Persephone Underground

by Jennifer Russon

  My mother and I weren’t completely estranged when she was in prison for vehicular manslaughter and recklessness with a minor in tow. Some of my foster parents had a heart and let me visit my mother while she was behind bars. I remember being allowed to crawl into her lap – a guard watching with a gun at his hip – while she read me Where the Wild Things Are.

  I remember closing my eyes with my head resting against mom’s chest. It made her voice as she read from the crazily illustrated pages sound like echoes.

  He sailed in and out of weeks, she read aloud to me – and I remember the character Max’s little sail boat, and how it looked like it was floating directly into the full moon.

  It seemed to me, this is what I was doing with Mami Wata, that we sailed in and out of weeks together. As soon as she swam me past the prisons in the cave (where my trial took place), we were once again on open waters. She found a small fishing boat, adrift in shark infested waters.

  I was terrified and trying not to scream as the sharks’ smooth, rubbery bodies swam around my legs. The jeans I’d been wearing when I came through the mirror in my apartment had fallen apart by this point. I still had the clamshell mirror in my pocket, but had torn the pants off these Levis a while ago – they were just cutoffs now.

  Mami Wata said I could buy new clothes, once we got to the island. She explained she was taking me to Tulum in Mexico – a place of ancient Mayan ruins in the city of Cancun.

  “With any luck, Hayden will just forget about you, and you can live out the rest of your days there,” she told me, when it was my turn to row our boat. She was cleaning fish for me to eat, burning them with a curious fire she’d made at the center of our boat.

  “But can’t he find me pretty easily? I mean…if he wants to?”

  “The portal to Tulum is one he doesn’t know about. I have escaped many like you, Persephone. When I take a shine to one of his girls, as I have to you, then I feel like it’s up to me to help them…”

  I accepted the speared fish she had just blackened for me. It was tasty. I washed it down with a jug she offered full of the Mama Juana wine she made at her home back on the Boulevard of Champions. That neighborhood voodoo of hers seemed a universe away. Her fish was delicious; emboldened by the hot food in my belly, I decided to ask her about something that bothered me greatly.

  “Why are you so nice and your children so evil?”

  Mami Wata gave a sharp little laugh. “I’m hardly nice. My obsession with living in the past has hurt a lot of people. I seek out my great love Phoebe everywhere I go. Every time I try to recreate it, I create disaster instead.”

  “Tell me what happened. How they were born – your twins.”

  “Robin and Lucas, you mean? You want to know about their father I take it.”

  I nodded, a fuzzy contentedness from the powerful wine she’d given me, softening me up since stepping foot in this boat, so rigid with fear.

  “He was a good, good man, their father,” Mami Wata said, taking a swig of the Mama Juana herself.

  He was mortal, but he had the gift of sight. Maybe all Native Americans do. His name was John Runningwolf.”

  Mami Wata explained that she stole John away from a woman she wanted for herself – a blonde mother of twin girls who he was going to marry instead of her.

  “I know of whom you speak,” I admitted candidly, “it’s Teresa Rose.”

  “How do you know?”

  I was stunned Mami Wata had clearly forgotten my confession of spying on the Roses; I decided it was in my best interest not to remind her.

  “I cleaned your master bedroom many times,” I explained to the old witch. “I’ve seen Teresa’s picture – and her two kids, Crystal and Ruby Rose.

  The old woman shrugged and said she left behind The Roses, and John – but not before she’d tricked him into getting her pregnant.

  “To think, I wound up with twins myself,” she laughed sadly. “From the beginning, Robin and Lucas were special….but not in a good way,” Mami Wata said, painting a complete picture of Miz Furr, who could morph into a sea monster and Lucas – a man who could turn into a vicious dog.

  “They were cold, calculating and so much more powerful with their magic than I have ever been,” she said. “They figured it out faster.”

  “I was still learning to manipulate my voodoo powers when they were born. I had many, many years when I believed I was simply crazy – a mad woman of ancient years, who just couldn’t die. The centuries wore on, and in them I learned to use magic. I learned that you are never stuck in any current time. Time is not linear. You can tear it open and climb inside any part of time you so choose.”

  I asked Mami Wata if she wanted to go back to the time frame with Teresa Rose and John Runningwolf in it, and she said no.

  “I wish them well, and that is why I won’t go back. Besides, I have no time for John and Teresa. As my own children have aged in this different dimension, I have their legacy to help manage. They are heirs to the Underworld. Lucas is a son of Satan. He has many sons, the devil does. My family are the undead keepers of the 7 seas. Many are brought to us when they die, and we deem them fit to stay here and atone in our prisons, swim in limbo as mer-people, or….”

  Mami Wata trailed off, wondering if she’d lost me. I suppose I had a dreamy look on my face, processing such incredible information on a light lunch and such strong Dominican red wine.

  “Or what? What happens to the innocent after they die?”

  “We grant them eternal rest.”

  “Is that better?”

  Looking around, my question was sincere. We were floating around an island paradise; to knock around forever in this boat wouldn’t be the end of the world. But then again maybe it was. Maybe I was clinically dead, and this was my infinity now – bobbing around in a boat with a voodoo priestess who evoked my happiest, most bittersweet memories of being with my mother.

  Our boat was nearing sandy beach and scraping the white banks beneath its crystalline waters. We were docking now, in a small Mayan village with many thatched huts I could see behind acres of palm and banana trees.

  Mami Wata said it was good I hadn’t eaten much. The good people of Tulum had prepared a special meal to welcome us. It would be good to fortify ourselves before touring my new home.

  Chapter

  27

  Nothing could have prepared me for the beauty of the Emerald village. Mami Wata led me through the Mayan community, explaining that its stone churches, massive Aztec temples, and thatched roof huts were millennia old. She told me she herself was born among Mayan ruins like these – but north of Mexico in Belize.

  “My adoptive mother, a nun, found me on a trip to Xunantunich.”

  “I’m sorry, say that again.”

  “It’s okay – nobody gets it right,” Mami Wata explained as we walked through a wooded area beyond the beach.

  “The short story version is that I was born an orphan, abandoned at Mayan ruins, much like you see around here.”

  With that, the old woman gestured around grandly. The ancient temples deserved our reverence, that was for sure. I asked her if it hurt her to know she’d been abandoned in such a rocky, terrible place for a baby. No food or access to drinkable water, so far as I could see.

  “The Palpatine Sisters were very kind to take me into their church,” said Mami Wata, explaining her adoptive mother had been in that order of nuns.

  “I was raised Catholic. They had an orphanage of girls like me. Except I was the only one with webbed feet. I didn’t discover my….gift…for voodoo until I’d been hired out as a maid.”

  She didn’t have to say anymore. Hayden had taken me down that Memory Lane months ago – when we were still on good terms. He had done it to explain away his grandmother’s eccentricities, but I still had questions. It was such an unfathomable story, who wouldn’t?

  On our walk down pebbly paths, with clearings in the palm trees overlooking the ocean, I grilled Mami Wata about why she had taken me to thi
s Eden.

  “You must like me a lot to bring me here – to such a beautiful place.”

  “I do. It may surprise you to know, I like a great many people. When I don’t agree with Lucas and Hayden on a ruling for a lost soul – when I think it too harsh – I steal them away to this paradise,” she confessed.

  As she said it, we came across a large banquet table, where very short Mayan women waited to serve us food from hollowed out gourds. Inside the organic receptacles, were fresh corn tortillas, salsas, pickled ghost peppers, and fresh pork. We filled our bamboo plates with lunch and washed it down with hibiscus tea.

  I didn’t recognize anyone until Mami Wata announced it was time for coffee brewed with real cinnamon. She revealed a big surprise – telling me that my roommate would soon be joining us.

  Oh, I knew what was happening… It was time to reveal the surprise Hayden had smugly told me I’d be receiving before he cast me out of hell on Mami Wata’s back.

  “I’m not leaving you alone straight away in this place,” she winked. “But when I do leave, you can reach me anytime. Check your back pocket for me,” she added, referring to my clamshell mirror.

  I did as I was told. The compact mirror had survived my descent into the Underworld and my watery trial. Mami Wata told me I could reach her by snapping it open and beckoning her to appear – just like the old days on the surface.

  When I looked inside the compact mirror this time, I saw – of all things – Marc and Demi Springers’ kitchen clear as day. I saw Demi standing there, crying – attempting to cook a meal. Her belly was hugely pregnant.

  I snapped it shut, lied to Mami Wata about the glass being dirty and in need of a good cleaning. Quietly, I wondered how long I’d been missing from the surface.

  Someone from the lunch-serving party cleared their throat, letting me know it was time to fill our after dinner cups. A wrinkled little Mayan woman, all of 4 feet tall, ladled out coffee into a stoneware mug and brought it to us.

  We sipped, contended, barely noticing as the hibiscus flowers shook on a nearby bush and my mother parted her way through. She sat down with us.

  My mother was the surprise Hayden all but warned me of.

  I should have been overjoyed. It was mom and she was alive – unhurt! The shock of seeing her pretty ghost threw me so off guard, it took a moment to see what was amiss.

  She was happy; she was chatty; she was the Joy Doyle I always knew. She introduced herself right away as “Joy”, and yet…she was not the Mom I left behind, bleeding in her master bedroom. This was the version of herself in the years before I’d been born – a girl of about 16. My heart broke when she naturally did not recognize me – but it also lifted slightly, too, when I spotted a large birthmark on the girl’s arm; I saw it while she was eating.

  My mother had no such birthmark. Mami Wata was tricking me. This “Joy” was just some random kid on vacation, traveling with her high school’s Spanish club.

  We weren’t in a time warp at all. We weren’t in some fake place. We were actually in Cancun. I admired Mami Wata’s handiwork in hypnotizing this girl. While she definitely wasn’t my mother, the resemblance and mannerisms they shared were pretty striking. I decided to think of her as ‘young mom’.

  “I’m here with the Spanish Honor Society for the summer,” young mom explained, helping herself to more tortillas. She piled pork in one and ate it with gusto. “I want to go to college and msajor in Latin American Studies.”

  “Oh? I thought you were interested in nursing.”

  “I’m sorry, have we met before?” young mom asked.

  “Nope,” I admitted, drawing a harsh rebuke from Mami Wata, who slapped my wrist.

  The old voodoo queen diffused the situation by introducing me to ‘young mom’ as a college representative, here to ensure the high school campers got the proper credit.

  “This is Persephone Gonzalez. She’ll be living with you, Joy – in your hut,” Mami Wata declared.

  “You are going to love it!”, young Mom gushed. “At first, you’ll freak out when you see how spare it is. It’s really just a roof, grass walls and a couple of hammocks – but once you get used to it, you’ll never want to go back to the materialism you knew back home.”

  At her words “back home” I felt the fissure in my heart finally crack all the way and break me. This was some kind of test from Mami Wata. Little did she know, her plan had just back fired.

  Her plan was this: to be so happy with young mom that I elected to stay here in Cancun forever – lost to Hayden and no longer a problem for the Furrs. But since I knew I was being tricked, all I wanted was to return to the surface. Return, clear my name, and make things right.

  “Why are you crying, honey?” young mom asked.

  “Ghost peppers – they were too spicy,” I lied.

  The three of us toured the dirt simple accommodations of young mom’s hut in this Tulum village. Joy showed me where I’d be sleeping, in the hammock right next to hers. Young mom worked on a beading project, squatting at the corner of the hut when I told Mami Wata I was going for a walk.

  “Come with me please,” I begged of the old voodoo queen.

  We left young mom smiling and humming while she worked. This could never have been my real mom, as real Mom had never been so happy. This fake version of my mother was very lucky, actually – that we weren’t actually related. This Joy wouldn’t know the agony of having her torso blown apart by bullets.

  I paid young mom one sad, backward glance before Mami Wata and I left her behind forever. We walked and walked, stopping at a crude looking church that seemed to be built from the hard labor of stacking many heavy rocks. There was a smooth altar, though, big enough to sacrifice a human body on.

  Rough and natural as it was, the church had pews – about three rows of them anchored in the sandy earth. Mami Wata and I took our seats.

  “Does young mom know she’s dead?” I asked, staring straight down at the ground; I fully intended to play along with the charade of believing the stranger we’d just left humming to herself was the real Joy.

  It was hard, pretending I wasn’t outraged. How stupid did Mami Wata think I was? And how did she expect to continue hypnotizing and manipulating ‘young mom’ from afar – get her to accept this ridiculous narrative: a Spanish honor society student stuck here for a summer that stretched into brainwashed infinity. How long could young mom be expected to believe we were roommates? Was young mom a robot, running on a loop? Was she a hologram, projected just for me to make me feel better? If that was the case, it wasn’t working.

  At that point, I sort of let on I knew the truth.

  The old voodoo queen eased my guilty conscious, telling me Joy was actually quite happy here. Part of the arrangement, in that happiness, was young mom never figuring out everything around her was a lie. She was living a narrative that Mami Wata created based on sweet dreams from her youth.

  “Before your mom died, I saw those dreams and gave her an infinite summer to live in – her dream come true – for an eternity,” Mami Wata said.

  “Your mother will never realize she’s died and gone to heaven – not even with you here, my dear.”

  “She isn’t my mom,” I argued. “I want to go home.”

  Mami Wata just laughed. “They’ll arrest you if you go back. They think you’re a psycho school shooter.”

  “I don’t know…I’ve gotten pretty good at living and hiding between two worlds. I could go back to the surface and just…I don’t know…visit people – like The Springers.”

  “Why on earth would you bother?” the old woman looked offended, but I could tell it was just an act.

  She wanted something. In the time it took for chills to form along my spine, I realized what that something was. Mami Wata wanted Demi’s unborn child for herself.

  Of course, I didn’t let on that I knew.

  “Demi is pregnant. Perhaps I could convince her to trade places with me, so she can be with Marc, in his dungeon in hell.
She could have her baby in the Underworld. That way…”

  I trailed off, getting more excited as I realized what an obvious solution this was.

  “Don’t you have a spell to spirit an infant away – turn it into a new surface body to replace the Hayden we so loved living with…on the Boulevard of Champions?”

  The old woman clutched at her heart. She thought this a marvelous idea, I could see that.

  She got up from her church pew and ran off to make our excuses to young mom, who, I am told, merely smiled in a zombie stupor and told the old woman it was nice to meet me, and if I ever changed my mind about being her roommate, I could come right back.

  Then Mami Wata took me to the nearest portal, one that might spit me back out in the year 2019, somewhere on the banks of Ft. Lauderdale.

  In this case, that portal was a pyramid shaped Mayan temple, with some 1,000 steps leading up to the top. A big beautiful opening – something like a window or a door – was at the tip-top of this temple/portal; a lookout point to the Caribbean Sea lay sparkling beyond it.

  I was surprised by how much my arms, legs and head hurt on the ascent – as if I had fallen from a great height. I ignored my physical agony and kept climbing the temple’s stairs.

  “Will you allow me to bring Demi a gift when I see her?” I asked, not bothering to turn around when I asked Mami Wata this important question.

  She was pressing up behind me as we huffed and puffed our way up to the top of the Mayan temple.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Domino. Can we give her back her little dog? She lost her husband and is about to have a baby. Domino might be her only comfort in such a vulnerable place.”

  Mami Wata did not give me her blessing, nor did she say no. Instead her answer to my question was to do something utterly cruel, shocking and unexpected. She simply pushed me – right out of the small, square window overlooking the sea.

  Chapter

  28

  I was grateful not to black out after being pushed from the temple. I saw seagulls swooping in the air, could hear the ocean getting louder as my fall brought me closer to certain death. I wanted to remember it all. I braced for a wall of water to smack me like cement and turn me to pulp…but when the fall was over, I felt nothing but softness beneath me.