“I remember the story,” said Marie.
“Well that was my village,” said Doctor John. “That chief was my daddy—a beautiful man and a powerful sorcerer. And those Portuguese were crazy—imagine them thinking we’d give them our jewels. My daddy wasn’t going to kill them. All he wanted was a closer look at men who could act so dumb.
“A thousand men came back to get us. They shot my daddy from so many sides; he didn’t know where to send his magic. They rounded us up and loaded us on a ship for Cuba.”
“A slave ship?” asked Marie. Marie Saloppe had told her about those boats, gruesome tales of suffocation, starvation, men surviving on urine and mother’s milk.
“A luxury liner,” spat Doctor John. “Sure, it was a slave ship. But I wasn ’ t on it. By then I ’d learned a trick or two from my daddy. As soon as I saw that ship I turned myself into an albatross and flew behind it. I coasted on that harsh wind, listening to my people singing in the boat.
“I wondered how they learned those slave songs so fast. One day out of Dahomey, they were already singing about Gumbo Smart, the black slave trader who made a fortune off white men without delivering one black soul. The next morning they sang about Queen Nzinga leading the Angolese people against the Portuguese king, warning him that her war would last six hundred years. That afternoon I heard a song about the eve of Makandal’s rebellion when he pledged his soldiers with the bull’s blood promised to make them stronger than white men’s bullets.”
Marie stared at him. “Bull’s blood?”
“From a black bull.”
“People say I’m descended from Makandal,” she murmured.
“People will say anything to put themselves above their neighbors,” he said. “After you’re gone they’ll be saying they’re descended from Marie Laveau.”
“Then why should I believe you turned yourself into an albatross?”
“Ask the folks who came over. Ask if a white bird didn’t follow them all the way, swooping closer when they sang about High John the Conqueror. Ask them what happened when they got to Cuba. Ask if that white bird didn’t land on the pier and turn itself into a black boy.
“I was that boy. And I was lucky. Right away I found a good master—a rich Spanish queer who sent me to work in his kitchen so the cane wouldn’t blister my pretty hands. The next time I boarded a ship I didn’t need to change into a bird. My master was taking me to Santo Domingo—first class.
“All that time I remembered my daddy’s tricks. I did favors. Things went my way. Santo Domingan doctors came to see me and we traded trick for trick. I learned a lot on that island. My magic got stronger ...”
Doctor John crossed himself. “My master was an old man. He died suddenly and freed me in his will. I began to think I should go someplace where people would give me money for my magic. There were enough magicians in Santo Domingo.
“So I shipped out for New Orleans, working on deck to pay my way. The minute we landed, though, I saw I was a bigger fool than Captain Sabato. Nobody was going to give me anything.
“I hired on as a stevedore loading cotton at the wharf. Soon it got around that I could read the future from black specks in the cotton. ‘Sure I can read the future,’ I told people. ‘I can read palms, cards, dreams, minds. I can read numbers in the stars. I can heal the sick. I can walk through the air between the towers of St. Louis Cathedral. I can turn myself into a dog and balance on the point of a sword. I can catch ten-pound catfish on a silk thread.’
“That’s what I could do then. Now I can do all that and more. But I’m still practicing, getting my magic together. I’m out on Lepers’ Row waiting for the time to make my move.
“But even when my time comes, I’ll tell you: I won’t do my magic for everyone. I’ll do it for white if they pay enough. I’ll do it for black. But I won’t do it for half-breeds, dirty yellow mules who don’t belong to any race so no one can trust them ...”
“Then what are you doing with me?”
“You’re no half-breed.” Doctor John put on his dark glasses and leaned forward. “You’re black as the Nile.” He whipped them off and stared into Marie’s eyes. “Pureblood hoodoo.”
“Voodoo.”
“Voodoo’s for the islands, for old-fashioned types like Marie Saloppe. Hoodoo’s for right here now. Anyhow,” he continued, “you’re special. You’re part of my family. You were born with the caul, red-eyed like me. Born to see behind the mirror and the veil. Born to restlessness and solitude, born to hoodoo.”
Marie sighed. “Did Marie Saloppe send you? You sound just like her.”
“Marie Saloppe didn’t send me. The same gods sent us both.”
“Then tell those gods of yours to leave me be,” countered Marie.
“No way,” he took a deep pull on the cigar. “Once they set their hearts on you there’s no way to change it. Not even blackmail.”
“Blackmail?” repeated Marie. The cigar smoke was making her sick.
Grinding his cigar out in an inlaid dish, Doctor John surveyed the room. “Nice high ceilings. Brocade wallpaper. Nice satin sofas. Not bad for blackmail. Not bad for hush money.”
“Hush money?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I got nothing against blackmailers. We’re in the same line of work, so to speak. But that’s not my point. My point is, you’ve got the gift, like it or not. Someday you’ll use it. But first you’ve got a lot to learn.”
“Like what?”
“Like real magic. Patience. Real pride. The mark of Cain,” he said, stroking the welts on his cheek. “Cain’s mark of pride. Read your Bible—Cain’s mark saved his life.”
“Father Antoine says I’ve got too much pride already.”
“Don’t tell me Father Antoine’s lies.” Doctor John coughed up a wad of phlegm and spat on his cigar butt. “That man’s had half a brain since he signed the other half over to Jesus. He told your mama the same lies, and he was wrong about you both. Your mama thought she was proud, but she didn’t have an ounce of pride in her.”
“How do you know?”
“I knew your mama pretty well. Let’s say I was a family friend. Miss Delphine was a fine colored lady but she was a coward ...”
“All right,” interrupted Marie. “I’ve heard enough.”
“Watch it,” he hissed, suddenly menacing. “Or you won’t ever hear that message from under the water.”
“What do you want from me?” cried Marie, then instantly found her answer. “I know. You want to play my dreams on the Wheel of Fortune.”
Doctor John laughed out loud. “Now why would I need your dreams? I read my combinations from the stars in the sky, God’s little jewels. I’m a good gambler. I never lose.”
“I don’t believe you’ve got any message—”
“I can make you believe. I know secrets that’d make you believe I was Jesus Christ returned.”
“What secrets?”
“Well ... I could tell you ’bout a mind I read sixteen years ago—the mind of a fine colored lady I ran into near the square. She was hurrying someplace with her new baby. I looked at her for one second and saw her past and future. Read her whole mind.”
A chill ran down Marie’s spine. “What was on it?”
“Plenty.” Doctor John chuckled slyly. “Plenty. Right off I saw that this proud-looking lady had only done one proud thing in her life. It happened the day I met her.
“She’d just come from lying to the biggest priest in New Orleans. She’d told him she was naming her baby after Mary Magdalene. But actually she named her after St. Mary the Egyptian—Black Mary, the sailor’s friend. Black Mary didn’t wash nobody’s feet with her hair. She kept her hair nice so she could keep working her trade, whoring for sailors on deck, earning her way to the Holy Land. That was the lady she’d named her baby for—a sensible saint who’d made the best of a bad deal. It tickled me to think of her lying before God and Jesus and those other fakers.”
Marie was shocked. Father Antoine had told her of men who
denied Jesus, but she’d never heard anyone admit to it. “Don’t you believe in Jesus?” she asked.
“Sure I do. Jesus was the best hoodoo man of them all. ‘Ask of me and ye shall receive,’ he said, just like a doctor getting ready to do a fix. And He fixed my people good, fixed them into trading all Africa for His little book.
“But Jesus and His book don’t work so well for poor folks. We’re better off with hoodoo. Hoodoo works for anyone who pays. But I didn’t come here to talk religion. All you Scorpios—you’re worse than Jesuits.”
Doctor John mopped his brow with a lace-trimmed handkerchief and sipped more brandy. “I was talking about a mind with one proud memory in it. The rest of that lady’s story was a shame—even for a half-breed. When I read her mind—”
“What did you see?”
“If I remember correctly”—he tapped his cobraheaded cane against his forehead—“I saw she’d spent a night with a poor crazy boy who didn’t know what was happening except that a beautiful woman was taking him home to bed. The next morning she was saying the crazy boy had done things in bed which her regular man couldn’t imagine.”
Marie sighed with relief. “You don’t have to be a mind reader to know about that duel,” she said.
“There wasn’t any duel,” said Doctor John. “But only a mind reader could have known.
“Your daddy was a coward like your mama. He was afraid to fight. He had to stop people laughing—his honor wasn’t worth a dime bet on the Wheel of Fortune. But he was scared to face that crazy little boy.
“ ‘I’ll murder him,’ your daddy said. ‘But I won’t risk my life for some yellow girl I don’t even like.’
“That made your mama love him more than ever. She brooded on it for days. Then she told him what to do.
“ ‘Fake it,’ she said.
“There wasn’t any duel. They poisoned that boy. The night before the duel your mama invited him back to her place. That boy was so happy, you’d have thought God was asking him straight to heaven. And that’s just where he was found. Your mama poisoned him with a glass of red wine imported specially from France.
“They buried him in the cellar of your old house. Go dig him up if you don’t believe me. See for yourself.
“At dawn your mama dressed in the dead man’s cloak. She met your daddy behind the church and they fired blank pistols at each other. Then she pretended to drop down dead. Your generous daddy arranged for the funeral—which never actually happened. The boy was already buried beneath the water in that house.”
“But why did they bother poisoning him? Couldn’t they just put fake bullets in his gun?”
Doctor John smirked. “Your daddy was a man of honor. He honored the rules of dueling.
“That was the low-down way that lady got her man. From that day on, those two were bound tighter than a road gang. They never mentioned the duel. They acted like it never happened—”
“They forgot it?”
“Not quite. Now that I think back I remember something else—something that happened just before she got pregnant.
“She and her man were having a bad time. Little things were going wrong. The fire wouldn’t light, the pump breaking. Nothing serious, but it brought her man down so low he stopped sleeping in your mama’s bed.
“After all she’d done for him, that made your mama hopping mad. One night she told him that the dead boy’s ghost was returning to her bed, doing things he couldn’t imagine. It fired your daddy up. Soon your mama’s belly was bigger than a cantaloupe.
“Six months after that I ran into her and saw her whole future. She and her man would finally forget that murder. They’d be happy in their dirty half-breed way . . . until someone would make them remember. And I bet you know who that someone was.”
Marie shook her head.
“Yes, you do. You’re shaking like a cypress in a hurricane. I thought you’d know ...”
“You’re lying!”
“I swear it on Damballah’s beard.”
“Shut up!” screamed Marie. “Get out of here!”
Doctor John stood up, brushed off his coat, and stuck the brandy flask under his arm. “You’re plenty ungrateful,” he said. “But I understand. Just to show you there’s no hard feelings, I’ll give you that message from the dead boy under the water.
“ ‘Doctor,’ he told me, ‘tell Marie not to feel bad about hoodooing her mama and daddy to death. It wasn’t her fault. Their time had come. The spirits were using her to do their work.’
“I’m going now,” said Doctor John, putting on his top hat and dark glasses. “I won’t ask you to apologize. There’ll be time for that later when you need me. Those spirits have more work in store for you, Miss Marie. Just wait. As soon as you see it, that’s how soon you’ll be asking my help. ” Twirling his cobra-headed cane in a figure eight, he strutted out the door.
CHAPTER VIII
MARIE LAVEAU LOOKED into the mirror.
She saw herself inside a cocoon. Her hair had grown longer, spun out into a translucent web supporting a thin pearly membrane. Inside the cocoon she was sleeping, waiting for something to happen in the world beyond the mirror.
Marie Laveau looked into the mirror.
She saw her face, which changed color with the sun, the light, the time. She saw her hair change from black to red, smooth to frizzy, straight to curly, change with the weather, the water, the heat. She tried to see herself from outside as if she were Mother Therese, Father Antoine, the convent girls. She couldn’t. The mirror clouded. Her face disappeared.
Marie Laveau looked into the mirror.
She saw her double, her other soul which roamed the night while her body slept, which talked to the trees and the wind, which would scream with pain if she broke the mirror.
Marie Laveau looked into the mirror.
She saw a black woman on a ship sailing down a wide brown river. A rosary dangled from her hand but her arms encircled the back of a sailor and her thighs were open, carrying her to the Holy Land.
Marie Laveau looked into the mirror.
She saw that her eyes were red. Staring into her own eyes, she saw she was all alone.
She stopped. Stopped going to school, stopped leaving the house. She stayed inside with the curtains drawn because the sunlight had gone bad like sour milk. The dawn and the evening stopped.
In the darkness the clock spoke to her, ticking her name, ticking off the days of her life. Water dripped steadily in the courtyard, repeating: Why? Why? Why? The water spoke in her mother’s voice, then her father’s, always repeating: Why?
The silence stopped. Laughing spirits filled the air—calling her, claiming her as their own. Gulf breezes blew in the windows, into the comers of back rooms, searching everywhere. The wind picked up Doctor John’s scent and learned to mimic him, to repeat what he’d said that night.
She followed the wind until it named into a spiral with her heart at its still eye. Memories spiraled above her, pieces of debris in the cyclone: An orange parrot. A gray veil. Lightning. A dead bull. A drowned man. A mirror. A turning wheel. A cross. A green snake. A heart pierced by a dagger. A golden fish. A chunk of amber. A black top hat. Her mother’s hair. A blue velvet bag.
The wind and the rain and the ticking clock all asked the same questions: Why? Why her? When would it stop? When would the spirits leave her alone?
She stopped. But the storms blew harder than ever.
Sometimes she awoke in the morning and thought that the storm was over, that everything would be all right.
She got up and dressed, watching the simple motions in the mirror, basking in the ordinary comfort of putting on clothes, layer after layer, close and snug as the leaves of an artichoke. There was no other world but the world of linen, lace, and buttons.
She opened the curtain. Fresh sunlight filled the dark rooms. Out in the courtyard drops of light splashed on the flagstones. The clock ticked quietly, graceful as a dancer.
She walked into the light. She smiled at
people in the street. Their faces seemed beautiful, creased and rich with life. She inhaled the smells of coffee, mud, flowers, garbage. A dog barked in the distance.
Father Antoine greeted her at his door. His white hair shone in the morning light. His cassock was the peaceful color of deep earth. “Come in,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in so long.”
She smiled at him and went inside. The room was cool and dim. Small patches of sunlight warmed the white walls.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “Mother Therese tells me you’ve stopped going to school.”
“I’ve been home,” she said. “Thinking.”
“Thinking? What does that mean? It means brooding, doesn’t it? You’ve been home brooding and you look it. You look troubled and you haven’t been to confession in months.”
“How many months?”
“Six. No—seven.”
“How many?”
“Seven.”
“How many?”
“Why do you keep asking? What’s wrong with you?”
“I’ve got an act of blackmail to confess,” said Marie. “A double murder. A caul, a world behind a mirror, voodoo blood, power I don’t want ...”
She confessed it all. But no sound came from her mouth. The words echoed inside her head. The room grew darker. The air went bad.
“Why should I confess to you?” she said. “You of all people. You knew the truth and didn’t tell me. You didn’t try to stop it. Why should I give you more power over me?”
She stood up and almost fainted. “I don’t feel well,” she said. “I’m dizzy. It’s the heat ...”
She was inside a tunnel glittering with mirrors. Father Antoine was speaking. He was yelling after her. She couldn’t hear. A thick underwater silence stopped her ears. The light in the street was sour. People were baring their sharp demon-fangs. A dog was howling. The ground felt slimy beneath her feet.
Dark clouds blackened the sky. Thunder and lightning. She ran home through the pouring rain, the grinning demons, the sour air. Ran home to the voices and the mirror and the ticking clock.
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