His Last Wife

by Grace Octavia

  However, knowing that and disagreeing with Kerry did nothing to answer what had happened to Jamison. And her reasons for caring were becoming quite personal.

  While the old Val had lured drunk Chuck to the hotel so she could get those pictures and bust Kerry out of jail, that old Val was nowhere to be found when the news of his death felt like a knife straight through Val’s throat. Standing beside Kerry outside the jail, Val encountered what had felt like a panic attack or heart attack or both. She kept her cool and held it in until they were climbing into the SUV, but inside she was feeling like she’d killed a man. A weak man, yes. But, a man, no less. Old Val might have laughed at that. Claimed it as collateral damage. But it was now keeping Val up at night, even with Ernest as her pillow. She couldn’t accept that she was the body bait that led to a man ending his life. There had to be something else.

  “Shit, Mama Fee!” Val cursed when she emerged from her bedroom fully dressed and nearly stepped into a terra-cotta bowl of ashes set right outside her door. “Why is this here?” she shouted, stepping over the bowl and heading for the steps, where another bowl was waiting on the bottom landing. “God! It’s everywhere.”

  She fanned some leftover smoke from her face and turned the corner off of the steps to head toward the kitchen, where she could hear the dishwasher going and voices speaking Spanish coming from the television.

  “Lorna, please get these bowls up from all over the house. That woman is about to burn the house down or suffocate all of us,” Val said when she found Lorna in the kitchen, standing on the top of a stepladder with a rag in her hand cleaning the ceiling-fan blades. “And where is she, anyway? Got it smelling like a Catholic church on Christmas Eve up in here.”

  “You know.” Lorna nodded toward the garden.

  “Again?” Val rolled her eyes and walked to the window over the kitchen sink to see Mama Fee back out in the garden. “Lord, she’s in one of her moods again.”

  “Been like that a couple of days now,” Lorna pointed out.

  When Lorna got to work at sunrise, Mama Fee already had her seven bowls placed in doorways and turning points throughout the house and had just started her burning. Lorna didn’t bother to ask what she was doing or why. She had her own Santeria-practicing mother at home and knew not to touch a thing.

  “Yeah, she has been like this a few days,” Val confirmed. It seemed like since Kerry had gotten out of jail, Mama Fee was sinking deeper into her practice. She’d never leave the house, always kept her hair covered, and went searching for spiders; morning, noon, and night. “You keep an eye on her today?” Val added. “Make sure she doesn’t burn anything else.”

  “Es impossible,” Lorna replied. “Doctor’s appointment at noon. I told you I leave early today.”

  “Early? Are you kidding?” Val turned to her. “I need you here.”

  “I tell you, I no babysitter. You help her. She’s your mother. She needs you. You,” Lorna said and her tone wasn’t gentle or forgiving. “You’re going out.” Lorna looked at Val’s clothing. Every day, each suit looked more expensive than the last. One of Lorna’s paychecks had bounced a month ago. Val had given her the money to make up for the mishap immediately. But Lorna knew it was a bad sign and started looking for a new job. Her “doctor’s appointment” was actually a meeting with a woman who’d fired her maid after she’d caught her sleeping with her husband. “Take her with you.”

  “I can’t. I’ll be gone most of the day and . . .” Val’s voice trailed off as she imagined Mama Fee sitting in the car with Kerry all afternoon to and from Dahlonega, how she’d be looking at Leaf. All of her superstition and suspicion about everyone and everything. “I can’t,” Val repeated, picking up her purse and slinging it onto her forearm. “Let’s just hope she keeps herself busy in that garden and doesn’t burn the house down.” Val turned on her heels and started clicking toward the front door like she couldn’t be bothered. “And make sure you get all those bowls up. It’s like a damn temple in here.”

  That garden had been keeping Mama Fee very busy. Busy, indeed. For weeks. And before that another garden had kept her busy for months. Years. She was sowing and reaping and reaping and sowing in a febrile effort to quell the insidious labor pains that had been punishing her womb since her last child came into the world. Like any other mother, Mama Fee always wanted what was best for all of her children. Maybe she couldn’t always give it, didn’t always have the means of providing it, but she knew what it was and sometimes, the magic of motherhood was that just knowing it and wanting it was enough to make such things materialize in her children’s lives. This instinctive desire was commonly easy to resolve with her first two children, sometimes requiring little-to-no will on her part. But the last one, the one who’d bit clear into her tit when she realized she could get more milk by dragging her brand-new bottom teeth beneath the nipple while sucking, was just insatiable. And, as Mama Fee’s own mama had told her, Mama Fee was bound to spend the rest of her life quenching that unending thirst for more.

  By the time Val was a grown woman, every ounce of milk in Mama Fee’s breasts, both literal and figurative, had been used and abused. Still, she stayed wanting the best for Val. And when she set her eyes on Jamison Taylor, Jamison Taylor’s house, Jamison Taylor’s car, and Jamison Taylor’s money, she thought she’d finally found the thing that might surfeit Val’s yearnings for more. The morning of their near-shotgun wedding, the day she’d actually met the man who’d impregnated her child, she stood in the window in that rich man’s house and made a vow to give it all to Val. And she knew how she’d do it too.

  Her mother had taught her the good and bad of the roots in her backyard. How to cure her baby’s cough; how to make a man go blind and stumble off of the roof of a building. The good was simple. Uncomplicated. Those were the charms based in truth and righteousness. Light. But the bad was usually messy. Very complicated. Those were the incantations based in hexes and curses. Dark.

  Mama Fee knew the charms she wanted for Val would require incantations. None of it was deserved or owed. It was just wanted. And would need to be taken, stolen away. There were two problems with that. Mama Fee never liked Jamison and did not want Val to have a child with him. How was she to get everything else in the beautiful picture Val wanted, while losing those two things? The answer was in the bottom of a dark pot that would make a slave of Mama Fee forevermore.

  At the end of Mama Fee’s lessons on the bad, her mother left her with the most important truth of the work they did, what others called conjuring, voodoo, roots work, hocus-pocus, evil, paganism, witchery, and it was that when one casts condemnation, she is forever tied to condemnation. One dark spell begets another dark spell. If you wanted your enemy in the ground, your spell might make it happen, but then the next was to keep him in the ground. And the one after that would be needed to take care of anyone who loved him and hated you enough to want you in the ground. Castings could be endless and costly. It was how the old voodoo women made their money. It was the only way Mama Fee could get that house, those cars, and the money for Val.

  So, she used it. For the first time in her life, with full advisory, she used it. When she got back home to Memphis from the disaster of a marriage at the courthouse in Atlanta, where Jamison’s mother looked at her and Val like they were some barnacles stuck on the bottom of a Louisiana shrimp boat, she sat a rock before her front door, slid off her shoes, and marched right to her garden with the sounds of a djembe pounding her ear. Yes, it was she who created that sudden and great and impenetrable divide between Val and Jamison right after the wedding. It was she who possessed Jamison’s mother and made the hot stew that poisoned the unborn child in Val’s stomach and led to the blood on the sheets and the baby’s death. It was she who then stole Jamison’s mother’s breath away at the bottom of the steps in the house, killing her slowly and painfully as she begged Val for mercy.

  Her next step, and it needed to happen quickly before Jamison and Val ended their short marriage on paper,
was to get rid of the groom. Well, then, everything would be perfect. The house, the cars, the money. All for Val forever. Ironically, she never got to that. Jamison’s tumble from the top was wanted and wanton, but not of her work. Maybe it led to the completion of her work, but she’d had no parts in what Val reported had happened to Jamison. It was a mystery that she’d charge to fate, had it not been for the fact that her invisible third eye tucked away in the pineal gland, the conarium or epiphysis cerebri, in the middle of her brain could never see Jamison falling from that roof or any of the events that led up to it. That could be explained by her distance from the man or the hard work some other fate fixer was busy putting in.

  But Mama Fee had little time to worry about that. Her own fate fixing had her busy trying to find more precious milk in her old, flattened tits for her grown-up daughter. As she knew, once they moved into the house, they had to keep that house. And every incantation Mama Fee had breathed into a bowl since she set foot in that house was toward that complex cooperation. The whispering to ancient flowers in the garden, the dried roots she was collecting for the glass jars in her bedroom, rings with gems on her fingers, the terra-cotta bowl at the bottom of the stairs, the cluster of salt on the doorstep . . . she was exhausted with work and worry. And worse, she felt all the way to her bones that something was still on path to take it all away. Because of that, she could never, ever rest. She could never, ever leave that house. Not until she could be sure she could get back in. Until she stopped feeling what felt like spiders trumping up her back at night, pricking and stabbing along the way. Letting her know something was coming.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” was what Mama Fee heard coming from behind her as she sat on the ground in the garden. She’d already seen the shadows of a man’s frame cast in the dirt long before she heard the voice, so the male voice didn’t startle her as she’d pretended.

  “Oh, Jesus!” She turned and looked up and worked to appear surprised and sound simple. “You nearly scared me to death, young man!”

  Val and Lorna were long gone from the house.

  “I apologize! I wasn’t meaning to scare you at all,” the man with dark hair, eyes, and luscious, turmeric-colored skin said. “I probably should’ve announced my presence sooner. I actually tried to go to the front door, but there was one angry-looking cat waiting for me there. Then I noticed you out here.” He extended his hand. “I’m Agent Delgado.”

  “I’m Marie Antoinette, but everyone calls me Mama Fee.”

  Mama Fee shook Delgado’s hand, noting the heat and slight shaking, and used the grip to hoist herself to her feet.

  “Thank you, young man,” she said for the quick lift. “And I apologize for that no-good neighborhood cat. You’d think a place like this wouldn’t have strays. Seems that old feline answers to Bast—at least that’s what I call her. She means no harm—unless you mean her harm.” Mama Fee smiled. “So how can I help you, Agent—” She paused.

  “Delgado.”

  “Yes. How can I help you?”

  After asking Delgado to retrieve a basket of what looked like weeds from the soil, she led him to the back door of the house, chatting the entire way.

  The cat Delgado had seen at the front door came racing around the back and flicked her ratty tail against his leg before he entered the house.

  In the house, Mama Fee ordered Delgado to take a seat at the kitchen table the way only an old Southern woman could—with a smile he couldn’t turn down.

  “I’m actually here looking for a Mrs. Val Taylor. I’ve been here before and spoke to another woman. I left my card with her,” Delgado said. “Do you know if she got it?”

  Mama Fee had carried the basket to the sink and had her back to him. She didn’t acknowledge his inquiry. She started humming some tune.

  “Ma’am, it is very important that I speak with her. Do you know where she is?”

  “No clue. She comes and goes. You know these kids.” Mama Fee looked up from the sink and turned around to Delgado. “Maybe you don’t. Nothing but a kid yourself.”

  “She could be in trouble, ma’am. Serious trouble.”

  “I know about trouble.”

  Delgado pushed the chair he was sitting in back like he was about to get up, but Mama Fee stopped him with a loud voice.

  “Been getting ready to make this special tea all morning. Was wondering why I needed to make it. Suppose I knew company was coming. Won’t you stay and have some?” she asked.

  “I really can’t. I was just looking for Mrs. Taylor. Do you know when she will be back?”

  “I’m actually thinking she’ll be back soon.” Mama Fee carried a pot of leaves and water to the stove. “How about you indulge an old woman’s desire for company and have some tea with me as we wait? It’ll really just make my day. And I promise you’ll love my tea. Everyone does. See, I’m an old woman. From the backwoods and I know how to work these herbs. Can cure just about anything. And I can hear in your voice that you could probably use some healing. What’s that, high blood pressure? I see it in your color.”

  Delgado was taken aback. “Well—I—sometimes it is high. My wife, she cooks a lot of food with salt—and—do you know when Mrs. Taylor will back?”

  Mama Fee turned the fire on at the stove and it seemed like a ball of fire shot up in the air, turned blue, and disappeared. “Soon,” she said. “Really soon.”

  Mama Fee went on with her humming, stopping every so often to compliment her gentleman visitor about his appearance and build. She spoke of her loneliness and more of her tea he’d have to try.

  While Delgado could feel himself being conned into a corner, that blue flame that had disappeared was still dancing in his pupils and he couldn’t move. He just nodded and felt the room closing in with the humming and talking.

  Soon came and soon left. And Delgado imagined that he was walking out of the house, but there he was, sitting, and soon there was a cup of dirt-brown tea in front of him.

  “Drink it, baby,” Mama Fee offered with her voice sounding like the refrain in a spiritual. “Drink it up, my baby. It’ll make you feel better. Make it all better, baby.”

  Delgado had left his mind, but Mama Fee was there, holding the teacup up to his mouth, humming and talking to him, coaxing, conning, hypnotizing.

  He sipped.

  “I’m looking for Mrs. Taylor,” he said, the cadence in his voice matching Mama Fee’s.

  She wrapped his hand around the teacup.

  “Just sip, baby. Sip. Drink.” She smiled and rubbed some sweat from his temple.

  “She’s in trouble,” he whirred.

  “I told you, I know trouble. I know it well.” This was whispered from an old woman who now looked young and beautiful and dreamy in Delgado’s eyes. “Now drink. I told ya you’d love it.”

  Soon the tea and even the dirt was gone from the little teacup.

  Mama Fee was sitting in the chair across from Delgado, watching. The cat was in the house, rubbing her entire torso against his legs, back and forth and between, purring and sometimes even roaring.

  Delgado’s eyes were wide open and bloodshot. His face was red too. Sweat was pouring down his forehead and wet his collar. His teeth chattered. His brain was awake, but asleep.

  Mama Fee stopped her humming and posed a question.

  “Dear, are you okay?”

  Delgado looked at her and looked and looked and then blinked in a snap of wakefulness that was marked with one final rub by Bast on his inner legs.

  “Oh!” Delgado jerked. “Oh!”

  “You need anything?” Mama Fee asked, concerned.

  “What?” Delgado looked around the kitchen like he was waking from the longest dream. “What?” He looked at Mama Fee.

  “I was asking you a question,” she said. “You look like you dozed off. I was telling you that I didn’t think Mrs. Taylor was coming home. Maybe you should leave and come back at another time.” Mama Fee smiled.

  “Yes. Maybe I should,” Delgado said, taking the sug
gestion into mind like a prescription. “I should come back.”

  “You look so tired. You young people, you work so hard. Maybe you should go home and get some sleep. Let that beautiful wife of yours make you something to eat.” Mama Fee grabbed the teacup from Delgado’s side of the table. “I’ll be sure to tell Mrs. Taylor you came by. Right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Delgado was on his feet and wondering what had happened. He couldn’t recall when he drank the tea or how Mama Fee had even ended up in the chair across from him. The last he knew she was at the sink or maybe the stove. Something that felt like peppers or maybe his breakfast gone bad was boiling in his stomach.

  Mama Fee got up and took his hand to lead him to the back door, talking again and thanking him for keeping her company. What a pleasant chat it was about his work with the GBI and Jamison’s case. About how Delgado had been cheating on his wife and wasn’t sure if that little boy with his name was actually his son, anyway. Mama Fee laughed. “No worries. I’m just an old woman. I won’t tell anyone your secrets.”

  “I told you all of that?” Delgado said, now on the outside of the threshold, looking in with Bast at his side.

  “Of course you did,” Mama Fee said. “Now you go on home. Come back soon. I’ll let Mrs. Taylor know you were here.”

  “Don’t you want my card?”

  “No need. I know how to contact you,” Mama Fee assured him. “I told you, I know trouble.”

  Chapter 12

  Before Val could pick up Kerry, she had to make a drop-off for Coreen. Though she’d already given her the first sum, Coreen quickly called back requesting more and had a higher figure and worse attitude. It seemed like since Kerry had gotten out of jail, Coreen was more demanding and daring. Her threats now included Kerry and the business and every bitter dispatch was tainted with what Val knew was jealousy for Kerry and disdain for the fact that Coreen had never been in that position in Jamison’s life. Val understood, so she took much of the fiery venom Coreen spat in her direction with the same kind of ambivalence and pacifying that Jamison had applied. She kept reminding herself that she was in control of Coreen and that at any moment, when she was ready to, she could and would handle that woman. Val was thinking that maybe Jamison’s lawyer was right and she’d just have to let Coreen do everything she was threatening to do. If she did, then she’d end up splitting what little money she had with Coreen when the old contacts and contracts at Rake it Up shriveled up with the demise of Jamison’s reputation. But Val wondered if there was another way to deal with Coreen and everything that came with her. After Coreen threatened that she’d next contact Kerry about her financial needs, Val knew she’d have to figure out something fast and final.