The Exorsistah

by Claudia Mair Burney

  I’d missed a whole section of the ritual. I tried to listen, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Mama. I kept my eyes fixed on Jamilla. She seemed to be writhing in pain now. Moaning as if she were dying.

  Then she stopped. She wasn’t stiff anymore. It was as if she were perfectly normal. She sat up on the bed and spoke to Father Rivera. “You’re sick. I can tell. You’re in a lot of pain, and you’re weak. Why don’t we stop this? It’s too much.”

  But her eyes looked wild and crazy. It was disconcerting to hear her say that so calmly, and yet her Charles Manson eyes challenged him.

  Father Rivera spoke directly to the demon. “Jesus Christ paid the price on Calvary.”

  Then Father Rivera let out a painful cry.

  Nobody moved. Mother Nicole softly chanted, “Kyrie elieson, Christe elieson, Kyrie elieson, Christe elieson. Lord, have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord, have mercy, Christ have mercy.”

  Father Rivera seemed to be in agony. It took me a moment to realize what was happening: The demon was tormenting him by increasing the gnawing, cancerous pain.

  Sweat beaded on Father Rivera’s forehead, while the demon in Jamilla laughed hysterically. I wanted to scream at it to stop, but everyone had joined Mother Nicole in prayer.

  I remembered the rules. I couldn’t say anything to the demon. I was to do as I was directed, but it looked like Father Rivera was dying before us all.

  A voice came out of Jamilla shouting cusswords. Father Rivera seemed to recover some of his strength. He touched the crucifix to Jamilla’s head. At that she went wild. Every limb attacked him.

  Francis, Stormie, and Mike sprang into action, grabbing the girl. Francis pinned her ankles, and the two doctors tried to keep her arms down. She had strength that wasn’t hers, making their attempts to keep her safe a struggle for all of them.

  Then Father Rivera went off! “I command you, unclean spirit and all your minions, by the mysteries of the incarnation, the passion, the resurrection, and the ascension of the Lord, Jesus Christ …”

  A torrent of curses flew out of Jamilla’s mouth. I mean, I’ve seen some R-rated movies. I’ve watched a few episodes of Def Comedy Jam, back in the day. I’d lived in the streets and met all kinds of foul people, but lemme tell you. Don’t nuthin’ cuss like a demon.

  I thought the wallpaper would peel off!

  It was as if that devil could hear my thoughts. Or maybe it just went there because I was the only person in the room who was new to the party.

  Jamilla turned her head to me and called me everything but a child of God.

  Why they always have to cuss me out?

  But I wouldn’t let that keep me from praying. I guess that made the devils in her even madder, because she let loose one of those Exorcist movie projectiles; and the next thing I knew, demon slime shot like a bullet at me and landed right on my diva boots.

  Aw shoot! My eyes widened. Oh no that heifer didn’t!

  I was not feeling prayerful anymore. I wanted to strangle Milla, that demon, or whatever it was that chucked on my Pradas!

  Father Rivera laid hands on Jamilla’s forehead, saying, “They shall lay their hands on the sick and all will be well with them.”

  That girl jumped up, despite those three men holding her. Father Miguel did not remove his hand from her forehead, but now he sounded as if touching her were burning him.

  I started praying again, for his sake, but I moved out of spitting range.

  Jamilla’s demon shouted, “You can’t run from me.” And called me out of my name again. I stood behind Francis. Let him get cussed out and spit on. He was the reason I was in this mess in the first place. And Jamilla was the second. But the real Milla wasn’t nowhere near this place.

  I’m telling you, that devil had some kind of Emme’s boots radar. She hurled another slimy wad and yo, although Francis is 6′2" and standing at the foot of the bed, that demon spittle arched over his head and landed right on my boots.

  Dang!

  I started thinking. Okay, Lord, I ain’t cut out for this kind of work. You gon’ have to do something, because I’m wanting to whup her unholy behind.

  God spoke, reminding me, It’s not Jamilla.

  That made me chill out. I kept praying, moving again to the opposite side of the room, all the way in the corner. I mean, it didn’t matter if I wasn’t standing by everybody else. God could hear my prayers wherever I was in the house.

  Father Rivera let go of Jamilla, and she seemed to calm down. But the men stayed put and continued to hold her. It seemed to be a respite for everybody, ’cause girlfriend had gone buck wild before, and everybody needed a breather.

  Father Rivera spoke the prayers softer now, his voice hypnotic, as he went through the Gospels. His lilting voice made the gospel of Luke come alive: “I was watching Satan fall like lightning that flashes from heaven. But mind: it is I that have given you the power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and break the dominion of the enemy everywhere; nothing at all can injure you.”

  Amen, I said silently.

  He recited the story in Luke 11 where Jesus drove out demons. It was like a mini Bible study right in the middle of the exorcism. We all continued to pray as he went through the passages—all from memory.

  I started thinking Father Rivera was the bomb. And I prayed that he would forgive himself for falling in love and making a beautiful person like Francis. I also prayed that he and Francis would love each other in a way that was meaningful to both of them—before it was too late.

  Just when I thought all was calm, all was bright, and Jamilla lay there mute and still, Father Rivera busted out with, “I cast you out, unclean spirit, along with every satanic power of the enemy.”

  What did he do that for? It was on. Again!

  Jamilla lifted off the bed. When I say she lifted, I mean she went airborne. Sistah-girl levitated! She didn’t float up like a slow-moving cloud. She shot up like a rocket. Those three big and tall men held her like she was a human canopy, and a symphony of the most unholy sounds imaginable poured out of her.

  Father Rivera rolled with it. He picked up the holy water and started splashing it around on her and everybody else.

  “Be gone and stay far from this creature of God, devils, for it is He who commands you, He who flung you headlong from the heights of heaven into the depths of hell.”

  The devil had a bad reaction to that one. It flung Jamilla down on that bed like God flung Lucifer out of heaven.

  Blam!

  The mouths on those things! They started in on everybody in the room. And it was bad. Put Father Rivera’s business all in the streets. I felt so sorry that Francis had to hear that thing talkin’ smack about his mama.

  But they didn’t stop there. They attacked Francis.

  I can’t begin to repeat what they said. But it involved him and me and doing stuff even married folk ain’t grown enough to do. I started thinking, Yo, I’m too young for this. Father Rivera had the right idea. I don’t need to hear all this. I wondered what in the heck was wrong with Francis. Nobody under fifty should be exposed to the filth they were saying.

  I stood there, my mouth wide open, because this was gettin’ real personal. The next thing you know, Jamilla turned to me and hurled another wad.

  I moved!

  It moved! And landed right on my boots!

  “Jesus, have mercy!” I yelled. They probably thought I was praying for Jamilla, but I was asking for some slack on my boots! I’d prayed for weeks for Jamilla. I was the one who needed some help now!

  Father Rivera again commanded them to come out. “I adjure you, every unclean spirit, every specter from hell, every satanic power, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who was led into the desert after His baptism from John to vanquish you in your citadel, come out now!”

  Jamilla began to cough. I stepped waaaaay over to the side in case she started spittin’ again. The room got colder. I could tell everyone in there felt it, too. And when I say cold, I mean see-your-breath co
ld. Wind that wasn’t in the room started blowing. Jamilla coughed again, and I could see the form of a man in her face. The form of Asa.

  Dang. That was crazy.

  “Emme!” Father Rivera yelled.

  Somehow I knew without him telling me he wanted to know what I saw. “It’s a man’s face on top of hers.”

  “Name yourself, demon!”

  The face growled the word, “Deception.” You could hear the sound of it all over the room, like that junk was in surround sound. It didn’t come from Jamilla.

  “What else do you see?”

  “That’s it.”

  Finally it stopped. Jamilla’s body sprang up to a seated position; and in a high-pitched male voice, she began to speak. To me. “I know you. You are the daughter of Abigail. She belongs to us. She gave herself to us so that we would not take you.”

  “Silence!” Father Rivera shouted.

  My knees began to tremble. Is that what happened to my mama? She was tryna spare me possession? Did she make some kind of pact with the devil? For me? It felt like my heart would burst, it pounded so violently. The presence of evil permeated the room. A crazy deep sense of suicidal despair swept through me. I dropped to my knees. My breath came in gasps. I didn’t seem to be getting enough air. Something was asphyxiating me. I pulled at my throat. The thing in Jamilla laughed. Father Rivera prayed fervently.

  “Go to her Francesco,” he yelled.

  In a flash, Francis was at my side.

  I couldn’t speak. Francis said in a panicked voice, “I feel something! It’s right around her.” Father Rivera turned his attention away from Jamilla to rebuke the force that had attacked me.

  At that moment the presence begin to materialize. It was like a big, gray leech lying across my neck. Its razor teeth had sunk into my throat, cutting off my air.

  “Release her,” Father Rivera said, “you accursed, into everlasting fire!”

  But it wouldn’t leave.

  “Fight it, Emme. Fight it.”

  Father Rivera’s voice cut like a light through the dark despair I’d plunged into. But I couldn’t speak. How could I cast it away from me?

  Again, I heard his voice: “Fight!”

  I began to focus my thoughts on God. On Mary, Jesus’ mama. Francis said that in order to receive Christ, she had to empty herself and be totally available to the Holy Spirit. A demon was trying to kill me, but I didn’t have to let it in. Especially if I was filled with the Holy Spirit.

  I gave myself wholly to God. The only way I could make this devil flee was to resist him, by clinging to Christ.

  Francis’s and Father Rivera’s prayers surrounded me. I could her Mother Nicole’s, Mike’s, and Stormie’s. All of them prayed until my throat was loosed and the demon fell off me. When it fell, I saw it hit the floor. And it turned into a necklace. Yellow, with red beads and cowrie shells.

  Father Rivera asked, “What’s going on?”

  “I saw a necklace. Then poof! it disappeared. It was a yellow-and-red beaded African-looking necklace with a cowrie shell charm.”

  The devil in Jamilla shouted, “NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

  Now the devil changed tactics. Suddenly my thoughts were filled with my mother. When she first started hearing voices. When she first told me how she could see demons, too. Her fear became mine in that moment. I could feel her anguish in every part of my soul.

  “Fight it,” Father Rivera yelled.

  In my mind, I was plunged back into that hospital corridor, walking up to room number 379 B. The door flew open in my mind, and there she was.

  I fixed my eyes on Jamilla at that moment and watched her face contort, until I was looking at my mother.

  God help me.

  I wanted to scream, but nothing emerged, until I heard a voice come out of Jamilla. “She is ours because of you.” The exact words that had come out of my mother three years ago.

  Father Rivera yelled, “Emme, what do you see?”

  I was mute.

  “What do you see?”

  “My mother.”

  I rocked back on my heels. I had an overwhelming impulse to hurt myself. To throw myself out of the boarded window or tear at the skin on my face.

  “Lying spirit,” he said to Jamilla, “come out of this child, in the name of Jesus Christ.”

  The feelings were so strong that I balled my fist to keep them from clawing me. My fingernails bit into my palm.

  Jamilla slumped forward, as if she were exhausted. Her head rolled on her neck like she had no muscle strength. With her head to one side, she whispered, “Please.”

  Mama Jacobs cried out, “That’s my baby! That’s her voice.”

  It was in that moment that I realized why Francis did this work. Why everybody on the team did it. That little, single word, please, held so much terror. I had only experienced a portion of the evil that visited my girl. She lived with it every day. Tormenting her. Forcing her to harm herself. And all she could do in her weariness, this one tiny soul, was plead with us with that one word.

  One more command from Father Rivera. One screeching shriek of terror out of Jamilla. She opened her mouth wide. Unnaturally wide, as if something were stretching it beyond its capacity.

  Father Rivera yelled, “Emme!”

  I watched as a serpent slithered out of her mouth.

  “It’s a serpent. It’s beautiful. Full of light, but it has arms and legs.” I watched it move through the ceiling, leaving a gray stain.

  Jamilla fell onto the bed, as if she were dead.

  “It went upstairs,” I said.

  Father Rivera said, “We must go upstairs.” He ordered her parents to hold her. And the team bounded upstairs. I directed the team to the demon that hovered around a cheap, cardboard musical jewelry box. It had a lid that when you opened it, a ballerina danced. Jamilla had had it since she was a kid. She kept her few treasures in that box. And the demon dove inside like he was …

  A necklace.

  The parents had cleaned the house of all traces of Santeria that Jamilla had told them about—but she had held on to that one thing.

  Because it was from him. Because he kissed her. Because his seductive power lured her in. And because she thought he was a god.

  I didn’t go near the box.

  “It’s in her jewelry box,” I said. “I think it’s one of those necklaces dedicated to the Orishas. He probably gave it to her, and she thought it was a love token or something.”

  Francis spoke: “If she kept it, it would have infected her again.”

  “It would have killed her,” I said. “It would have had help.”

  Francis quoted the Scripture: “When an unclean spirit goes out of someone it wanders through waterless country looking for a place to rest, and not finding one it says, ‘I will go back to the home I came from.’ But on arrival, finding it swept and tidied, it then goes off and brings seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and set up house there, and so that person ends up worse than before.”

  Like they say at Father Rivera’s church, the Word of the Lord. God had spoken.

  I rode home barefoot. I couldn’t hang with the diva boots, now that they had devil slime all over them. Tossed those babies at the Jacobses’ house.

  Nobody talked on the way home, but Father Rivera did say one thing to me. “You did good.”

  Lord, have mercy.

  I don’t know what the rest of them were feeling, but a residual melancholy clung to me. I couldn’t shake it for days afterward. Not even when I went to take my GED exam, which should have been a happy occasion. Sometimes, I’d cry for no reason. Other times, I’d cry for Jamilla and what she’d suffered. I cried a lot for my mother, and I knew what I had to do.

  Francis once told me that at every exorcism, you die a little. I didn’t believe him at the time. I’d dealt with demons all my life. I thought I knew what was up with them; but my mother, and God only knows who else, protected me. I was shielded from knowing the depths of evil the way Jamill
a had experienced it. I couldn’t stop thinking about what the demon said about my mother, “She’s ours because of you.”

  I know liars lie, but they also add a little bit of truth to the mix. I couldn’t trust a demon. That’s why I didn’t want to talk to them. But one did speak. The words “Because of you” churned over and over in my soul.

  I remember when I used to believe that happily ever after was as final as heaven. I guess I needed to hold on to that kind of hope, just so I could go on. But a hard-knock life taught a sistah that what you think is happily ever after has a shadowy side, especially when you’ve been touched by evil.

  I went to see Jamilla two days after her exorcism. The house was full of happiness and peace now, but a vein of sorrow, barely susceptible, ran through the Jacobs family, and I knew from experience it wasn’t goin’ nowhere.

  Mama Jacobs invited me in, wiping her hands on an apron. The house smelled of cooked roast, collard greens, rice, and yams. Jamilla’s daddy had taken off a few days from work. He prowled around the house like a tiger, as though circling his little cub would protect her from further spiritual ills.

  I found Jamilla in the living room on that rent-to-own couch with the big, crazy flowers. She looked like Jamilla again. Mostly. It would take time for her body to heal from the abuse it had suffered.

  She got up and came and hugged me. “Hey, girl.” Then her eyes swept to the floor like she was ashamed. “Thanks.”

  “It’s all good.”

  We sat down and didn’t even talk about it. The exorcism team had already given her instruction. Sistah had to be diligent now. She’d have to watch and pray and stay in that Word of God like it would save her life. It had. And it would.

  She told me how happy she was that she’d be able to go back to school. She told me what was up with people we use to hang with. And then we talked about the fly gear I had.

  “W’sup with you and Frank, girl? I could tell he was diggin’ you, even when I was possessed!”

  “We’re just cool, Milla. He’s on a mission. It’s a God thing. I’m gon’ let that brotha do his thing.”

  “Girl, are you crazy?”

  “Naw. Just real, Jamilla. The brotha’s don’t save you. God can use them to bless you, but He’s the only one who can save you. I can’t afford to get that twisted.” I looked her right in her eyes. “You can’t either, sis. Not even if a brotha comes to you lookin’ like an angel of light.”