The Good House

by Tananarive Due

  “Yeah, there’s a front-page story in theLower Columbia News, and I guess that kind of thing gets around,” Rob said sarcastically, eyeing the newspaper on Myles’s seat. “Think you could’ve made that story any bigger? That family photo’s a nice touch. Congratulations—you got the word out. The Portland station’s on the way to the courthouse now. I figgered I’d better get some peace out here this morning, because there sure won’t be none for a long time to come.”

  That hurt, Myles realized. “Do you really think I was enjoying my job last night?”

  Rob didn’t answer. Instead, he began writing out a speeding ticket.

  Rob yanked the ticket out of his book and dangled it in Myles’s window, leaning closer. His breath smelled like coffee grounds. “I’m glad you’re all right, Myles. I mean that. And I know you have a job to do, just like I do. But I’m gonna give you two pieces of advice: For starters, pay attention while you’re driving, so I won’t have to spray you off your seat with a hose. The next thing is, you tell that prick reporter, Roger, to stop calling Liza’s mom’s house. He called four times last night, and that’s plain indecent. I’m surprised at you.” His voice shook on the last words, angry.

  Dammit. Roger should know better, Myles thought. “I didn’t know he was harassing them, and I’ll tell him to stop. I apologize, truly. But can I ask a favor?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I know how tight you are with the M.E. If you get the autopsy report first, will you call us before you call the big news stations?”

  “What do you want with it?” Rob said.

  “I hear there might have been bruises. On the neck.”

  Despite his irritation, Rob’s sleep-starved eyes burned with awful knowledge he needed to share, like a convert to a lurid religion. “Yeah, there were bruises. That rumor’s true. Art choked the hell out of him. I don’t know which killed him, the choking or the drowning, to tell the truth. When I have a report, you’ll know more. It’s public record. But I’m calling you, not Roger.”

  “Thanks. That’s good enough, man. I appreciate it.”

  Myles remembered they were talking about little Glenn Brunell, and he felt a stupor wash over him. He’d seen that kid only last week, when Glenn’s eyes had been glued to his Game Boy while he sat cross-legged outside the town council chambers, oblivious to the mundane world of the adults around him.Bored? Myles had asked him, and Glenn had only nodded, not looking up, as if he’d already heard the question fifty times. His neck had not been bruised that night.

  Myles could have believed an accidental drowning, horseplay gone awry—but how could Art have accidentally choked Glenn hard enough to bruise him? That was murder, no excuses. He didn’t know what to make of a man like that. That funny, lively family had been a lie, and it was gone in a single day. And Myles had grown to like Liza since his move back to town, ever since Corey’s funeral. They’d flown to Los Angeles together, and Liza had spent much of the trip trying to convince him not to give up on Angie.Give her time. It can all work out in the end , she’d said, forever positive.Just look at me and Art.

  He needed to mail Liza a card, or send her a fruit basket. He wanted to do something for Angie, too. He wished he knew what else to do for either one of them.

  “I hope this is the end of it,” Myles said.

  “It sure as shit better be.”

  Rob didn’t ask whatit was. He’d been clearing away corpses in Sacajawea since Angie’s Fourth of July party, Myles remembered. More than most, Rob already knew.

  “You’re kidding,” Angela said.

  “Girl, I couldn’t make this story up if I tried. We’re delayed at least four days.”

  Angela had answered her cell phone only because she thought it might be Myles, until she remembered he didn’t have her mobile number. Still, she was glad to hear Naomi’s voice, an anchor to the simpler life she’d had even a few days ago. Not easy, but simpler.

  Angela’s stride slowed as she rounded Lake Sacajawea in Longview. She’d been pushing herself so her mind would go empty, helping her forget everything for a whole minute at a time. A whipping wind and cold rain droplets had chased away any other morning joggers, so Angela had the gravel path to herself as she ran beneath the canopy of branches from neatly ordered trees. The rainwater washed her face, and she hoped it was washing her spirit, too. She needed to be as cleansed as possible before she drove back to Sacajawea today.

  “We’re just about to start shooting, then that crybaby Jake twists his ankle at the gym and says he can’t put any weight on it,” Naomi said. “Almost all my scenes are with him, of course. So I’m stuck. And after the way I rushed out here, leaving my poor dog in the middle of nowhere. I knew I shouldn’t have left, Angela. I’m flying back there tonight.”

  Angela nearly tripped over her feet. “No, don’t do that.”

  “I can’t sit up here while Onyx is out who-knows-where. He’s been gone since Sunday! I know you’re doing your best to find him, but I’d be looking a different kind of way because he’s my baby. Did you set up a reward yet like I told you?”

  Angela didn’t answer because she barely heard the question. Knowing Naomi was far away was the one nugget of relief Angela had felt after Myles left that morning, when she’d had to fight to pull herself out of the bed in a way that reminded her of those days before she went to The Harbor, when she lived in her bed. Recognizing herself less and less in those days, she’d picked her eyelashes and eyebrows clean off and had to paint on her face when she went out, which had been rarely. She never wanted to revisit that ruined, debilitating part of her mind again.

  But that would be hard. The world was in pieces again. She needed to keep Naomi away. The source of whatever she’d smelled on Art could be in the house, in the soil, in the air. Naomi could not come here.

  “Sweetie…,” Angela began. “I want you to sit down.” She’d planned to do this in person, but the time and place were no longer her choice.

  Naomi caught her breath. “What?Shit, Angela.” It was like a plea, asking her not to go on.

  “I didn’t know how to tell you this, and I’m very sorry….”

  Naomi didn’t interrupt her, but Angela could almost see Naomi’s tears in her pointed silence. This was hard, but not as hard as it would have been if Art had not drowned Glenn yesterday. “Onyx is dead. Myles and I found him in the woods behind the house.”

  “Maybe it’s another dog. Are you sure it’s him?” Her voice was stubborn, matter-of-fact.

  “I’m sure. He had on his collar.” That was a lie, but a forgivable one, Angela thought. “Sweetie, I’m so, so sorry. We both are.”

  Utter, stark silence again.

  Angela stopped at a picnic table and sat against the rough, damp tabletop, feeling the rainwater seep into the seat of her jogging pants. From where she sat, the expanse of the rain-spattered lake stretched out on one side while the oldest and most regal homes in town sat tranquilly on the other. This was a peaceful place, she realized. That was why she had come, because she would need to hoard all the peace she could find.

  “What happened?” Naomi said finally.

  Angela paused, wondering if Naomi really wanted to know her dog had been found in pieces. She chose mercy. “We’re not sure,” she said. “A snakebite, maybe.”

  Naomi sobbed, a squeal. Naomi finally believed her, and Angela was sorry both for the lies and the truth. She cursed herself for not knowing better in the beginning. She never should have brought Naomi to Sacajawea.

  “I was so scared something would happen to him in those woods. Wasn’t I, Angela? That first day, when he was gone, I was so scared he was in the woods all by himself. Before I left, I knew something had happened to him. Iknew it. I—” Her next sob stole her speech.

  Angela let her friend cry. She’d needed that at one time, when she called her friends to cry, until she was sick of hearing her own misery. She waited, gazing at a brown duck paddling between stalks of grass in the water with her line of four
ducklings, a sight that nearly mesmerized her. “Here’s what you should do, Naomi,” Angela said after a time, and Naomi quieted, eager to be told. “Don’t stay at that hotel. There’s no reason for you to be there. But don’t come here.”

  “What about…”

  “I’ve already taken care of Onyx for you. He’s buried in the woods.” That lie elicited another sob, but this time Angela didn’t wait for the spell to pass. “I’ll have Suzanne book you a room at the nicest spa she can find up there. Go somewhere pretty, like a hot springs. Pamper yourself. The works. Blow your diet. Eat ice cream. Do you hear me?”

  Naomi made a vaguely affirmative sound.

  “I think that’s the best thing for you now. You’re hurting. Take care of yourself for a few days, then go back to work. It’s my treat.”

  “I can’t let you do that, Angela,” Naomi said. Her voice was tear-racked.

  “You don’t have a choice. I am doing it. I want to.”

  “Only if you come with me,” Naomi said.

  “I can’t, sweetie.”

  “Why not? You took the week off.” She was nearly whimpering.

  “I’m stuck here for a while. Something’s going on.”

  “Something like what?”

  Angela paused. There was no way to explain it, but she decided to try.

  “Like when Corey shot himself. And when my neighbor walked into a truck. And when you went sleepwalking into the cellar. And when Onyx died. That kind of something.”

  “Angela, you’re scaring me. Justleave that place.”

  “I can’t. Whatever’s happening here started with my family.”

  “So?”

  “It’s mine,” Angela said, because she could think of no other way to put it. “I own it.”

  “You’re talking crazy.”

  “I know,” she said, smiling to herself. “Don’t worry. I’m sleeping in a hotel, and I won’t stay in town long. Will you go to a spa?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Naomi whispered.

  “Just do it. Please.” She paused. “Naomi…have you been sick at all?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you had a stomachache since you left here? Anything strange?”

  “I just got a headache, but my stomach’s all right. Why?”

  Angela had called Liza’s house that morning and posed a single question to her exhausted father, who was the only one in the house who could compose himself enough to come to the line. After apologizing for the intrusion, Angela asked him a single question:Did Art say he wasn’t feeling well before yesterday? As a matter of fact, Mr. Kerr told her, Liza had said Art had a bellyache the night before Glenn died.

  Angela had felt better while she was running, but now the foreboding that had begun in earnest last night was gathering strength. Didn’t she feel a slight heat in her arms, the tingling again? She was almost sure of it, and her heart quickened. “There’s something going around town. That’s another reason you need to stay up there. I want to make sure you’re okay, because I love you, Naomi. And I’m so sorry about Onyx.”

  She heard Naomi’s sniffling nostrils as she cried to herself. “If I promise to go to a spa, do you promise to leave that house as soon as you can? Before something else happens?”

  “I promise,” Angela said, although she doubted it was a promise she could keep.

  Les Mystères

  “People ask, ‘Why has this Evil come?’

  Why does the rain come?

  It has its time.”

  —MARIE TOUSSAINT

  Le Livre des Mystères

  1929

  Twenty

  FROM THE NOTES OF

  MARIETOUSSAINT

  IWAS THE FIFTH OF FIVE CHILDREN,the youngest; and, some would say, the most spoiled. My siblings Charles, Gil, Henrietta, and Nadine preferred each other’s company, as I was born much later, so I spent my time either playing alone or atGrandmère’s knee. She liked to tell me she had been waiting for me, asking, “Why did it take you so long to get here,cher?”She chided me as if I’d had a choice in the matter. “I got here fast as I could, Grandmère,”I told her, laughing as her dry fingertips tickled my soft belly.

  Grandmèrewas a manbo,her talents widely sought after. Throughout my childhood, Madame Fleurette, as she called herself, was visited by all the walks of life inhabiting New Orleans; colored and white, rich and poor, unschooled and well-schooled. A white man with a handlebar moustache came to her once because he wanted to go to the state senate, and he sent our family boxes of sweets and cookies for six Christmases after he won that gilded seat. He later became a United States Congressman, but by then his Christmas packages had stopped arriving. Grandmèresaid he should have been thanking Ogou la Flambo and Shangó, because you would never want to go to battle without them at your side. People always forget those who have helped them. I learned this young, but knowing this did not save me from my fate, from my own forgetting.

  From the start, I lovedvodouand the lwasmore than my brothers and sisters, and more, it seemed, than my own mother, who was a manboin her youth, favored with visits from spirits in her dreams. I knew we owed our home, our clothes, and our luck to the lwas,and to the blessings of Jesus Christ, whose crucifix hung above my bed at night. Grandmèretrained me from the time I was young. I was only seven years old when my sweet Papa Legba came to me the first time, when Grandmèremade her ritual call, “Papa Legba! Ouvri bàryè,”so he would open the doorway to the lwas, and suddenly I felt as if I was floating into the sky. I remembered none of what happened next, but I was told Papa Legba bent my spine as if it belonged to a twisted old man, and I hobbled about, speaking with Papa Lebga’s tongue, a tongue of an elder. I was a marvel, because it is rare for a lwato mount a child; the danger to young ones is too great because they are not yet strong enough to carry such a burden. Yet, I was that strong as a child. As a child, I am convinced, I was the strongest I have ever been. Papa Legba has always favored me, and my love for him was sown early in my years.

  One day, when she feared she was near death,Grandmèrebade me to wear her ring. I was but twelve, so the ring was too large for my ring finger, but she fitted it to my thumb. “So I will always be able to find you,” she said. I did not know the meaning of her words at the time, but I was happy to take possession of such a lovely ring, especially since she had not offered it to my brothers or sisters. I studied the ring’s ritual artwork, and I did not recognize the vèvèas those I had seen her draw on the ground, cornmeal slipping delicately between her fingers as she called thelwas.I asked Grandmèreto explain the ring’s drawings to me, and she said they were from an ancestor’s dream, that the ring had been mined in West Africa. The drawings were clues to a secret language known only to our bloodline, telling our story, preserving our power. “Through this ring,” Grandmèretold me, “I will tell you the language of the lwas,so you may speak to them as an equal.”

  Such talk was not unusual for mygrandmère,who had often been accused of pomposity, even heresy, thinking so much of herself. I had assumed her critics were only jealous, since no other manboin New Orleans, in Louisiana, or perhaps in the whole of the South, could claim her power. Hundreds of people came from miles about for her rain ceremonies, and her successes with healing rituals were legend. Grandmèreoften made the claim that she was kin to the great priestess Marie Laveau, a lie—but there was enough truth ground up in her lies to serve the lwasand the people well. Even people who did not like her arrogance came to her when they needed help.

  Grandmèretaught me young that I was not bound by the rules that governed others. Our wealth and standing gave us privileges, she said. As a consequence, when I was in town, I dared to go places designated only for whites, much to my parents’ mortification. Grandmèregave me courage. In Africa, she told me, our direct ancestors could take wing and fly. It was our birthright, she said, to create miracles. With my ring, she said, I would grow up to make a great miracle take place, something no other manboor bòkòcould claim. I
would become the head family spirit.

  I have waited all of my life for the miracleGrandmèrepromised. There are times I have come close to destroying these papers because I became convinced she lied to me, another of her elaborate stories meant to serve as a metaphor, not literal truth. There are times I have wanted to destroy these papers whether her words were lies or not, so great is the power of what lies within these pages. Twice, I have thrown the ring she gave me away, and twice I have retrieved it; once, I had to search an open field for a month before I found it glimmering in the sun. It is a terrible dilemma: I blame the ring, and I blame the word, and yet only the ring and the word can restore what has been ruined. I loathe the ring and the word, and still I must cherish them.

  There has been a curse upon me. Perhaps “bad eyes,” the plague of too much jealousy, led to my change of luck afterGrandmèredied. I was blind to the curse until it was too late.