Mama Wati had caught the look and admonished him, “You watch where you put those eyes you crazy old man, or I’ll throw a conjure on you and make it shrivel up and crawl up inside you. You’re old enough to be this girl’s grandfather.”
Obadiah’s smile had been replaced with a frown that dragged his faux teeth down toward his chin. He’d flipped his top hat up into the air with one flick of his wrist. The hat had sailed end over end, finally landing on the old man’s shaggy white hair.
“Here, take this chicken and fry it up,” Mama Wati had commanded. The old woman had placed the dead chicken in the man’s outstretched hands, taken him by the shoulders and spun him around giving him a push toward the cottage. “It’s as scrawny as you but it’s good enough for our Feast of St. Johns.”
As Hussy had picked herself up out of the dirt, she’d looked over her shoulder and seen Obadiah disappear into a small bungalow at the edge of the cotton field, swinging the dead chicken by the neck like a feathered purse.
Mama Wati looked Hussey up and down for what seemed like forever to Hussey, taking her measure.
“Why don’t we go on in the house too?” Mama Wati said at last.
“I need to be getting home,” Hussey had said, taking a step backward. “My parents will be worried about me.” She looks like a harmless old lady, Hussey had thought, but there’s no way I’m going into that house with her.
“I wouldn’t harm a hair on your head child,” Mama had said, catching the apprehensive look in Hussey’s eyes. “Ain’t nothing in that house to be afraid of including me and Obadiah. He may give you a look like he wants to eat you, but there ain’t nothing to him but a look.” Mama had thrust her hands back on her hips and grinned at Hussey; her eyes had sparkled with warmth and humor. “I could tell your future.”
“I really should be getting home,” Hussey had said, taking another step backwards.
“Don’t you want to know your future child? Don’t you want to know if you are going to grow up to be rich and famous and discover some miracle cure to heal the afflicted or wind up waiting tables in a fish house?”
“Well, maybe just for a minute,” Hussey had said, calmed by Mama’s gaze and intrigued by the notion of knowing her future.
“Then follow me.” Mama Wati had led the way toward the small bungalow at the edge of the cotton field. Hussey had fallen in behind her noticing the setting sun, radiant red and yellow on the tin roof of the little house. It had looked to Hussey like the roof was ablaze, yellow flames leaping from a bed of crimson coals.
“What about the fire?” Hussey had said.
“It’ll burn out,” Mama had said over her shoulder. “Tomorrow, when the ashes get cold, Obadiah will scoop them up in a sack and scatter them all around the young cotton plants. It guarantees a good harvest, all part of St John’s Eve.”
Mama Wati had led the way toward the little bungalow, puffing on her cigar and leaving a trail of smoke like a freight train in its wake. As she’d trudged toward the house, her large hips swaying like two pigs in a sack, Mama had continued to talk. “St. John’s Eve is older than voodoo itself. It’s been celebrated for over five thousand years from the circle of stones at Stonehenge, to the mossy hills of Ireland, to the dark forests of Russia. In Norway and Sweden and Spain and Greece, Rome and Egypt, maybe as far back as Atlantis. It’s the celebration of spring, fertility, light and rebirth. It’s also called the summer solstice It was renamed after John the Baptist, who Jesus called ‘A burning and shining light.’ So, like most pagan holidays, the bible thumpers renamed it and Christianized it. They started calling it a celebration of St. John the Baptist instead of a celebration of the real burning and shining light, the sun. It’s the best time of the year to give the voodoo skills a little spring tonic, a bonfire booster shot. Makes the juices flow again after a long cold winter, for the plants and for the people.”
“If the Saint John celebration is all about Stonehenge, the druids and all, why is your husband wearing that blackface?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Mama Wati had said, “for some reason the spirit world responds better when he dresses up like this. Maybe it’s some kind of cosmic affirmative action program.”
Mama Wati had led Hussey across a fading whitewashed porch with spongy floorboards and placed her half-smoked cigar in an ornate gilt pedestal ashtray standing beside the door. The ashtray had been decorated with little cherubic figures around the bottom. “The cigar smoke chases away the demons,” Mama had explained to Hussey, “that’s all well and good for the fields, but if you chase away the demons in your house, sometimes you chase away your angels too. And we don’t want that, so I limit my smoking to the outdoors.” The house had once been painted forest green but had faded and peeled in the Florida sun to milky-green verdigris, the color of tarnished bronze. Two large windows flanked the varnished door in the center of the porch. The varnish had aged to a dark, sticky, pebbled finish. A tarnished horseshoe hung over the door, points up to catch the luck; a small crucifix hung in the belly of the metal shoe.
“You have demons in your house?” Hussey had tried to peek through the door. She hadn’t been able to see a thing through the windows. She definitely didn’t want to come face to face with a demon. She had heard her father preach about demons many times, big scaly things with horns and hoofs and long, sharp teeth. And her father had said they worked for the Devil.
“I don’t want to go in if you have demons in there.”
“Everybody’s got demons,” Mama had said. “Just not everybody knows it. Or if they do know it they just turn their back on them. Turning your back on your demons doesn’t make them go away; it just makes it easier for them to bite you in the ass.”
Hussey had wondered if she had demons living in her house too; maybe they were invisible demons. She hadn’t wanted to think about that. Her mother had once told her about the invisible mites hiding in her bed sheets and she hadn’t slept for a month. She’d taken a step forward and a floorboard had creaked, scaring her enough to make her jump backward. “Come along child.” Mama had held open the door for her. “I wouldn’t let no demons get you.”
The inside of the bungalow had looked bigger and nicer than Hussey had expected from the looks of the outside. It was furnished with a Victorian settee, matching chairs, and a marble-topped coffee table. The curtains had been drawn to keep the room shaded from the Florida sun. In the semi-darkness, Hussey had just made out tapestries and various prints of angels and Catholic Saints hung on the walls. Mama had ushered Hussey into a tiny parlor and motioned her toward one of two chairs that faced the sofa. “Sit,” Mama had commanded, pointing to a chair as she plopped deeply down into the sofa.
“Obadiah!” Mama Wati had bellowed in the general direction of what Hussey assumed was the kitchen. “Bring a pitcher of that sangria and some cookies. We got us a visitor.”
“Give me your hand girl and I’ll tell your future.” Mama had flipped on a tasseled lamp beside her, grasped Hussey’s tenuously extended hand, and examined her palm.
“My lord, girl.” Mama Wati had stared at Hussey’s outstretched palm, “Will you look at that! You got so much magic in you it’s running out your ears!”
Mama Wati had dropped Hussey’s hand, leaned forward and taken her face in both hands. She’d turned her chin left and right, looked deeply into her eyes. “Well, I’ll be damned. You’re a born voodun, girl. You got the gift all right, strong too, maybe even stronger than your gran—” She’d stopped, sat back in her chair and smiled at Hussey. “It’s about time you showed up, girl; you should have started your lessons a year ago!”
“Obadiah!” Mama Wati had yelled. “Hurry up with that pitcher of sangria … and try not to spill it!” To Hussey she’d said, “That man can trip over a pattern in the carpet.”
“Now,” Mama Wati had continued, turning back to Hussey, “if I’m going to teach you all about voodoo we have to start at the beginning. Voodoo started in Africa, a long time ago. It’s based on anc
ient African religions. When the slaves came to the Caribbean, the island of Santa Domingo, they blended it with the Catholicism of the Spanish. The French plantation owners made the Saints into voodoo gods.”
“Obadiah!” Mama had interrupted her lecture to bellow toward the kitchen again. “Get your old wrinkled ass in here with the sangria and bring some of those damned cookies! Training this girl is making me hungry.”
“Training me?” Hussey had said. “I thought you were going to tell my future.”
“Voodoo is your future girl: The dark arts, homemade sin.”
“I thought voodoo was in league with the devil,” Hussey had said, “some kind of witchcraft.”
“Nonsense.” Mama Wati had said. “My mother and her mother practiced voodoo back in Cuba, as far back as anyone can remember. I’ve been a Voodun since I was about your age. Now I stand tall with the unseen powers. I can make a reluctant lover pop the question; make a thief return what he stole; make sick folks well or well folks sick. And I can talk to the spirits that live in the forest, all kinds of things. I can even raise the dead.”
Nervous, Hussey had looked at her watch. It was near dinnertime and if she didn’t leave for home soon her parents would be worried.
Mama had noticed Hussey look at her watch. “We’re fixing’ to have our St John’s Eve feast, if you can call a scrawny, badly cooked chicken a feast. You’re welcome to join us. But I do mean badly cooked. That old man could burn canned corn. I say he cooks religiously … everything he cooks is either a burnt offering or a bloody sacrifice.”
“No.” Hussey had eyed the door. “Thank you for the invitation, I have to be getting home.” She hadn’t been sure what to think of Mama Wati, becoming the old woman’s apprentice, or voodoo in general.
Obadiah had entered the room carrying a large glass pitcher of ruby red liquid and a platter of cookies shaped like little voodoo dolls, with chocolate chips for eyes and little chocolate Xs across the mouth to simulate stitches. His progress across the room had been slow, as he poked a foot forward before each step so as not to trip. The sangria had sloshed around inside the pitcher.
“At least stay and have some cookies and punch,” Mama Wati had said.
With shaking hands Obadiah had passed around glasses and poured the sangria into each glass, spilling a little over the side of Mama Wati’s glass. Mama Wati had grimaced as the sticky liquid rolled down her hand and left a crimson pool on the white marble table.
“Damnit, old man! You clumsy clod, you spilled sangria all over me!”
As Obadiah had turned back toward the kitchen, holding the pitcher of sangria straight out in front of him, Hussey thought she’d seen a slight smile flicker across his face.
Mama had picked up her glass and taken a sip. “Drink up girl, the secret is I add a little brandy to the wine and fruit. It gives it a little extra kick.”
“I thought you said it was punch.” Hussey had sniffed the liquid in her glass. “I’m only thirteen; I’m not supposed to be drinking alcohol.”
“Hell,” Mama Wati had said, “it’s just fruit juice with a little wine mixed in. Drink up, it’s good for you.”
Hussey had taken a sip and smiled. “Tastes good,” she’d said. “I like it.”
“Never be afraid to try new things. The buzzards of destiny knew what they were doing when they sent you to me. It’s time to start your education; first you are going to learn the finer points of charms, amulets and talismans.” Mama had picked up a spoon from a side table and held it toward Hussey. “Take this spoon over to the fireplace and bring me back a spoonful of ashes.”
As Hussey bent to the fireplace to collect the ashes, Mama had hustled into the kitchen and returned with a large silver tray. In the center of the tray had been a marble mortar and pestle. Flanking the mortar and pestle on one side, had been an assortment of spice jars. On the other side of the tray, a tiny funnel and a small bowl filled with tiny, empty glass vials with equally miniscule cork stoppers.
“Now put the ashes in this little mortar.” Mama had held out the marble bowl for Hussey to deposit the ashes. “Now,” Mama had said, adding a dash or a dollop from each of the spice jars and stirring the mixture, “we will mix in some salt and some red pepper powder and dried parsley for color and mix it all up. Then we take this little funnel and pour our charm powder into these little glass vials. And when we attach a little silver chain, we have love charms to be worn around the neck of the charmer. And we can sell each of these little ‘guaranteed to work’ love charms for about fifty dollars apiece. I reckon we got about three hundred and fifty dollars in charms here; enough to buy groceries for a month.”
“But it’s just ashes and some spices,” Hussey had said. “There’s nothing special in those little vials to make someone love the person who wears it. I thought people used voodoo with weird stuff, like henbane, or bat’s wings, or ground rhino horn.”
“Voodoo is mostly done with the stuff you find laying around the house,” Mama had said. “You don’t actually need eye of newt or ground-up rooster testicles to throw a conjure. It’s all based on belief. If someone believes you can conjure them, then you can. What these charms have that we didn’t put in them is belief. If the wearer believes the charm will work, he or she will have more confidence in themselves around the one being charmed. By the time the person wearing the charm leaves here I will have waxed poetic about the great powers of this charm, devised by the ancient Egyptians, created from the ground-up hearts of great lovers though the ages, infused with all the power of the universe. When the wearer hangs this little glass vial of ashes around his or her neck they will be so convinced of the potency of the charm, their confidence will ooze right out of their pores. They’ll actually be cocky, arrogant about it, almost aloof when they are around the object of their affection. And there ain’t nothing sexier than someone who’s aloof and cocky; someone who acts like being loved is a foregone conclusion. That’s why this charm works; it ain’t what we put in it, it’s what the wearer puts in it.”
“Amazing,” Hussey had said, “it’s all just the power of suggestion.”
“Well, most of voodoo is the power of suggestion,” Mama had said. “A charm here, a conjure there, all mostly a whistle in the dark, but there is a dark side to voodoo too. Some things in voodoo are more chemical than conjure, like zombie powder.”
Hussey looked at her with skepticism.
“Never mind your doubts, just do what I say.” Mama had stood, crossed the room and disappeared through a door between the living room and the kitchen. Mama had left the door standing open behind her and through the door Hussey could just make out a bed; behind the bed she could see a whole wall of shelves filled with row after row of jars and bottles. Mama had returned carrying a jar of what looked like purple sand, and a thick, leather-bound book.
“Lesson number one,” Mama had said, passing the thick book to Hussey as she plopped back down on the couch. Hussey examined the book, on which the title, Conjures was written in beautiful script. “This book has been passed down from voodun to apprentice for two hundred years. It contains all the spells and recipes for potions and cures all the way back to Haiti, some even back to Africa.”
Hussey had leafed through the book while Mama talked. The book looked like it could be two hundred years old, the paper was yellowed parchment and the leather cover was so worn and cracked it looked brittle. She’d turned page after page of handwritten voodoo spells, recipes and potions. The margins of the pages had been filled with mysterious diagrams and symbols scribbled in a dozen different inks and handwriting styles.
“Do the spells work?” Hussey had asked.
“Of course they work!” Mama had said. “They wouldn’t be called spells if they didn’t work. In time you and I are going through this book, conjure by conjure and spell by spell. But not today.” Mama had taken the book from Hussey’s hands. “Hold out your hand, girl,” Mama had unscrewed the top of the jar containing the purple grains. “You know the
cow pasture where you try to get the buzzards to vomit on you?” Mama had poured some of the purple seeds into Hussey’s outstretched palm. “These here are mushroom seeds. I want you to take them to the pasture at night and sprinkle them on piles of fresh cow plop. Go back the next morning and pick the mushrooms. When you got you a sack of mushrooms, go into the woods and pick some nightshade … then come back here and I’ll show you how to make a potion that will bring back the dead.”
Hussey had wondered to herself how Mama Wati knew of the buzzard puking game.
“I know everything,” Mama had said aloud in response to Hussey’s thought.
The memory faded, bringing Hussey back into the present, as Mama’s house came into view. Hussey smiled to herself as she thought of the evening after her first encounter with Mama. How she had climbed out of her bedroom window in silence and with stealth that night, made her way to the lake, and placed a few mushroom seeds on top of every pile of cow flop she could find in the dark. A few she found with her bare feet, the poop oozing up through her toes. And for good measure, she sprinkled some of the seeds on top of the little puddles of buzzard vomit. Little did she know then, in the regurgitation of the eaters of the dead there was a spark of life. In the buzzard bile was purification and rebirth on a microscopic level, a ying and yang, a maypole dance of enzymes.
And even now, preparing to move away from Cassandra and start her new life, Hussey had no idea how that simple act of sprinkling a few mushroom seeds on drying puddles of buzzard vomit would change her life, and the lives of so many others.
Homemade Sin Page 3
