by Rod Davis
He had no idea which ones were the best; to his half-trained ear they all sounded good, and they had won many competitions. Jean-Pierre had heard them himself in the course of his own singing or playing organ in church choirs around the city. In fact, if he hadn’t heard Miss Angelique’s performing “Ave Maria” at a special Christmas service at First St. John the Baptist he might not have agreed to Gus’s idea. But he had told Gus they were “good as almost anybody I’ve played with,” which Jean-Pierre seemed to have meant as a high compliment.
“Give me a couple of weeks and just a few songs, which is all we get anyway, and I’ll put them alongside the Angels of Desire,” Jean-Pierre had said. The Angels were supposed to be the best Gospel quintet in town, and had made many records and won awards. Jean-Pierre had played a selection from one of their albums for Gus and humbled him.
It wasn’t that Gus thought Miss Angelique’s could win the competition, but on hearing the Angels, he wondered if the school choir could even share the same stage with the pros and semipros. But in his moment of doubt, Jean-Pierre had lifted him—restored his sense of purpose. In fact, the sound from the Angels that sent Gus into the land of second thoughts simultaneously inspired Jean-Pierre, who, it was fair to say, took up the banner from then on. It was as if Jean-Pierre had accepted some fearsome challenge—teaching white girls how to sing some old Gospel favorites. Gus recognized the feeling. It seemed a little preposterous, but there was no doubting what Jean-Pierre was feeling. He was feeling like a missionary.
16
On the Ides of March, the first day the bulldozer showed up on Ladeau Street to knock down the washateria, Corina knew it was all going to get far worse. Houston had told her it might take forever to get a construction permit for the SuperBotanica now that the media had got City Hall stirred up. She had said, “Gus Houston, you don’t know nothing about this city to say something like that.” To which he had laughed, like she was some kind of squirrelly little old granny who didn’t know day from night, and told her it was just politics and that was one thing he knew about. Which he didn’t know nothing about. Politics in New Orleans was knowing who to give money to, and Elroy must have known, because it sure wasn’t taking forever to get a construction permit. It was taking no time at all.
She’d heard the diesel engine going as soon as she got to the shop, and had driven over to check out the racket without even opening up. Sure enough, it was coming from the old washateria, or what was left of it. By noon, when Corina went back for another look, the building was gone and they had jackhammers out breaking up the concrete slab and rough-looking men in hard hats jerking metal and pipe out of the wreckage, and trucks full of other men, some white, some black, piling rubble into trucks; dumb, stupid ants carrying off everything in sight.
By nightfall, nothing was left and the lights were on over a big hole in the ground and they were still ant-working, so she didn’t go home. She sat in her car and watched. She saw Elroy’s Nissan, and thought she saw Julio, too. Then she saw a big flatbed come up with a crane on the back and watched it lift a giant metal cylinder out of the hole in the ground, and then another just like it, which she realized were gas storage tanks.
With all her might, she hoped for the tanks to bust open in midair and spill twenty-year-old Tiger ethyl all over the place and then some dumb fool light a cigarette and blow them all to kingdom come, but her mind was not right for prayer, she knew that, and so nothing happened—except for a moment in her mind where it did, a huge explosion like the end of the world. And then the tanks were loaded on a huge truck and disappeared. And then the crane was hauled away. But the work went on until midnight without stopping, and she left because she couldn’t stand to watch anymore, the end of the world.
Elroy was going to do it. He was going to do it so fast she didn’t know how to stop him. At seven a.m. a washateria had been on the corner, and by noon the washateria was gone and for a few hours in its place you could detect the bones of the old gasoline station and then that was gone, too, and now there was just a hole. Corina had no doubt that in the morning the hole would be gone, too.
But if Elroy was going to do it, she was going to do something back. She knew what he thought. He thought she would give up. She would bet anything he thought that. He had paid somebody off and he was racing to get his SuperBotanica up and thought that would be that, but it wouldn’t be that.
For one thing, there were a lot of black men on that job crew, probably because Elroy was smart enough not to use a bunch of Cubans in the neighborhood. For another thing, Corina had a lot of friends, and clients. For another thing, she had power. By the time she lay down to sleep that night, or really early in the morning, she had called so many people, who had called so many other people, that she was able to sleep the sleep of a general before a battle he knew he would win, that he must win.
Except for the dream. It had been many months since the words had come in that way. She had not forgotten them but she had not had them in her dreams. This time they flashed in lightning across dark thunderclouds that filled the heavens. She knew the words had meaning but she had lost it. The words came with Houston. Houston was because of them. She was bound to him in ways that made no sense without the words, without the power behind the words. “Come Ye to the Trough of God.” If she thought she knew the meaning she was a fool. And nothing could tell her. Except Him. Exhaustion overcame her and she almost slept through the alarm.
By nine a.m. every member of the African Spiritual Church of Mercy and a hundred other people too were at the construction site, including Houston, who thought he knew so much about the media and politics but in her mind knew about as much about that as he did about his own life, which was precious little as far as she was concerned. But he did show up. She gave him that. And, like the ones from her church, he wasn’t just watching from the street. They were all right there on the site. Sitting down, singing “Power to the People” and “We Shall Not Be Moved” and sometimes walking up to the workers with their jackhammers and tool belts and the foreman, a big Irish-Indian, with his blueprints and telling them they should be ashamed.
When Elroy got there he didn’t even speak to Corina, he just talked to some of his workers and they all left, except for a couple to watch the generators and trucks. By eleven, when the TV stations arrived, all the reporters saw were a hundred or more black people walking around a vacant lot next to a stack of lumber and an equipment shed and two Port-o-Lets, male and female, as required by OSHA.
So they interviewed Corina, who vowed to keep “these foreigners and racists” out of the neighborhood and “defend our faith as God has ordered me to do,” but not all the stations ran it. Houston said it was because they didn’t have good “visuals” or “B-roll” and TV always had to have visuals and B-roll. So at the end of day two, General Youngblood had to take stock again, for her adversary had, on that day, proven as wise as she had been bold. It was a draw, and it left her feeling strangely mean.
Elroy kept looking at the calendar, then at the construction schedule, back and forth, until he thought he had hypnotized himself. It could work, it couldn’t. It could work, it couldn’t. There was time, there wasn’t. Like that, all evening. Thirty days until Jazzfest was enough; but only if they got to work. Day and night crews could do it, tripling the cost, but he didn’t mind about that if he could be open. Julio said what difference did it really make, suppose he got a heart attack, would the schedule still be so important? But Elroy had set his pride on Jazzfest and he would have it. She would not stop him.
Work resumed the day after the TV crews left, and although a few reporters came back, Geronimo Casey, the crew foreman, was smart enough to keep things quiet. He gave the men lots of breaks, and had them at work by four a.m., then off around ten, when the protestors showed up, and any time a TV crew came by, which was only twice. It went on that way for over a week. Although at first the crowds were full of fight, by the second week on
ly about half of them were coming back. And it was humid like the Caribbean and they didn’t stay that long.
Yet even in small numbers, they were a problem. Besides all the singing and praying, they taunted the workers about being “Toms” and “un-American.” Worst of all was Corina. The protestors could be handled, but Elroy didn’t think it would stop with the protestors, and since there wasn’t anything else Corina could do legally, he waited and wondered. He knew what she might try; he could see it in her face even across the hundred yards that usually separated them. He had been feeding Changó every day since the construction started and knew the battle would take place among the orisha, but he wasn’t sure how far she’d go. He thought it would be very far, and seeing Paulus every day among the protestors only reminded him.
But he was pleased the second week when the rhythm of the santos moved into the work of the crews. The slab set well and even with Geronimo’s deliberately weird schedule there was little doubt the prefab would be up maybe even earlier than May 1. Julio was already working long hours at the warehouse making sure the stock was in, especially the new things from Nigeria that they’d ordered earlier in the year—bones, special herbs, candles from the holy city of Ile-Ife, where the santos had come from.
Elroy was very proud of his brother. Not only for the inventory checking, but everything—he’d even hired a small ad agency to make sure the ads to announce the opening were in the paper and they were going to shoot a special commercial just before Jazzfest to run on the independent TV station, which had cheaper rates and which more of the blacks watched anyway.
In the commercial, Elroy was going to welcome crowds of specially selected black people into his store and welcome New Orleans to the world of the spirits. He was thinking of even pouring a special mixture of Florida water and flower petals on the sidewalk in front of his store to offer a blessing. It wasn’t the kind of thing for Changó, exactly, but he and Julio had decided that viewers wouldn’t be ready for real sacrifices yet.
Elroy was very excited thinking about that part of it. It was his dream—gateway to the santos for all the people—and he was finally realizing it. It made him especially mad for Corina Youngblood to try to split the browns from the blacks on this. He swore against her to Changó on it. He had misgivings about harming the woman he still had the hots for, but what choice did he have? She was trying to destroy him. She was also, therefore, trying to destroy the santos.
She would not. She had not. The war was over. She had lost.
In less than three weeks he would be open for business and become the talk of the city. Perhaps, as a gesture, he would renew his invitation to her to take out a SuperBotanica franchise at a location over on the east side. Or to relocate to Mississippi or somewhere and set herself up. She would never do that, of course. It would be a good idea and Elroy had no doubt she would prosper, but thinking like that was foolish, as Julio constantly reminded him. This was war. Corina Youngblood was the enemy. He must be careful how he apportioned his mercy.
By the light of the half moon by the shallow lake she lay the four slain animals in a circle. Paulus waited to one side with the white-handled cuchillo. Each goat pointed in the direction of the cycles of life of the world of Damballah-Wedo, the serpent god she had learned of not through Elroy but through Benjamin, a Haitian she had met at a party at Jean-Pierre’s. He had a different idea about the santos than she did and they had quarreled but she had remembered much of what he had said and some of it, like the snake-mother circling the earth, she had believed. And Benjamin showed her pictures of the circles the Haitians drew in the earth. She knew those were real just by seeing them, and because Elroy had mentioned such things during her own initiation long ago.
She created the circle and fed the spirits at each corner with the blood of the animals. She prayed for an hour in the center of all that power. Paulus joined her and together they drank blood from the sacred bowl. It made her feel far different than the power of Jesus, but it was a power she knew Jesus let happen and so she felt it was acceptable for her to call upon it.
Jesus let everything happen. Therefore He let the santos happen. The santos, she thought, were what Jesus sent to the people because He didn’t have time for everyone Himself and because He thought people would be more able to talk to the santos because the santos were not pure of all frailty the way Jesus was. Her own santo, Ogun, could have terrible tempers or rage and destroy entire cities and inflict terrible cruelty on his enemies. It was not something Jesus would do but it was something Jesus might allow to be done. Corina believed Jesus had to operate that way. The santos had to do things He could not and the people were unable to do. And sometimes the santos had to inspire and fill the people so that they could do the unbelievable or unspeakable things necessary to protect themselves. She saw herself thus on that night by Pontchartrain.
Had any white people come across her they would have recoiled in horror. Two centuries ago they would have burned her alive as an evil African witch. Now they would be scared. She was glad. That was her purpose. She wanted to scare people. It was the way of the Warriors—the Cubans called them Los Guerreros—to frighten those whom they had to vanquish. She felt the spirit of Ogun slip inside her skin and take her and she felt her face harden and her teeth sharpen and her muscles bulge. It was thus in the night.
Rising from the circle, she told Paulus to leave, for what she had to do was for her. Or perhaps it was not “her” speaking to Paulus but Ogun, and Ogun was unflinching in his might. The Corina part of her did not want Paulus to be too close to Ogun’s business, for it could destroy him in a flash and she might not even know what she had done.
When Paulus walked away from the circle, Corina took each of the goats and twisted the carcass backward, with the heads facing out instead of in. She drew upon the opposite side of the santos—the propensity for evil that is in all of them and in all of us. She needed that side in the battle for her church, especially against the man who had been her padrino but whose spirit role in her life she now foreswore forever and spit on the ground where that which he had been was ground into the mud and blood beneath her feet.
When the goats were rearranged, she walked counterclockwise and stopped at the tail of each one. She carried four small broken coconut shells in her skirt pocket and at each carcass threw the shells. Each gave her the negative sign—two white sides, two husk sides up. If she had been seeking help, that would have been bad, but in looking for the strength of destruction she knew she was reinforced.
On finishing, she dropped to her knees, then fell forward and stretched, arms extended, amid the inverse circle. She called upon all the Spirits whose Cuban or African names she could summon—Elegba, Ochosi, Ogun, Oshun, Oya, Changó, Yemonja, BabaluAyé, Osanyin, Shalako, Oyekun, Elekun, the Ibeji—many, many more and told them of the need to protect their children in this New World and come to her aid and that if they did she would sing their praises and reward them forever.
Just before dawn she awoke with a start. She had been with Ogun, slaying thousands of invaders at the shores of the River Niger. Paulus was curled along a shoreline, too. Only this one was here, now. She woke him and they drove back to town, directly to the construction site, where two dozen men were already busy in the steaming early morning sun.
She walked up to the generator huffing near what would be the front door to Elroy Delgado’s store. While the big Indian pretended not to look, she opened the thermos in her hand. In it was not coffee but thick, warm blood. She poured it over the generator and onto the ground and even if the Indian boss turned away, there were others at work who did not. Corina tried to see as many of their eyes as possible. Each pair she was able to catch, was a pair she fixed. When her eyes were full, she left.
Afterwards, Geronimo Casey ordered two men to hose off the generator and the concrete. It was his policy, and that of Elroy’s attorneys, to ignore everything the protestors did. But when he went to his
car phone and called his boss, he realized it was easier for him to close his eyes to the hoodoo woman than it was for the others.
17
Jean-Pierre had gone down to the construction site several times after work, although he more or less accepted the fact that the Delgados had greased enough palms to get their SuperBotanica. He told his mother that, causing her to become furious, and had decided not to bring it up again. In any case, he had other business with the Delgados. He preferred not to ruin revenge for his brother with a losing struggle against “economic development,” which was what the Delgados were calling their stores. In New Orleans, anything which developed the economy, including gambling, was going to prevail. Jean-Pierre considered himself a realist, not a street-shouter. And he had other business with the Delgados. He would not take them on in public, at an area they controlled. He understood his mother’s concerns but he was not interested in being a martyr.
He had told her she should just find a new location—what was so great about the Uptown ghetto anyway? She didn’t want to hear that either. Jean-Pierre had learned as a child he could not win arguments with his mother. Paulus had absorbed the lesson by becoming like her. Jean-Pierre could never be like her. Neither could he oppose her. Her will was strong, her temper fast.
Also he loved her. She had taken care of the family and was at heart a woman of substance. She was not educated, as was he, but she had a power he could only read about. For all those reasons he rarely pushed an argument with her. He had set out on his own life’s path. And he had other business with the Delgados. He did not want her to know about that or to be a part of that. It was his business with them.
The choir, maybe, was a way of keeping his mother’s business separate from his own. Readying Gus Houston’s girls to go up against the old-line Gospel groups and the new, strong ones, Jean-Pierre had little time after school for anything except singing lessons and choreography. He had settled on a three-song medley: “Old Rugged Cross,” as a kind of white hymn refashioned black, rolled into “Jesus On the Mainline,” and finally “All I Got I Got from Jesus,” a contemporary Gospel favorite getting good airplay on the religious stations. They also were practicing a possible last-minute substitute, “Oh Happy Day!/Walking with Jesus,” a fusion of the call-and-response hit by the Edwin Hawkins Singers with a hand-clapping overlay Jean-Pierre had adapted from something he’d improvised for his mother’s church.
