My Ears Are Bent

by Joseph Mitchell

  The hand-healers are deeply respected, and a conjure man will go through torture to obtain laying-on ability. The faith Negroes have in hand-healers is indicated by the fact that Grant Biddle, a cemetery caretaker in Baltimore, reported last June 22 that the body of John D. Johnson, a celebrated Negro healer, had been dug up and the hands cut off.

  The Italian Sailor and the Ectoplasm Box

  The shabby, side-street depths to which voodoo has fallen in its transition from the Congo to Dixie to Lenox Avenue may be gauged by the fact that now all but the very best conjure men make use of ectoplasm boxes in their negotiations with demons.

  These boxes are put up for lazy spiritualist mediums, and for the humorless magicians who expose them, by a small factory in Chicago, and are sold to conjure men at $15 a box by voodoo supply houses in Manhattan and New Orleans. When the box is lit, a smoky shape, roughly resembling a hooded man, floats upward. Even the little wax images resembling naked humans into which conjure men stick pins, inflicting long-distance torture, are made in candle molds in a Manhattan loft.

  You do not have to study voodoo long to realize that it has gone sour. To work their furtive wonders the kings of gris-gris and the two-headed doctors now need something more powerful than rooster blood, or jungle drums, or the Essence of Bend-Over, or Southern John the Conqueror root, or Four Thieves vinegar, or gooferdust, which is, after all, only earth stolen from the fresh grave of an infant sometime around midnight. The public schools have played hell with the powers of the conjure men. The most deadly enemy of voodoo is a movement upward in the literacy rate; witches find roosting places only on the shoulders of the ignorant.

  The bones which compose the altars of the Harlem conjure men are likely to be beef bones or old soup bones, and the skulls they sometimes hold in their laps come from medical supply houses, like as not. In the whole country today there is not a single conjure worker with the power of Marie Leveau, the illegitimate quadroon who kept an aged, fat rattlesnake lying on her altar, who used to make policemen get down on their knees and bark like dogs when they came to her house in St. Anne Street, New Orleans, to arrest her. She had no respect for the law at all. Is there a conjure woman in Harlem who can make policemen from the West 135th Street station get down on their knees and bark like dogs? No!

  There are conjure men in Harlem who claim to have sections of skin from Marie’s old altar-snake, but they do not have any of her brain-grease. Marie never ordered any of her conjure goods from a supply house. She dug in the malaria swamps for her own roots, grubbing them up at exactly the right time of the year, when the sap and the moon were both just right.

  Marie never rooted out any herbs unless there was some blood on the moon hanging up above her. And she didn’t want any ectoplasm boxes in her way when she got ready to have a few words with the goblins. But Marie is gone (what day and what year nobody knows), leaving as disciples the strongest conjure men in the United States, but none as strong as she—leaving fiery legends which will someday take places on the brightest pages of American folklore.

  However, old dead-and-gone Marie hasn’t got anything to do with ectoplasm boxes, which this article is supposed to be about, and will be, too, if High John the Conqueror will quit bothering me. Get out of here, High John!

  The use of the ectoplasm box was described by the man who sells voodoo supplies but does not want his name printed because he is afraid the ministers to whom he sells orthodox incense and candles will not be as tolerant as he is. This man is very tolerant; he believes voodoo worshipers have a right to their religion and that the right is guaranteed by the Constitution. He made the same remark made by the old man who kissed the nanny goat—“Every man to his own taste.” He said he sells comparatively few ectoplasm boxes because they are expensive, as voodoo goods go. For many years they were sold only to mediums, but now a good portion of the ectoplasm boxes manufactured in the United States are sold to voodoo doctors.

  “I know about one demon session where an ectoplasm box was used,” he said, shoving a big pile of paper-bound copies of “The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses” out of his chair, so he could sit down.

  “There was an Italian sailor who came in here and wanted some advice. He said a Harlem drugstore man gave him my address. He said he had a wife and two small daughters, and he was worried about their future. He wanted a conjure doctor to let the demons know they could have him as a sacrifice in return for ten years of prosperity. He figured he could save enough in ten years of prosperity to leave his family well fixed.

  “I told him I couldn’t do a thing for him, that such things weren’t in my line at all. I wouldn’t even give him the names of any of the doctors I know. They don’t like to have strangers know their names, as a rule. However, he found a man for himself, a Negro man who used to come around to my place. This man came to me and wanted to buy an ectoplasm box, but at that time I was out of them, didn’t have a one in stock. He finally got one from another doctor.

  “He wanted to use the box for this client he had, this Italian sailor. I always wondered why this sailor didn’t get an evil-eye woman to do the job. Anyhow, one way and another I found out everything that happened between this conjure man and the sailor.

  “They went out on a Friday night. They went into some woods somewhere near Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. The conjure man had an automobile. He took a bag with him, a bag that had a black cat in it. Well, they got into a dark place deep in the woods, up on a hill. It was a windy night, and they got to a place where the wind wouldn’t hit them so hard.

  “Sometime around midnight the conjure man drew a big circle on the ground with a piece of Dragon’s Blood root. It makes a red mark. Then he drew an inner circle, and between the outside and the inner circle, he wrote down the five names of God. He only knows the five names, but some know the seven names. The five he wrote down on the ground were Tet-rag-ram-maton, Yah, Seleh, Elohim and Yad-he-vey-he. That was for protection. No demon can break through a circle which has these names on it. It’s absolutely impossible.

  “I better tell you that I think that doctor was something of a faker. I don’t believe any of the doctors can get demons to give ten years of prosperity, but you never can tell about these things. He might have been sincere. He tried hard enough, anyway.

  “The doctor put three candles in the circle to form a trinity, and he prepared himself and the sailor. He anointed the sailor. Then he took and wrapped his sacred cloth around his body and tied fourteen knots in it. He wrapped the band around seven times. He put a band around his forehead. That was all for protection. You have to be careful. You never know how many demons you are going to invoke. I know a man who has invoked 130 demons personally, but that was over a period of fifteen years.

  “When everything was ready the conjure man put on his invoking robes of white and stuck a cross up in the circle. Then he took the cat out of the bag and cut its throat. He and the sailor drank the blood of the cat. Then they built a fire and roasted some of the cat. The sailor got sick, but he ate enough to protect him. When that was over the conjure man began yelling and chanting and hitting the ground with this stick. After he had been chanting in this peculiar tongue for a while he turned to the sailor and told him he was in communication with the demons, and that he was trying to make the deal with them. The sailor told him to do the best he could. Then he went back to his chanting. He jumped up and down and twisted and hit the dirt with his wand. He kept talking in this tongue for a good long time. He would talk to a demon on the north edge of the circle, and then he would turn and talk to one on the south edge.

  “Finally he turned to the sailor and said he had everything fixed up, that he was going to have ten years of wonderful prosperity, but at the end of that time he would have to give himself to the demons. The sailor was pleased, and he said he wanted to shake hands with the demons. The doctor told him that was out of the question, but the sailor kept insisting. He kept saying, ‘I want to shake hands.’

  “Well, the
doctor had decided he wouldn’t use his ectoplasm box unless he got into a pinch. So when the sailor kept on insisting he decided to turn on the ectoplasm. He struck a match and lit the box.

  “Up into the air issued this thing, this white, filmy shape, like a man covered up with a robe. It had a shine to it. It shook a little. The doctor turned to the sailor and said, ‘O.K., brother, shake hands with it.’ But the sailor was writhing on the ground, gibbering. Then, all of a sudden, he jumps up and tears out of the magic circle. He was yelling in Italian and screaming like a stuck pig. The conjure man tried to catch him, but he outran the conjure man. He tore down acres of bushes getting out of the woods.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Well, he kept running all that night. He ran all over New Jersey and alarmed the whole countryside. Finally they caught him, and they had to put him in the insane asylum.”

  “What happened to the conjure doctor?”

  “He kind of disappeared. I think he left town. I think he moved out West somewhere. I haven’t seen him for two or three years.”

  4. ONE DOLLAR A BATH

  In the dining room of the Home of the New York Guild for the Jewish Blind, at 332 St. John’s Avenue, Yonkers, eighty-three sightless men, women and children sat down and celebrated the 109th birthday of Hirsch Smulowitz, a white-bearded tailor who called his late wife from the back room of their East Side shop one night forty years ago and shrieked, “Rebekkah, I can’t see!”

  Mr. Smulowitz was born on February 29, 1824, and according to the Gregorian calendar, he should have birthdays only on leap years.

  Told that he was not due a birthday party this year, Mr. Smulowitz pounded vigorously on a table, shouted that he would leave the home and get a job shoveling snow. Mrs. Rose Z. Moschcowitz, director of the home, told him there was no snow to shovel, but his protests were so loud that she promised him a party and forthwith ordered three big cakes.

  As proud and domineering as a landed patriarch, Mr. Smulowitz sat at the head of the table and ordered an attendant to cut the first cake. Then he shouted a command in Yiddish.

  The attendant went at once to a cabinet, unlocked it, brought out a bottle and poured the aged celebrant a glass of schnapps. Mr. Smulowitz swallowed the contents and shouted another command in Yiddish.

  “On a man’s birthday one glass is not enough,” he said, holding out the glass. The attendant filled it again.

  “How do you feel tonight, Reb Hirsch?” asked Mrs. Moschcowitz.

  “Not very bad,” he said, tapping the table with his glass.

  “You hate to admit that you feel better than any of us,” she said. Someone turned on the radio. Mrs. Moschcowitz asked him how he liked the radio.

  “I don’t like it,” he said, emphatically. “Tell them to stop playing at once. Tell them that noise is no good.”

  “He doesn’t care for the radio,” said Mrs. Moschcowitz. “He never did. His principal pleasure is to hear someone read love stories in the Jewish newspapers. When the stories are finished, he says, ‘Now read me about the market. How is the market today, maybe?’

  “We have to pay him $1 to get him to take a bath. We insist that he take a bath three times a week, and it runs into money. Here lately it got to be too expensive—we have a $40,000 deficit, you know—and so we cut out a piece of parchment paper in the shape of a bill and give it to him when he refuses to take a bath. He doesn’t know the difference.”

  “What does he want with the money?”

  “His mind wanders,” said Mrs. Moschcowitz, “and sometimes he forgets that he is in a home. He remembers the struggle he had to make a living in the tailor shop and he wakes up and yells, ‘I haven’t got money for the coal this month!’

  “Every time a visitor comes to the home Reb Hirsch holds out his hand and says, ‘Any money for me, maybe?’ The depression doesn’t interest him. He says he has been through a dozen depressions. He says it was worse after the Civil War, far worse, than it is now.”

  Next to schnapps and wine he cares for snuff.

  He keeps a six months’ supply in his pockets. The bladders of snuff cause his pockets to bulge.

  Little is known about the past of Mr. Smulowitz. He was born in Riga, Russia. His wife died in 1927. For many years the Guild gave him and his wife a small pension.

  After her funeral, Mr. Smulowitz was taken straight from the Brooklyn cemetery in which his wife was buried to the home in Yonkers.

  He is cheerful and he likes to give orders.

  On days of celebration he gets up in the middle of the floor and dances a surprisingly agile jig. He thinks he should have a glass of whiskey each day. After the celebration last night he stood up and commenced a jig. Afraid he would excite himself, Mrs. Moschcowitz asked him to sit down. He sat down, felt for his tiny schnapps glass.

  “Fill it up,” he said, hitting it against the table.

  5. “YOU’RE LOOKING BETTER TODAY”

  The tall, red-haired Italian-American had only one arm; shrapnel in the Argonne tore off the other at the shoulder-joint. The little Negro was sightless, blind as a rock, and there were ugly pink scars on his brown face.

  The man they called Jumpy had only one leg, and it appeared to pain him to get his breath because of a little bit of gas he inhaled one morning eighteen years ago in France. He said he believes that with one pull on a cigarette you can get more smoke in your mouth than he got gas, but it still hurts. He said it hurts him a lot worse than an aching tooth hurts, or a terrible headache, and sometimes it hurts for days, hours on end.

  The Italian and the one-legged man were playing checkers in the convalescent ward at United States Veterans’ Hospital No. 81, at 130 West Kingsbridge Road, in the upper Bronx. The blind Negro sat on one of the iron beds with his head in his hands. He sits like that for hours on end, not moving a muscle. There were two newspapers on the bed, and both were turned to the sports pages. The two checker players stared at the board.

  The war between Italy and Ethiopia had just begun, and I had been ordered to find out what veterans of the World War thought about it.

  “Have you been reading about the war?” I asked the man who had swallowed gas years ago in France.

  “No,” he said.

  “You must have read something about it.”

  “I don’t have no interest in it,” the man said. “So far as I’m concerned they can blow Europe to hell. I feel sorry for those poor Italian dopes and those dopes in Ethiopia getting their guts shot out and their heads blown off so a bunch of rich guys can make more money. Poor dopes.”

  “In one day they killed 1,700 men, and they wounded 3,000 over there,” said the Italian-American, moving a black piece across the worn, greasy checkerboard.

  “Yeah,” said the gassed man.

  “Where is Ethiopia?” asked the blind Negro.

  “That is a lot of men to kill in one day,” said the Italian-American, “but that is just the beginning. They just started.”

  “We killed a lot more than that in one day in our war,” said the blind Negro. “There was millions killed in our war. We bloodied up the whole world.”

  “Would you go to war again if you were able?” I asked.

  “By God,” said the one-legged man, “I would not go to war for nothing or nobody. They could came over here, even Japan, and take the whole damned country and I would not go out and get my head blowed off. It wouldn’t be any worse than it is now anyway.”

  “It is better to be in the army than starving to death without no job,” said the Italian-American.

  The one-legged man lit a cigarette for the Negro and handed it to him.

  “A man that goes to war ain’t quite bright,” said the Negro. “He don’t show good judgment.”

  I found that there was little discussion about the war in the whole hospital. The day fighting started a man said something about “those damned Wops,” and an Italian veteran heard it and picked up one of the cranks they use to raise and lower the hospital beds and
said he would knock the man’s brains out if he didn’t take “Wop” back. The man did, and there was no fight. There was more talk about the war in the wards where men are permanently confined to their beds. They were stretched out in bed with radio headphones on their heads, listening. Each bed in the hospital had a headset attached to it.

  “If you want to see the guys that know about war go upstairs to Ward 2-South,” said the one-legged man. “They are the guys that don’t leave here until they take them out in a box. Shell shock. And look in 4-South, where they got the guys with no jaws, and their eyes and ears eaten off, and look at some of the guys with tuberculosis they got after gas burned up their lungs. Look at the T.B.’s, and ask them if they would fight again.

  “Those are the guys the public never sees. They never go out of the hospital. Every once in a while one of them goes off his nut, crazy as a bedbug, thinks he’s fighting again, and they transfer him to another hospital. Thousands of those guys lying in beds still fighting in France. All the public sees is a guy on crutches now and then. It don’t make no difference. They can drum up another war and young fellows will trot off with smiles on their faces to get themselves blowed to hell. It’s a lot of fun.”

  I was permitted to walk down the corridor in 2-South, but not allowed to ask questions. There was a man standing in the corridor in his bathrobe. He stared straight ahead, vacantly, and he was trembling all over. An orderly came up and guided him to his bed. A doctor said something to him. It took him long minutes to answer; the three or four words he said were uttered with great effort. The doctor said his brain is sound, but his nerves will not obey its commands. There did not seem to be much reason to ask him what he thought of the Italo-Ethiopian war.