Of Starlight and Plague

by Beth Hersant

  And why? Because he lost his job and had to take another that was below his skill set and pay band? Because he was battling his diabetes and probably sleep deprived from all the shift work? Because then some drugged-out asshole jumped him in a parking lot? It was bad, but was it bad enough to alter the pattern of the man’s life?

  Next card: the Two of Spades for separation and the breakdown of a relationship, possibly infidelity. Tammany shook her head. She couldn’t imagine Otis cheating. He and Nola were the “old marrieds” of the neighborhood, always together. Every week he strolled into Tommy’s Flowers over on Dumaine to buy her a bouquet of the white and purple stocks she loved. And the way he looked at her…

  She quickly turned over the last card in column two. Eight of Spades — temptation, misfortune or danger. The reading was just getting worse.

  Column three and she turned over the first card, hoping to see another king (of clubs perhaps) to suggest that Otis would come through his troubles in the future. It was the Queen of Spades. A divorced or widowed woman. Which? Next came the Ace of Spades for death or a bad ending. And finally the Four of Hearts for travel or a change of home.

  Tammany rested her head in her hands. It was a grim message that foretold the dissolution of a marriage either by illness and death or by infidelity. And she was going to tell Nola none of it. She might be wrong. The loa know all the affairs of men, but that didn’t mean that Tammany’s interpretation was correct.

  “Well?” Nola was peeking in through the kitchen doorway.

  Gathering up the cards Tammany said, “You’re right to be concerned. If I’m correct, then he is ill and not thinking very clearly, but he’s alive.”

  “But where is he?”

  “Honey, I don’t know. There are other things we can try, though.” She dropped the pack of cards into her purse and fished out a notebook and pencil. “I need to go home and get a little sleep. Come on over to mine at ten-thirty. In the meantime, I need you to pick up a few things.” While she spoke she made a short list which she tore out of the notebook and handed to Nola.

  The woman read it aloud: “St. Anthony’s candle, sage incense …”

  “… if they don’t have that, then cedar or sandalwood incense would do just as well. Just hand the list to Marie over at Carmel and Sons. She’ll sort you out.” She gave Nola a tight hug and headed home.

  By the time Tammany got there and fished her newspaper out of the bushes, she was tired and cranky; and while she was about to go to sleep, the purpose of the nap was not to rest. One of the truest forms of communication with the loa was the act of dreaming. Contrary to Freudian theory, vodouisants believe that dreams do not come from the mind of the dreamer. They express no subconscious wish nor do they grapple with the impulses of the psyche. Dreams come from without, from the loa who use the dream-space as a middle ground where pure spirit and human mind can meet and communicate. Furthermore, dreams are not seen as a separate realm of experience that can be fictionalized as nonsense and dismissed. They are considered to be as real and as relevant as anything encountered in waking life. Adam M. McGee described this beautifully in his 2012 article, Dreaming in Haitian Vodou: “Vodou is ultimately a dreamed religion, lived half in dreams and half awake — in much the way that a halved symmetrical object, placed against a mirror will be uncannily made whole, although half of it be immaterial.”

  While these dreams could come spontaneously any night of the week, in urgent cases there were things you could do to help them along. Tammany pushed her old iron bed aside and with a groan knelt on the bare floorboards beneath. Her knees immediately lodged a protest and so she tried to work fast, taking a handful of cornmeal and sprinkling it onto the floor. She sat back and surveyed her work. It was unsatisfactory. The cornmeal was supposed to have formed the sign of the crossroads, essentially looking like a neat plus sign. But while the vertical line which represents the realm of the loa was straight, the horizontal one (for the world of men) was on a downward slant and the crucial point of intersection was smudged. She wiped out the design and started again. With the crossroads finally clearly depicted, she struggled to her feet and pulled the bed back into place.

  Next she hobbled into the kitchen and took a purple candle and a bottle of greenish-brown oil from the cupboard. Onto the candle she carved the word “Yah” for Yahweh.

  “You must never forget to center God in all you do.” Grandma Eula, who had taught her about the loa, had repeated this crucial rule many times. It is a part of the faith that few outsiders comprehend. Voodoo is like gumbo, a great mix of different things. And central to it is its connection with the Bon Dieu — the Good God of Moses, who led his people out of slavery. While some are uncomfortable with a melting-pot religion that sees African spirits and Catholic saints on the same altar, still many vodouisants identify themselves as Christian. Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, had been a devout Catholic and that was a good thing. There is great power in the spirits and great influence over the community. It should only be wielded by someone who loves the Light.

  With the rough letters carved into the candle, she unscrewed the stopper from the bottle. Her nose was hit by a heady blend of spices: the warm, sweet smell of cinnamon, the nutty aroma of cardamom, a hint of licorice that was in fact anise and the lemony smell of coriander. These had been added to a jojoba base to form “Aunt Sally’s Dream Oil.” She anointed both the candle and her own forehead with it.

  As she placed the candle on her nightstand, she murmured, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…” When finished with this recitation of Psalm 23, she lit the candle and prayed to God to show her where Otis was and what had happened to him. She lay down and within minutes the exhausted old woman fell asleep.

  Tammany is at Temple.1 It is a huge hall that is obviously run by some powerful and influential mambo. She herself was never “big-time” enough to have a place like this —large and ornate and filled with followers and initiates. She is a “home-grown” mambo, who learned in her grandmother’s kitchen and tends only to her friends and neighbors.

  Inside, initiates are dancing to a rolling drumbeat that is pitched low, rumbling like distant thunder. The white-clad bodies move in unison around the center post, the potomitan. Every body, whether young and lean or old and ample, moves lithely to the drum and it is beautiful to see. But there is one island in this sea of motion — one who is not dancing. Sitting on the floor in the corner is Zeline, a woman who lives three doors down from Tammany.

  She’s harmless but not the mambo’s favorite person in all the world — too frivolous, too concerned with her clothes and makeup and nails. There’s always too much of it all. Eyeshadow and lipstick applied with a spatula, her skirt and jacket a bright pink, and too much bling — gold rings, gold chains, gold bracelets. It always made Tammany want to open a dictionary in front of her and point out the meaning of the word “subtlety” in the hope that she might take the hint. But there is nothing subtle about Zeline. As the local gossip, she opened every conversation with the phrase, “Have I. Got news. For you.”

  But today Zeline looks different. Her glad rags have been replaced with denim overalls and her intricate coiffure is squashed under a straw hat. Instead of her normal choice of eye-wateringly high stilettos, she is barefoot. Incongruities such as these are common in dreams. You see someone you know, but they are different somehow. They are dressed differently or act out of character and you know that that is really a loa who stands before you. They may appear in the guises of your friends or neighbors, but they always give you clues to their true identity. An outfit, an item they carry, a way of talking, a mannerism — they can employ all of these things and more to make sure you know exactly who you are talking to.

  In this case it is Azaka, a loa of farms and agriculture, who sits before Tammany in his dungarees though he’ll speak through Zeline’s mouth. Indeed she is an ap
t choice of cheval (literally the “horse” the loa rides). Azaka is a gossip too. Good, the mambo thinks, he knows everybody’s business. He’ll know where Otis is.

  “Good morning, cousin.” You must always address a loa politely.

  Azaka makes no response.

  Tammany kneels down beside him and wouldn’t you just know it: her knees are killing her even here in this place.

  She asks, “Would you like some?” As is possible in dreams, Tammany’s hands are suddenly full. She is holding a tray laden with coffee and corn cakes smothered in cane syrup — all Azaka’s favorites, all presented as an offering.

  Zeline sadly shakes her head but says nothing.

  The mambo is suddenly uneasy. This is not right. Azaka never turns down a meal. Ever.

  She tries again. “Zaka, you know where Otis is, please —”

  The loa throws up a hand to silence her. Tammany is surprised to see that it is trembling. Zeline’s face is uncharacteristically pale, her mouth drawn into a tight line, her eyes glazed and staring. She mumbles, “Just … just go dance with the others.”

  Tammany is deeply troubled by this. A hungry, talkative loa who will neither eat nor speak is highly unusual, but a frightened, visibly distressed one… What the hell could frighten pure spirit?

  She has so many questions, but Azaka has told her what he wants her to do. Obediently, she struggles to her feet and steps onto the dance floor.

  The song is Po’ Drapeaux with two drums that manage to beat steadily while also rolling in syncopated snatches of rhythm. An asson rattle shakes in time with the drums, occasionally accelerating to sound like an angry rattlesnake. Female voices sing in harmony, then in dissonance. And this mix of fluctuating sound should be a cacophony, a mess impossible to dance to. Yet it all fits together and sounds right. Tammany steps to the beat, shoulders pulsing in time. She and another woman (Mabel from the Post Office) bend and the mambo’s right hand clasps the woman’s left. They lift these and twirl — now back-to-back, still holding on, they shimmy. They unwind, embrace and dance away from each other. Giving herself over to the dance, Tammany closes her eyes and moves. Somehow she manages not to bump into anyone in the crowded room, but she can smell them all around her. Human sweat and Florida Water cologne — a mix of roses, lavender and jasmine with the heavier, muskier smell of vodka that goes to her head as if she’d been drinking it. She is starting to feel good: young, lithe, and happy. She is here, with her neighbors, dancing for her loa.

  But then the drumming falters. The tight rhythm loses its cohesion as the song begins to unravel. Tammany’s eyes snap open. Around her the dancers jerk awkwardly. At first she thinks that they’re trying to keep time with the stuttering drums, but soon she realizes that they’re convulsing. Mabel is holding her head as if in great pain. Dropping to her knees, she pulls the white scarf from her head and clutches it in trembling fists. She is changing. Tammany watches in horror as the woman’s eyes roll back in their sockets and her features shift. Her wide, flat nose juts forward into an animal-like muzzle. Her full lips shrink back into a thin, grimacing line. And her beautiful mahogany skin grows livid and pale. It takes a moment for the mambo to identify the animal that now writhes before her. A bobcat.

  “What the actual fuck?” she hisses as she backs away.

  She bumps into someone else: a man, but not a man, a fox that fixes her with hostile, vindictive eyes. All around her they are changing. Into wildcats, coyotes, alligators — predators all. And Tammany is running for the Temple door as teeth snap and claws reach for her.

  Tammany woke up drenched with sweat. She ran her hands over her quilt to reassure herself that she was back, safe in her bedroom, and not still in that horrible place. For the first time since she was a little girl she had dreamt of the Baka. The Baka were demons from local folklore and were a bit like werewolves. They could be anyone, any smiling friend or neighbor that you met on a daylit street. But at night they changed into animals and their animal nature did not know you. They’d rip you to pieces.

  Unlike the loa, however, the Baka weren’t real. They were bogeymen, the stuff of children’s nightmares. So why on earth was she seeing them now? Why wouldn’t Azaka eat the food she offered or answer her questions? And what good could she hope to do in the face of something that frightened a loa? As her thoughts began to spiral downward, she suddenly got very angry. She hated that hopeless voice that whispered, It’s too big. Don’t even try. Frankly, it pissed her off.

  She rose, washed her face, and got ready for Nola.

  The rest of Tammany’s morning was spent in the living room of her tiny shotgun house. There she had an altar to the loa — a beautiful old dresser with ample space on top for whatever a ceremony required and plenty of drawers beneath to store supplies. She installed Nola in her comfiest chair with a cup of tea and then got down to work. The mambo tried everything she could think of to find Otis. She lay a recovery spell and then another designed to make a man come home. She used St. Anthony’s Oil with its good, wholesome scents of coffee and sugar and rum and prayed to the saint because he, as the orison goes, was “ever ready to speak for those in trouble.” When the work was done, she sent Nola home with a hug and collapsed into the chair.

  It was still warm from her friend and this, unfortunately, was not the only thing of Nola’s that lingered. Tammany felt her friend’s torment as sharply as if it was her own. That awful mix of fear and confusion, the sense that a well-built life was crumbling to pieces, the loneliness and the questions … it was too much. Grandma Eula had warned her many times about being too empathetic: “You can help them,” she’d said, “and pray for them and support them. But if you suffer with them, child, you will go crazy.” She was right, of course, and so Tammany rose, shook her head to clear it and turned her mind to what she needed to do next.

  There was a lot of food on the altar, an offering to Papa Legba so that the old man of the crossroads would permit the loa to come and help with the work. She’d lined up his favorite foods: grilled meat and vegetables as well as chocolate and coconut treats. Having missed her breakfast, she was hungry and looked longingly at the plate. But this food was not for her. The only proper way to dispose of it was to give it to someone in need. So she packed up the meal, headed down Dumaine Street and cut across Louis Armstrong Park. There she found George, an old homeless man, singing for change at his regular spot near the Buddy Bolden Statue. He was in his groove with “I Ain’t Superstitious” so Tammany caught his eye, held up the paper bag and placed it on the old man’s coat. He gave her an elaborate, flourishing bow of thanks.

  The rest of the mambo’s day was filled with a stream of clients who needed advice in matters of love or help finding a job. She had a few home remedies to prepare and what amounted to a counseling session with Twyla White, who came to her in tears when her monthly bleed signaled the failure of her IVF treatments. As she ushered the last of them out the door, she noticed a handsome young white boy sitting on her front stoop.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Sorry. I don’t have an appointment, but I was wondering if you could fit me in today?”

  Tammany looked at her watch and sighed. “All right, come on in.”

  She led him into her kitchen and started rummaging around in one of the cupboards. The young man looked on with great interest, wondering what voodoo paraphernalia she would use as part of the session. Words cannot describe his disappointment when she pulled out a packet of Fig Newtons.

  She popped one into her mouth. “Want one?” she asked with her mouth full.

  “Uh, no thanks. Is … is this how most voodoo readings start?”

  She took a big drink of milk and shook her head. “Only the ones I have to do when I’m tired.”

  She sat down at the table and beckoned him to do likewise. “So what’s your name?”

  “Daniel Wade.”

  “Hello, Daniel Wade.
What can I do for you today?”

  “I was hoping for a general reading.”

  “For?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tammany shrugged. “Is there a particular question you have or a problem you need help with or…” she paused and looked at him. He sat there smiling at her and it was an open, friendly smile. But there was a guarded expression in the young man’s eyes. He was dubious about all this. “Or is it a test?”

  He blushed.

  The mambo’s response was good-natured. “What exactly are you looking for? Proof that this works?”

  “I’m a writer. I am working on a book on Voodoo in the United States and in order to fully understand it, I thought I should have a few readings done.”

  “Fair enough. So you just want me to — what? — tell you about you?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Ok,” she said as she shuffled the cards.

  She explained the configuration: the columns for past, present and future and then flipped over the first card.

  “Seven of Spades. It usually indicates loss.” Another card. “Seven of Clubs suggesting business or financial success, but perhaps difficulties in love. You said you’re a writer. Most writers I know are dirt poor. You the exception?”

  “My first book — it was on modern day vampire culture — did very well. A New York Times bestseller,” he nodded.