Marie Laveau

by Francine Prose

  “He loves me.”

  Marie sighed. Maybe this was worse than too much church. “Good luck,” she said. “Does he know about the business?”

  “Of course. He wants me to work. And he wants to marry me.”

  “Believe that when you see the ring.”

  Ti-Marie frowned. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She’d been in love with John Eustis ever since she’d met him at the market and divined his true love from the way his face lit up when he spotted her among the orange stalls. Walking back to his apartment, he put his arm around her proudly. In bed he was so nice to her that she spent all evening daydreaming about their afternoons in his cool, shuttered room.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Marie, struck by a sudden fear. “I could’ve given you some Clean Sweep Powder to keep you from getting pregnant.”

  “I know where you keep the powder. I’m the one who grinds it.’”

  “At least you’re learning the business,” Marie laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, honey, now you’ll really be doing the dance.”

  “It’s not a dance,” said Ti-Marie, concealing her plans for a life which would somehow include John Eustis. voodoo, and Jesus.

  Marie finished Ti-Marie’s hair in silence. She respected her daughter’s secrets and her ability to keep them. “It could be worse,” she thought. “When I was her age, I’d already put a death fix on my mama and daddy.”

  So, though Ti-Marie’s romance with John Eustis Poe continued for a disconcertingly long time, Marie granted her her privacy. By then, Marie had some more important secrets of her own.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  MARIE AWOKE IN an icy sweat from a dream she couldn’t remember. She peeled the wet sheet from her body, then clutched its limp edge. Pain gouged her stomach like a fingernail, raked the length of her spine. Sour juices burned her mouth. Gagging, she got out of bed, tiptoed past Ti-Marie’s room to the courtyard, where she vomited a thin acid stream. She covered the vomit with straw and went to rinse her mouth ...

  The pump wouldn’t work. She jiggled the handle, bore down with all her weight. Its lip stayed as caked and dry as her own. She ran to the kitchen to brew herself some Garden of Gilead tea, loaded the firebox with twigs, squeezed the flint. The spark sputtered.

  The fire refused to burn.

  Marie knew terror when she saw it. She’d watched a million clients sweat like draft horses in fear of lovers, masters, bosses. But what scared her was that she wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything.

  Doctor John was dead and gone. The loas were on her side. She hadn’t had competition—let alone a serious rival—for ten years—not since that Sister Butterfly came from Natchez claiming to be Two-Headed Alexander’s granddaughter. Marie had had nothing against Sister Butterfly, but she was setting a bad example. So she’d put a Go Away fix on her and Sister Butterfly packed up and went home, saying her grand-daddy was right, the climate in New Orleans was bad for the spirits.

  Marie was the queen. She ruled the city. No one had the power to harm her. And still she awoke in agony, vomited every morning, could hardly sleep, couldn’t eat. Wine turned to vinegar, fresh bread to cotton in her mouth. Still her pump stayed dry, her fire refused to light.

  “Who’s fixing me?” she asked her cards. The cards talked gibberish: You are going on vacation. “Why?” she asked the mirror. The mirror showed her her own red-rimmed eyes. She buried it at the corner for three days and asked again. She saw the whites of her eyes, yellow with fear. She turned to the stars and planets—thick clouds veiled the sky. She burned candles and asked the saints and loas; their voices were drowned out by the demons clamoring in her ears.

  “It’s not a fix,” said the demon-voices. “It’s worse than any fix.”

  She knew that. Fixes had a pattern: Every October fixes. Full Moon fixes. Three Candles-Three Nights fixes. But her fear came in waves, held her for weeks until she forgot she’d ever been free of it, then broke, freeing her to eat and sleep until the unpredictable morning it would come again. Fixes weakened your powers. But even at its worse, her pain let her do business. Her fixes and healings worked.

  She could choke down the sour bile and lead the Sunday dances, hold her head so high that no one could hear what the voices inside it were saying: “Bad ssspellsss,” hissed the demons, parodying her cobra. “Evil in the air. Something terrible is about to happen. There is nothing you can do.”

  Marie did nothing. She awoke in pain and vomited in the courtyard. She fed her Sunday lunch to stray dogs. She asked Ti-Marie to light the fire, Christophe to work the pump. She did nothing and prayed that no one would notice.

  No one did. In fact, people told her she was looking younger, better each day, more and more like Ti-Marie; they claimed it was growing harder to tell them apart. Everyone gossiped about the miraculous family resemblance—everyone, that is, but Marie and Ti-Marie. All they had to do was look in the mirror.

  Marie gripped Ti-Marie’s chair as the pain ripped through the small of her back. The comb shook in her other hand; Ti-Marie winced as it caught in a tangle.

  “Don’t look in the mirror,” said the voices in Marie’s ears. She concentrated on the shiny curls ... Instinctively, she looked up to check her work ...

  The mirror reflected two identical women—one seated, one standing. Their faces, their bodies, even their expressions were exactly the same. Marie was seeing her double. “Don’t look,” said the voices. “When you see your double, bad trouble’s on its way.”

  The brush dropped. “Hey,” she said, bending to pick it up. “What do you see in the mirror?”

  “You and me.”

  “Doesn’t it scare you?”

  “Why? Lots of girls favor their mothers. If I look like you at your age, I’ll be doing all right.” She smiled.

  “You won’t,” muttered Marie as the pain snaked around to her stomach. “I had that dream last night,” she said, clenching her teeth against the nausea. “The loup garou and the storm.”

  “I did, too,” whispered Ti-Marie.

  “Having the same dream means we’re bound the same way.”

  “No,” Ti-Marie said tentatively, as if curious to hear how the word sounded. “I don’t want to go that way. I don’t want the life. I want John Eustis, children, church ...”

  “You’re a fool!” cried Marie, so angry that the fear released its grip on her stomach. “I had the same idea when I was your age. Marie Saloppe and Doctor John told me, but I wouldn’t listen. You don’t have to listen, but I can tell you. You’ll take over the business. You know the secrets.”

  “I don’t have- the power,” said Ti-Marie, weakening.

  “You will.”

  “But I don’t want it.”

  “You don’t have any choice. That was my lesson—I learned hard. Don’t believe me—learn it for yourself.”

  “All right,” murmured Ti-Marie, so softly that Marie had to lean forward to hear. Resting a hand on her shoulder, Marie had the sensation of touching her own belly years before, feeling her unborn child hush in obedience to her command. “Everything will be all right,” she said.

  Ti-Marie stiffened. “If it’s all right,” she murmured, “why are you shaking so hard?”

  Looking in the mirror, Marie saw her daughter’s head bowed in submission while she stood upright, victorious. Their bearing was so different—they no longer looked the same.

  But her fear was the same. Her hands shook so hard that the comb tore thick swatches from Ti-Marie’s scalp. Without a word, Ti-Marie seized the comb and finished the work herself.

  The pain and fear remained an unpredictable constant, coming and going at whim. The only thing that changed was the fact that people were starting to notice.

  Now Christophe awoke when she did and waited for her to return from vomiting in the courtyard. “Are you sick?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Sleepy?”

  “Yes. But that’s not it.”

  “Then what?”

  “Ma
ybe you need a rest,” he suggested when she didn’t answer. “Maybe you should quit work for a while, take a vacation.”

  “My work’s going fine,” she answered in a tone which would have been more indignant if not for the fact that more and more of her satisfied customers were saying the same thing: Take care of your own magic. Rest. Go on vacation.

  Marie dreamed she was at Franklin Midnight’s shack. The shack was darker and scarier than she’d ever known it. The shadows seemed more menacing: Evil spirits without form. Zombies without bodies.

  Someone knocked on the door. Another knock. Then another.

  A little man stood on the threshhold. Baron Cemetery. “Come in,” said Marie. Her heart sank. The Baron scurried past her like a big black June bug. Marie stiffened with repulsion. The old loa hadn’t changed in the forty years since she’d seen him at the ballroom. He lit three white candles and filled the room with his foul green smoke. Marie’s eyes watered till she choked; only then did the Baron grind his cigar out with his worn boot.

  The smoke cleared. Marie stared into the empty sockets of his skull-face. Her gaze traveled down to the cotton wadded in his nostrils, the toothless mouth, leathery black skin. “Is this it?” she asked. “You come for me?”

  “Don’t ask me,” said the baron, duck-walking across the room. He giggled and pointed. A table, platters of food, and wine bottles magically appeared.

  Suddenly Marie felt extremely hungry. Approaching the table, she chose one item, then another. First sweet warm milk, Venus’s omelets from Delphine’s kitchen, three-cent chocolates, cold meats from the St. Philip Street Ballroom, oysters from the St. Julian Hotel, a bite of the red apple she’d shared with Jacques, the bright gumbo she’d served him and the prisoners, the darker stew of her family Sundays, washed it down with a sip of champagne, a cup of Marie Saloppe’s Garden of Gilead tea, holy wine from Father Antoine, the oranges of her solitude, Christophe’s coffee. Even the communion wafers of her pregnancy tasted sweet as some fine confection.

  She didn’t stop eating till she’d sampled every dish. Then she looked up to see Baron Cemetery standing beside the table, bowing, smiling a smug headwaiter’s grin.

  “All right,” she said. “My life flashed before my eyes. Was that my last meal?” Fear churned her full stomach.

  “Not quite yet,” said the baron. “But I’m on my way.”

  “How long?”

  “Figure it out yourself. ” The baron cackled merrily. “You’re good at that. It’s a joke I tell the other loas: ‘Marie Laveau’s my private secretary. She helps me keep my appointments. Just ask her when I’m due.’ Look at your cards.” The baron pointed impatiently at the mirror. “Ask your mirror.”

  The food vanished. In its place were her cards, her mirror, a dark cloth. Cutting the cards, she turned up the two of spades. She cut them again—the two of hearts. Then again—the two of clubs.

  “If you don’t believe that,” said the baron, “look in the mirror.”

  “How many years?” Marie asked the mirror. A procession of doubles marched toward her: two golden fish, two cups of coffee, two barons, two images of herself, then herself and Ti-Marie ... Marie Saloppe’s voice came from nowhere: “When you see your double, bad trouble’s on its way.”

  Now Marie knew what the trouble was. “Two years?” she asked.

  “You got it,” said the baron.

  “Please,” she begged him. “That’s not enough time.”

  “That’s what they all say,” snorted the baron. “I expected a little more originality from a voodoo queen.”

  “I don’t have to believe you. It’s just a dream ...”

  “Suit yourself,” said the baron and disappeared without a word.

  Someone knocked again. “He’s back,” she thought. Then she saw the face at the window—the hideous loup garou from her dreams, come now to collect on her parents’ promise, their old debt.

  Raindrops fell on the roof. The cracks in the walls glowed with lightning. Shaking itself like a wet dog, the loup garou flew off, leaving a slick red trail. The stomrfilled Marie’s dream with thunder and rain. Wind shook the house. Then the shack began to rise.

  Inside, Marie sat still. She was tranquil again, no longer sick or shaking, listening to the rain and wind, feeling the shack sail away, smooth as a skiff on a breezy day.

  Marie awoke in terror and pain. “It’s a dream,” she told herself. “It’s not true.” Forcing down her nausea, she walked over to the mirror.

  The mirror told her it was true. There before her was the face she’d seen on countless clients. She knew what it meant: What you have now will kill you. There is no cure.

  She braced one arm against the bureau and examined herself, running a hand along her skin, feeling the nodes, the centers, sending her mind down into her body, touching heart, stomach, brain. There were no tumors, nothing chewing from within, no ulcers, no infection. No weaknesses—her strong young body was testament to that. But her death was inside her, two years away. She could see it in her face, in the fear which drove her, retching, to the courtyard.

  “I never thought I’d live forever,” she murmured. “I’ve had a good life, better than most ...” Fear knocked her against the doorpost, Jacques’s spot. She hugged it now—not in the shyness of love, but in terror.

  Her first client that day was a poor-white lady in her sixties. “My man left me,” she told Marie. “Said I was boring him to death. Every time I opened my mouth he told me to shut up ’cause he was just thinking the same thing and thinking it was much too boring to say.”

  “How long you been married?”

  “Thirty years. But I still want him back.”

  “Oh, love,” sighed Marie, who’d heard the same story many times before. “That’s a hard case to fix.” She gave the woman a double dose of Venus Draw and three Come Home candles, knowing the cure wouldn’t work because her own heart wasn’t in it. She was too busy hating her client for all the good years she’d had and would have, while she herself had only two more.

  After the woman left, Marie went out to the courtyard and vomited again. “You’re a Scorpio,” she reminded herself. “You’re supposed to know how to die.”

  She knew how she wanted to do it. She’d seen condemned prisoners on their way to the gallows look up at the^sky—not with self-pity or regret, but with simple curiosity, as if they’d never seen it before. That was how she wanted to die—with that kind of grace.

  But she didn’t know how.

  Two days later, fixing Ti-Marie’s hair, Marie saw her double in the mirror and knew what to do. “Hey,” she said. “I need your help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “I need you to take over,” Marie wanted to tell her. “I’ve had a vision, that old dream we shared. Now I know what it means—I’ve got two years left. It means I’m dying and I can’t let go. I want the business to outlast me. I want you to carry it on ... Now I need to go away for a while.”

  “Where to?”

  “A place I know. A shack near the lake. I go there when I need to be alone. I haven’t needed it since before you were born.”

  “Why do you need it now?”

  “Bad nerves,” said Marie, suspecting that her daughter already knew the answer. Then why was she asking, purposely causing her pain? She glanced into the mirror and saw that Ti-Marie seemed frightened, as shaky and sick as herself.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  “Take over when I’m gone. Just for this while.”

  “That’s not what I want.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I told you. A normal life. John Eustis and a home and a warm bed. Children. A priest I can look in the eye. A place with the angels in heaven and normal folks here on earth.”

  “Forget it,” snapped Marie. “I told you—a thousand times. That’s not one of your choices.”

  “But I want it. If I have the power you say, I should be able to get it.”

  “You don’
t have that much power. Neither of us does.” Then she caught herself. Ti-Marie was weeping. Her eyes were as red as her own.

  “I don’t have any power,” she said.

  “You do,” said Marie, proud and triumphant for them both, though she was the one who’d won. “And I’ll help you. I’ll stay awhile before I leave and teach you anything you need to know. Don’t take it all on at once. You don’t need to work like I do. Shorten your hours—just handle the emergency cases. I don’t care. I’d be grateful—you’d be taking the weight off me.”

  “What should I tell them?”

  “Tell them I’m on vacation. They’ll understand. Tell them I said to trust you—you can heal and fix better than me. Tell them I said so. They’ll believe you.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’ve got faith in you. By the time I’m ready to leave, it’ll be true. Everything will be all right,” she said and for that instant believed it despite the fear gnawing at her stomach like a hungry rat.

  “Listen,” she told Ti-Marie. “Three drops of Van Van Oil, a sprinkle of Lucky Lucky Water, a splash of Bend Down Low Oil. That’s the Go Away fix—that’s what makes it so expensive. Meanwhile you think of some reason to make that client’s enemy go away.”

  Ti-Marie listened but gave no sign of hearing; she just stared at Marie with steady black eyes, red-rimmed now from concentration. “Just like an Aquarius,” thought Marie. “Listening and listening and nothing gets farther than their eyes. It’s no use. Maybe the magic did skip a generation. Maybe she’ll never have the power.”

  And immediately she’d correct herself, thinking, “She was born to it. Who could do it better?”

  “Keep on,” she told Ti-Marie, ignoring her own doubts, fear, impatience and the fact that this last-minute education was taking the better part of a year. “Everything will be all right.”

  At last it was over. In the midst of every consultation, Marie read her daughter’s mind and saw the knowledge. “You can manage while I’m gone,” she said. “You’re ready.”