It would be intellectually irresponsible for me to suggest that my blackness could be separated from systems in America. But I hope that there is space to discuss the “lost ones” in this system, those like Kelly who benefit from their light or white skin yet want none of its privileges. Blackness is not static: I may travel to another place and be considered something else in addition to, not in lieu of, black. If we could consider blackness not as a zero-sum experience, then that discomfort can give way to understanding and healing.
I thought about my great-aunt Evelyn and her daughter Gwen, who chose to take advantage of her privilege and call herself white. As Kelly fought to define herself, did Gwen ever struggle on the other side of the color line? I could not assume either one had it easier. Both were affected by the tough racial stratifications of American society and made separate choices for a better life or a sense of peace. Maybe if Gwen had “stayed” black, I would’ve gotten to know her, and the Regis family would have been less fragmented. Suddenly, I began to feel pity for those relatives.
After we finished discussing Kelly’s identity challenges, Kelly wanted to show me a part of Creole and Louisiana identity that sent a chill down my spine: Voodoo. Louisiana Voodoo is a syncretized religion that combines French Roman Catholicism and West African spirituality and religions via the transatlantic slave trade. Not every Creole person is a Voodoo practitioner, but the religion is a vital element of Louisiana Creole culture. The faith’s most powerful leaders were those of African and Creole descent, such as Marie Laveau, whose story has been popularized most recently in American Horror Story.
I was raised to believe that, like the “root” in my mother’s house, Voodoo was demonic and something to be feared. But in conversations with my cousin Colleen, our family’s relationship with Voodoo was more complicated. Colleen was born and raised in Lafayette, the city where Kelly is based, and though she identifies as Christian, she tells me that our family was familiar with Voodoo and its power. She wasn’t sure if any relatives practiced at all. She can recall two brushes with the religion. One of them was either a relative or neighbor who suddenly died. When the body was sliced open, there were snakes inside. Another was a next-door neighbor who ceaselessly slobbered. He could not speak well and was mentally challenged. Word around the neighborhood was that he broke a woman’s heart and she fixed him good, though no one knows what ritual or spell she performed. When Colleen and her family migrated to Philadelphia, Voodoo didn’t occupy the same space as it once did in Lafayette. They didn’t talk about it unless prompted, as when I interviewed them. There weren’t any anecdotes of vengeful spells and whatnot from spiteful lovers. Philadelphia was a new landscape and the old ways weren’t relevant up north. Consequently, those like me who had never lived in Louisiana were not as attuned to how seamlessly Voodoo was woven into our family’s lives.
Because Kelly wanted me to understand the connection between Creoles and Voodoo, she showed me both of her altars—a gift that I did not take for granted. She had had requests from white women who wanted to stop by her home and take pictures of the altars for artistic research, but she turned them down. She knew what the game was. But after learning that my ancestors were from Louisiana too, she wanted me to see them. I was Creole, and I needed to know about not just Catholicism, but also the other religious and spiritual practices of our people. The ancestor altar was in the upper right-hand corner of her living room facing the kitchen. There are pictures of her grandmother and her child’s dog, who recently died, the key to her aunt’s house, a doorstop from her grandmother’s house, a ram’s horn, some of Oswald’s filé, her brother’s ashes, and a bottle of whiskey from which she fills a shot glass every evening. When it has evaporated by the morning, she knows that the ancestors have had their fill. A few pieces of cotton are placed on the altar in memory of those who were enslaved, and offerings need to be given to them: a piece of peanut butter–chocolate candy or some mints will do. Before she starts to cook, she lights the candles on the altar. She did so before teaching me how to cook crawfish étouffée. Whatever she prepares, she portions some in wooden bowls to give to the ancestors. Whenever there’s a crisis, her family will lie down beside the altar, watch the candles glow, and talk to the ancestors in regular conversation.
Without prompting, Kelly echoed what I’d learned in the Lowcountry: “My mother . . . she’s terrified of storms, and she’s terribly afraid of water, and she can’t swim, but she has never been traumatized by any storm. Nothing’s ever happened to her. There’s no reason for these fears; they’re just genetic memory—that’s all.” But genetic memory is only half of her family’s history. A relative of hers committed suicide by throwing himself into the river. Her mother was a guard at Angola, one of the most notorious prisons in the world. Angola comprises four plantations and is almost surrounded by a bend of the Mississippi River. Many of the black men in there can’t swim, and even if they could, gators would await them.
But water is also a vital resource and an aspect of Kelly’s spirituality and reverence for her heritage. Her ancestors lived along the Atchafalaya River, a 137-mile-long tributary of the Mississippi that runs through south central Louisiana. She gathered water from it as part of her vow-of-renewal ceremony. Resa, Tracey’s sister, performed traditional Voodoo rites. For the ceremony, Tracey, Resa, and Resa’s boyfriend drew veves using cornmeal on the pavement. Veves are Voodoo geometric designs or symbols each corresponding to a different loa, or lwa—one of a group of spiritual forces recognized by the faith. In Kelly’s words, “It’s the act, not the result. The symbol is [the doing,] that you take the cornmeal in your hand and then you’re leaning down and you’re creating the [physical] symbol with your hand. It’s the action of your body and the intent in your mind that makes whatever it’s going to make. It’s not about the final result.” There are different families of loas called nanchons, which are said to have come from different tribes in Africa. Papa Legba of Rada nanchon was the one called upon in Kelly’s ceremony. He is said to speak all human languages and serves as an intermediary between this world and the souls of the dead. Syncretized with saints Peter, Anthony, and Lazarus, Legba often appears as an older black man with a cane or crutch, smoking a pipe. Resa took a mouthful of whiskey and blew it in the direction of Kelly and her husband. Together, Resa, Kelly, and her husband petitioned for Legba to open the door into the spirit world. Resa doesn’t remember a word she said during the ceremony, because she was absent and a spirit took her place.
For Kelly’s personal altar, located in her studio, she has her grandfather’s rosary and rocks and mineral specimens, some of which her sister gave after a jaunt in Egypt. The four corners of her altar need rocks to ground it. Then there is the dirt. Hers is from Poverty Point, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of prehistoric earthworks and mounds. There’s also a bird’s nest and some water, which she charges every full moon. If the water isn’t charged, the energy, she says, can make you depressed. The water cannot get stale either. The renewal is a commitment. If there is dust anywhere on the altar or the water is stagnant, the lack of maintenance affects her emotional health. She regularly prays to seven African deities. Her personal favorite is Oya, the goddess of winds, who creates cataclysmic change, especially when it comes to career paths and anything concerning women. La Sirène is another she points out—a mermaid goddess associated with wealth, beauty, and seduction. Also Baron Samedi (Saturday), god of the dead but also a giver of life, who can cure any ailment—if he so chooses. This ritual acknowledgment of spirits is a dedication. If one is not consistent and faithful, all kinds of doors will close. Kelly is not sure if she comes from a line of Voodoo practitioners, but she suspects she has, because of the customs she’s learned:
A split cow tongue on the kitchen counter can bind the tongue of someone who’s talking negatively about you.
If you have an enemy, do a ritual. Write down your grievances. Wait until midnight. Walk down the block from your place to an intersection, leave that no
te in the middle of it, and walk away without looking back.
Another alternative is to put the note in a little bottle, like a baby food jar, and throw it into the Mississippi.
This part of my trip was both different from and similar to my learning about the root in the Lowcountry. I learned about the powers of the spiritual realm there, but here in Louisiana, this kind of devotion was much more tangible, with altars and sacrifices. It reminded me of similar practices in my family, like a prayer closet in one’s home, crucifixes or paintings of Jesus, portraits of deceased family members, and biblical sayings as artwork on the walls. Weren’t these all examples of our gratitude to God and the ancestors? Didn’t we have these adornments as a way to remind ourselves, like Kelly, that we were being watched over? And as for my father, he always had photos of his ancestors. He even gave me snapshots of my grandparents—his parents—to put up in my own home. At first, I thought these were just gifts, but after visiting Louisiana, I knew that these images were charged with my ancestors’ presence, which would always be with me, no matter what.
Later that day, I attended the Festival International de Louisiane with Kelly. One woman looked at me and asked, “Are you from Saint Landry Parish?” I blinked. Saint Martin Parish is an hour southeast of Saint Landry. I shook my head, smiled, and said no, as I had done before at Saint Anthony of Padua Catholic Church. I told this woman the correct parish, and Kelly chimed in, “It’s those half-moon eyes.” I was stupefied. I never liked my eyes, the way they curled upward whenever I smiled for photographs. “Open your eyes,” my mother would say as she grew impatient behind the camera. Though I tried my hardest, I gave up after a while.
My half-moon eyes are one of the biggest indicators that I am my father’s daughter. When my father and I smile, often you can hardly see our irises, but we are exuberant. These weren’t stubborn eyes; they were my father’s eyes, and now they had a name. It was only after I came to discover my family history in Louisiana that someone identified these eyes for what they were: half-moons.
4
ALL I COULD think about for the rest of that evening en route to Tracey’s home in Opelousas was half-moons. It was the first time in my life that I truly felt like my father’s daughter without having to explain who or what I was. I had a name for one of the characteristics that I once thought of as a physical flaw in need of correction. Now I felt transformed, but not into someone new; rather, I was looking at myself with a different degree of magnification. My eyes weren’t small. They were half-moons that waxed and waned. The beauty of the label stuck with me and announced in a subtle way that these people in Louisiana were my people, no matter how long I had been away and how little I knew about my own culture. The power of three is no mistake. I was recognized at Saint Anthony and at the Festival International de Louisiane by both Kelly and another woman. And now half-moon eyes. It was the eve of the day when I would finally return to Saint Martinville. After I had spent all this time listening to everyone else’s narrative, it was now time to excavate my own.
I asked Tracey if my last full day in Louisiana could be spent going to Saint Martinville; otherwise my father and cousin Janice would be livid. She agreed, and hence my previous days were jam-packed with activity about Cane River Creoles. Going from Natchitoches to Lafayette to Saint Martinville made the most sense geographically. I was looking for my great-grandmother Carrie. I didn’t know Carrie’s maiden name, but her son Armstead’s surname was Hamilton, and Hamiltons were related to the Metoyers. Was this what Janice meant when she mentioned our connection to Cane River? I wasn’t too sure. I wanted a stronger link. I found marriage licenses, both in English and French, from Maturin Regis’s children, but couldn’t find anything about Carrie. Sometimes marriage information will include the names of the parents of the bride or groom, but there was nothing.
My dad messaged me very frequently, asking me when was I going to Saint Martinville and whether I’d found anything interesting so far. I would send him pictures of the Acadiana landscape, and Janice would send me a list of surnames to look up in the records. I was nervous that I’d let my family down, especially my dad, if I couldn’t find any substantial information. This trip was unexpectedly bringing us closer together because I was returning to a past that he never knew about in a place to which he had never traveled. He was hungry for details, feeling empowered for when I would tell him about our history.
The third oldest city in Louisiana, Saint Martinville is a part of the Acadiana region, just eighteen miles southeast of Lafayette. With its mossy oaks and picturesque street corners, Saint Martinville was the place where people from New Orleans escaped to, calling it Petit Paris because of its good French-language theaters.1 Many residents are descendants of Beausoleil Broussard, who led the Acadians, French people who settled in what is now Canada and northern Maine, to southern Louisiana after the British occupied their land and expelled them from Canada. Others are descendants of the bourgeois Bienvenu and Duchamps families, who fled after the French Revolution. Others are from Senegal.2 Acadiana’s most famous landmark is the Evangeline Oak in the center of town because it was the inspiration for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Evangeline.
Our first plan was to go to the African American Museum just a few steps away from the Evangeline Oak, but it was closed. There was a number to call for someone across town to open the door for visitors, but that woman never picked up the phone. Our next stop was the City Hall, but a woman there told us our best bet was the Saint Martinville Public Library if I was interested in genealogical research. If it weren’t for Tracey, Antoine, and Richie, I would have remained paralyzed at the threshold of the door leading to the records section. I’m not a stranger to libraries and archives rooms with rows that exercise my eyes to gauge their lengths, but this expedition was different. My family was in there somewhere. I didn’t know where to look, much less where to begin. I tried to pace myself.
“Do you need some help?” A small, bearded man with glasses peeked out from behind one of the columns.
“Yes,” I said exasperatedly. I repeated all the loose strands of my family history to him, and he said, “Well, I don’t have much time, but I’ll see if I can help.” He adjusted his glasses on his face and began to go down the aisles, pulling out books the size of his chest and handing them to Richie and Antoine. He directed them to search through them to find a Maturin Regis or Armstead Hamilton. We hit a brick wall: one of the large books that included my family’s name was inexplicably missing. But that was OK. This stranger, who was neither a librarian nor a genealogist, was undeterred. He placed his finger on a few property records and saw that Maturin Regis Sr. was listed but never Carrie, causing him to conclude that they may have never been legally married.
“Succession records. We have to look in the succession records.” The stranger moved past us and pulled out another big book in a different row. As he flipped through the pages for Armstead Hamilton’s name, the room felt eerily still. All of us leaned forward. What was he going to find? Could the missing link really be in succession records? I tried to make excuses for why it wouldn’t work out in order to avoid disappointment. Sometimes succession records don’t exist for black landowners. I knew this from my time in the Lowcountry. What if it was heirs property? We hadn’t been in the library long enough. There wasn’t enough time. I was supposed to fly back to New York the next afternoon. This was too good to be true.
There was a loud tap on the page. His finger was underneath a line that told me that Armstead, listed as a free man of color, was given a plantation by his mother, Carrie. I squinted at the document, and it read exactly as the stranger said. Antoine pulled out his camera and asked the stranger to repeat what he just found. My family was not made up only of free people of color; some of them were slave owners, complicating what I thought about my own history. There it was: a decree in cursive handwriting. A plantation. I didn’t know what to do with that information. Tracey and Richie urged me to find out which plantation it
was, but then what? Would I go visit? Would I subject myself to a plantation tour as Tracey had done back in Melrose and listen to some white girl gloss over the history of my family?
I wrestled with what to do, long after I returned to New York. Months passed, and then those months turned into a year. I could not find Carrie, my great-grandmother, anywhere. My only talisman was Up from the Cane-Brakes, in which Turpeau—a grandson of Maturin Regis Sr.—writes:
While working for the Labbes, he [Maturin Regis Sr.] had a wife who gave him a child, Aunt Rose by name. He had two sons, Uncle Sanfore and Uncle Alexandra [sic], and judging from the ages of the following children, he also had Uncle Louis, Uncle Matt, Aunt Virginia, Aunt Amanda, and Uncle Jimmie besides my mother whose name was Isabelle, all about the same period. Of course a man’s wife or wives in those days were quite a matter of taste. There seemed to be no special limit. . . . In my grandfather’s case, he had a family on the east bank of the Teche and one on the west bank of Teche. He lived on the west bank; Uncle Sanfore, Uncle Alexandra [sic], and Aunt Rose lived on the west bank.
This section I found incredibly intriguing. I am a product of blended families. My father lived in one county in South Jersey while I lived in another with my mother. But in this particular time period, in the mid-nineteenth century, why did Maturin Sr. have some of his children on the west bank of the bayou and some on the east? Was it a matter of arrangement or something deeper?
Wandering in Strange Lands Page 14
