Sweet Unrest

by Maxwell, Lisa

  I watched, unsure of what to do, as she flung herself at a tall, dark-skinned man, kissing him with more enthusiasm than was maybe entirely necessary in the middle of a crowded sidewalk.

  The man, who towered over her, immediately wrapped her in his arms and lifted her up, as easily as he might lift a child. His head was shaved smooth, and his right arm was tattooed down to his wrist in an intricate sleeve of primitive-looking designs. He looked like some sort of warrior clad in a lemon-yellow polo shirt. The two things just didn’t seem to make sense together.

  “Lucy, get over here!” Chloe called, her arm still around the man’s waist. “Y’all come meet my man, Piers Dumont.”

  Piers smiled and the warrior disappeared, revealing the charmer.

  I held my hand out. “Lucy Aimes.”

  “Lucy’s father is the professor taking over out at Le Ciel,” Chloe told him.

  Piers seemed surprised and opened his mouth to speak, but Chloe beat him to it.

  “I’m so glad you made it!” She squealed again, a sound that was both irritating and charming, and completely in character with the vibrant person who hadn’t stopped chattering since I’d plopped into her car. “Piers goes to Vanderbilt, up in Nashville,” she told me before kissing him again, soundly.

  I shifted uncomfortably, wondering whether I should leave to give them some privacy.

  “Lord knows why Tulane wasn’t good enough for him,” she added a little breathlessly as she gazed up at him. “I wasn’t sure if he’d get back in time to meet us today, but he did.” She wrapped her arm around his waist and snuggled into his bulk.

  Together, we walked to the Central Grocery and ate muffulettas dripping with garlicky oil while Chloe chattered on about the wonders of Piers. She barely let him get a word in edgewise until the alarm on her phone went off. She looked at it, her mouth turned down. “We’ve gotta go. I’m gonna be late for my appointment with Mama Legba.”

  Piers’s brows lifted. “You still seeing her?”

  “Of course I’m seeing her, baby. I don’t know why you’re even asking, since you’re the one that introduced us in the first place.”

  “I just thought your mom didn’t want you going there anymore.”

  “My momma knows I’m a grown woman and can take care of myself,” Chloe said, shooting him a look. “But do you know that?” she asked playfully as she crossed her arms and lifted one brow, daring him to contradict her.

  “Of course I know that,” Piers said, kissing her quickly on the forehead. “Just like I know Mama Legba’s more than capable of keeping you out of trouble if you go messing with the spirits.”

  Chloe laughed at that. “Piers, baby, you know I’m not messing with no spirits. I stay far away from all that.”

  Piers didn’t look convinced, but he kissed her again before he sent us on our way.

  “So who’s Mama Legba?” I asked as Chloe led me through the crush of tourists surrounding Jackson Square, back toward the cathedral.

  “Mama Legba’s the best, Lucy. You’re gonna love her. She’s an old Voodoo Queen. The best in the city, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Voodoo?” I laughed. “Seriously?”

  Chloe stopped and turned to me. “There’s a lot you Yankees don’t understand, you know. All those silly movies and superstitions. Pins in Voodoo dolls and all that trash.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “That’s not at all what Mama Legba’s about.” She started walking, faster now, and I matched my strides to keep up with her as she maneuvered easily past the half-sober groups of tourists who were browsing through the makeshift gallery that ringed Jackson Square. “A lot of fake Voodoo shops around this town make a killing selling tourists all sorts of stupid things. People come here looking for magic, so they go and buy up phony Gris-Gris and all kinds of dime-store junk. They give a lot of money to have some supposed psychic tell them their future.” She gestured to the rag-tag group of fortune-tellers scattered like displaced gypsies around the park, then shrugged. “It’s good for the city, I guess. The tourists come to find some magic, and their money helps keep this old town on its feet. Doesn’t matter that they’re being taken, as long as they’re having fun. As long as money keeps flowing into town, right?”

  I nodded. “I guess so.”

  Chloe shook her head. “Mama Legba—she’s not like that. She’s the real deal.”

  “Wouldn’t that make her dangerous, then?” I asked, thinking about what little I knew about Voodoo.

  “Is your priest dangerous?” Chloe shot me a look that dared me to contradict her. “I didn’t think so. You assume Voodoo is dangerous because you don’t know it.”

  I thought about that and realized she was right. I didn’t know a thing about Voodoo other than what I might have seen in old B movies on late-night TV. I had a vague memory of one featuring a toothless old witch who controlled rotting zombies in order to kill and maim anyone who got in her way. “So set me straight,” I told her.

  She glanced at me suspiciously from beneath heavy lashes. “You really want to know?”

  “Sure.” If nothing else, I figured it might be entertaining to meet a real live Voodoo Queen—or at least as real as any of them could be.

  Chloe stopped suddenly at the mouth of the narrow alley that ran alongside the looming cathedral and considered me as we stood in the church’s humid shade. “It might be better if we let Mama Legba tell you.”

  I don’t know what I expected, exactly, from a Voodoo Queen’s lair, but it wasn’t what I found at Mama Legba’s. I certainly wasn’t expecting a warmly welcoming place decorated in bright colors perfectly suited to a Caribbean resort.

  Stepping through the coral-pink door and into Mama Legba’s shop was like stepping into a sunny day. Brilliant yellow paint covered the tin ceiling above us, cerulean blues washed the worn plaster walls, and the floor was a light oak worn almost white by time. It was a comfortable space that smelled of sage and the ghosts of pressed flowers. The teak shelves that lined the back wall were filled with large, clear jars, each holding a different dried herb. Bottles in brilliant jewel tones hung from the ceiling, making me feel like I’d stepped into some magical forest.

  “You late, Chloe-girl!” sounded from the hallway that led toward the back of the shop.

  “I’m sorry, Mama, but Piers showed up, and you know how I feel about that man.” Chloe laughed as she picked up one of the small, primitive cloth dolls that rested on a nearby shelf and ran her fingers along it. “When you gonna give me a love charm to make sure he’s always mine, Mama?”

  A woman appeared from the back hallway, looking irritated except for the beginnings of a smile that tugged at her mouth. “That ain’t never gonna happen, Chloe-girl. You bind someone, and you not talking love. You talking something else.” She walked over and tipped up Chloe’s chin. “You deserve love. Not that something else.”

  Chloe smiled and hugged her. “Damn straight, Mama. But can’t blame a girl for trying.”

  The woman laughed, a heady sound, but she stopped when she finally noticed me.

  Mama Legba looked like she was in her early sixties. She had a broad, smooth face and dark hair that was just beginning to go gray around the temples. It was pulled back into a tidy knot. Her face was more plump than angular, and she was thick through the waist. She might have been described as a sturdy woman, but no one could have called her fat. Though she wasn’t overly large, somehow the room felt almost too full with her presence, and her clear, dark eyes were sharp and focused on me.

  “And who’s this, Chloe-girl?”

  “Mama, this is Lucy. Her daddy’s the one that’s come to work on Le Ciel.”

  Mama nodded as though the news was old. “But why she here, child? I thought you came for a lesson today.”

  Chloe smiled. “I did, Mama, but I wanted Lucy to meet you. She don’t know all that much about Voodoo.”

  Mama Legba looked me over carefully, the same way someone might if they were trying to determine if a piece of fruit was
rotten. “Maybe she don’t want to.”

  “No. I mean, yes. I do,” I stuttered. “I’d like to know more, that is.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?” I shrugged.

  Mama Legba’s lips twitched. “Why not, indeed.” She thought about it for a second as she continued to study me, and then, making up her mind, walked over and sat at the small table set up in the corner of the shop. “Well then. You want to know about Voodoo? Fine. You come over here and let me read your cards. Then we’ll see how much more you want to know.”

  Five

  At Mama Legba’s words, Chloe’s eyes widened. She brought her hands to her chest, clutching them together as though she were holding back a hope that wasn’t ready yet to be free. “Oh, Lucy,” she said, her voice soft with the reverent tone of a true disciple. “Having Mama read your cards is a big honor. She doesn’t do it for just anybody.” Her voice lowered to an urgent whisper. “And Mama Legba’s never wrong.”

  I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t want to offend anyone, so I sat at the small table across from the old woman and waited for her to work her magic.

  Mama Legba took out a stack of oversized cards with an intricate design on the back. Printed in ink the color of old blood, delicate lines of dark, angular symbols bordered a series of interlocking doors. The wear around the edges of the cards and their slight discoloration made them look ancient.

  “We gonna shuffle the deck, Lucy-girl, and you gonna draw. Then I’ll read the cards for you,” Mama Legba said. She shuffled the deck thoroughly, let me cut it, and then spread it before me, face down, in a wide arch.

  “You pick three and line them up, face down in front of you,” she told me, gesturing to the table. “Go on now.”

  I glanced over at Chloe and tried not to laugh at how serious she looked. Maybe it was growing up around this stuff or maybe she was just gullible, but her intense focus on what I was about to do told me she believed every bit of Mama Legba’s act.

  I drew three cards and did as she asked, placing them in a straight line from left to right across the table. In a practiced movement, Mama Legba swiped up the remaining cards and set them aside.

  Her steady gaze swept over my face. “You don’t believe this is real, do you, child?”

  I glanced over at Chloe, who looked concerned and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a little hurt. “Not really,” I admitted. “But I’m willing to let you show—”

  “Bah,” she interrupted. “It don’t matter what you believe, Lucy-girl. There is. And there ain’t. You can choose not to listen, but that don’t make what I’m gonna tell you any different. Look here,” she said, pointing at the discarded pile. “You didn’t pick none of these cards. Why not? Why’d you pick the ones you picked?”

  I couldn’t tell her that it was to get the whole thing over with, so I just shrugged.

  “You got your reasons, girl. You go to pick a card and you grab it,” she said, making a snatching motion to demonstrate. “You don’t think nothing about it, do you? You ain’t got no strategy. It’s all chance, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe so.” She shrugged. “But maybe not. Maybe something drew you to that card.” She held her hand up before I could protest. “You got to understand that it don’t matter what you think. It matters what is. And what is, is that energy be all around us.” She lifted her arms and gestured at the air surrounding us, like a magician revealing her trick. “Good energy. Bad energy. It moves us, steers us. We ain’t aware of it, mostly, but it’s there. Everything’s energy. You is energy. I is energy. These cards, they got their own energy deep inside them. That ain’t hoodoo,” she snorted. “That’s physics, girl. Somethin’ for you to wrap your head around.

  “Now, these cards here just be one way of reading that energy you got inside you. The energy that move us all around.” She paused for a moment, and then pointed to the first card. “See here, this first card—it’s your past.”

  “But I thought you were going to tell me my future,” I countered.

  She looked at me as though I was impossibly dense. “How you know where you going if you ain’t know where you been, girl? You got more sense than that. You been growing up with the past since before you was born. Cain’t have no future without no past.”

  “You sound like my dad,” I muttered, a bit unnerved at how close she’d come to describing my childhood.

  “He’s a smart man, then,” she said matter-of-factly. “Now, as I was telling you, this here card represent your past.” She flipped it over and showed me its face. Unlike the back of the card, the picture on the face was stunning. It was printed in surprisingly lush colors, with iridescent ink that didn’t show any signs of wear from age. When the light hit it, the picture seemed to be in motion.

  Mama Legba didn’t bother to explain the strange card, just flipped the next card, and the next. “This is your present and this show your future.” She sat and looked at the cards, making a soft rumbling noise deep in her throat that sounded like an admonition. The corners of her lips twitched again as she looked up at me with amusement in her eyes. “You gonna be an interesting one to watch, Lucy-girl. You drew yourself some very powerful cards.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  She nodded. “Look here.” She pointed to the overturned cards, tapping two of them with her long finger. “You drew mostly the major Arcana. That’s rare. They only—maybe—a third of the whole deck. But they’s the most important cards. The trump cards. They mean your life’s gonna be of major importance. You gonna have yourself a higher purpose than most in this world.”

  Well, that at least sounded promising. I could live with a higher purpose, as long as that purpose didn’t require me to stay in Louisiana.

  “We start here.” Mama Legba pointed to the distant past card. It was a picture of a woman with long, raven hair sitting in a chair and holding two long broadswords in a defensive cross in front of her.

  “The Two of Swords. This here card shows me that in the past, you blocked your emotions and avoided the truth because you refused to see what was right in front of you.” She glanced up at me with a look that said she wasn’t surprised.

  “See here, how the woman is blindfolded? She don’t see the truth. The swords she holds is crossed over her heart, because she won’t allow herself to feel the truth. You kept someone or something out because you didn’t trust in your own heart,” she told me, reaching across the table to tap lightly on my chest.

  She moved on to the next card. “This here card, the Fool, is your present.”

  I snorted back a laugh. “Figures.”

  “Girl, the Fool don’t mean that you foolish.” Mama Legba paused for effect. “Though maybe you is. Look at the card. Tell me what you see.”

  I looked at the card. At first glance, it looked like a Joker, but when I looked more carefully, I saw something more in the picture. The fool wasn’t wearing the usual court jester hat, as I’d originally thought. The hat was actually his—no, her—hair, blowing wildly in the wind as she seemed to leap onward. She carried a brilliant crimson bag and was accompanied by a sleek, Whippet-like dog.

  “She seems so free,” I said, reaching out to touch the card. As my fingers brushed its worn surface, I swear I felt a breeze ripple through my hair.

  Mama Legba clucked approvingly. “See here, girl, this card mean that you starting something—a journey or quest. It’s signifying new beginnings and new challenges.”

  “No offense, ma’am, but it doesn’t take a fortune-teller to know that I’m starting something new,” I said. “We just moved here.” But I felt a niggling doubt.

  “True enough. But the move is only part of your quest. See here, how the card be facing away from you?”

  I nodded.

  “The fool usually be telling you to follow your heart, but the position of this card is closed. It means you is reluctant to give yourself that freedom.”

  I didn’t understand how the idea pertained to my life, but Mam
a Legba didn’t give me time to think it over.

  “See here,” she continued, seemingly unaware of my growing doubt. “This here card’s your future.”

  I looked at the card she was pointing at. Where the other cards had been almost alive with color, the final card was a study in darkness. A hooded figure, its skeletal hands grasping a jagged-edged scythe, stood over the body of a very young woman. The only color on the card was the deep scarlet of the blood running from her throat. Behind them, a dark river flowed.

  “I’m going to die?” I asked, thinking of the Dream. I could practically feel the dark, fetid water rushing over me, pulling me down, and my chest felt suddenly tight, like I’d never be able to breathe again.

  Mama Legba made an impatient-sounding snort that jolted me back into the room. “You smarter than that, girl. You looking at things too literally. You got to look soul-deep. Death don’t mean no end. This card show a powerful energy, because it mean that something’s gonna change. You don’t believe that when we die we just end, do you?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “No. I suppose I don’t.”

  “You believe we go on? That what this card be showing us. Death ain’t nothing more or nothing less than a change. Something was. Something new gonna be. This here card tell us something big gonna happen in the future for you. A door will close. Another will open. Something big coming for you, Lucy-girl.” She pinned me with her eyes. “Something gonna change in you as you continue your journey.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  I shouldn’t have asked. The Lucy in Chicago wouldn’t have asked, but the Lucy here? I’d already had enough change. More than I could handle, to tell the truth. The Dream was back, and now I’d pulled the Death card. I needed to know what was coming next.

  Mama Legba smiled as though she knew I was hooked. “Well now, that depends, don’t it?”

  “You tell me,” I said trying to keep my voice flat. Trying to hide the sudden urgency I felt.