by Multiple
Taurus, sitting next to me seemed a bit twitchy and I wondered afterward if he didn’t really want to take her place—when we returned to the reservation with our car trunk stuffed with chicory-flavored coffee, I would sometimes catch glimpses of him late at night in the bathroom, holding a hairbrush for a microphone, humming ABBA and with a yellow towel wrapped around his head in imitation of the beehive hairdo he had seen (which made no sense to me—his own hair was as long as mine, and he could have played with that, although perhaps he felt it was the wrong color. When he was 17 he tried to bleach stripes into it, but the stripes turned an odd green. Hair as black as ours doesn’t really bleach—or perm for that matter. But it is good for whipping lovers.
Aries seemed a bit jealous that the performers looked better than she did, but we never really talked about it. Years later, the man I would sleep with that night asked if I had ever been to a drag show before (he announced we were going to one where he would perform—not as a drag queen, but as a “wonder stud,” one of two “masculine” men who basically served as living props for the performers to play with during their numbers—his first act was with the two of them in French sailor outfits standing at attention while a Cher lookalike emoted to “If I Could Turn Back Time.”). I told him I had seen my first when I was half his age—drag shows didn’t seem to have changed all that much other than since we were in Wisconsin, the first performer smelled of beer rather than gin. My new lover looked good in the French sailor outfit. Later in the evening he looked much better without it.
Chapter Five
I was relieved when we were released from the Klitkat Klub and ended up back in the French Quarter. My head was filled with the different smells and I liked looking at the fancy iron work—locals called it iron lace. On the bus tour it was mentioned iron work like this had been used in other cities, but it had been ripped away and used to manufacture weapons during World War Two. New Orleans had managed to keep the beautiful curves and designs of their balustrades and verandas. I traced the realistic ear of corn with my fingertip that was a few inches high and brightly enameled, repeated on the fence that surrounded the Corn Stalk Hotel.
The older siblings had been given some cash and turned loose with instructions to meet back at the Cafe du Monde at six in the evening. I enjoyed being on my own, crossing back and forth, using Bourbon Street as my point of reference. That was how I ended up on Dumaine Street and saw a name I recognized—Marie Laveau. Curious, I walked into the Voodoo Museum. A portrait of a woman who looked part Native was prominently displayed, wearing a turban, much more elaborate than the one that Lady Chartreuse had used to hide my hair.
I smelled a mixture of bitter things, old things, and tobacco—the leaves—not cigarette stubs, and followed the scent to what appeared to be a type of altar. There was an interesting collection of items identified as “gris-gris.” We would call them medicine bags. These were made of cloth and seemed very commercial. A framed newspaper article yellowed with age indicated at one time all New Orleans policemen carried gris-gris. That made me wonder what sort of criminals police expected to encounter here.
I read a little on Marie Laveau’s history. Queen of Voodoo. Nice to know how Scorpio self-identifies. I was pretty sure Aunt Pork wouldn’t compare herself to Marie Laveau. Everywhere I looked, everything seemed vaguely familiar. It was as if what was called voodoo had a Native American base which then got tweaked with a lot of other influences. The voodoo dances where participants were possessed by spirits called Loa seemed very similar to our Winter Spirit Dances.
A gris-gris could also be a doll. Apparently when White people first encountered sacred carved objects used by the African peoples, they assumed they were playthings, and not ceremonial items. Still keeps happening with us. I held a gris-gris doll in my hand and thought of my grandmother’s dolls. I decided to buy one for her, although the story that would go with it would be more valued. A true artist keeps track of what others in her field are doing, much in the way one cat keeps an eye on its sharp-toothed neighbor.
I paid and stepped back on to the street. “Pocahontas,” I heard from behind me. “What were you doing in that shop? It’s strictly for tourists. Come with me.” Lady Chartreuse put his arm around my shoulder and escorted me back in the opposite direction of the Cafe du Monde.
“Were you stalking me?” He had a tank-top on, and he smelled freshly showered. He was more attractive than many, but not someone who would really catch your eye. Perhaps that was Lady Chartreuse’s function.
“No, I’m running errands—picking up a few things I’ll need for tonight. I saw you walking out of the Voodoo Museum. I figured it must be a sign. My own family history is tied to Marie Laveau but it’s something that was never talked about to outsiders because it involved the only murder that could be traced back to her conjuring.” He laughed. “Our family covered it up the same way they tossed my ass out. Get rid of anything that could bring them shame. Nothing much has changed since the 1800s.
“It is more than a twice-told tale,” he began. “A Creole woman named Camille fell in love with a Scotsman because she felt it was a step up for her to marry not just a true White man, but one whispered to be descended from the Lairds of Caledonia. But a spurned Creole lover came to the Priestess Marie Laveau, asking her to use her powers to force Camille to love him. When she shook her head, he said if he could not have her then no one should so he wanted her dead. ‘If this is what you ask, it can be done, but you will pay greatly,’ —and then she spat on the ground in front of him and stomped on the spot with her expensively shod foot. ‘Make it so!’ She told him the items he needed to bring her for the gris-gris she would create.
“Then did the Priestess go to visit her apprentice, the fabulous Madame LaLaurie, in the aristocrat’s parlor of scarlet. She had been teaching the woman for many years, and she was a talented student. Unfortunately, her interests were even darker than Marie knew. For the most part, Marie Laveau was a healer. But part of being trained as a healer means learning how to kill, since one role of a healer is to combat assassinations in all forms.
“Over the months that followed, Camille became pregnant and her world was bright. But then her husband and mother began to show signs of depression and were haunted by dreams. Camille sought the intervention of the Priestess, and Marie Laveau told her the unborn child was in danger from great evil that had begun with a ancient curse in Scotland, and the real reason her husband had escaped to New Orleans.
“Because Camille was told the only chance for the baby’s survival was to have Marie Laveau herself act as midwife, when her labor began, she summoned the Priestess. It was a labor of great difficulty and Camille died in the process. When the Priestess summoned Camille’s family to give them the terrible news, she also showed them the horribly deformed child. In the stories, the baby boy was usually called the Devil’s Child. Camille’s father asked the Priestess to keep the infant because he would not have the abomination in his house. He let Marie know the Scotsman had gone insane and had been locked away by the Ursuline Nuns.
“Thus did the Priestess step into the darkness with the child, tightly wrapped to hide his truth. When she turned the corner she was face to face with the Creole who had asked for Camille’s death. ‘What have you done to me?’ he cried, because this man who had been so handsome was now as crippled and hideous as the child she held within her arms. “
He opened the door to a shop that looked very new and clean. The air conditioning made me shiver and I was fascinated by the mixture of antiseptic and herbal smells from shiny glass cases. My first impression was this is what would happen if you merged a medical marijuana shop that I had seen on a news report and a New Age bookstore. We make all of our own stuff back home. I guess this is where we would come to buy things if we lived in a city. I even caught the vanilla like scent of dried Sweetgrass.
“What happened with the Creole man? It was something to do with the evil of his soul now reflected in his physical body?”
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br /> “It was so the world could see he was the one who would spend the rest of his life paying the price of Camille’s death. Then she dismissed him because he was now so ugly he offended her sight. She left him and returned to the home of Madame LaLaurie, where it is said Madame called in a priest to have the infant baptized while she stood for him as his godmother.”
“How is this all related to you and your family?” I asked politely, since I was much more interested in exploring the store than finding out what happened to a legendary Devil baby. I had heard very little French at that time and all the names were getting hard for me to follow.
“Madame LaLaurie assumed responsibility for the child. It is said the two of them would use the infant to summon his true father, but I believe the Priestess would never have done such a thing.” He turned to look me in the eyes. “She was a good woman.” I personally thought I would hesitate to describe a historical figure who had just been accused of murdering a pregnant woman, driving the father insane, deforming a Creole man—and apparently deforming a baby, as “a good woman.”
“No,” he said, turning away from me and focusing again on his story. “It was not the Priestess who did such things, but Madame LaLaurie herself. A few years later when her house caught fire, the authorities discovered the bodies of her slaves who had been brutally tortured and mutilated as part of her dark arts. She fled with the young boy, just before she would have been put away. Most people believe she returned to France.” He stopped, pausing for effect. “But now you know she really escaped to St. Francisville. She established herself there when the Sterlings had bought the Plantation and renamed it the Myrtles.”
He picked up a slender glass container that held small metal balls and seemed to judge its weight. “The people of the area called her the Devil’s wife. When her godson was an adult, he sometimes went by the name Web or Webber. It was because his familiar was a monster spider. He was the one who murdered William Winter on the seventeenth step of the Myrtles’ porch.”
And that was somehow related to why Martin Winter, aka, Lady Chartreuse was now standing in front of me, poking at a tube of something labeled kufwa. “What’s that?” I asked. It was well sealed so I couldn’t smell it. It was a greasy yellow.
“Do you know what a neutron bomb is?” I shook my head to indicate I did not.
“It’s like an atomic bomb, except it is designed to leave the buildings standing and just kill the people inside through radiation. The military uses them now to combat troops that are in armored vehicles. Kufwa is the neutron bomb of gris-gris. The word is originally from the Congo and means ‘to die.’ It was one of the ingredients Marie Laveau used when she made the gris-gris for Camille.” He saw me frown and quickly added, “You mix it with graveyard dust and that camouflages the yellow color.” He replaced it in the stand and added, “That’s why the combination is called goofer dust.”
I looked at it with greater respect and wondered if I could do the same thing with ground up death camas. I considered buying some, but at that age, my enemies’ list was fairly small. I wandered around trying to better understand what a lot of the stuff was. The labels were well-printed, but I didn’t know what “Two Head Root,” “Dragon’s Blood,” or “Tears of Blanc Dani,” were, let alone how to use them. I considered asking Lady Chartreuse but I was worried I’d have to sit through another tale of his family history. My thoughts were interrupted by a gray-haired White man who came out of the back room and placed a small quartz crystal into my hand and then closed my fingers over it while he whispered something.
The quartz responded by growing quite warm, but didn’t feel threatening or dangerous. “I have been saving this for you,” he said. “I am honored that you have come into our shop.” This was the first time this happened, but over the years I have quite a collection of crystals White people have given me as soon as I walked into a New-Agey place. For a long time I felt complimented, but I finally realized they gave me these items the way on my father’s reservation, the vendors will always cover up their tables and leave a small gift for the Sacred Clowns to placate them. All my crystals were a sort of mystic mafia protection fund. I suppose it worked. I never harmed anyone. Well, I never harmed any shop owners.
Chapter Six
My first official lover was an exchange student from Italy. He was taller than I was, and his shoulders seemed oddly wide in comparison to his tiny waist. He smelled of oregano and something I later learned was basil. In our language, one of the slang terms for a White Person literally means “hairy-assed” and I didn’t understand why until I saw him with his pants down. A lifetime of nude bathing and sweatlodges among my own family did not prepare me for how many hairs per square inch a White man’s ass can have—and they were curly.
Valentino had skin like a mocha latte, and his eyelashes were so long they brushed against the lens of his glasses. His hands were large enough to easily span the keys of the school’s piano, the warm coffee fingers against the cool white chocolate and licorice keys. He loved to play jazz and knew the name of the musician whose home I had seen (and smelled) in New Orleans, and I loved to watch his fingers alternately slam and caress the music out of the old beat-up piano, which smelled of dust and glue. I knew he wanted me, and could even follow the rhythm of his heart in the rhythm of his music, calling me in.
We consummated in the closet of the music room, with me banging out a rhythm on his hairy ass that matched his earlier piano solo, while he whimpered in Italian I didn’t understand. It would be another year or so before I learned about lubrication—perhaps Valentino wouldn’t have whimpered so much that first time if I had learned earlier. His fingers were long enough to grab and pull and play with my body, his color pale against mine, lightened coffee against darker cinnamon, and my wild hair got caught in his wide mouth and he started laughing.
For the next eight months of his stay, we practiced our rhythm and his English improved tremendously, while my tongue perfected French movements rather than Italian ones. Even now, while I am fluent in my mother’s language as well as my father’s, my English is strong, and I can hold my own in French, German and Gayspeak, the Italian language has always eluded me. When Valentino and I were alone, discourse wasn’t the course I was interested in.
When the frost sparkled on the ground and the air smelled of alder wood smoke, we invited Valentino to come with us for the Winter Dancing, to the Longhouse, where his brown eyes grew wide behind his glasses as we began to paint our faces and the drums pounded. When the fireman flung his fresh logs onto the waist-high fire, sparks flew up like a mad swarm of glowing hornets, which glittered against Val’s lens, as his face paled as if cream were added to the latte, his pupils dilated and glassy. Then my grandmother’s Song began and the dolls began to dance.
I think that’s when I first realized I might have some problems explaining to White lovers what my life is like, after he sat in the station wagon more silent than the dolls, until we brought him food around 4am as the healing ceremonies began inside. He only spoke a few words in Italian until we arrived home, Taurus and Capricorn joking about him in our language until our mother told them to leave Val alone. We had one more exchange student (from Sweden) but after Valentino’s reaction, our grandmother decided it was best she wasn’t offered a chance to come to the Longhouses with us.
We would pack her off to stay with our cousin Maggie and her Mormon husband during the weekends we were away, and she seemed content. I never really knew her that well—I was older and busy with Otter, a half-breed in my art class who was from a different tribe. Gemini and Libra knew her much better, since they were closer to her age, and the last I asked, Gemini still e-mails her, and actually once flew out and visited her in some small cold town that seemed to have a lot off “J’s” in the spelling, where he said it was dark most of the day.
It took Valentino a full week to thaw out, and he never asked questions of what he saw, and never again looked my grandmother in the eye. He would not go into the �
��Indian Room” where the dolls were kept. For 6 weeks he spent his spare time blankly watching television and eating everything he could get his hands on, until his thin waist swelled and gaps in the shape of footballs appeared between the buttons over his new little belly. By the time we resumed having sex he was speaking English again and he felt wonderfully spongy on his new love handles. When he unbuckled his jeans, his new belly slowly pushed his zipper open and his freshly formed flab escaped in a way I found strangely sexy. Fat had also fleshed out his tits, making small cones on his chest, and his hairy ass was much larger and rounded.
By the time he returned to Italy, his thighs rubbed together and I had learned to enjoy having sex between their soft thickness. When I kissed him goodbye, he smelled of smoked salmon. Ever since I have especially enjoyed fleshy, zaftig lovers, even though most of the ones I have chosen (or who have chosen me) have been lean as chiseled marble, and about as hard.
Chapter Seven
Mormon missionaries always come in pairs, in matching black polyester suits and they smell of whatever cologne had been introduced the year before. As I understand it, their religion gives them extra points for converting us—we’re called Lamanites, and are considered to be the Lost Tribe of Israel, descended from one of the sons of Noah—at least that’s what I recall. When I was demonstrating dances in Honolulu I was told the Polynesians were also Lamanites.
One day, two missionaries came to our home, pimply-faced and smelling of a knock-off version of Calvin Klein’s Eternity, with plastic badges identifying them as “Elders” (which always made all of us laugh at the thought of White boys barely old enough to shave being called Elders—a term of the greatest respect for us). My grandmother offered them tea while they talked on and on about their beliefs (apparently if you convert, you get to convert all of your dead ancestors as well, apparently without consulting them). When they had finished, my grandmother put down her tea and quietly said, “Let me get this straight—you say there was this White Man named Joseph Smith, and he found these golden tablets under the ground in New York State?”