The Witch of Bourbon Street

by Suzanne Palmieri

  At night I always wore the gypsy clothes people expect to see when they come to get their fortunes told by a Sorrow witch. Especially Frances the Great. I was also quite the alchemist, concocting all the tinctures and oils for the shop downstairs.

  Every night, people came—by appointment only, which I found very fancy—and Eight Track would stand guard while I gave those people what they wanted—stories of love and happiness tinged by sadness so they felt true—and they gave me money for it. There was a little buzzer under the reading table in the parlor, so if someone got angry or drunk, I simply pressed it, and Eight Track came in and took care of the problem right quick.

  Everything seemed like it was okay. More than okay. Until that night I lounged in a booth with Jazz Man, and I’d had a little too much to drink. Eight Track was behind the bar, and he’d called out, “Frankie girl, look see who just walked in. Lookin’ all lost.” Eight Track always had a way of sucking the awkward out of any situation by saying the very thing that could make it even more awkward. I used to be able to wield my humor like that. I lost that somewhere down the line. That’s one thing Danny said during an angry fit a year into our marriage: “You used to be funny, you used to smile, now you walk around lookin’ dead inside.”

  I looked up that night and there he was. Danny. He’d come in from Tivoli only to find me all cuddled up with Jazz Man.

  He was so young. So was I. Sometimes, when I think on it, I get mad I ever expected him to act any differently.

  “What you want, Danny?”

  “I’m on my way … I mean, I’m leavin’. You know, for college. And I wanted to say that last month was, well, I just wanted to know if I could write to you or somethin’.”

  I didn’t mean to laugh. And it was a cruel little laugh that escaped my lips. Jazz Man laughed, too. I felt like an older woman that night. Sultry, without a care in the world. Besides, Danny was leaving. And he’d already had his chance. His feeling torn up about it wasn’t bothering me. Not. At. All.

  “Move along now, little man. I don’t know what this fine woman saw in your skinny ass anyways.” Jazz Man smirked, taking a long drag of his cigarette.

  “Look, mister, I’m a quarterback. Gonna be all-American. Frankie, this guy is a grown man. Does he even know how old you are? She’s fifteen, did you know that?”

  Jazz Man left right quick after that, muttering, “It just ain’t right,” the whole way out the door. I never did find out if Danny did that on purpose. Not that it mattered.

  Danny reached for my hand. “Come on, Frankie, come outside. Let’s say good-bye the right way. I didn’t mean to ruin your date.”

  “My date? Danny, I’ve been here for a whole month now. You didn’t ruin my date, you just broke up an entire relationship! I’m not yours anymore.” My voice trembled more than I wanted.

  “If he really loves you, it won’t matter.”

  “What are you talking about? That man is out there now thinking he’s a damn pedophile and never knew it! And what are you talking love for? You think there’s always got to be love?” I said harshly, and pulled nervously at my necklace, a chain with a key shaped like a mermaid tail inscribed with the words, “She came from the sea.” He’d found it while we combed the beaches of Saint Sabine Isle. That was love, not this, this is life.

  “You still wear that?”

  “Of course! Why wouldn’t I? I loved you once, didn’t I? You sure you still got your senses? Good luck at college, Danny. Seems to me your dumb self is gonna need it. I swear.” I gave him a quick shove and ran upstairs. And that damn fool ran right after me.

  We made all kinds of magic that night, but he still left. And I acted like I didn’t care.

  “They always leave,” said Simone at the bar the next day. “Chin up, girl. You your own strength.”

  I never saw Jazz Man again. A month later I found out my own body betrayed me, carrying a child I couldn’t fathom meeting. I went to bed each night staring into that mirror, the one that dates back to Serafina. Sometimes I’d even place my hands on it and beg her to let me inside, to fix everything that was broken, to talk to me the way my family told me she would. But all she gave me, month after month, was a growing belly. Danny wrote a few letters, called a few times. Maybe even more than a few … but letters and phone calls are easy. Staying is hard.

  And all I could think of was Dida, Mama, Millie, and Old Jim. Heck, I even wanted JuneBug. I wanted everything I had always known through and through. All I wanted was to go home to Sorrow Hall. But something held me back. A stubbornness, sure. I’m stubborn as all heck. But it was bigger than that. How does the queen of the world, Frances the Great, get knocked up and not know if the father was a fool boy or a second-rate musician, and either way, neither of them loved her enough to stick around? How does that even happen? Witches ought to be able to see those kinds of things coming. Turns out I wasn’t anything special at all. Just a lovesick, stupid girl dressing up like a freak and spinning lies for money. Would Dida, Claudette, and Millie still love me if they knew I wasn’t powerful after all? And that’s when it hit me: None of us knew what love was. Because we were all so damn in love with that ridiculous Sorrow legend. It eclipsed everything. But so what if I wasn’t a witch? Choke, gasp, horror of my life … I had more pressing issues. I had a baby on the way. And I was gonna have it. It’d be fine.

  It had to be fine.

  “You’d think we could conjure some more money, right, Eight Track?” I had laughed uneasily after glancing at the books.

  He’d smiled at me. “I heard tell that Serafina did that very thing. That true, Frances?”

  “If you’d asked me last week, I’d have said yes and started trying it myself. But I’ve seen the light, and now all I can say is, raise the prices on that whiskey, will you?”

  “You a fine businesswoman for someone so young, Frankie.” Then his face grew serious. “I’m sorry I let Danny tell that good-for-nothin’ Jazz Man how young you are. But if he really loved you, he wouldn’t have taken off all scared of a law we both know you could have fought.”

  “Don’t worry, Eight Track. It’ll all work out.”

  “Or it won’t,” he’d said. “But either way it still works out, right? ’Cause we can’t control what happens to us, just how we react. Either way I’ll help you. You know I’ll always be here for you. I have been since you were little and came in like a ray of sunshine. Ain’t nothin’ gonna change that.”

  “I know.” I’d hugged him.

  It’d be fine. It had to be fine.

  It would be fine. No one would be angry with me. Heck, I came from a family that would have celebrated such a disastrous thing. Unwed teenage motherhood was a right of passage or something. The odder the better … I walked out into the bright sunshine of Bourbon Street with my heart almost light.

  But then I saw them, a family.

  The little boy rode on his father’s shoulders, and the mother held a little girl’s hand. And the shared smiles that kept breaking out over their faces were more magical than anything I’d ever seen. Entranced, I found myself following after them.

  I watched them for a whole day.

  I watched how the mother always seemed to have whatever any of them needed, right there in her bag. Abracadabra, a Band-Aid. Poof! A tissue. A bottle of water, a box of crayons. A sweater.

  I watched how the father gently disciplined them. “Don’t touch, too hot … ow!” he’d say as their eyes grew wide.

  I watched how they did a graceful dance of safety, always making sure the kids were on the inside of the sidewalk instead of walking by the curb. Even as they grew tired and the kids started to cry, those parents still smiled at each other and shared secret eye language that promised warm bodies pressed against the tide of chaos when they were safely back in their hotel and those little monsters, their beloved monsters, were asleep.

  Then, as twilight hit the French Quarter, the parents—knowing it would soon be a den of iniquity and no place for their darlings—g
ot into a cab. I was sad to see them go. Then I was just sad.

  * * *

  When I returned to 13 Bourbon Street, I saw the place already packed with the usual crowd. Drunken tourists, regulars, and just plain old lost souls searching for cures that would never help, looking for the hopeful lies I’d tell them about their futures.

  I couldn’t bring myself to go in. Instead I wandered off toward the Old Ursuline Convent. There’s a marble tomb there, raised up to keep it safe from the waters that rise without warning sometimes, and when I was a child I loved sitting on it and talking to that little girl, the Lost Girl of August. The memorial carved into that stone meant more to me that night than it ever had before:

  HERE LIES THE BODY OF THE LOST GIRL OF AUGUST.

  BORN—UNKNOWN. DIED—AUGUST 1901.

  A REMINDER TO ALL THOSE STORM-TOSSED SOULS: CHILDREN ARE GOD’S CREATURES FIRST.

  LET NO OTHER CHILD DIE ALONE.

  Alone. I’d felt loved yet alone my whole life. Between that family I’d watched all throughout the French Quarter and the Lost Girl of August, I’d made up my mind.

  The baby deserved what I’d never had. Something I’d made fun of, turned away from. Something I’d been taught to disdain. The baby deserved a normal life. Uncomplicated. Free. Safe.

  Eight months later, I gave that beautiful secret to Eight Track. And even though we’d worked the whole thing out, he was still trying to give me grief. I’d just pushed a baby out all by myself at sixteen years old, and that man was trying to father me, a wild girl who wanted nothing but a father but didn’t know how to listen to one.

  “You bein’ too hard on yourself, Frances. You just a child, you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.…”

  “I know, but this is better for her. Just take her. You and Simone raise her like your own. But don’t tell nobody. I’ll die, I swear it. Nobody can know.”

  “Ain’t you gonna miss her? Want her back?”

  “She deserves better than me. I’m a lie from a long line of other lies. Make her true, Eight Track. Make her strong. Not false like they made me. Don’t lie to her. Make her like Simone’s voice and your strong arms. Fill her up with your goodness. Okay?”

  “When she gets big, you want me to tell her who her real family is?”

  “An honest person knows when to tell a lie, Eight Track. That’s from The Book of Sorrows. I never knew what that meant until just now. It’s better if she doesn’t know. Tell her I died. Because, I did. I did die. I’ll never be the same person again.”

  By then I was crying, and Eight Track was sitting on the bed holding that quiet baby, who was already watching her world fall apart. Already soaking up tears that weren’t hers.

  “You ain’t no lie, Frankie. And you still magic, you hear? Even if you don’t want that to be the case, it is. You can’t change that. You can’t be someone you ain’t. Just ’cause something ain’t the way you thought it would be, don’t mean there ain’t no truth to it. Sometimes … sometimes the true thing is even better.”

  He was making some sort of sense, and I didn’t want any doubts. “Get out!” I screamed. And kept screaming long after he’d taken my baby away and hidden her inside what I believed would be a better life.

  And with my body aching for her, my crumbling faith fell apart completely. I knew that no one on earth had ever been more wrong about anything.

  I wasn’t the queen of anything. I wasn’t magic. My family wasn’t magic. I was nothing but a poor, backwoods girl with a foul mouth and a fistful of mud.

  The day after I had her, I returned to the bayou. My body sore, my heart sorer.

  “She’s lost her mind,” I heard them whisper my first night home. I’d walked up the stairs slowly, almost falling through the rotting ones I used to avoid with ease. I was silent but screaming inside.

  The next day, I found my mama in her usual spot in the back gallery, turning over cards. The whipping sound soothed her. I wanted to talk to her because I hoped she knew my secret. She was supposed to be the mind reader.

  See it. Prove me wrong. Make me believe. See what I’ve done. Oh, Mama, see it. I’ve made a terrible mistake. One I can’t take back. I can’t speak of it, Mama, you have to see it.

  I held my breath, hoping against hope.

  “What’s the matter with you, girl?” she said, sensing me standing there. “Someone break your heart? If so, you just tell Old Jim and he’ll make sure whoever it was makes a nice meal for the alligators. You know there ain’t nothin’ he won’t do for you, Little Bit.”

  “He can’t tell me the truth,” I said.

  “What does that mean? Your granddaddy ain’t never told a lie.”

  “He doesn’t know he’s lying. You’re all lying. We’re nothin’ but fakes.…” My voice came out sharp and unforgiving as those hateful words that covered the truth I couldn’t tell came pouring out.

  She listened, I’ll give her that, and when I finished my tirade, she pushed back a stray wisp of her thin blond hair and asked, “But what about the facts, Frances? What about those people who come to New Orleans just to see us and have us read their fortunes? We even have a place in that book, The Top Ten Most Psychic Families, or whatever it’s called.”

  As if that were all we needed to make it true.

  “So what if we can do a little more than most when it comes to being strange?” I argued. “What makes that magic? Some families, they have generations of people who are athletes, or entertainers, or politicians. Talents, that’s all it is. Something one of us decided we were good at a long time ago, and then we made up a bunch of silly fairy tales around it. Blew it up in our minds. All I see is a freak show, Mama. A carnival act. All those people who make fun of us, who steer clear and snicker when we go into town? They’re right. How about that? We’ve been making fools of ourselves for a hundred years, and you all can keep right on doing that. But I’m done.”

  Dida had snuck in and was waiting in the doorway. “You can’t be done,” she piped up. “You’re the best of us. You’re the shining hope, honey. You’re the one Serafina will speak to. Whatever happened to you, you’ll get over it. It just takes some time, sugar.”

  “Why don’t you know?” I whispered.

  “Know what?” they both asked.

  “Why don’t you know why I’ve changed? If you’re all so full of the power, why don’t you whip up some truth tea? Your cards ain’t tellin’ you nothin’? And while you’re trying to explain why you can’t ‘see’ what made me lose my mind, why not try and explain how any of you, if you love me so damned much, let me move to New Orleans by myself to run a bar! I was only fifteen years old. Who does that? You never even asked why I was leaving, because you didn’t want to know. All stoic and proudly wearing your lies.”

  “You’ve always had a mind of your own, Frances. We trust you. You’ve been grown since you were born. Besides, can you imagine if we’d tried to stop you?” asked Claudette.

  “But you didn’t try. And now I can’t fix it, I can’t fix it!” I yelled, slamming my way out into the back gardens so they wouldn’t see the tears fall.

  “Where are you going?” Claudette called after me.

  From the shadows, I watched her grip the side of the table and stand up shakily in that way that used to make me want to run to her and help, to feel her soft skin against my cheek, and then move away so she’d have to try to find my face with her hands. I loved how she would run her hands over my features. But now even her shaking seemed like an act. She’d walked this house and property her whole life, she must have memorized it by now. She was just pretending not to know. They all pretended not to know, like it was too much trouble to try to fix what had been broken in me. I hated her in that moment. I hated everything.

  “I’m going to the Voodoo. And I’m going to drink. And you should stop me, because that’s what I hear mothers are supposed to do. But you won’t!”

  She sat back down. She didn’t call after me. She just sat down, head cocked to one
side, and started turning over those cards of hers again, listening longer to whatever she thought those raised braille numbers were telling her than she did to my silent cries for help.

  I never lived there again. After a few nights with Millie at the Voodoo, I decided to move into the little shack down by the docks. Still on Sorrow soil, but tucked out of view in an area even more overgrown than that big house. If you can imagine.

  Mama came to find me once, right when I was fixin’ the place up. She used those ropes Old Jim had strung up all over the property after she went blind and raised, year after year, as she grew. Now they’re overgrown with vines and flowers so you can’t see the rope at all. I sort of love them.

  “Come home,” she said. “I need you.”

  “That’s exactly the problem, Mama. Children need their parents. You’re not supposed to need me. It’s backwards. Like everything else in this family. Besides, if you need me so much, why did you let me go away in the first place? You only need me now because I’m convenient.”

  She left, angrily calling out after her, “Ingrate!” And so I cut the ropes. And the next day when I saw Old Jim trying to repair them, I yelled, “Don’t you dare, old man! I cut it on purpose.”

  He stopped and looked at me with that heavy sort of disappointment he covers up his anger with. “You just let me know when you get on with the forgive and forget part of this tantrum, and I’ll put it back up, okay, Little Bit?”

  I don’t remember what I said, but it must’ve been something mean because he smiled and said, “See? You ain’t that different.”

  A few years later, I was back with Danny. And things were more rocky than before because there was a lie of omission inside each exhale. In the end, I always came home to that little shack, the silence of hiding becoming my norm. No one ever questioned it. But the whole while, I couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if I had kept my baby.…

  * * *

  I had to stop all this remembering. I had to move on, move forward. Things were changing. Red phlox in hand, I shook myself from my reverie, got in my boat, and pushed along, my eyes catching on something in the distance.