The Exorsistah

by Claudia Mair Burney

  “So that’s about the extent of how they came to you?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, they seem to enjoy coming to me through men, nowadays. But that’s another story.”

  “What I mean is did they ever do any other kind of direct assaults? Did they slam doors or shake your bed? Anything like that?”

  “Heck-e-naw!”

  “Whew.” She fanned herself. “That kind of infestation is hard to nix. Good. Good, for you!” She paused as if the next part was difficult for her to convey to me. “All right, here’s what you need to know, lovie. And you can’t forget this for a moment. Since demon power was manifested to you at a young age, you were obviously targeted for a reason. I want you to be more diligent than most. In fact, I recommend you be hypervigilant in these matters.”

  The grave expression on her face told me how serious she was.

  “Emme, as soon as you do anything to invade enemy territory—and in your case, merely thinking about joining us in the work—you’ve upped the ante. You’re more dangerous to the kingdom of darkness now. And they’ve come up against you with a full frontal assault.”

  “I don’t get what you’re saying, Mother Nicole. I wasn’t attacked today. Those were my own evil thoughts. I wish they were the devil! I wouldn’t be feeling so bad if they were.”

  She shook her head. “I disagree. I think maybe some of them were your own thoughts. An oppressive demonic attack amplifies whatever sinful thoughts you have, and they torment you. You have a natural attraction to Frankie. The enemy can’t read your thoughts, but he’s been around long enough to know human behavior. Believe me, he’s always watching.”

  I sat up, and she reluctantly released me. “Isn’t there some verse that says he’s like a lion goin’ around lookin’ for people he can take out?”

  “That’s right,” Mother Nicole said. “It’s in 1 Peter 5 and it says, ‘he goes about like a roaring lion, looking for someone he can devour.’”

  “Yeah. I can see that in my head. It kinda helps. So the enemy is tryna make me think about being with Francis in a … well, closer way.”

  “That’s right. It’s a step beyond mere temptation. He sent a spirit of lust to buffet you and get your mind off preparing to do that which would result in you helping take his kingdom down.”

  I considered that. “So, maybe a spirit of lust came to me. Shoot. It was so natural, I hardly noticed it at first.”

  “But you did notice it, and then you did something about it—you fled. Keep in mind some people are so entrenched in their sins that they love them. It’s like an alcoholic. Make no mistake about it. An alcoholic loves his alcohol. A good many sinners love their sin.”

  “Aw man, Mother Nicole. I didn’t love what I was feeling. I mean, it was kinda intoxicating at first, but then …”

  “Demonic oppression is a spiritual force. There are spirits of fear, lust, anxiety, all kinds of things, and these spirits attack the mind.”

  “But it felt so real.”

  “Francis told me he shared with you that he has a gift of intuition. You may have noticed it’s a particularly powerful charism.”

  “That’s why I can’t ever face him again.”

  Mother Nicole rubbed my arm. “Don’t worry. Frankie has been fighting the enemy long enough to have experienced far worse than that. I want to make it clear to you that he was attacked as you were. In the same way. Are you hearing what I’m saying, Emme?”

  I wasn’t sure.

  She broke it down for me. “I’m saying that it might be a good idea if the two of you didn’t spend so much time alone.”

  Okay, that made it clear. For once I was glad I was so dark Mother Nicole couldn’t see my face flush.

  “He wants to honor you as a woman of God. He said it’ll be weeks before he can get your long legs out of his mind—and that has nothing to do with demons.”

  I had to laugh at that. “My bad. I had no business flaunting my legs all in that man’s face.”

  Something else was on my mind. I took a chance and broached the subject with Mother Nicole. “Since we’re talking so frank, no pun intended, there’s something I want to tell you.”

  “What is it, lovie?”

  “I really like Francis. I mean, I know we haven’t known each other that long, and I know about that whole priest thing, but …” Then I felt stupid for mentioning it. The brotha said he wanted to be a priest. How plain could he make it that we can’t be together?

  Mother Nicole took my hand in hers and gave it a little squeeze. “Emme, Frankie is young, and he’s lonely. Father Miguel is dying, and you are a lovely young woman who’s taken him completely by surprise. He’s very confused right now, and I’m going to venture to say that life is probably quite confusing for you, too. I can see why the two of you are drawn to each other. But I can also see how the two of you could be a disaster together.”

  “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.”

  “And he wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. Not on purpose. But two confused people? They can accidentally hurt each other. So why don’t we focus on getting you settled here. You finally have a safe place to live. That’s plenty for you for now. Okay?”

  I nodded, but my thoughts were still with what she said about Francis and me hurting each other by mistake. She was right. I didn’t have to know a lot about relationships to figure that one out.

  I needed to focus on what God wanted me to do here, even more than what Francis, Mother Nicole, or even Jamilla wanted. I didn’t have to worry about living on the streets, and that was a huge blessing. Maybe after my birthday, I could deal with whatever I felt for Francis. Maybe by then, I’d actually know what it was.

  All I had to do was bide my time for a few weeks, go through demon-hunting school, stave off fierce attacks on my mind, while completely avoiding the man I was attracted to and confused about.

  Piece a cake.

  I sighed. God, I’m gonna definitely need those diva boots Francis bought me.

  Today.

  I didn’t see Francis at all for the rest of the day, but sometime that night, he knocked on the bedroom door.

  Brotha had kicked it up a notch or twelve and was lookin’ so far past too fine he was ’bout twenty-five fine. He had on some kind of silk blend T-shirt, and his uniform black Levi’s. He had a baaaaad jacket on over the shirt, and he smelled so good I wanted to taste him.

  “Hey,” I said. I was glad I hadn’t put on my Victoria’s Secret pajamas yet. “You look nice.”

  “Hey yourself,” he said, then added, eyes cast down, “you look good, too.”

  He had a yellow plastic shopping bag in his hand that had the words Hotep Books and the store’s address on the bag. He handed it to me. “This is for you. I got it to keep you out of trouble, missy, since we can’t hang like we were doing.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “What is this?”

  “Books. And a DVD about Santeria. I had to go to this Afri­can bookstore in Detroit to get that stuff. They don’t necessarily pack the shelves at Borders with these joints.”

  I was grateful enough, but wasn’t no way I was gon’ jump and hug him. “You’re the best,” I said.

  “Be good. There’s a MacBook Pro on my desk. It has a DVD player on it. And don’t be messin’ with my music files.”

  “You just don’t want me to see your hoochie-mama pictures.”

  “I don’t have hoochie-mama pictures on my computer. Or in my cookies. None a dat. I prefer—”

  “To be a priest,” I said.

  He nodded, knowing I’d bested him. “Have a good evening, Emme. I’d have invited you to the gig, but … you know. The attack thing. And the priest thing, since you brought it up.”

  “Priests don’t go to clubs.”

  “They do when their Chiara needs diva boots.”

  Having bested me, he turned on his Timbs and swaggered away.

  I lay on Francis’s bed for hours, poring over the books about Santeria. I wasn’t no Bible scholar,
but right away it looked like to me there was some problems with it. I mean, I was feelin’ the slaves wanting to practice their religion without catching a beatdown. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have Jesus stripped out of my life, and the idea that the people who stole them from their homeland could control them and force a sistah to work and breed was awful.

  I would not be down with that. From the stuff I read, they worshipped their own gods by all kinda subterfuge. They’d substitute certain saints for their gods. Obatala was apparently the big daddy of the Orishas. He became Our Lady of Mercy to the uninitiated. Orunla became St. Francis of Assisi. I wondered if Francis was up on that one.

  There were warrior deities and foundational deities, and they all had stuff they did and were supposed to help you do. From what I could see, practitioners seriously believed they were God. I mean, like I believe Yahweh is God.

  I put the books aside and thought for a moment. Some of those Orisha names cropped up in some of the black poetry I read. But how could it not? Most slaves had come from West Africa where Santeria is rooted. I thought about Jamilla—redbone J. The girl everybody in the school thought looked white, even though she didn’t really. Salt to my pepper. Heck yeah, she gon’ want to know who she is if she grew up with that madness.

  And I had to admit, the Santería thing was seducing. Some of what I read reminded me of the Pentecostal church. And then I made that connection again. We are from Africa. A lot of the Pentecostal style of worship—how we get our praise on, how we shout, dance, and get the Holy Ghost—so much of how we worship came straight off the slave ships. And a lot of us didn’t even know it. That’s what Francis meant when he said he didn’t want to slam it. He knew the connections. He saw what drew people to it. And knowing him, he had compassion on them. But he also made it clear he wasn’t with that. And if he wasn’t with it, he was against it in my book. At least I hoped so.

  I decided to go to the computer and check out the DVD. I got up from the bed and went to the little wooden desk, way too small for him, and sat in the chair—also too small for him. I could barely get comfortable sitting there. So, I did what he probably did and unplugged his MacBook and plopped down on his bed.

  I slid the DVD inside and watched his player come up. Man, I was in for an unpleasant surprise. I saw what I read about. And yo, in living color, three dimensions, and with his Bose headphones, that junk was buck wild. Those brothas and sistahs were singing and shouting and eating fire and messin’ with chickens. They were drumming and sacrificing animals. I saw some foul stuff on that DVD, and I ain’t talking about what they were doing. I mean I saw all kinds of spirits that the film editor probably didn’t see.

  The music and the praise dancing was giving me a sick, dizzy feeling. Then, yo, they showed a woman who had what they called a “spiritual intrusion.” It could have been from natural, preternatural, or nonordinary causes, which sounded to me like the same stuff that any exorcist or deliverance ministry would deal with. Only the word demon was never used.

  They brought the woman to a priest, and when I looked at the listless, mute, emaciated figure, hair standing all over her head looking a hot mess, I could see. I could smell. My heart pounded, and in my mind, I was taking a walk down a long corridor.

  I’m walking through the hospital with the orderly. A nice brotha. Big, corn-fed type they like to hire in institutions because they got mad skills for when people get out of hand. I saw a brotha like that give a beatdown to a patient because he was mouthin’ off. I didn’t think the patient posed a physical threat at all.

  This brotha seems nice, though. Asked me when the last time I saw Mama was.

  “Last year,” I say. I don’t tell him why.

  I’d been bounced around to a couple of different foster homes. Nobody ever wants to bring me here. They always say junk like, “It doesn’t matter, Emme. She can’t even respond to you. She won’t even know you’re there.” But it does matter. It always matters.

  The brotha says, “I want you to be prepared for what you’re going to see.” Said something about maybe she isn’t like she was the last time I saw her.

  He stops at a closed door. It’s room 379 B.

  “You ready, lil’ sis?” he asks. I nod, my mouth gone too dry to speak, my heart beating like a machine gun firing bullets.

  He opens the door. And I see someone, but she’s not my mama. The only thing that looks like my mama is the caramel color of this … this thing’s skin. I freeze in the doorway.

  “This ain’t the right room,” I say. “That ain’t my mama.”

  “Abigail Vaughn. Thirty-seven years old.”

  I can’t breathe. The air escapes my lungs like a prisoner. I shake my head. I can’t even speak the word. This isn’t my mother.

  My mother’s long hair—even longer than mine—is gone. Patches of bald shine from her scalp between wild tufts of matted hair.

  She throws her head back and slams her head against the mattress. It is the only harm she can do to herself in four-point restraints. Her mouth twists into a grimace. I see most of her top teeth are broken.

  I want to say, “Nooooooooooooooo.” But a scream pushes past my halted words and tears out of me.

  My mama turns her head. Her wild eyes roll back to the whites and a voice that isn’t hers says, “She is ours. Because of you.”

  I wake up five minutes later on a stretcher in another wing of the hospital.

  And then I was back in Francis’s room, and the lady on the DVD wasn’t my mama, my heart, the person I longed for every single day. I stared at the MacBook’s monitor. Images of people turning into lights and colors and animals that, like I said, didn’t make the director’s cut, flew at me. A sick, twisted feeling clenched my belly. For the first time in my life, seeing demons made me so sick that I had to run out of the room, into the bathroom, and hug the porcelain bowl till I could get myself together.

  When I got back to the bedroom, I ejected that DVD out of that computer, plunged it back inside the bag, and put it out of the room so quick you’da thought I was running in fast motion.

  I decided I was gon’ look at Francis’s hoochie-mama pictures.

  Actually, I wanted to see if I could find some pictures of him. I needed his calming presence any way I could get it. Truth be told, I was gon’ e-mail myself a couple a pictures to my Hotmail account so I could have some whenever I busted up outta there. It give new meaning to “hotmail” for me.

  Kiki had a MacBook. It was a little different, but this one was about the same idea. I pulled up his Photo Booth and looked at the pictures he’d taken of himself with his computer. He had a few cute shots, but obviously he wasn’t into taking his own picture—which I thought was kinda nice.

  He said don’t mess with his music files. So I didn’t. Instead, I searched around and found his regular picture files. There were a lot of pictures from gigs. Man, that boy was fine. I loved to see an instrument in his hands. From what I could see, he mostly dug the bass. Him handlin’ that bass took me right back to being in the music room with him yesterday.

  After I looked at about forty pictures, I saw the thumbnail. It had one simple word as the caption underneath. Madre. I remembered Penny Pop said madre meant mother. I clicked on the picture hoping to see what his mama looked like and got the shock of my life.

  The pretty, dark-skinned woman smiling at the camera looked so much like an older version of me I thought I’d be sick. She was hugged up with a little boy, all cocoa-red skin and black, shiny curls. I knew he was my Francis. What I didn’t know was why he didn’t tell me I looked just like his mama.

  I never did get to sleep that night. I heard Francis come in at about one A.M. It was getting close to the witching hour, according to him, when demon activity was at its peak. I wish somebody had a told that to the demons tryna break me down at midnight.

  At first I wasn’t gon’ say nothing to him, but rage roiled all through my insides, and if I didn’t let it out, I felt like I was gon’
bust.

  I stepped out of the room. He had taken his shoes off and sat on the couch, looking bone weary. I realized how tired I was, too. How little sleep we’d gotten in the last few days. How much had happened.

  Did he feel like he’d been blindsided, too? I ain’t know, and a part of me ain’t even care.

  I marched over to the couch and stood over him. He wasn’t crazy. Brotha felt things. He didn’t even try to pretend he didn’t know I was spittin’ mad.

  He didn’t speak. Just watched me and waited for me to go off. Slipped his rosary off his neck and started quietly fingering the beads.

  How was I ’sposed to go off when he sittin’ there praying?

  I tried to modify the madness and plunked down next to him.

  He shifted on the couch to see me better, I supposed, and watch me more. All the while praying. I knew where he was on the beads. The first, blessed art thou among women.

  His praying the rosary made me think of that creepy DVD.

  “Francis,” I said, tryna control my volume.

  “What’s up, X?”

  “That Santeria stuff has a lot in common with the Catholic church.”

  “You knew that the first time you asked me about it. I told you why. So did the books, if you looked at them.”

  “I looked,” I said. “I read how they do baptisms.”

  “Did you?”

  “Like the Catholic church does ’em. Exorcism and all. But they don’t exorcise demons. They say they exorcise the germ of evil in a baby.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “They used the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to baptize people.”

  “It’s a good counterfeit, X.”

  “They use the stuff you told me in the car y’all be using in exorcisms. Blessed salt and holy water and oil.”