by Jim Nesbitt
Her mother didn’t believe in the Yoruba mysticism of her father. She worshipped in the tiny Catholic chapel down the road and didn’t see an African god or goddess in the shape of St. Barnabas or St. Barbara. But she didn’t interfere in her husband’s ways. Nor did she prevent him from passing on these ancient ways to their daughter.
Chango, the headstrong god of thunder and fire, was her father’s orisha. When she was very young, maybe four or five, her father took her to a tambor, a special party for the gods, this one a gathering of santeros who beat the drums and called on Chango to walk among them.
The packed earthen floor was swept. The room was crowded. A steady beat came from three drums, batas pounded by the palms of three black men, all santeros. One was a thin, bald elder with the large green eyes of her cat, Maria; another was young, dark and muscular and the third smoked a large cigar, swaying and puffing to the beat of his own hand.
She was afraid and started to whimper. Her father nuzzled her and whispered in soothing tones.
“Don’t be afraid, periquito. I will teach you how to walk with the santos. They will protect you through life and give you power. That way, you will never be alone even when your father and mother are far away. The orishas will love you and watch over you, just like we do. Only much better.”
He led her to an old woman, her head covered with a bandana that matched the flowery print of her billowing skirt. Her father stretched out on the floor in front of the woman, flat on his stomach, his face and eyes down. This was the foribale, the tribute to an older santero or orisha.
The old woman held out her hand and her father rose.
“This is your child?”
“Yes, madrina. Give her acuelle, please. And tell me who her orisha is so that she can walk the right path.”
Through the years, she could still feel the old woman’s cool, wrinkled hands on her cheeks and the hold of her powerful, searching gaze. She could still feel herself drawn out of her body and into those wise eyes, brown with flecks of copper.
The old woman frowned, then looked at her father.
“What is it, madrina? You see abiku?”
Abiku, the spirit of death dreaded by every parent who followed the Yoruba ways, a wicked sprite that possessed small children and caused them to die. The old woman shook her head.
“Not that, omo-mi. She is strong and well. But she is not like you, she is not a child of Chango. She is a child of Alabbgwanna, the Lonely One. That is what I see, that is what is. There is more -- this child will walk with Alabbgwanna, but she will also walk with the dead. She will be a palera. She will wear the cuts of palo mayombe. She will have the power, both light and dark.”
“What should be done?”
“Teach her the ways of a santera, omo-mi. Teach her to walk with the Lonely One. That is all you can do for now. One day, she will walk a way that you will not. There is nothing you can do to change that. For now, she is the child of the Lonely One and she will protect her in her way.”
They talked as though she was not there. Her eyes shifted from the face of the old woman, calm and the color of coffee and milk, to the face of her father, worried and darkened by the madrina’s knowledge of his child.
Her father started to speak. The madrina cut him off with a sharp chop of the hand that caused her brass bracelets to jangle.
“It is time for Chango, omo-mi. Listen to what is said.”
The drums were beating faster. The santero with the cigar was standing, his head thrown back, shoulders slack, another at his station behind one of the sacred batas. The santero stumbled forward, arms rigid and thrust outward from his chest, pushing into the crowd, forcing them to clear a rough circle in the center of the room.
“¡Cabio Sile pa Chango!”
As one, the crowd lifted themselves up on one foot in tribute to Chango. The santero spun about the room, his shoulders jerking crazily, his legs splitting out at odd angles that made it look like he was sure to fall, then snapping back quickly to keep his body upright and moving.
“¡Cabio Sile pa Chango!”
Again the crowd lifted themselves as one. The santero moved faster, his eyes rolling and unfocused, his jaw working like a man chewing a strip of dried fish. He spun, then slid to a sudden stop near a corner of the room where two, double-bit axes were stacked, their white handles trimmed with red. They were the battle weapons of Chango.
The santero grabbed the axes and began his terrible dance, spinning to the drumbeat, whirling the axes through the air, the whoosh of the sharp blades striking a counterpoint to the drums.
The people chanted to Chango and prayed out loud, exhorting the orisha to vanquish their enemies and watch over them. The santero stopped suddenly, banging the sides of the axe bits together with a clang that silenced the drums and struck sparks that flew up toward the dark ceiling.
He surveyed the room with wide, shining eyes. She ducked behind her father’s leg, afraid of the figure with an axe in each hand, looking at every person as he slowly turned in the center of the circle. His face beaded with sweat, the santero pointed his axes toward the doorway.
There stood an old woman, her head covered by a black, tattered shawl, her face shadowed. She pointed a bony, gray finger at them and spoke in a hushed, raspy voice -- fine-grained sandpaper brushed over rough pine.
“She will walk many paths and see many things. She will have the power, she will be great and terrible. She will know darkness, she will know ororo. She will walk with iku. And she will live many years.”
Walk with the dead, know evil. The words brought a quiet coldness into the room.
“Hear what is said. The child is mine. For now.”
The old woman turned her back to the crowd, her black clothes blending into the darkness. The santero was curled on the floor, axes at his side, sweat drying on his body, his face relaxed in deep and sudden sleep.
Memory shifted to flames and her mother’s screams in the night. Her father’s hard, anguished face was bathed in flickering orange light. Through the doorway of their home, through the flames, they could see the glowing figure of a woman, reaching toward them for a brief moment.
Her father took a step toward the house, but the figure was gone. The screams stopped. The pop and crackle of fire was the only sound. His body became rigid, his face a mask of frozen anger.
He called out the name of Chango. Distant thunder answered.
He called again. More thunder, sounding from even farther away, like a man muttering an answer over his shoulder to someone he didn’t want to talk to.
Father cocked his ear toward the cloud-covered sky, then fell to his knees. He looked at her.
“Chango won’t come. He says it isn’t his concern.”
She looked away from the fire and toward the place where the pathway from their home met the dirt road to town. There stood the dark, stooped figure who spoke to them at the tambor many days ago, just out of reach of the light from the dying flames. A thin arm stretched out from the folds of the dark shawl, slowly beckoning.
A stillness settled over her. She looked back at her father, face down in the dirt, crying and beating the earth with his fists. She walked toward the old woman.
“You are the Lonely One.”
“Yes, omo-mi. I watch over you. Come with me.”
She peered at the shadow the shawl made, hiding the old woman’s face. She heard loud music, laughter and shouts. She looked around and saw they were at a bodega in town. They hadn’t walked; she hadn’t moved her feet at all. But they were there, moving toward a table crowded with men, about ten in all, most barefoot and wearing the rough-cut cotton pullovers of cane cutters. Tucked in the rope belts of some were machetes, gleaming dully in the light of oil lamps.
The men were rolling dice for drinks, shaking the ivory cubes in a large leather cup, then banging them down with shouted oaths. The old woman pointed at two
men, both light-skinned, one thin with oil-slickened hair and a drooping moustache, the other fat and bearded, his pants big enough for two men, his shirt covered with grease stains.
The old woman touched the shoulder of a tall mulatto, wearing black trousers and a vest with a faded red peasant print, standing near the table, his arms, ropy with muscle, folded across his bare chest. His body became rigid. His eyes grew bright. He smiled a tight smile and drew a machete from his belt.
The blade flashed in the lantern light in a bright arc that went toward the ceiling, then swept down and across the fat man’s throat. The fat man’s eyes bulged out. Gouts of blood pumped up through the matted hair of his beard. He fell across the suddenly silent table.
Flashing again, glistening with blood, the blade arced toward the thin man, catching him in the side of the neck, slicing deeply through muscle and artery. The thin man fell to the floor, his blood gushing over the feet of his companions as they pushed and scrambled away from the table and the man with the machete.
He stepped forward and swung the blade again -- this time ripping open the belly of a small black man who was backpedaling, his arms thrown up in surrender. The mulatto spun to his left and chopped the blade into the arm of a man who was swinging his own machete into action. He shouldered the man to the floor, stepping over the body of the thin man, pulling his head back by the hair, severing the head with three short, powerful chops.
He held the head aloft. The men backed away. He turned, facing the old woman. He smiled, bowed and extended the lifeless head toward her like an offering. A squat cane cutter in a straw hat stepped forward, machete in hand, and sliced his sharp blade across the back of the mulatto’s neck, driving him to the floor.
The mulatto was dead before he struck the packed dirt. The head was tightly gripped in his hand.
The old woman turned to her. There was shadow where a face should be and she felt herself sucked into that darkness. The smell of blood and the swishing sound of sharp steel fell away. They were in an unlit room with a slow-turning ceiling fan. A man slept beneath mosquito netting.
A thick chord of muscle eased its way along the top edge of the footboard -- a fer de lance, its heavy, triangular head swaying from side to side. The snake turned toward her, its eyes locking on hers, drawing her closer.
“Don’t be afraid, omo-mi. That one is here to do your bidding. That one is here to do harm to those who did harm to you. Touch his head.”
A coldness filled her, flowing in like icy water from a deep pool. She touched the snake’s head; it bowed and pushed back against her palm like a dog begging for its master’s stroke.
The old woman pulled back the netting and whispered again: “This one -- he ordered the burning of your house. He had your mother killed. He has ordered the death of your father. And if his men find you, they will kill you as well. Those we saw at the bodega set the fire that killed your mother. They are dead. He is still alive.”
Her insides felt like ice and granite. Her jaw ached with tension and something she had never felt before -- an anger that strung her tighter than a drumhead but sharpened her senses and brought a clarity to her young mind’s eye. Her hand rested on the snake’s head as it pressed into her palm.
She cupped its jaw and stared into its eyes. Her head tilted back. A thin wail, snapping and wolfish, flew from her lips. She flung the snake through the netting’s gap, catching the man as he rose naked from deep sleep, startled by her cry, frozen by the sight of a snake on his sheets, readying its first deadly strike.
The snake lashed out, catching the man full in the throat. His eyes were wild with fear and the knowledge that he was a dead man. The snake struck again, hitting the man just below his left eye, hanging heavily by its fangs, pumping more venom. The man died without making a sound, slumping forward like a sidewalk drunk.
She looked at the old woman. Darkness surrounded by a tattered shawl. They were in the raked dirt yard where her home once stood. The old woman pointed to the closest tobacco shed. Her father’s headless body hung by the heels from the rafters, spinning slowly in the night breeze.
“Others came for him. You know what you must do.”
She knew darkness. She walked with evil and the dead. Through long years.
She lived with her father’s people in the Sierra Maestra range and passed into the blacker side of Yoruba mysticism. She was cut in palo. She learned the vengeful arts of the mayomberos, their necromancy, their mercenary tendency to whore out to the highest bidder. This taught her commerce and its distinctive soullessness. It won her fear and the title of La Bruja, whispered as she passed along dusty streets.
In New Orleans, she learned vodoun, the ways of the bokor and the zombie fear that rides with the ancestors of slaves. She knew the black top hat and long-tailed suitcoat of Baron Samedi. She gulped his fiery iron jack, smoked his maduro cigars and told his lewd jokes in the trance of his possession.
Baron Samedi wanted more than jokes on a night when fog rolled in from the big river, floating like cotton past the grime-smeared windows of an abandoned warehouse where the believers met. They told her she prowled the crowded room, laughing with a deep voice and puffing a dark cigar.
She grabbed a young mulatto by the shirt, they said, ripping it open and running her tongue across his chest, puffing thick smoke into his face. She unbuckled his trousers and pushed him to the cold, concrete floor.
Her skirt bunched forward, her ass brushed by the cold, damp air, she mounted him with a grunt, her teeth tightly clenched on the dark, strong cigar favored by this randy Guédé, a spirit of the graveyard and sex.
The mulatto met her thrusts, their flesh clapping like cupped palms. They climaxed together, sweating in spite of the cold. The mulatto laughed and slapped her on the ass, they told her.
“We can do this again, but let’s not put on such a show next time.”
This drew a laugh from some, she was told. Baron Samedi was not amused. They said her eyes flared. The deep voice came from her chest. She puffed the cigar and blew more smoke in his face.
“Time is no more for you, young son. You are dead very soon.”
He was found in an alley the next night.
A husband, long dead, brought her to Mexico -- Benito Obregon. She gave him six sons. He gave her the ways of Mayan and Aztec times, a sense of the need to feed and nourish the universe, maintain its precarious balance of energy. Sometimes that meant a rope of thorns drawn through the web of the hand, the blood caught in a bowl for the Vision Serpent.
Sometimes something else was called for. Her husband was a smuggler -- a hero to some because he ran guns for the Revolution, a brigand to others because he charged a high price for his weapons and later trafficked in other forms of contraband, from stolen cattle to liquor and humans.
A rival named Sanchez stole a load of her husband’s liquor. Her husband caught him, killing two bodyguards with a shotgun. His men spread Sanchez across the top of a table, tearing off his shirt. Her husband drew a hunting knife from his boot and stabbed it into Sanchez’s chest, leaning over his face like a deaf man trying to read the lip movements of a dying scream.
He carved out his rival’s pulsing heart, held it to the sky, then sliced off a hunk and ate it. She was horrified when he told her this. She had seen many things following the path of vodoun and palo mayombe. She had shown reverence for the dead and called on their power to help her and hurt her enemies. But passing human flesh between her lips was unthinkable.
“I did it for tribute, to keep the gods on my side and to gather the energy of my enemy for my own use.”
Her husband told her about a battle between the Aztecs and the conquistadors of Cortez near the great temple on Serpent Mountain. Captured Spaniards were herded up the steps of the temple pyramid where plumes were placed in their hair and they were forced to dance before Huitzilopochtli, the god of tribute and war.
; The captives were then thrown across stone altars; their chests were carved open, their hearts were cut out and offered, still quivering, to Huitzilopochtli. The dead were then pitched down the staircases and butchered. The priests gave worshipers bits of heart and flesh in a chile paste.
She was still disgusted. But as he kept talking, she began to see the parallels between her beliefs and his -- the push to replenish the energy of the universe, to draw on the power of gods and ancestors and enemies, the need to honor the forces of the underworld and the overworld, to consort with the gods themselves.
He was a willing student of her ways. He taught her about the Vision Serpent, Tlaloc the rain god, Xiuhtecuhtli the fire god and the paths between the earth, the world of the dead and the celestial home of the gods. He fed her peyote and showed her how to live the life of a coyote, a wolf or a hawk.
She taught him about the Warriors, the Lonely One, the red-eyed loas of the Pethro path of vodoun, the body cuts of palo mayombe, the swaying trances and the calls to the spirit world.
They developed their own ritual, one that mixed the worship of the dead and the sacrifice of the living -- a chicken or pig, perhaps; maybe their own blood and that of their sons. This was fine for the routine of life.
But to give tribute for a victory over a rival smuggler or the federales, only human blood would do. Sometimes her husband and her sons captured a member of a rival gang; sometimes a drifter lost his life to keep the gods happy, his parts chopped and dumped into an iron cauldron.
She learned to make the chili paste, she discovered the sickening sweet taste of human flesh and heart muscle. It had been two months since she made the paste and led her sons through solemn ceremony. And she felt the need to draw on the power of the gods.
T-Roy had promised them a special sacrifice, a man of power, a rival from the time before he came to live among them in the low, sunburned hills just south of the river. She called him Tedero and laughed to herself because it set his teeth on edge.
He had power and presence -- he could call the orishas and loas, they would answer. He possessed a cruel ability to dominate other men. He stepped into their circle and into the place her husband once held. Without effort. But he didn’t believe and blinded himself to the spirits riding on his flanks.