by Lara Parker
He blinked at her, as though she were not real, then his drunken brain seemed to grasp that she was there. His face was contorted with rage, but he grinned slowly.
“Run away from me, will you?” His voice was hoarse and strangled in his throat. “I’ll have your skin off your bones, I will!” He took a lurching step. “Damn you, and your impudence! What does it take to keep you locked away! You’re the Devil’s slut, you are, and I’ll beat it out of you before I’ll give you up!”
For a moment she thought she would faint, and she made a helpless swimming motion with her arms, pulling backward on the air. But he sprang for her and had her in a vise before she could move or cry out. She knew he was more a brute beast than a man as he pressed her to him, forcing the breath from her, and smothering her face in his shirt. She felt him tremble as though her fear had spilled into his body and under his heaving breast she sensed the anguish of his frustration.
“Why do you despise me!” he cried, rum slurring his speech. “Betray me! Defy me! Do you want to kill me?” He wrenched her away from him and dug his fingers into her neck, twisting them in her hair, and pushing her down.
She cried out in terror, her heart thundering. Then she heard his belt sing in the air, and she was Suzette, as the hot flash seared her back, and she was Chloe, as she plunged into blackness before the next blow came, and she saw the eel again, his gaping craw opening and closing, inching out of his crevice, just before the dark water swallowed her up.
Ten
Angelique was dressed in the white gown for the ceremony. The drums had been throbbing for hours, but Thais did not come to take her down, and it was almost time for her to appear. Then it was Suzette who came for her—Suzette, who despised her.
“Come on now, you, and don’ give me no trouble.”
They walked down the stairs and into the room behind the altar, and Angelique was surprised to see that, after all these months, the clay figures were still there. The little people, the trees and huts of the plantation, were all where they had left them. The Angelique doll was lying headless on the dirt floor, with the Chloe doll beside it. She stared at the toys but felt nothing, neither remorse nor grief. It seemed strange to her that she had played such a silly game.
When she took up Chloe’s doll, the beady little eyes looked at her, and she had a sudden impulse. She pulled off a piece of the kinky black hair, and, reaching for the knot around her neck, she untied her ouanga. The moonstone gleamed within the wad of herbs beside the snake’s skull. She stuffed the wisp of hair into the sack, pulled the string tight, and hung it back around her neck.
“What you doin’ with that?” Suzette asked, suspicious. “Sit down, now, and be still.”
“No,” Angelique said spitefully. “Don’t tell me what to do!” She smashed the toys with her foot, kicking them aside, until all the clay was crushed back into dust.
The drumming in the chapel pulsed and flooded the chamber with the sound. She could hear the shouts rising and becoming more insistent, invoking the mysteries and summoning the spirits:
“Carrefour! Saint Michael! Grand Père Eternal! Luc! Marc! Louis! Baron Cimetière!” the worshipers chanted, repeating each name in a sonorous cry. On and on they sang in monotonous litany, until she began to hear, “Ela Freda! Saint Vierge Marie! Erzulie ge Rouge!”
“Go on, now, it’s time,” said Suzette.
Sullenly, Angelique climbed under the curtain. Her mind was brittle tonight, and she was bored by the ceremony. She watched coldly, impassively, thinking to expose its secrets.
Chloe had told her of the houngan, who was the leader, and she looked to see which one he might be. Her father was nowhere in sight, but she noticed an older man with grizzled hair who shook a sack of white meal onto the ground, lacing thin lines in a fantastic design. He raised a clay jug and sprinkled a yellowish liquid on the four corners of the pattern. Instantly, the drums came to life, bright and palpitating, and the houngan chanted and, above his head, shook a long, slender gourd dripping with beads and small bones. The bodies of the dancing slaves were coated with a thick white paste, their dark skin gleaming through pale streaks, their candles flickering.
A huge fire smoldered at the foot of her platform, and yams dusted with flour were tossed upon it to be cooked. The smoke and acrid odor rose to her nostrils.
Then she heard a terrified squawking above the sound of the pulsing drums, and a dancer leapt forward, carrying a white chicken dangling by its feet and flapping its wings. He wrapped his hands around its legs and broke them with a sickening, cracking sound, then placed the chicken upon his head, where it struggled a moment and fell still, its red eyes staring. It was almost comical, like a feathered hat, until the houngan reached forward and plucked off the head, which came free of the body as easily as if it had been severed with an invisible knife. The blood spurted down the dancer’s face.
Angelique leaned in and listened closely, trying to understand his babbling. All the loas were listed in the book, and she wondered if she would recognize which one had claimed him, riding him like a horse and raving gibberish from his mouth.
She watched him with cold fascination, trying to decide whether he was putting on a show or was truly taken. When he drew nearer to her, she saw that his eyes had rolled back into his head, and he stared up at her with creamy slits. The blood streamed over his glistening forehead down to his soft mouth, and the white paste clung to the sweat, which trickled in rivulets upon his chest.
Suddenly she started as a small stone dropped on the platform in front of her. Instinctively, she reached for it and took it up. It was warm and smooth, copper-colored, and although the man’s eyes were empty and as yellow as pus, and his lips did not move, she heard him whisper, “Chloe, Chloe, Chloe…”
A sigh seemed to pass through the other worshipers. They backed away as if he were something evil, and fear was palpable in the air, like an odor. He swayed and reached for her, his face in an eyeless mask. A croaking sound coming from his throat, his long fingers grazed her legs. Even as she shrank back from his touch, she felt an itching tingle travel through her body, as though tiny bugs were crawling on her skin.
Suddenly he quivered and sprang onto her altar, and the drums rumbled like stormy breakers in the sea caves, echoing, fading, and when he leaned over her with his eyes still blind, like a lover to kiss her, flames flew from his lips!
As she gasped and pulled back, she felt that the flames were cool, like ribbons, fragrant with perfume, enveloping her in waves of crimson and gold. They were leaves—petals—in such masses that she thought she would drown in the tumbling blossoms. She laughed, rising from the mound of delicate odors. Reaching down, she gathered the petals into her arms and tossed them like rain into the air. She saw them float down on the worshipers, who had become passive, and stared, each face beautiful and elegant as if carved from ebony.
The drums entered her body, and she began to dance, first as she had danced with Chloe, swaying slowly as a child in play, then more sensually, invitingly, as for the first time she sensed her body’s curving hips and budding breasts. She was dancing on the loose fabric of her gown, and she was naked before them.
At that moment the spirit entered her, enfolding her in a glowing mist. Erzulie sang strange sounds from her mouth, and Angelique writhed and quivered, clawing at her own breast and sobbing with a deep sadness as she fell, trembling in the power of the loa. One by one, the worshipers approached and leaned into the platform and touched her, kissed her, their lips brushing her arched feet, her tensed legs, their hands pressing her thighs.
She was not the child Angelique, but the goddess Erzulie, as she eagerly welcomed their soft mouths, tongues entering her. There arose a quiet, ghostly silence, as the enraptured lovers tasted her exuberant innocence and were enthralled by the source of life. She raised her hips and groaned, longing for some release, but she was caught between the god’s possession and man’s devotion, and the nibbling and tonguing only tantalized her more.
When she emerged from her trance, she had lost all memory of her possession except the tingling mind-flutter of a mysterious dream.
* * *
The next morning, Angelique sat by her window staring across the courtyard to the slave quarters. The day was cruelly hot, the sky a blinding blue. She looked out over the cane fields that were now like waves of foam, taller than the men who disappeared within them. This morning, a thrilling idea hung in the branches of her mind.
The spirits were real. She had never doubted it, but now she fully accepted the corporeal existence of the loas. She longed to know more. She felt a kinship with the slaves, for, like them, she was a prisoner of violence and fear. She envied their volatile natures, their easy access to the gods, as she turned inward for escape.
After that day, the ceremony became an obsession. For long hours she recited and repeated the incantations softly to herself; the mournful chants became melodies she kept in her head. All her time was spent poring over the Book of Mysteries, struggling to translate the several languages and decipher the spells. The pages revealed secrets of ancient African magic. Angelique studied each set of rules, memorizing syllables and sounds.
In the room behind the altar, she studied the formulas of potions and searched through the jars on the shelves for the correct ingredients. She arranged them and hoarded them, still uncertain as to their purposes.
Suzette watched her dully. “What you doin’? Leave that stuff be.”
“Look the other way if you don’t like it.” Angelique spoke gruffly, and continued to taste and sniff all the powders and juices.
“You is an impertinent chile.”
“I am not a child anymore.”
She dreaded her father’s presence. She often woke in the night, when the creaking of the windmill invaded her dreams, and the screeching sound was like the voice of a demon; she would be cold with sweat, her heart racing, thinking he was there.
After bringing her back to the plantation he had ignored her, except during the ceremony. She hoped that as long as she remained hidden and performed her duties as goddess, he would leave her alone.
She sensed how valuable she was to him, and to some of the other planters, who had begun to toy with African voodoo in darkest secrecy. On Sundays they worshiped in church, but at midnight they came to the dancing.
One day when she was lost in her studies, she heard a man’s voice on the stairs and felt a jolt of fear, thinking it was her father. Quickly, she shoved the book beneath her bed, but when the door opened she was surprised to see a stranger. It was the Jesuit priest, Father Le Brot, who had spoken to her the first day, after the trial with the dogs.
“Angelique,” he said kindly. “M-m-may I come in?”
She simply stared at him, dumbfounded, unable to answer. He seemed an emissary from another world. He nodded to Thais to leave them and walked to where Angelique was sitting; to her astonishment, he took her hands. He was a rotund little man with a balding head and a red face set on a fleshy neck that bulged over his collar. His bright eyes and jovial smile could not hide a self-important mien, and she remembered that when he spoke he had a tendency to stutter.
“H-h-h-how are you, my dear? I’ve b-b-b-been thinking about you, and-and-and wondering how you were s-s-s-sustaining your ordeal.”
The use of the word ordeal angered her, and she was instantly suspicious. If her father had sent this man to test her, then he was a fool, for she would reveal nothing.
“It is not an ordeal to be Erzulie,” she said coldly, rejecting his condescending tone.
Father Le Brot sighed deeply and motioned for her to sit at her small desk. He took a seat in the chair opposite her, and she felt him searching her face for traces of sorrow or weakness. She would show neither.
“What do you want with me?” she finally asked. “Why are you here?”
“I have c-c-c-come to pray with you,” he said.
“Why would you want to pray with me?”
Her memory of the nuns in the Catholic school was dim, but she knew that their mournful prayers had always made her feel guilty. The nuns had taught her to read, but they had also droned over her as though she were doomed.
“Because I have great concern for your immortal soul, my child. You are living in a den of iniquity, and participating in pagan rituals that are the work of the Devil!” the priest intoned.
“The Devil?” she gasped. “I have not seen the Devil.”
“The dancing and the frenzy, these false gods, the sacrifices … my dear, you must know, that is the Devil’s doing, and that they are demons from Hell!”
“I know no such thing!” she cried hotly. “You think the Devil is everywhere!”
He calmed. “Do you w-w-want to make a c-c-confession?” he asked her gently.
“No. I have nothing to confess,” she answered. She did not trust this man and was becoming impatient.
“Then p-p-pray with me,” he said, taking her hand again.
“I don’t want to pray,” she answered petulantly, then rose and walked away.
Father Le Brot looked surprised, but his face softened.
“No, no, uh-uh of course you don’t,” he said. “How f-f-foolish of me. You-you-you s-s-s-say your prayers with the s-s-slaves, do you not? And t-t-tell me, my dear, are their p-p-prayers answered?”
She considered this question. What was the nature of their prayers, she wondered. Did the slaves pray for freedom and a safe return to the homeland? It seemed they asked for nothing, only life and ecstasy, and the chance to lose themselves in the dancing.
“They pray to me,” she said.
Father Le Brot looked befuddled and shook his head. She was pleased to have bewildered him. “And the planters pray to me as well,” she added, with a touch of arrogance. She thought she saw the priest’s gaze flicker as though she had confirmed a suspicion he held.
“The planters come to these … these d-d-dances?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” she answered. “Erzulie grants wishes if she chooses.”
Father Le Brot rose and began to pace. Angelique watched his black habit flow about him, and she could see the sweat in the folds of his neck. She thought the priest’s robes must be uncomfortable in the heat. He was deep in thought when he spoke.
“These planters who come to these rituals, well … in m-m-many ways they are as … as ignorant as the s-s-slaves. The franchise of civilization has invested them with neither c-c-compassion nor humility, and they turn to these primitive ceremonies out of d-d-desperation.”
“They know Erzulie will give them something God will not.”
The priest placed his folded arms under his round belly and drew himself up as though he were making a proclamation.
“My dear child, how little you understand. God’s great gift is life everlasting. For those who have faith, the treasures await in heaven. These g-g-greedy men are gamblers who crossed the sea because others before them had made fortunes in sugar. They were not gentry in France. They were renegades and s-s-second sons, who had no land or fortune to speak of, and Martinique is a p-p-place where they thought they would live like kings!”
His pontificating bored her, and Angelique became intrigued, watching the sweat dripping down his face, wondering what he wore beneath his gown to make him so warm. She understood him perfectly. He was afraid of the Negroes, like all white men.
“Oh, they come to Mass and profess piety, and, ah, yes, are quite ready to condemn heresy, but in truth, they have little true allegiance to God Almighty and no interest in the Hereafter. The wealth they yearn for is here!” he continued. “And one way or another, that wealth rests in the hands of the slaves! The planters s
ee this, and yet they do not see this. They fear the slaves and need them, both their sweat and their heathen superstitions. Without workers, they are helpless. So black men swarm these islands, their numbers growing every day.”
Father Le Brot was becoming impassioned and, amazingly, he had lost his stutter. Angelique thought the priest looked like a spotted puffer fish who had become alarmed.
“Every hour! And still they want more! They bring the poor creatures in ships of doom! To plant more cane! And harvest more sugar! And the blacks will not work, so they beat them to death and bring more! Already these misguided whites are outnumbered twenty, thirty, to one! And in the end God will not own these islands, they will belong to the Negro. It is the Devil’s plan, and the Devil has planted the greed in the heart of the white man.”
He stopped, out of breath, and stared at her, his eyes bulging. Then he seemed to regain his composure and, somewhat embarrassed, spoke to her in a gentle voice.
“I’m sorry, my child, I know these things are all a mystery to you and that you are helpless to change them. It is for your own soul I came. You must consider your immortal soul, Angelique.”
“Where is my soul, Father,” she asked. “Is it in my heart or in my head?”
“It is, my child, the invisible part of you that lives after death.”
A cloud fell over her mood. Why would this priest speak to her of death? She was protected by her father and fed by the slaves. Nothing threatened her. Even the walls of the tower were thick and would provide safety from hurricanes. She decided that Father Le Brot was only speaking the words she had heard at Mass, words that always warned of doom and damnation, and yes, of the Devil. He began to stutter again.
“You are in grave d-d-danger,” he said.
“Why? What kind of danger?”
