The Witch of Bourbon Street

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “Sippie,” I said, “you can ask me anything. We ain’t got nothin’ but time right now.”

  She glanced at me, then glanced down. And when she looked back up, there was a soft pleading in her eyes that made me want to wrap her back up in that little quilt and pull us both back in time. In that moment, I’d have given it all up, the life I lived with Danny … even Jack. In that one moment, I felt sure that if given the chance, I’d just turn back time and undo all the wrong. Because the Sippie I was looking at was the real one. Not the brave-faced girl who found all the exit signs. No, this was me, looking at myself in the mirror when I was her age. Terrified, broken, lost. Hold it together, Frances. Whatever she asks you, you damn well better tell her the truth. That girl deserves that.

  “Okay, here goes … and you know you got to just tell me the truth, because I’ll be able to tell by your eyes if you’re lyin’.”

  Damn. This is going to be hard. “I’m ready, Sip. Hit me.”

  “Do you like my name?”

  I have a terrible habit of laughing at the most inappropriate times. Sometimes it’s shock. Sometimes it’s the simple absurdity of the world. But that time, I’m pretty damn sure it was relief that she hadn’t asked something bigger. All I know is she started laughing, too, with a small, tight smile that broke into a full-on How much more ridiculous can this life get? grinning, hysterical, rolling-on-the-floor sort of laugh.

  “Yes,” I gasped, breathless. “I love your name.”

  “I’m glad.” Sippie beamed. “Well, now that we got that out of the way.… What should we do now?”

  “Well, we can’t go out, can’t look for Jack, can’t do nothin’ but wait for Danny. Then I’ll brave the streets with him.”

  “I don’t like not being able to do anything, no exits…,” Sippie murmured.

  “I know you don’t, sugar. I spent far too long feeling the same way, and then I realized I’d walled myself completely in. My exit became a prison of sorts. Now, when I used to feel that way, Dida would tell me stories. How about I tell you a story?”

  “Can you tell me something I don’t know, something from when you were little?”

  “Something good, or something bad?”

  “Both.” Sippie grinned.

  “I like the way you think! Okay, so, once, when I was no more than five, when everyone still believed I could change all our futures, Dida and I were digging up roots and wild plants on the banks of the bayou when I saw a bird’s nest on the ground with eggs in it all cracked and lonely.…

  * * *

  “Can we pick it up and take it home, Dida? Maybe we can save them and bring them back to their mama. You got the healing touch. I bet you could do it.”

  “No, cha. We don’t wanna mess wit nature. You see, nature takes care of itself just fine.” Juss fahn. “Wish we were all a little bit more like that, don’ you? Lettin’ things be as they are, without fussin’ ovah what could have or should have been. When we meddle wit fate, that’s when things turn sour. It was all that meddlin’ way back that caused dis sorry family to lose our way.”

  “But won’t the mama bird be sad when she comes back? No nest, no babies, no nothin’?”

  “I don’t rightly know the workings of a mama bird’s mind, Frankie girl. But I guarantee she won’t be weepin’ and carryin’ on. She won’t be jumpin’ off no bridge or drownin’ that grief in a bottle of whiskey. Nope. She’ll be strong and brave. She’ll have more babies someday. That’s the thing about birds, about all living creatures who ain’t us. They soldier on just fine. But people? We get turned all inside out until we can’t remember what’s what.”

  “Like my mama?”

  “Like your mama and a bunch of Sorrow mamas before her. We can’t remember that time when the world was ours and the sun felt good on our skin. All we know now is that deep ache you got right in your heart, the one that makes you downright miserable about those eggs. Sooner you learn you can’t fix what’s broke, the sooner you might help us out of this whole mess.”

  “But I thought that was my job to fix it? Make everything like it was?”

  Dida stopped to take a hard look at me.

  “It’s important you understand the difference between the words fix and heal. You hear me, child? You can’t fix anything, but you can heal it. Broken things are better when they’re healed. But once a thing is broken, it never goes back to bein’ all nice and new. The trick is to fix it up and make it useful again. You have the power to do all that. You’ll be the one to find the cracks, glue the pieces back together, and heal us. Then those who come after you won’t ever remember bein’ anything other than happy and useful. And the beauty of it is the cracks will still be there, ever so light, so they know nothin’s perfect and nothin’s supposed to be perfect. What a day that will be.” Dida got a far-off look in her eyes.

  I sat on the grass in front of her, thinking.

  “That would be sad. If my babies and their babies didn’t remember the way it was … the way it is. Seems the remembering would be like a … um … a warning. Right? A warning to not be foolish like Edmond and Helene.”

  “You remember when I told you not to eat those molasses cookies right out of the oven last Christmas?”

  I’d burned the roof of my mouth so bad, the skin peeled right off. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now, did that warning do you any good?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You know why?”

  I shook my head. The day was getting hotter, and the roots I carried had a strong scent that was making me dizzy. I was starting to feel sorry I’d ever mentioned that nest.

  “I’ll tell you why. See, if I warn you about something, it’s human nature to want to see for ourselves. But if I’d just hid those damn cookies till they was cool enough to not burn you, I’d have saved you some pain and me that evil scolding your mama gave me.”

  “You think she loves me ’cause she loves me, Dida? Or you think she loves me ’cause she thinks I’ll get strong enough to help her get to see for real?”

  “You look here, child. Claudette loves you the best she knows how. And she loves you more than she ever loved anything. Why does it even matter? Love is love. Claudette is like that mama bird ’bout to come back and find that nest of yours. She’s brave and strong and knows life hands out terror and pain. Nature is nature, cha. And the Sorrow women, well, maybe we’ve all become a little too much like Crow here.”

  Crow lit on her shoulder right then. He was always around.

  “I don’t mind bein’ like Crow,” I said.

  “I know. But something’s missin’, don’t you think? Crow flies and takes things as they come. He don’t ask for anything else but a sunny day and a cool drink of water.”

  Wahtah.

  I loved it when her speech got lazy. It meant she was relaxed.

  “How that sound to you, Little Bit? Never having a real true feelin’. Just floatin’ along from branch to petal to my shoulder here.”

  “It sounds … hollow,” I said.

  Dida laughed so hard then that Crow went flyin’ off in a scattering of feathers.

  “That is the truest thing I heard in a long time. Maybe you weren’t born to fix anything at all, Frankie girl. Maybe you was just born to remind us what it’s like to be less like Crow here and more like those wailin’ people surprised when the world don’t go their way. Maybe you are here”—heah—“to fill us up and take away some of that hollow. Dat sound bettah to you?”

  “No. It don’t. And I don’t think Crow thinks like that. I think he feels a lot of things. I think he’s different from all the other birds that ever were birds at all. Ever.”

  * * *

  “And I think I was right about that, don’t you, Sippie,” I said, finishing. “Reading that history made me remember that conversation with Dida, and I can’t quite believe I ever forgot it. I mean, I’d already somehow figured out what I would do. Only I didn’t know it would be me that would be that mama bird.”

&
nbsp; “You aren’t like that. You’re not hollow,” she said raspily.

  “You don’t know. I think I was, while I was all holed up.”

  “No … Let me tell you about hollow,” she said through tears I wished so hard I could make go away.

  “It was hot the night Simone … left … even for New Orleans,” Sippie began. “She’d made dinner wearing her white slip and those shiny, red high heels she’d bought with the last of our small stash of cash she kept in a Crisco can. She had her hair wrapped tight and kept patting the back of her neck with a cool, damp cloth as she turned the chicken over in the skillet.

  “‘Fried chicken on a night like tonight, I tell you I must be crazy,’ she said, picking up a cigarette from the ashtray on the counter. I was standing on the kitchen chair, talking too much like usual. From the day I could talk, Simone told me I never shut up.

  “I was the child who sucked the life right out of her.

  “She’d make fun of me, repeating what I’d say in a baby voice. ‘Where you goin’, Mama, wit your heels on like dat? You goin’ singin’ again? You know Daddy don’t like that. You should stay here. I got a funny feelin’. Daddy say, always trust your feelin’s.’

  “Then she’d say, ‘Shut that rosebud maw of yours, girl. I’m here cookin’ like a fool so you and that man can eat nice. I do what I want to do—hell, I do what I got to do to keep you fed and clothed and … Look at me, trying to explain myself to you. Go on, git out. I got to finish this. I’ll burn it all up if you keep talking.’

  “When the food was done, she practically threw it at me and Eight Track. ‘Come on, y’all. Come and eat up. I got to go finish puttin’ on my face.’

  “The food was perfect … chicken, stewed okra, and tomatoes, grits. Simone could cook. And she could sing. And she could run. But that night, that night she decided to take me with her, and I still don’t know why. All I know is that Eight Track was drunk, they had a fight, and she grabbed me. I was still in my nightgown, and her dress … it was so pretty, and her bangles were jingling. And she brought me here. And then…”

  Sippie couldn’t stop covering her ears, yelling, “I can’t stop hearing her. All I want is for her to stop.”

  “Honey, maybe you keep hearing her sing because she has something to tell you.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned recently, it’s that you’re gonna have to try and listen. Really listen.”

  “How?”

  “You got some power when you sleep, Sippie. Some way to see things we both know are true. You saw Jack without Crow because you willed yourself there. Why not try that now? She’s callin’ you, sugar, you should answer.”

  Tears streamed down her face. She looked so lonesome.

  “I think I have to do it now, get it over with.… I just go to sleep? Right? I don’t want to hear it anymore,” she said.

  “Hush, love, come with me.” I brought her into the room where she was born. “Open your mouth, baby … there,” I said, placing a few drops of valerian honey under her tongue.

  And then I lay down with her, my half-awake, lost-and-found-again Sippie Wallace Sorrow, who put her head in the crook of my arm and fell asleep, trying to shut out a world of memories that I knew, from far too much experience, she’d have to face sooner or later.

  25

  Jack Meets the Sorrow Echoes

  Belinda holds Jack’s hand tightly as they skim through the fixed world. It looks too perfect, too still. She takes him past the Sorrow Estate—Jack can’t believe he’s seeing it in all its former grandeur—then over Sorrow Bay and around the lighthouse to Meager Swamp.

  “I thought I knew this area better than anyone,” he says, looking at the piece of land, obscured by bald cypress, just north of the swamp.

  “This was a part of Tivoli Parish once, I think. Papa said he sold it when he found out there were people there years ago that had slaves. Papa doesn’t believe in that. Neither do I. Do you?”

  “Bee, I’m a Sorrow, like you. We don’t think that way. Unless someone is downright stupid. Those people? Well … that’s another story.”

  Bee laughs—beautiful chimes sounding—before growing serious again. “Well, I think stupid and evil walk hand in hand, Jack. And they walk here … right here.…”

  They find themselves sitting in the center of a meadow full of violets. And shadows of time, come and gone, grow and fade as they sit, unmoving, and wait.

  “What are we waiting here for?”

  “I don’t know. Do you hear your name?”

  Jack listens. Then listens harder.

  “Jack…”

  He can’t believe it, but he does. He hears his name.

  “How do I go to it? How do I go to the voice?”

  “Close your eyes, and let yourself go. That’s all. And when you finish hearing what they have to say, you’ll be back here with me. That’s when it gets très triste.”

  “What?”

  “Sad. That’s what happens here. It’s like a payment or something. I don’t quite understand. But you go; I’ll stay here and wait.”

  Jack closes his eyes and meets with his sister, Sippie.

  Bee watches him smile, laugh. She hears the love growing. When he opens his eyes again, he is disappointed to be back.

  “That was your sister, no?”

  “It was. She’s going to try and save us.”

  “Save you. No one can save me, Jack.”

  “Maybe I can.”

  “Are you ready?” asks Bee. “Best prepare yourself…” She trails off.

  “Time to pay?”

  “Yes, the sad things, the terrible things, have begun to take form.” She squeezes his hand.

  Jack looks across the field, seeing the shadows of so much evil. Native people dying, slaves being beaten and hung, plantation houses being built and then razed. Dark storms and sour land. Then he watches as a small house is built and whitewashed, and a woman sits on the porch and cries.

  “Who is she?”

  “I don’t know,” says Bee. “She’s stuck, too.”

  “Can we talk to her?”

  “You can try. She can’t see me. But that doesn’t mean she can’t see you.”

  Jack walks to the porch. The woman, her skin so black and her dress so white, is sitting on a faded, peeling rocking chair.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” he asks.

  The woman looks up, startled.

  “You Jack?”

  Jack isn’t surprised. Nothing is surprising him anymore.

  She stands up, and with her hands shaking, she hands him something wrapped in a handkerchief.

  “That be all I got. All I got for my whole life. And I gave it to my girl. Lord, I let that man … I let him … Jack…”

  The woman falls to her knees, opening her mouth in a silent scream. He feels tears prick his eyes.

  He unwraps the soft fabric and finds a pin, like a star, filled with opals.

  “It’s beautiful,” he says, not knowing what to do.

  “Give it back, you can’t do nothin’, no one can do nothin’! Git! Git out! Git out ’fore I make sure you stay in dis place forever!”

  Jack runs back to Bee.

  “Can we leave now?” he says, wiping tears away with his arm.

  “Yes, Jack. I’m sorry. Yes, we can go. Let’s see my family now, ça va?”

  “Please,” he says, and in a blink they are back on Sorrow land. “What is that all about, anyway?”

  “Who knows. I don’t have any answers … but just look, Jack! Sorrow Hall. Isn’t it grand?” she says.

  “I’ve seen it like this before, sort of. Not as real, or perfect, though.”

  “How? Do you have magic?”

  “All Sorrows have magic.”

  “Really? Mother says it’s a gift from the devil, and we don’t have it because she’s from God. I’ve never been able to do anything magical, and I’ve tried with Rosella.”

  Jack knows R
osella is the one history remembers as the voodoo witch. But he doesn’t say it. “Well, you’re here, ain’t you? You got magic f’true.”

  “You speak like you don’t read enough, mon cher.”

  “And you talk like you read too much, little girl.”

  “There is no such thing as reading too much. And I’m only a little younger than you. And probably much older when you think on it.”

  They walk up onto the lawns.

  “These are my sisters. Aren’t they beautiful? SuzyNell is the prettiest, but she’s planning on eloping. No one knows I know, but I do. And Mae, Lavinia, Grace … and Edwina, who looks mostly like Mama, though with dark hair. They can’t see us. I love having sisters, do you have sisters?”

  “I do. Only I just found out.”

  “How come you only just find out?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Was she the one who called to you?”

  “Yes, she was.”

  “Does that make you sad that you don’t know her very well?”

  “Does it make you sad that your sisters can’t see you here?”

  “It used to. Oh! Look! There I am! I’m pretty, too.”

  “You are. But that’s got to be strange, Bee. Seein’ yourself like that.”

  “A little, but you get used to it.” She sighs, gazing happily at her family. “Want to see what really makes me sad?” she asks, her face falling.

  “If you want to show me, Bee,” Jack agrees. He doesn’t wish to feel sad, but he’d rather be here than stuck in that strange room looking at his sleeping body, unable to wake.

  They walk into the house, and the world loses its fixed nature. All the walls seem hard and soft at the same time, like a sheer curtain tinted in blue. “This way…,” she says, climbing the stairs. “Stand here.”

  Jack and Belinda stand on one end of a long hallway flanked with open porticoes out to second-story porches.

  “Here she comes,” Bee says softly.