Unsympathetic Magic

by Laura Resnick

  “And another theory is that they didn’t have cameras back then, so they painted the story of their big day out on the savannah,” Jeff said, flirting with her. “Hoping to impress the girls back at the cave.”

  She smiled again, responding to his charm.

  I was less susceptible, since I was well acquainted with the neuroses and vanity that came with Jeff’s charm.

  Puma said, “But sympathetic magic does go back thousands of years.”

  I asked with a slight feeling of dread, “Do you have a Ph.D. in anthropology, too?”

  She looked puzzled by the question. “No. I have an undergraduate degree in business.”

  “Oh, good,” I said.

  Max took up her theme. “Sympathetic magic, evoked through effigies and fetishes, was and is practiced in cultures all over the world. Poppets like these—” He gestured to the voodoo dolls. “—were common for centuries in European sympathetic magic.”

  “Do you mean witchcraft?” Jeff asked.

  “For the most part.”

  “In fact,” Puma said, “the voodoo doll was adapted from the European poppet.”

  “Hmm.” Jeff examined the doll in his hands. Then his gaze moved to a nearby display of Catholic ritual objects. “So what’s the foundational text in Vodou? The Bible?”

  Puma shook her head. “There isn’t a foundational text.”

  “Really?” I was surprised. “Nothing like the Koran? The I Ching? The Book of Mormon?”

  “No. Vodou developed as the religion of slaves—people who weren’t taught to read or write,” Puma explained.

  “But the slaves revolted and drove the French out of Haiti two hundred years ago.” Jeff said to me, “It was well worth the effort, but it was a brutal conflict, and Haiti’s happy ending still seems a long way away.”

  Thinking of Haiti’s grinding poverty in our era, and particularly of the massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake that had devastated the country and killed a horrifying number of people, I thought it did indeed seem to be a nation bereft of its just rewards as a society where slaves had overthrown their captors and founded a free republic.

  “Even today, Haiti’s literacy rate is only a little more than fifty percent,” Puma said. “And it was much lower in the nineteenth century. So Vodou is an oral tradition, not a written one. The rituals and beliefs have been passed down verbally, for many generations, right up until our current-day mambos and houngans—who will leave behind their knowledge orally, too.”

  “So that’s the only way you can learn about it?” Jeff asked. “In person?”

  “Oh, there are books about Vodou; just no books of Vodou.” Puma added, “And actually, there aren’t that many good books about it. Nowhere near as many as there are about other major religions. It’s always been misunderstood and misinterpreted by outsiders, and until pretty recently, it was dismissed as a superstition rather than respected as a religion.” Being a canny shop-keeper, she added, “I’ve got some of the better books about Vodou in stock, if you’re interested.”

  “How major a religion is voo—Vodou?” I asked curiously.

  “There are an estimated sixty million practitioners worldwide.”

  “Wow! I had no idea.” Jeff looked at me. “They’ve sure overtaken your tribe.”

  “Yes, but we’re the Chosen People,” I said, “which is an exclusive club.”

  “I was raised slightly Methodist,” Jeff told Puma. “So this is unfamiliar territory to me. And Mambo Celeste, the voodoo priestess who works at the foundation—”

  “Yes, I know her well,” said Puma. “She and I studied Vodou under the guidance of the same houngan.”

  “You and that—that—that—er, Mambo Celeste studied with the same teacher?” I asked in surprise. “I mean, with the same priest thingy?”

  “Houngan, Esther,” Jeff said with exaggerated patience. “Houngan.”

  Like he knew the lingo.

  “Well, not at the same time, of course.” Puma was probably thirty years younger than Celeste. “But we did have the same teacher.”

  “So you’re a mambo, too?” I asked.

  “No, I’m not.” She shook her head. “I considered that path very seriously when I was younger, and I’ve been involved in the local Vodou community since my teens. My mother was worried at first. Like a lot of people who only know what they’ve seen in bad movies, she was afraid that Vodou was some sort of devil worship or crazy cult. Once she understood it better, though, she supported my faith, even though she didn’t share it. But she wouldn’t agree to me becoming an initiate—training to be a priestess, that is—until after I went to college and got a degree. She was strict about that. And she was right, too. By the time I finished school, I realized that I didn’t have a true calling to become a mambo, and my real path unfolded before me.” Puma’s gesture encompassed the shop around us. “I combined my passion for Vodou with my talent for business.”

  “Was your houngan disappointed?” Max asked curiously.

  “Oh, no! He encouraged me to follow my bliss.”

  “And is he still among us?” Max asked.

  “He’s still alive, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “But he’s not still here in New York. He went back to his birthplace in Haiti to help people after the earthquake. He had recently turned seventy, and we were all so worried about him going, given what conditions were like down there after the quake. But he felt a calling to restore the spiritual center of people’s lives there after all that they had lost.” Her expression glowed with affection and respect. “We don’t hear from him very often, but once in a while he lets us know that he’s all right. And I think he intends to stay there.”

  “He was Celeste’s teacher?” Jeff said with a frown. “It, uh, doesn’t really seem like she took after him.”

  “Not many people do,” Puma said tactfully. “He’s a remarkable man.”

  “It sounds like it. But, to be honest, the impression that Celeste has given me of her religion,” said Jeff, “is that it’s mostly about having a pet snake.”

  “Well, snakes are venerated in Vodou,” Puma said. “But I guess it’s fair to say that carrying one around the way she does . . .”

  “And such a big one,” I said.

  “Is a silly and dangerous affectation?” Jeff suggested.

  Puma said to me, “You’ve met Napoleon?”

  “Yes. Earlier today.”

  “Between the baka and the mambo’s boa constrictor, you’ve have a rough twenty-four hours, haven’t you?” she said sympathetically.

  That seemed like an understatement to me, but I grunted in agreement. “Surely she doesn’t walk around the city with Napoleon draped over her shoulders? Or get on the subway? I mean, if she can get on a train with a seven-foot long boa constrictor, while the MTA balks at letting Nelli on public transportation—well! That’s just not fair!”

  “Who’s Nelli?” Jeff asked with a frown.

  “Max’s dog.”

  “The mambo doesn’t carry the snake around town,” said Puma. “Napoleon lives in the hounfour.”

  Max said, “Actually, Nelli is—”

  “What’s the hounfour?” I asked Puma.

  “It’s a Vodou community’s social and spiritual center. You might call it the temple or the meetinghouse.”

  “And where exactly is this hounfour?” Napoleon’s home seemed like a good place for me to avoid.

  Jeff said, “In the basement of the Livingston Foundation.”

  “I don’t think Napoleon leaves the building unless he needs to see his veterinarian or something,” said Puma.

  “Then I’ll just stay out of the basement.”

  “Good plan,” said Jeff. “That’s what I do.”

  “Still,” I said, “you’d think she’d need a license or something, for a reptile that size.”

  “He wasn’t nearly that big when she got him,” Puma said. “I sometimes wonder if she feeds him too much.”

  I had a sudden mental image of the
mambo feeding rats to her squirming boa constrictor, and I made an involuntary sound of disgust.

  “Are you all right, Esther?” Puma asked with concern.

  I decided maybe I should pour some cold water on my head after all. “I need to use the restroom.”

  “Of course.” She led me behind the counter, through a doorway that was covered by hanging beads, and into the stockroom behind the shop. She pointed to a door on my left. “Right there.”

  “Thanks.”

  Inside the bathroom, one glance in the mirror confirmed that I looked every bit as haggard as I felt. My snarled hair hung in greasy clumps, my skin was pale with fatigue and shiny with perspiration, my lips were chapped, and the remnants of Jilly C-Note’s mascara was caked around my eyes. I really did look like a crack whore now. My tight, low-cut shirt had big dark patches under the arms, where I’d been sweating. I suspected I was beginning to smell like a pachyderm, and I thought that by the time I got home, I would need surgical assistance to pry the push-up bra off my tender flesh.

  If Lopez could see me now, he would surely be cured of his attraction to me.

  And if my mother could see me now, she would thank God that at least she had one daughter who had turned out all right: my sister Ruth, who was a hospital administrator in Chicago and had two kids, a standard-issue husband, and no leopard-patterned clothing of any kind.

  I thought longingly of my shower and my bed, but suspected that I was still hours away from seeing either of them. Wishing that Puma kept a garden hose in this bathroom, I did the best I could with paper towels and cold water, then I rejoined the others.

  10

  I didn’t want to think about the mambo’s snake anymore, so I was relieved to find that Jeff had changed the subject by the time I returned.

  “So how would I create sympathetic magic with this?” he asked Puma, holding up the doll that he claimed looked like me.

  I resumed my place on my stool. “I trust that you’re asking purely out of intellectual curiosity?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t do it with this,” said Puma. “These dolls are novelty gifts, not real poppets. Something like this is a fun impulse buy for someone who comes into the shop to browse out of curiosity, not really knowing anything about Vodou. The voodoo doll is an icon that they recognize, and if they see one that they think looks a little like themselves, or a family member, or a friend, they get a kick out of it and buy it. And, of course, once they’ve decided to buy something . . .” She grinned. “Well, then I see what else I can talk them into buying.”

  “I should employ such a strategy at my bookstore,” Max said with admiration, “but I lack the talents of a true merchant.”

  “Hmm.” I started wondering where Biko was. This shop was only a few blocks away from the foundation. He should be here by now.

  Puma said, “These dolls are good sellers for me. Especially with the European tourists who come here on guided walking tours of Harlem.” She added with a rueful expression, “So it’s worth putting up with Mambo Celeste giving me a hard time about the dolls whenever she comes here.”

  Ah, the mambo again. Yay.

  “Why does she give you a hard time?” Jeff asked. “Dolls seem pretty harmless. Especially compared to some of the stuff you carry.” He nodded toward the glass case that contained the ritual knives.

  “Well, I guess you could say she’s very traditional.” Puma added in a spurt of candor, “And a little rigid. Also opinionated.” She shrugged. “Mambo Celeste thinks a poppet is out of place in a respectable Vodou emporium. So she doesn’t approve of me selling them—or of there being so many of them on display. She thinks it gives people the wrong idea.”

  “Well, that’s hypocritical,” Jeff said. “Although I mostly avoid it, I’ve been down in the basement of the foundation, where she does rituals, and I’ve seen her altar. There are dolls on it.”

  Puma shook her head. “Dolls on Haitian altars represent the loa. They’re not poppets, and they’ve got nothing to do with black magic or cursing people.”

  “Ah!” Max nodded vigorously. “Of course!”

  Jeff muttered, “More of the ‘of course’ chorus.”

  “I had forgotten!” Max told me, “It has been quite some time since I had the privilege of studying with a houngan.”

  “You’ve studied with a houngan?” Puma asked with interest.

  “Many years ago. And for less time than I would ideally have wished. So my knowledge is both limited and, er, rusty,” Max said. “But I do recall now that the voodoo doll and its associated dark magic is strictly a mainland practice.”

  “Mainland?” I repeated.

  Puma said, “The European poppet became the voodoo doll by way of New Orleans, not Haiti.”

  “Is voodoo different in New Orleans?” I asked.

  The mention of New Orleans voodoo made me think of another of the Big Easy’s famous features: food. Jambalaya, gumbo, red beans and rice . . . My empty stomach grumbled.

  “Some of the customs are different, and the focus isn’t identical,” Puma said. “Traditional Haitian Vodou emphasizes religious ritual and spiritual connection, while New Orleans voodoo tends to emphasize magic. There are more similarities than differences, but the differences are there. I deal with both traditions here in the store, since there’s a lot of crossover.”

  “Which is understandable!” Max was clearly enjoying talking shop, as it were, with a knowledgeable practitioner of Vodou. “After all, both traditions developed among West Africans enslaved in French Catholic societies in the New World.”

  Puma nodded. “And there was contact between the two communities.”

  “Well, if Celeste doesn’t like you having money-making voodoo dolls in the shop just because it’s not her brand of voodoo,” Jeff said, “why don’t you just tell her to mind her own damn business?”

  “Because she’s a mambo. She has dedicated her life to interceding with the spirits and helping people, and she deserves my respect.” Puma added, “Also, she spends a lot of money here.”

  “Ah.” Jeff nodded, obviously persuaded by the final reason. He held up the poppet of “me” again and contemplated it. “So I guess Celeste’s disapproval isn’t because these are tourist souvenirs? It sounds like she’d grumble even if you were selling real poppets.”

  I had the impression he was thinking of buying the doll just so he could wave it around at the foundation and annoy the mambo.

  “Well, you can’t exactly sell a real voodoo doll,” Puma said.

  “Is it illegal or something?” he asked.

  “No, it’s not that,” said Puma. “The real thing is very specific and personal. It’s not something you can just go into a shop and buy. For one thing, you need to incorporate physical items from your victim into the doll. Strands of the real person’s hair or their fingernail clippings. That kind of thing.”

  “How the hell would you get hold of someone else’s fingernail clippings?” Jeff asked with revolted fascination. “Wait. Never mind. I don’t think I want to know.”

  She smiled. “It probably requires some dedicated effort.” Giving him a flirtatious look, she added, “But that’s only if your intended victim if an enemy. If, instead, you’re creating a poppet to make someone fall in love with you, then incorporating some of their bodily fluids into the doll is your best bet. Sweat, saliva, semen, and so on.”

  “You know, if someone’s collecting another person’s, uh, secretions and smearing them into a burlap doll,” Jeff said, “maybe it’s time to seek psychiatric help.”

  I could not help but agree.

  “Well, people do seek professional help for these things, but not from shrinks. From priests and priestesses,” Puma said. “To curse or charm your intended victim, you would probably bring the nail clippings—or whatever else you’d collected from the victim—to a voodoo king or queen. That’s the New Orleans equivalent of a mambo or a houngan. They’d fashion a poppet for you, usually out of wax or cloth, incorporating the ph
ysical bits of the person that you’ve provided.”

  “Okay, I see why this is something you can’t go into a shop and buy,” said Jeff.

  Max added, “Through the ritual, the physical detritus that has been collected, and the power of the sorcerer, the poppet develops an affinity with the victim. In a mystical sense, it becomes that person. Thus, whatever happens to the doll also happens to the victim.”

  Jeff said to me, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we could get a voodoo queen to make poppets of casting directors and then charm them into giving us work? Or curse the poppets of critics who gave us bad reviews?”

  “Do the two of you work together?” Puma asked us.

  I saw her glance at the clock on the wall. Like me, she was probably wondering what was taking Biko so long.

  “Not really.” Jeff explained that we had done Othello together about five years ago and told her that I would be teaching some of his workshops at the foundation for a while because of his current scheduling conflict. He added, “I’ve been teaching there, on and off, for years.”

  “I’ve been involved there for years, too,” said Puma. “It’s funny that you and I have never met before. But then, the foundation has so much going on, both on site and elsewhere.”

  “And I haven’t actually been around for a while,” Jeff said. “I’ve been living in Los Angeles for the past couple of years and only came back at the start of this summer.”

  I was a little surprised by that. When Jeff had mentioned LA earlier, while we were in Catherine’s office, I assumed it was a short trip, not a long stay. However, I really had no idea what he’d been doing since leaving New York four years earlier with the short-lived road company of Inferno: The Idi Amin Musical.

  Studying his face now, Puma said, “Actually, I thought you looked sort of familiar when you came into the shop. I think I saw you at Mr. Livingston’s funeral.”

  “I was there,” he said with a nod. “I left for Los Angeles pretty soon after he died.”