Stormwitch

by Susan Vaught

  I want to think of her as I see her now, ready to fight the storm. She still has enough magic to chant. Her words won’t be frail at all, I know.

  “Il n’est pas Zashar,” she whispers as the wind twists toward us. “Next time, it might be her, and we could end this forever. We’re the last, child. And the last will have to do what all the rest couldn’t. Get rid of that witch once and for all, so storms can be storms, and nothing more.”

  Listening with only half an ear, nervous, I study the wind. Ba always talks about being the last, and about one day fighting Zashar. But this isn’t the stormwitch. We both know that, because the weather doesn’t feel strong enough. The sky doesn’t feel dark enough. When Zashar finally comes, she’ll come at night, with darkness and screaming wind fit to kill anything in the storm’s path.

  Still uncertain of what magic we’ll have to fight, Ba and I begin the song.

  I sing my mother’s name. Circe. And then Ruba Cleo—Ba. When it’s her turn, Ba sings of Antoinette and Arielle, and back we go, two at a time, to Tata, the first Dahomey Amazon to come to Haiti and survive.

  Ba holds Agaja’s necklace, in case we need the strength of his spirit.

  The wind picks up.

  We keep singing, calling on our African foremothers, asking them to protect us and send the hurricane back to sea because it’s unnaturally strong, because there’s witch work in it. We know the wind carries an Amazon spirit, confused and under the control of Zashar, the stormwitch.

  Zashar has been dead a long time, but she refuses to rest in peace. Her hate keeps her forceful, even in the place where the dead stay. She preys on other Amazon spirits, chases them out of the quiet of death, and sends them to do her vengeance on my family, and on white people, too. It’s up to Ba and me to break through the battle fever driving those confused spirits, and to show them the truth. To show them who the real enemy is—Zashar and all her hate.

  Ba’s fingers, oiled for battle, slip against my palm as I try to hold them. In her other hand, she clutches the necklace.

  The winds pull and tug. I try to hold my base. Sand swirls, hiding my grandmother. I see nothing but rain and darkness. My eyes water. I forget my words, forget the names I should speak. The wind shrieks, sensing my weakness.

  And still, above it all, Ba sings, setting her strength against the storm. She sings of Dahomey’s great king Agaja, whose spirit we still serve and carry. She rattles the necklace and tells of how Agaja closed the slave ports and tried to set Dahomey free from wars with other nations.

  She tells the storm how Agaja named his fourth son to succeed him, how Agaja believed his fourth son would carry on his traditions. But that wicked son was interested in his own wealth and power. He had his witch Zashar do away with his older brothers. One, a son who truly believed in the ways of his father, was sewn up in a bag with his Amazon guard Tata and thrown into the sea.

  Ba tells the spirit in the storm how Tata and the loyal son were supposed to die, but Tata survived. Picked up by Dutch slave traders, Tata came to Haiti, where she guarded the spirit and beliefs of King Agaja. Ba tells the storm how we are Tata’s descendants, the last of the living Amazons.

  Wake, she commands the poor ghost in the wind. See the truth.

  Zashar wants to kill us because Agaja was right about closing the ports, and his wicked son’s decision to trade slaves with the whites destroyed Dahomey in the end. Zashar wants to kill us because we don’t believe attacking all white people is the way to fight back against that pain and destruction.

  Mostly, though, Zashar wants to kill us because she was an Amazon, and Amazons fight to the death and beyond to protect their king. Tata and our line supported the wrong brother. We were a threat to her king then, and we’re a threat to the power of his memory now.

  We speak against the betrayer.

  Ba’s voice sounds as loud as the wind, and I shiver from fear and pride.

  We speak against Zashar and the useless hate she spreads. We speak against killing for the sake of killing, and death without purpose.

  Finally, Ba reminds the spirit that she died long ago, with the rest of the brave war women in those last battles with the French.

  The winds sputter and go quiet. We’re in the eye.

  Ba lowers the necklace and releases my hand, and I grab my bow with trembling fingers. The arrow, tipped with a mix of herbs, spice, and spells to send the spirit back to the land of the dead, shakes as I take aim. I’m ready to shoot if I must. I’ve been trained. Ba has drilled me like the Amazons of old, as I will drill my daughters and my daughters will drill theirs. Through us, King Agaja’s triumphs and the glory of the war women will live forever.

  Clouds part.

  A woman stands before us, tall like a goddess, eyes dripping lightning like tears.

  I know without question which Amazon this spirit is, from the strength of the wind, the brand on her bare chest, and the courage in her wizened face.

  She seems as old as mountains. As timeless as dirt and air.

  Ba keeps singing to her.

  This spirit, Agontime, doesn’t rage like other spirits in other storms we’ve chanted to turn. Dahomey-born and sold to slave traders after a palace coup, Agontime bore the pain of twenty-four years of Brazilian slavery before royal deputies found her and took her home to Africa. Despite her tragedies, she went on to become adviser to another of Dahomey’s most powerful rulers, balancing his strength with grace and wisdom. The name she chose speaks for itself.

  Agontime means “monkey who came home from the land of the whites, and now stays in a field of pineapples.”

  Before us, her great spirit wakes to itself, and perhaps dreams of that pineapple field. She hears Ba’s song, and seems to realize that she shouldn’t be here, in the land of the living.

  I watch as she shudders. Twists.

  The spirit fights against Zashar’s sorcery, the dark magic the stormwitch uses to drive peaceful souls to despair and rage.

  Even in spirit form, Agontime’s will proves formidable. Unlike every spirit we’ve met before, this one realizes who she was in life, what she is now—and where she belongs. She realizes what Zashar’s magic has done to her.

  With a roar, Agontime turns her majestic back on us and faces east, back across the ocean toward Dahomey. Toward her home.

  Her movement catches me by surprise.

  None of the spirits has ever turned back home without Ba firing her arrows!

  And now this time, my first time as the archer, the spirit turns on her own!

  I see her movements as if slowed to half of real time.

  Should I fire?

  The strength in my arms falters, and my arrow flies by accident. It falls into the sea, useless. Agontime strides away, walking the storm back out into the ocean. Hurricane winds circle and follow her like screaming children.

  Ba cries out.

  We aren’t ready for this. We have no protection from the suddenly shifting winds! Ba whirls. Grabs for my hands. I sling my bow over my shoulder. We lock eyes and fingers, and hold tight against the storm’s sudden movement. We hold against the growl of the hurricane, against the fury in the waves—and my memory blurs.

  I see Ba’s tired face as the water fights to tear her from my grip. The sand beneath her feet gives way into thrashing water. For a moment, she drags me with her as she sinks.

  In the distance, Agontime roars on in a language I barely understand.

  Then Ba’s smiling—why is she smiling?

  She looks relieved as she lets go with one hand, to toss Agaja’s necklace out of the water. It lands safely beside me.

  Ba’s speaking, but my ears won’t hear her. I’m shaking my head. My hands are shaking, too. Our fingers slip apart.

  There’s an empty beach where Ba should be.

  The ocean … the sky … a sense of Ba’s spirit, rising and rising—and then nothing at all until I wake on the sand.

  Cold. Crusted like wood too long in the surf. Cut in a hundred places, with
a shell necklace, a broken bow, and a few last wet arrows. And I’m alone.

  Alone because I didn’t hold tight enough or shoot straight enough. I’m not fast, but I also wasn’t strong.

  I let go of Ba.

  My weakness killed her.

  Now as it did then, pain crushes my chest. I feel like my heart is torn in half.

  Sobbing, I roll over in my bed in Pass Christian, Mississippi. In the home of Grandmother Jones, a Christian woman who speaks of pushing not shoving, and who thinks witches live only in my imagination. My hand slides under my pillow to find my journal.

  For a moment, the cover feels like the oiled leather of Ba’s fingers in mine, just before she slipped away. The hole in my heart’s sky where Ba’s star ought to be opens wider and darker than ever.

  Through my window I see a single light, broken from my tears, shining from Crazy Sardine’s house next door. And an outline, small and slight. A tiny shadow.

  Gisele. And she’s staring at me.

  I’m sure of it.

  9 August 1969

  Dearest Ba,

  I’ve come to a terrible suspicion. There is a storm coming soon. I sense it’s a beast of a storm, too, whipping waves from Africa. It doesn’t feel natural, but it doesn’t feel like it carries an Amazon spirit, either.

  It feels darker than that.

  I’m scared to touch the storm with my mind. I know I’m an Amazon, that I shouldn’t be scared, but I can’t help it. I keep trying to remember the last thing you said to me on the beach in Haiti. I see your lips moving. I know I heard you.

  What did you say?

  Leaves are rustling in the trees outside my window. These people on the Mississippi coast know nothing. They scoop sand and build castles that will be swept away by sea foam. Grandmother Jones—she seems more distant than ever. That woman is a greater mystery to me than ancient riddles. More impossible than Egba’s rope puzzles. I will never understand her.

  And she will never trust me enough to let me fight the storm. She’ll interfere. Get us all killed, in the name of her almighty god.

  Clay told me he trusts me, but I don’t know. And Gisele, maybe. Crazy Sardine, perhaps he believes. He seems to have a deeper wisdom, despite his strange appearance. Those long shirts and wide sweeping pants—and gold chains, and his shoes! How can a man walk on stilts with no grips? And yet he gives me the oddest smile when I’m near, like he’s known me forever, and he’s waiting for me to lead him somewhere.

  Ba, how will I turn the evil in this storm without you?

  Grandmother Jones found some of my herbs again, after dinner. She threw them away, and she took my matches and candles. Praise the universe she didn’t find my war tunic and cap—or my machete, or my mended bow and the three arrows tipped by your very own hands.

  She prayed for me, or prayed over me. Said she fears me going to hell. Said I need to make myself known to her church, her god.

  I told her about the storm I sense, and she told me I was imagining things. I wanted to tell her I know the ways of our people before the Slave Coast betrayed us all, but she’s told me over and over that I hold too tight to yesterday. If I swore I heard Dahomey’s drums in my dreams, she wouldn’t believe me. There are things in this life, of this world and the others, that Grandmother Jones has never seen, and she can’t understand them.

  She wants me to put away my past, Ba. She says I live in a civilized world now—as if a country with the likes of Leroy Frye, Ray-boy, and her white bosses at the Richelieu could be more civilized than Haiti.

  I don’t think anyone here knows about the storm yet, Ba. I’m alone, I’m alone, I’m alone.

  I want you back.

  If this storm kills me, I’m not sure I’ll care.

  Chapter Five

  Sunday, 10 August 1969: Morning

  Clay, Gisele, and I stretch our legs walking on the beaches that used to be white-only. We thought that by coming on Sunday morning, early, before church, we wouldn’t meet too many people. We thought it would be good practice, to help us get our courage up to walk again later, when the beach gets more crowded.

  We were wrong.

  These folks sure seem set on their Sunday morning swim in the waves.

  We march anyway, deliberately walking out of our invisible cage—the one my grandmother would have me stay in, eyes down, mumbling sir and ma’am to people I don’t even know. Her talk of pushing without shoving lingers in my mind, but I keep it to the side. My anger toward the situation is already too great. My hand clenches around the journal in my pocket, and the top of my head aches. I think I might yell at the first person who tries to stop me.

  As usual, Gisele walks by my side holding my arm at the wrist. She looks straight ahead, eyes flashing, as we stroll up and back, and up again. White mothers grab their children and glare. Some people point and stare. Some smile, nervous-like. Shy and unsure. A few—three, perhaps four—nod, as if to welcome us.

  We cast shadows on the Gulf of Mexico as we pass. Sun beats my skin like hot golden hammers, but what strikes me the most are the people who don’t react at all. Seem to see nothing. Watch the air as we walk by, expressionless, as if we are haunts or sea-shines. Blank-facers bother me more than the haters and smiler-nodders. Rocks. Like Grandmother Jones, except these rocks are white.

  Who are they? What do they feel?

  Do they feel?

  A radio spits and fuzzles on a woman’s towel.

  “… tropical disturbance, still more than five hundred miles east of the northern Leewards …”

  The woman sees me listening and snaps off the power. Then she makes a gesture I’m sure her fellow church members would gasp about.

  Clay’s version of chanting trips through my mind.

  What do you want? Black Power.

  All the wide eyes and gaping mouths make me think the people on this beach can’t imagine black and power joined in the same sentence. Pass Christian reminds me of towns I saw in my father’s photos of Vietnam, the few he sent home to my mother. Ba kept them in an album, so I would have them. That album was full of wide eyes and gaping mouths—empty expressions, tense brows, smiles that pointed to nowhere … people at war. Only the people in Pass Christian aren’t fighting an army. Mississippi’s whites are fighting other Mississippians, black ones—and according to Grandmother Jones, and Clay, and all the books I’ve read, they’ve already lost the war. Twice now.

  Why don’t they know that?

  “Bitch,” whispers Clay, staring at the woman with the radio.

  “Mm-hmm,” Gisele says. “Big ole behind, too.”

  “You don’t have to call names,” I mutter, though I’m not sure why. It just seems wrong. “That woman is who she is, who her mother raised her to be.”

  “You really sixteen years old?” Clay shakes his head. “You sound like my great-grandmother.”

  “In Haiti, we had no time to be young. And back in Africa, people had even less time to grow up. Most war women went to training as soon as they could eat for themselves.”

  “I eat for myself.” Gisele swings my hand. “I want to be a Da-Homely war woman.”

  Clay groans. “What have you been telling her, Ruba? Living on that island cooked your brains like mackerel. Never mind. Don’t even want to know. Let’s go down to the wharf instead.”

  “No,” I say. “I need to go to the campground, near the covered gardens.”

  “You going to pick plants again?” he asks, and I hear another groan coming.

  I stroke the soft cloth bag hidden in my pocket beneath my journal. “Grandmother Jones cleaned house again last night. She took all my special herbs, all the ones I need to fight the storm.”

  “There won’t be a storm,” Clay mutters. “Hurricanes, they usually swing wide of us. Head for Texas. You and that Dahomey storm magic stuff—when are you going to get over it?”

  I refuse to answer him.

  Gisele speaks for me. “Be quiet, you ole dummy. She ain’t getting over it. She’s going
to teach me. Starting with which plants we need to chase away the evil in the wind.”

  “Well, go ahead if you have to, but I’m swimming.” Clay runs off toward the water. “Meet you by the campground!”

  Gisele and I climb the bank and cross the two-lane, moving away from the beach and toward all the houses and green. Wordless, we head into a thick stand of pines and begin our search. Her hands are nimble, and her eyes sharp as I teach her to seek tiny flowers and roots, shifting sand for shells as she goes.

  My bag grows heavy, and heavier still. Gisele drops leaves and little frogs into her pockets when she thinks I’m not looking. And a lizard. And one lost hermit crab. I watch as she giggles and crams her hands through moss, under rocks, behind anthills, never minding the bugs. Scaring snakes to death.

  Was I like this when Ba taught me? In a big hurry, taking no time to think or be careful?

  Surely not.

  Minutes pass. Maybe hours. Time moves in strange ways when you gather plants for conjuring. And the light helps. If you stare at it long enough, it filters through to touch what you need.

  Gisele sees this. Her eyes widen as she follows soft rays to a patch of white-yellow mushrooms.

  Just then, a terrible racket plagues the bushes behind us. We both startle.

  Voices slither through scrub pine and palm. “Know I saw them come in here. Y’all go that way.”

  Ray-boy.

  Mumbles and stomps come next—from his square, stupid friends, I assume.

  Ba’s teaching overtakes me, and I grab Gisele. She holds me tight, and we join bark and branches without a sound.

  “Here, Juju,” Ray-boy calls like he’s coaxing a dog. “Got something for you. C’mere.”

  He passes us without a clue.

  “Hey, Poke. You see them?”

  “Naw.”

  “Dave Allen?”

  “Nah, Ray-boy. They ain’t over here.”

  More footsteps, and then a whirlwind of shouts and bellows.

  “Hey!”

  “Let me go!”

  “Over here, y’all!”

  “No! Over here!”

  I watch without breathing as Ray-boy Frye and his friends haul Clay toward our tree. Clay fights and swings, but his toothpick fists make no match for the two big white boys.