been there the day she had been chosen.
The air was still, without a breath of wind, and even the long arms of the windmill hung silent. The hooves of the restless horses rang on the stones, and the men spoke in low voices, their voices thick with drink.
“You’re Satan’s whore, Bouchard! The whip is the music of the Negro! The whip alone will make him work. Hell’s brutes!”
“No, you are wrong! They must have their dancing. The Negro is naturally superstitious. They are beasts, obsessed with her. I can barely keep their hands off her.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“They forget that I am there! And sometimes I must pull out the sword! But they know in their cunning brains what is coming, and they will wait.” He laughed bitterly.
Angelique and Chloe hovered in the shadow of the wall. The sun was rising, and a long shaft of light crossed the courtyard. They were afraid to move and could only cower against the stones. All the courtyard lay between them and the kitchen. The planter Desalles continued in slurred words.
“They are all morally and temperamentally unfit. Last week, Valentin threw himself into the big vat, just as it came to a boil—ghastly sight. And, just yesterday, Bence, my new boy who seemed so promising, climbed a breadfruit tree and jumped. Broke his neck, the bloody fool—”
“—And they use any means to take vengeance! I—I was flogging a slave and the madman swallowed his own tongue! Choked himself to death!”
Chloe coughed, then covered her mouth, but neither man seemed to notice as Desalles droned on.
“Villainous women—absorb their unborn children like herd antelope. One of my females, about to give birth—one day I see her, full with her baby, and the next—poof! Her big belly disappeared!”
Bouchard’s horse clipped toward the chapel, and the girls hugged the wall. Chloe stared at Angelique with frightened eyes.
“My worst nightmare,” Bouchard was saying, “I have to rerig the blasted windmill here. The new grinders haven’t arrived yet from France. If the cane comes in early, I shall lose it all.” The horse’s hooves came nearer. “See what a pissing bind I’m in. That’s why, on Sunday, I give them their damned ceremony and then…” His voice was syrupy with rum. “… Erzulie … my little treasure, hidden away. What would I do without her, Luis?”
Angelique felt Chloe tugging at her sleeve. She turned to see the face of her friend contorted in a grimace as she motioned to her throat. Angelique instantly seized her by the head and buried it in her skirt, but Chloe exploded in a spasm of muffled coughs.
Bouchard barked in their direction, “Who’s there?” Angelique and Chloe shrank farther back into the shadow, then quickly scurried around the back of the building. Hooves rang on the stones as the animal approached, stopped, and clipped again, more slowly. There was an agonizing wait until Angelique’s father was staring down at the two quivering girls.
“What is this?” he growled at Angelique. “What in hell are you doing out here? Were you not forbidden to show yourself?” His tone was withering with contempt. “And to a slave!”
“Please, Father, don’t harm her. She is … my friend.”
“Friend? Don’t you know she will betray us—if she hasn’t already!”
“No! She would never do that.”
“Why are you here—together—at this time of morning? Did you steal away in the night?”
“Yes, but no one saw us. No one!”
“For what purpose did you run off?”
“Only to … to play—”
“Play? Play what? Where?”
“Games, Father, make-believe—in the little room beneath the chapel—”
Her father’s face turned purple with fury. He leaned from his horse and snatched Chloe up by the hair. She shrieked as he threw her across the saddle and, catching her around the waist, he galloped with her kicking figure across the flagstones and into the kitchen. Monsieur Desalles sat frozen upon his horse, gazing at the scene in stupefaction. He roused himself enough to call out.
“Here, here, Theodore. Don’t harm her belly. Remember, you want her to breed someday.”
Angelique ran to the kitchen door in time to see her father leap from his horse with Chloe still under his arm, her arms and legs flailing. He reached for a pair of coal tongs that hung on the wall above the sink.
Brandishing the iron tool, he called out, “Luis! Give me a hand here! Hold her head!”
Angelique grabbed at her father’s coat. “No! No! Father! Please don’t hurt her! Please, I beg you! She’s done nothing! I’ll die if you hurt her!”
Her father turned and glared at her, his eyes black hollows and his teeth clenched. “You’ll die if I don’t!” he hissed. “You heedless—reckless girl! Leave off those mewly tears! Don’t you know what you have done?”
She leapt upon him, clawing for the hand that held the tongs, but he flung her away. Desalles was at the door now, and Bouchard cried out to him. “Hold her back! Damn the fiend!” Chloe screeched at the top of her lungs and Angelique, her head reeling from the blow and hot tears blurring her eyes, scrambled to her feet only to feel Desalles’s hard grip on her arm.
“Thais!” her father yelled for the maidservant, trying in vain to hold C
hloe who was scrambling and kicking. “Thais! Come down here, at once!” Then he muttered, “Blast your lazy black hide!” under his breath, vainly trying to still the wriggling girl.
Desalles had both Angelique’s arms fast in his wrenching grip. Her father set the pliers on the chopping block and, grasping Chloe by the hair, held her head flat against the scarred wood, prying at her mouth with his thumb and fingers as she mewled and struggled.
Thais appeared, groggy and witless with terror, at the door of the tower. “Thais! Help me here! I will pull out her tongue! I will! I’ll see that she never, never speaks again!” Staggering with drink, he cursed, “Bloody wretches, defy me, will you? I’ll bash both your heads in before I’m done!”
“Let me go!” Angelique found her captor’s crotch with a kick.
Doubling over in agony, he released her with an oath: “Damned slut!”
From the corner of her eye, she saw her father lift the dreaded pliers, and she flung herself on his arm again.
“Off me, you hellish creature, leave off!” he cried. But both she and Chloe, now like wild hyenas, bit down: Chloe on the fingers that pinched her slippery tongue, and Angelique on the side of the fist that held the tongs. Angelique felt her teeth sink in the flesh and the warm blood leak into her mouth, but like a rabid dog she held on even as blows smashed her head and she heard the pliers rattle to the ground.
Then her father, dragging both attackers like a bull beleaguered by lion cubs, raging with oaths, lumbered into the courtyard. He shook Angelique off with a curse and a kick, and she fell to the earth, rolled, and lifted her head to see him lurch for the well at the center of the courtyard, with Chloe still under his arm.
She knew what he was going to do.
“No!” she screamed. “NO-O-O-O-O-O-O!” Crawling and stumbling, desperate to stop him, she grabbed for his leg, his arm, but too late. He lifted the squirming, howling girl above his head and hurled her over the edge. Angelique slammed into the rocks of the well wall, reaching, screaming, “Chloe!” and stared agonizingly down into the gaping hole. She heard a thin wail and felt the chain vibrate as though struck, and she screamed “Chloe!” again, her cries resonating with the falling girl’s, bouncing, echoing in the cavern—like ravens’ fading caws when they sailed over the trees into the rain forest—and then silence.