by Laury Falter
When we reached Aunt Lizzy’s house, I assured Jameson I’d call his family and let them know about our altercation with Sartorius. While I wasn’t the ideal person to deliver the news, Jameson would need to remain hidden in the backseat until the Vires at my front gate could be distracted.
After our encounter with Sartorius, I was terrified to leave Jameson alone and in such a precarious position. So, as I dialed the Caldwell residence, I continuously peered out the window to ensure the Vires at my gate hadn’t moved to the car. Miss Celia answered; I gave her the details of our encounter and quickly dialed my mother’s number at the ministry. By that time, the Caldwells had come down the street, distracting and antagonizing the Vires until Jameson could slip unnoticed from the car.
“Hello, is Isabella Weatherford available? This is her daughter,” I spoke into the receiver.
A few minutes later, I was in the midst of an argument with her.
“You’re being stubborn,” I barked into the receiver, loud enough to cause Estelle’s head to peer around the corner of the kitchen.
My mother shunned any maternal instincts in reminding me that she was the adult in this scenario. She asserted, with a good measure of finality in her voice, “I’m staying, Jocelyn. I will be more beneficial to you here.”
I spoke furiously and with such a rush of words they seemed to flow directly from the anger inside me. “You are the mother of The Relicuum. When they learn this they will use you to get to me.” I recognized my voice sounded desperate, but that was just fine, because it was exactly how I felt. Unfortunately, neither my manner nor my words persuaded her enough to leave.
Her reply was calm and sympathetic. “I’m staying. And please relay to Lizzy that Lester is staying, as well.”
Terrific, I thought, my mother and estranged uncle are both insane.
“Jocelyn?” she pressed, when I didn’t respond.
“Yes,” I replied, begrudgingly. “Yes, I’ll tell Lizzy. You can expect a call from her, too.”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Why are you so intent on staying? It makes no sense.”
She proceeded to explain something that incited the chill to rush down my spine again.
“Because they’re close to realizing the tools they found in the bayou belong to the Caldwells.”
She paused and said in a deep, reticent tone, “Jocelyn, whatever comes your way…you are ready.”
“Don’t say that,” I implored. “That’s the kind of sentiment someone says when they’re talking to you for the last time.”
When she fell silent, I froze, because we both knew I’d just identified her very expectation.
“I love you,” she stated, hastily, and then the phone went dead.
I stared at the push buttons on the dated, rotary phone pad for a few seconds, none of them making any sense to me. Nothing at all made sense to me. I slowly set the receiver back in its cradle and turned away from it, my heart felt like it was in the pit of my stomach.
By then, my cousins, Aunt Lizzy, and Miss Mabelle were in the room having listened to the gist of my conversation. They hadn’t heard the best part yet. So I went ahead and delivered it.
“Sartorius just tried to kill Jameson and me.”
Everyone in the room reacted in their own way, except for Miss Mabelle. The only response she gave was when her eyes became steely.
Aunt Lizzy quieted everyone and clarified, “Your mother and Lester are staying at the ministry?”
After a brief nod from me, she left the room, going upstairs to call them from the privacy of her room. I imagined their conversation would be just as terse.
“She’s not known for being deterred, ever,” I said, circumspectly, to my cousins, as Aunt Lizzy left the room. It was the only reason I didn’t call right back.
“Like mother like daughter,” Vinnia said, plainly. It wasn’t meant to be funny so there was no grin or laughter associated with the statement. She was being insightful and, as much as I didn’t like it, accurate.
With the conversation over, Miss Mabelle headed back to the kitchen, chortling over her meaty shoulder, “Be ready at midnight.” It sounded more like she was announcing the time of a picnic rather than a risky midnight excursion. As the two-way door was about to swing closed, she snorted in irony. “Because yer gonna need this lesson mo’ than eva’ now.”
Dinner was somber. As news of our encounter with Sartorius hung over our heads most of Miss Mabelle’s fried chicken, sautéed greens, and corn casserole went untouched. There were no debates over what would be the best cast to use when moving to a new city or when starting a new relationship. There were no teasing remarks, no mockery, no joking whatsoever. We sat, heads down, scraping our forks around the plate, until Nolan couldn’t handle it any longer.
“Feels like a morgue in here,” he muttered, pushing back his chair to take his plate to the kitchen.
The rest of us silently agreed and followed his example. I was in my bedroom by nine o’clock.
Nearly three hours later, the familiar pound against my door told me it was time, and I met Miss Mabelle at the stairs. As usual, we didn’t speak to each other as she opened the door and waddled down the pathway to Miss Celia’s vehicle parked at the curb.
This was my first time outside the house since the encounter with Sartorius, and it made me uneasy, so my eyes darted toward the Vires at the gate the moment the door opened. I instantly noticed three heads instead of the usual two and braced myself for what might be coming. But they remained in place as we passed and my worries were alleviated even further once I recognized who had joined the crew outside our house.
“Nice night, huh, Turcott?” I said, cordially, while strolling by.
He gave no response other than an incensed glare, which nearly made me chuckle. He seemed far less antagonizing to me after our incident in the hotel. Miss Mabelle ignored him entirely, which told me that she didn’t see him as much of a threat, either.
With Turcott following, Miss Celia had to make a few extra maneuvers, but eventually she lost all three of them, and Jameson was given an all clear to move up to the seat. Once settled, he turned to me and quietly asked, “How are you doing?”
Knowing he was referring to what happened this afternoon with Sartorius, I felt my heart weaken for him. Despite what I was putting him through, after all these months, his attention was still on my welfare. “I’m fine,” I replied and gave him a faint smile.
He nodded but didn’t return the smile.
“You?”
“Fine,” he repeated and turned away, noticeably repeating my answer. I knew what this meant. He was fine with what happened earlier, but his heart…it was still broken.
Guilt overwhelmed me, pressing against my chest and restricting my lungs. I wanted to move across the seat, take his hand, and tell him that my heart was broken too. Yet, there was no sense in it. It wouldn’t possibly help to know I felt the same misery, not when we couldn’t do anything about it. I had no other course of action other than to stare out the window and guess where we were headed.
After taking I-10 and merging onto Clairborne Avenue, I could make a good assumption. It took just fifteen minutes to arrive, pulling up on a roughly paved road to the side of a dark, desolate house propped on brick stilts.
Stepping outside the car felt like we had landed in a foreign country. While the Garden District boasted immaculately-detailed, white-columned porch houses, lush gardens, and manicured trees, here, in the Ninth Ward, streets were sparse. The clapboard houses were spaced every few yards with just a metal fence partitioning one land from another and many of them still showed signs of past hurricane damage.
A dog barked in the distance as we stopped at the door, likely disrupted by our arrival in the still night. No other sign of life emanated from the neighborhood. This was good, because Miss Mabelle didn’t bother to knock. She opened the screen and front door and entered without hesitation.
Inside, the aroma of rotting wood surro
unded us, violating our sense of smell until there was nothing else that could permeate it. Dry dirt littered the floor alongside leaves that had made their way in through the broken windows. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture in the room we were standing in.
As Jameson and I waited patiently for them to tell us why they brought us to a vacant, dilapidated house in the Ninth Ward, Miss Mabelle lit a lantern and led us to a small room in the back.
The floor creaked, letting anything living there know to expect us before we arrived. It sent the cockroaches and rats scurrying to safety well before we encountered them, but we heard their feet scuff as they fled.
After the four of us squeezed into a room large enough to comfortably hold two, Miss Mabelle began to speak.
“This was my bedroom. It was here, where I learned who I was and who I would become. It was where I asked our deities for guidance and where I learned the practice of Voodoo. This was my temple,” she whispered in reverence.
She moved to the back, carrying the lantern with her and illuminating faded drawings on the walls. Symbols were strewn across them from midway down because Miss Mabelle hadn’t been tall enough to reach any higher back then. I imagined her – short and wiry, with knobby knees – attempting to leap and mark the wall above her latest drawings. It was endearing, but that was before she spoke again.
“Had no idea back then I’d be dealing with the two of you,” she narrowed her eyes at us. “The Loa didn’t bother to mention your emergence in my future.”
“The Loa?” I asked, tilting my head at her, prompting her to explain.
“The Loa are the spirits – the Mystères and the Invisibles – who conduct business for us with the Bondye, our creator. We entertain them, and they, in turn, assist us.” She paused and added, “Usually.”
“You entertain spirits?” I asked, realizing that less than a year ago I would have laughed at this woman and done my best to slip unnoticed from the room. Now, I actually believed her.
“Yes,” she snapped, so it was Miss Celia who explained it to us.
“The Loa have varying personalities and they come from varying backgrounds. They are distinct individuals. Some are beneficent. Some enjoy causing a little commotion. Some like to eat. Some like to dance. Some like to drink.” She summed it up for me. “We entertain them, so they will entertain us - by bringing our requests to our Bondye.”
Miss Mabelle, who had been closely inspecting her childhood art, turned and headed back toward the door, stopping at Jameson and me long enough to state, “It is good you are here. Your presence gives the Loa perspective. They will recognize you now when I ask for their help in protecting you.”
She whirled back around and disappeared through the doorway, just as I felt the goose bumps rising on my arms. There was no justification for my reaction other than recognizing that we were in such dire trouble we needed supernatural assistance. That didn’t sit well with me.
Miss Mabelle didn’t bother to speak again until we left and were at the car. When Jameson attempted to open the door, she barked at him, “We ain’t done yet.”
He chuckled to himself, muttered consent, and closed the door, before meeting up with us to stroll across the street. There, another house sat on a lot equally as barren as Miss Mabelle’s childhood home. It was made of brick yet showed the same neglect. The windows were missing entirely. Screens hung from their hinges. The two concrete steps to the front door were broken and crumbling. Judging by its exterior, it appeared to be vacant, also. This proved to be true when Miss Celia entered without knocking.
Inside, she paused to glance around, allowing us the opportunity to see where we stood. The living room had the same desolate feeling as Miss Mabelle’s had, especially with the remnants of a campfire left in the corner by a past visitor.
Miss Celia moved to the right, directly next to a window where the streetlight shined off a green glass bottle left on its windowsill.
“This is the very spot,” she said, quietly, her eyes downcast in memory of the moment she was relaying to us now. “This is where we were told of our obligation to assist you.”
“Mmhmm,” Miss Mabelle concurred.
“Where our lives changed.”
“I’m sorry,” Jameson said, holding up his hand in a gesture, asking them to stop. “Are you saying you’ve been planning this with us,” he motioned between him and me, “since you were small? You’ve known all that time?”
“Our sisters lived centuries ago,” Miss Celia reminded him, referring to the first channelers who determined the future of our world.
He didn’t reply, having been stunned speechless.
I, however, was not. “You have been waiting for us since you were young?”
“Yes,” Miss Celia replied, plainly.
“How young?”
“Five years of age,” she stated and quickly looked at Miss Mabelle for a nod of confirmation.
“And what did you do to prepare?”
A smirk began to rise, but fell away when determination overcame it. “We became the best Voodoo priestesses in the city.”
“The world,” corrected Miss Mabelle, never one to be modest. For good measure, in case we missed it the first time, she reiterated, “In the world.”
“Well,” I muttered, staggered by that proclamation. “Thank you for doing that…”
“You’re welcome,” said Miss Celia, proudly. She sighed and took one final look around, moving to leave. “We have a schedule to keep tonight,” she informed us, as she passed. “We should be going.”
From there, our housekeepers drove us back to the French Quarter where they parked one block from Jackson Square. It brought back the memory of the day before, which I had to quickly shove aside. I caught Jameson observing the corner leading to the park as we crossed to the house in front of us.
A dim light was on in the front window as we climbed the stairs of the small, pink, frame house with white trim. We had to walk single file or risk accidentally kicking over one of the many potted plants lining the walkway. After one soft knock, the door opened to a lean, darkly-tanned woman wearing an abundance of jewelry. She smiled warmly and stepped aside, as if she had been waiting for us.
“Annemarie, we’s a little behind on our agenda fo’ the evenin’,” Miss Mabelle said in a tone softer and more apologetic than I ever believed possible from her. It actually made me trip across the rug in the hallway.
Jameson, who always seemed to have one eye on me, caught my elbow and helped me back up. By the time I was steady on my feet again, he was several strides ahead, readily avoiding any expression of my gratitude. I didn’t blame him, but I couldn’t shake the disappointment as his back became the center of my focus.
Annemarie beckoned us to the back of the house, her clinking jewelry being the only sounds she made as she skipped any greeting, introduction, or explanation.
We followed the smell of herbs until we found ourselves in a small conservatory just off the kitchen. Vines trailed the glass walls, nearly enclosing the room that was full of lush and colorful potted plants. In the center was a long wooden table blazing with candles, sending odd shadows across the foliage. Also on the table were glasses of wine, torn bread, and cheese crumbles, making me recall what Miss Celia had just explained about pleasing their Loa.
Annemarie’s cold, gentle hands took my elbows and positioned me at the side of the table. She did the same with Jameson, placing him so our shoulders were nearly touching.
Part of me wished they would.
Through the course of it, I began to get the feeling that Annemarie was setting up for a ceremony, which prompted me to open my mouth and asked about it, but Jameson, who apparently was having the same feeling, beat me to it.
“What are we doing here?” he asked, suspiciously.
While Miss Celia completely ignored him, Miss Mabelle made a shushing sound. That irritated me, so I repeated his question. At that, our housekeepers narrowed their eyes at us, but Annemarie was the one who
answered.
She lifted her palms to the sky and said in reverie, “Loa come to us as we seek protection for these children.” Then, Annemarie spoke a dialect completely foreign to me, as she was weaving from one side to the next, gyrating her arms above her head, and flexing her intonation with demand and submission.
Something happened then that I didn’t expect. Jameson flinched, drawing my attention to him. At that point, his head tilted back and his eyes rolled up.
“You’re hurting him,” I stated, anxiously, moving forward, around Jameson, and toward Annemarie, preparing to force her to stop.
“The Loa,” stated Miss Celia, in a calm, scholarly manner, “has arrived.”
Looking back at Jameson with his head still back, I understood what was happening. The Loa was channeling through him.
When AnneMarie was finished, she withdrew a cane from beneath the table and placed it on the altar. Her eyelids and arms lowered together, and her shoulders fell forward, as if she were bowing.
It was several minutes before her head rose again and her eyes opened. When they did, Jameson finally came to and looked around, hazy eyed. Our housekeepers quietly moved to her side, thanked her for her help, and ushered Jameson back to the door.
We left her standing at her altar, exhausted but seemingly appeased.
I had never seen anything like it before, but I was encouraged by it nonetheless. Without needing to be a true part of it, I understood it was powerful, just the kind of protection we were going to need.
“Papa Legba,” asked Miss Mabelle to Miss Celia, their heads bent toward each other, as we left the house.
“Yeyas, it was.”
“That was Legba?” Jameson asked from behind us, his enthralled voice carrying to the housekeepers ahead.
Miss Celia glimpsed over her shoulder and nodded, her expression matter-of-fact.
“Who’s Legba?” I asked, realizing that Jameson knew something about Voodoo.
“One of the older spirits. Very wise, serious,” he said, laughing to himself. “That’s the reason for the cane on the altar. It must be his symbol.”