The Witch of Bourbon Street

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “All right, then, I’ll tell Danny you just fine,” he huffed, and sped off on his boat.

  Frances made a frustrated sort of groan and stomped her feet.

  “I’ll tell Danny you just fine,” she repeated mockingly as she made her way back to Sippie. “Screw Danny! Now he’ll just be over here with a mouth full of patronizing when he gets back.

  “Why am I talkin’ to you?” she half growled at Sippie. “You can’t talk back. I been silent too long, it seems.”

  Sippie drifted in and out a few more times after that. Once to see Frances sitting on the wide floorboards, examining her, poking her a bit here and there.

  “What you been takin’, girl? Opiates? You don’t seem the type. Them boys drug you up? That sounds about right. I have a cure for that. A little belladonna, a little poppy. Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”

  The sun had begun to set over the bayou in a glorious show of pinks and oranges, hypnotizing Sippie while she waited.

  When Frances came back out, she put a bitter-tasting liquid into Sippie’s mouth with a dropper.

  “What has the world done to you, child?” she asked.

  You don’t want to know.

  Then it was night, and the lights from the candles and the lanterns that dotted all the surfaces of the cottage glowed and shimmered. Somehow, Frances had gotten Sippie inside and was washing her up using warm, rose-scented water out of a ceramic basin. She rubbed Sippie down gently, squeezing out the water, and then doing it over again and again, before putting some kind of ointment on her cuts and bumps. Then she carefully eased a soft white cotton nightgown over Sippie’s head.

  Frances kept murmuring, “I mean you no harm, girl. No harm.” And as Sippie’s subconscious began to wake up from whatever horse tranquilizer/lighter fluid/fish shit lab-concocted drug those boys fed her, she couldn’t close off her thoughts, her echoing memories. Memories of things that had been shouted at her. Words that reverberated, coming back at her in full volume. Things she hoped Frances couldn’t hear.

  Don’t trust no one … come to me, honey, I got a little sumthin’ for ya. You nothin’. You stupid. You wanna die, bitch?

  “I can tell you are a mighty strong young woman. I know it’s hard to feel weak. You just relax, I won’t lord this over you. Let’s get you fixed up right as rain,” Frances said, placing her in a cozy bed under quilts to keep out damp air and terrible thoughts.

  Sippie curled up, imagining herself a baby inside her mother’s arms. It smelled of warm earth and flowers and safe things. She was wrapped up tight and held on to that feeling as hard as she could. She let herself pretend she’d always been there, because Sippie knew in the morning she’d have to be sixteen years old again.

  Frances smoothed Sippie’s hair back from her face as if she’d read her mind. “For tonight, you be a little girl, okay? It’s always important for strong girls to have a place they can be weak. Show that soft underside. If you need that place to be here, it’s here for as long as you want it.”

  Sippie buried her head in the softness around her, a kind of soft she’d never had, and turned her face, pretending to be asleep while she cried. She’d be brave, wild, strong-willed Sippie Wallace tomorrow. Tonight, she was a little girl who finally found her mama.

  But would her mama want her? Had Frances been missing her all this time, too?

  It’s so unfair, she thought, that when we finally figure out what we lost, we got to think of all the things we missed.

  8

  Jack Hides with Ghosts

  If Sippie had been a few hours earlier, she and those boys would have met up with Jack, and everything might have worked out differently.

  But it didn’t happen that way.

  Their paths weren’t supposed to cross, not just yet. Though each person in the world is born with a purpose, we’re never given maps that take us there. And most times, it’s the tragic things that lead us straight to our rightful place. Sidestepping loss is never a good idea. So, though things were about to get dark for both Jack and Sippie, it was the best sort of thing to happen. It was the only thing that could happen.

  When Jack reached the bridge, he scoped out the best place to hide his bike, so it wouldn’t be found too quickly but would eventually be found. He’d torn off a piece of his T-shirt and pulled out a pocketknife to make a small cut on his upper arm. It stung more than he’d thought it would, and he wished for a second that his mama were there to rub one of her salves on the wound. But this wasn’t the time to worry over things like that. He smeared the blood on the bike and on the ripped shirt. A little extra something to add flair to his plan. That part had been Millie’s idea. She always did have a darker way of looking at the world.

  “It’s going to work,” he said hesitantly. And then, “It’s going to work,” again, with more confidence.

  Jack walked to the other side of Trinity Bridge, where he uncovered the pirogue he’d hidden there weeks before. Old Jim had given it to him for his tenth birthday, and he could maneuver that little boat anywhere.

  He poled his boat down into Meager Swamp, avoiding the river, because though not a lot of people traversed Serafina’s Bayou, there were always a few who ended up at the Voodoo. Meager Swamp would lead him into the denser, unexplored waters and islets of the bayou, the ones Old Jim showed him. He loved the untainted wildness of the area, with the alligators lounging in the shallow, muddy places and the strange insects fluttering about.

  And so, as Frances was nursing Sippie’s wounds, Jack was letting the bayou heal a little bit of his own soul. He always felt guilty for wanting more than he already had. There were plenty of people in the world that had worse things than a broken family. But there was a deeper ache inside of Jack, one he didn’t really understand. He felt there was something he had to repair, that if he didn’t, the ache would grow and eat him up completely. When Claudette would play those old blues albums at Sorrow Hall, every so often one would skip. That’s how Jack felt, as if he were caught in some sort of skip in time. There had to be a way out, and he hoped, he believed, his “Great Idea” was the answer.

  He didn’t know yet that nothing is ever that easy.

  As the sun began to burst into all the otherworldly colors only a bayou sky can offer, he made camp in an old shack he’d found when he was little. It was hidden in an oak grove on the west side of the Sorrow Estate. From the rickety narrow porch, he could see the entire back of the Sorrow Estate as well as the lighthouse in the middle of Sorrow Bay. He’d be able to see if anyone was coming his way—though he knew it’d be the last place they’d look. No one ever looks for anything anywhere obvious. And because Jack knew it so well, stealing off to it whenever he could, it made him feel safe as night fell over the bayou. Inside the shack there were remnants of altars and candles and spirit boards. Jack was sure it was where the infamous voodoo witch Rosella lived back when all hell broke loose in 1901. He’d gone through all of the artifacts and cataloged them in his notebook. Even brought some to Mr. Craven. Though he never said exactly where he’d found them.

  When he heard the yelling from across the bay, near his mother’s cottage, he crept out through the trees to see. After, he went back to his hideout, frowning the whole way.

  I had to pick the most action-filled day this bayou has seen in years to hide? Idiot.

  He couldn’t help wondering about that girl he saw with his mama. She looked like all the prettiest girls he knew. His mama, Millie, the ghost of Mae Sorrow, and his newest find, the picture of SuzyNell from the newspaper clipping Mr. Craven had given him.

  He pulled out his notebook and sat on a wooden crate he’d placed on the front porch.

  WHO IS SHE?

  Then he wrote:

  IDEAS:

  1) Another one of the crazies who come to figure out if they have magic in them?

  Then he crossed that out, because she didn’t seem crazy at all. And she was being dragged there. But also seemed to want to be there. Huh.

  2) Someo
ne from the high school in Tivoli?

  No. He would have noticed her. She wasn’t someone you could miss.

  He was just about to write down, “3) A lost Sorrow,” when he smelled the most beautiful perfume. He stood up and walked down the two steps, peeking around an oak to see if someone was coming. The lighthouse was aglow and fog swirled around the water. The moon was bright and full. The smell grew stronger, like lemons, and soap, and spices he couldn’t quite name. His eyes grew wide as they fell on a woman, light hair piled high on her head, wearing a long, old-fashioned dress with a high, lace collar. She stood straight and regal, but when she turned to look at him, he felt her sadness seep straight through him.

  “Helene?”

  The ghost looked somewhat surprised. “I am,” she said, smiling, before she turned to continue staring at the lighthouse. “It seems, however, that no one has thought to teach you any manners. You may address me as Madame Helene. And that scent that drew you out of your hiding place, that would be moonflower. Some call it devil’s trumpet. It is a magnificent plant. Blooming only at night. Have you seen them?”

  “The moonflowers? My mother has them in her garden.”

  “You mean my garden.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “In any case, that was not what I came to inquire about. Have you seen Edmond, my husband? We are having a party, and I can’t find him anywhere.”

  “I haven’t, I’m sorry,” Jack responded politely.

  “I’m caught in time, boy. Reliving the pain of these years over and over again. I don’t know how to leave this place.”

  “I’ve read somewhere that if you look to the light…”

  “Don’t you see? I can’t leave. I’m still trying to find Belinda. I won’t go without her.”

  Jack was just about to tell her Belinda was, impossibly, his very own Dida, but he stopped short, wondering if Dida would have to die to free all those ghosts. Jack didn’t want that.

  “I must go now, boy. To relive all that terror. But you must make me a promise.”

  Jack nodded. The scent of moonflower was fading.

  “Don’t believe what they say about us. There’s so much that no one ever had the chance to say. It wasn’t all bad. There were reasons … reasons.”

  She floated away slowly over Sorrow Bay, to the lighthouse, where she joined two other shadows in what looked like a terrible fight.

  Jack was shaken. Though he’d seen Helene in the house, Edmond and Rosella, too, he’d never spoken to the grown-up ghosts the way he spoke with the Sorrow children. And he was worried about Dida. He went back to the porch, picked up his notebook, and wrote down the whole encounter. Writing things down always made Jack feel much better. Like what had just happened was the most logical thing in the world. Besides, Helene was right, there was a party, or at least the echo of one that happened long ago, going on across Sorrow Bay.

  Everyone sensed that Jack had a good shot of Sorrow magic living inside of him, but no one really knew what he could do. He couldn’t wait until everything was turned right again and he could share it all with his mother. He had so many questions.

  He made himself comfortable, sitting on the rotting, uneven steps of the shack to watch the opulent Sorrow past play out like a movie.

  The party was a glamorous affair. Multicolored paper lanterns lit up the whole of Sorrow Hall, both inside and out, hanging from porches and trees. Men in white suits held silver trays full of champagne. They moved gracefully, like dancers. Potted palms and other exotic plants were placed on all the outdoor galleries, and a brass band played the kind of jazz that beat in your blood. Jack decided he’d seen enough when the scene began to repeat itself. That’s how it happened sometimes, an echo of a “bigger than life” moment that gets stuck and skips like a scratched album.

  He went back inside, half dozing in his sleeping bag to visions of the beautiful Helene Sorrow, dressed in white and smiling, as the band began to play “When the Saints Go Marching In” as if it were the first time, because to them it was. Helene made such a pretty mama.

  Jack’s worst memory of all time was the day his mama walked away from him on the steps of the Tivoli courthouse. Jack was born with all the Sorrow “talents.” At first, when he was just a baby, he thought it was fun to know things, to see things no one else could. Then, he noticed his mama could do the same kinds of “tricks,” even though she tried to hide it. Only the similarities didn’t make his mama happy, they made her sad. Jack was convinced it scared her so much, she decided to leave him. He knew there were other reasons. His parents fought all the time. And when they got divorced, his father wanted custody of Jack. His mama could have fought harder to keep him. But she didn’t. Jack didn’t like to think about that.

  He was only four years old, and his father was holding him on the courthouse steps as Jack tried to wriggle out of his arms. He knew his mother was confused. She wanted to forget everything that happened and run to them, run back to the life they’d had. But she also knew the life they’d had wasn’t any kind of life at all, and she couldn’t figure out a way to strike a balance.

  He cried out for her. “Mama!”

  Her heart was beating so fast. Jack could hear it in his own heart.

  As Jack reached for her, his father pushed his arms down. That’s when Jack knew he’d have to use some of the magic, even if it made his mother sad.

  Don’t leave, he thought, looking straight at her to make sure it was working.

  He could tell she heard him, but she wouldn’t answer. His father saw the look pass between them and got angry.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Frances! Y’all see this?” Danny said angrily, looking around at the gathering of people who had come to support—some to spy on—them. Uncle Pete and his girlfriend of the moment, some old high school friends. And Millie, Millie was there with his mama. Some legal people and even a few bored souls who seemed to love other people’s pain. “She’s working some of that hoodoo right now!” Danny’s eyes went wild.

  Daddy doesn’t mean what he says, Jack tried again, sending Frances an image of a picnic they’d taken out on Saint Sabine Isle the previous summer.

  She still wouldn’t talk to Jack. All she did was start to cry, and Jack, no more than four years old, understood what guilt was.

  But as she walked away, baby Jack decided to use the secret weapon.

  Why didn’t you use the juju to keep me, Mama?

  Jack would never forget the look in her eyes when she turned around. Something already broken broke more inside her.

  I can’t give you what I stole from her, she responded.

  Millie put her arm around his mama and they walked away.

  He’d wondered what she meant, never figuring it out and never feeling safe enough to ask.

  Jack suddenly clambered back out of his sleeping bag and grabbed his notebook.

  WHO IS SHE?

  She’s the one Mama stole from. Someone she loved first. Someone she left first. The realization sparked and exploded in his mind like a fireworks show over the bayou.

  His sister.

  It was as clear to Jack as if Frances were standing in front of him telling him plain.

  He closed his notebook, not sure how he felt, and went back to the porch to watch the party. It was better to be with ghosts than real people sometimes.

  When this is over, I’ll have a whole bunch of better memories. When this is over, we’ll make Sorrow Hall just like that again, he vowed. He knew change was coming, especially now, because somehow he’d already set something important in motion. Only now, what he’d started was out of his control, and all he could do was wait.

  9

  Daniel Amore & Old Jim Green

  “Looks like heaven and hell are making love up there,” said Old Jim, nodding at the sunset.

  “You missed your calling, Jim, you shoulda been a philosopher or something.”

  “Hell no, I’m the shrimp whisperer and happy with the hard life I chose.”
Old Jim grinned.

  They’d had a good haul in Destin—Old Jim being the shrimp god and all—and were heading back. If Danny’s boat, The Gypsy Witch, were bigger, they probably could have stayed out longer.

  Danny sighed, gazing out over the open Gulf, trying not to think about Frances, which had been his state of mind for nearly a lifetime. “If I only had a dime for every time I tried not to think about that damn woman,” he said out loud to the sea.

  The Gypsy Witch hadn’t been that fishing boat’s first name. When Danny first bought her—cheap off a Yankee who’d thought a shrimpin’ life in Louisiana would be romantic and quickly realized the error of his ways—he was young and still angry about dropping out of college to marry Frances and be a father to Jack, only to get divorced four years later. The marriage had been his decision, and he loved her, but when she left him … none of that mattered anymore. In a fit of anger he’d called the boat The Gypsy Whore. But when he was trying hard to win Frances back—and she was sure as heck having none of that—he renamed her The Gypsy Queen. And a few years later, when Frances and Danny had settled into their peculiar and ordinary pattern of wanting each other precisely when it wasn’t the right time, she got her rightful name: The Gypsy Witch. Danny knew the ambiguity of the last one was best. He could love her or hate her without having to rename that blasted boat again. And it all depended on his mood, his memory, or, hell, even the time of day. His feelings for her could shift with the tide, but no matter what he was feeling, The Gypsy Witch summed it up.

  The girl Frances used to be, the one he’d admired from afar during their early days at Tivoli Elementary, was someone Danny could never hate. Back then, he’d never had the courage to tell her, because everyone made fun of the Sorrows. But her pure love of life was something he wanted to bottle up and sip from forever. Unfortunately, the woman she grew into scared the shit out of him, and the woman she became during their brief marriage was someone he could never seem to understand.