The tall Cajun arrived in his rough prison blues. Marie noticed the scars of a rope burn around his neck. “Thank you,” he said, smiling happily.
“For what? Ten years later, I could’ve saved your life ...”
“That’s all right. What I’m thanking you for is the music.”
Then, from the far edge of the clearing, Marie heard the sound of flutes, Sunny King’s loud drumbeats crashing through the wall of rain ...”
“Keep reading,” said St. John. “And pass the bottle.”
Marie read on: “Jacques Paris.”
Jacques hesitated in the door way for a long time. Rain streamed down his face. At last he walked up to Marie and kissed her sweetly on the lips. “Read the next name,” he said before she could speak.
“Freda-Erzili,” she read and immediately heard the giggling, smelled the jasmine perfume. Swaying on her stiletto heels, Freda-Erzili walked in, still wearing the same pink lace dress, her makeup streaked by rain. She came straight up to Jacques and seized his arm possessively, then hugged Marie without letting go of him.
“I know it’s not worth it,” she whispered in Marie’s ear. “But it’s love—what can you do?”
“Stop the gabbing!” John the Baptist’s voice thundered over the music and conversation. “Keep on reading! Get it done!”
“Clement Moevius,” read Marie. “Bastile Croquere. Sister Delilah.”
As her friends entered, Marie grinned with joy. She noticed that Clement Moevius had changed back to the confident red-headed gambler he’d been before that unlucky turn of the Wheel of Fortune; three crisp hundred-dollar bills protruded from his breast pocket like a folded handkerchief.
“But you’re not dead,” she said, suddenly remembering.
“The storm.” Bastile Croquere explained for them all. “It was a bad one. Some of us didn’t make it. But we don’t mind.”
“I don’t,” echoed Sister Delilah. “There’s plenty of work for me beneath the water, all that seaweed tangled in the ladies’ hair.”
“Read on!” cried John the Baptist.
“Elspeth Nedermeyer. Emma Sands. Lucinda Brown. Christophe Glapion ...” Marie looked up. Christophe smiled and kissed her. “You, too?” she said.
“I stayed at the beach,” he said. “Waiting for the storm. It seemed like the right thing to do. I thought: It’ll happen soon enough now that Marie’s gone.”
“Welcome,” said Marie, swallowing hard.
“No theatrics at my party!” yelled John the Baptist. “No tears. Keep on reading! Let’s make everything all right!”
Marie called the names of everyone she’d ever known—long-dead spirits, saints and loas, dancers who hadn’t made it to the clearing, friends, acquaintances, clients, prisoners, every name she’d ever heard.
“Now she knows it,” she heard Delphine whisper to Victor. “Now she knows her name.”
“Baron Cemetery,” read Marie.
“No party’s complete without him!” cried John the Baptist. “How can you have fun without the baron around?”
A cloud of green smoke heralded his arrival. Yet now it smelled sweet—like incense mixed with fresh flowers, mown grass and rain. Unafraid, Marie nodded to the ugly old loa.
“I’ve brought a little food,” he said, raising the knapsack on his back. “Cooked by your old friend Venus. A little spread in case anybody gets hungry.” “Then spread it,” said Marie, returning to her list. The shack was full of people talking and drinking from the endless stock of honey whiskey; somehow the room expanded to hold them. John the Baptist kicked the round table back against the wall. Some guests were dancing. St. John whirled Delphine and Madame Henriette, one on each arm. Sister Delilah waltzed with Bastile Croquere, while Marie Saloppe spun in a circle with Grandpa Joel, Pinhead Helen, and Clement Moevius. Father Antoine and Doctor John danced belly to belly. Tongue thrust deep in Jacques’s mouth, Freda-Erzili winked and beckoned for Marie to join them.
Tired of dancing, guests milled through the crowd—staggering, kissing, embracing. A steady procession paid their respects to Marie, then moved on to wish St. John well on his birthday. Mother Therese pressed her dry cheek against Marie’s and drank some whiskey. Marie saw light through Father Antoine’s body; when he took her hand, she felt the heat of five candles on her palm. “Bless me, Father,” she said. “It’sbeen months since my last confession ...”
“Beneath the waters there’s no sin,” said Father Antoine, smiling. “There’s nothing to confess—so there’s nothing for me to do. I just lie in the sunshine letting the sweet fruit drop into my mouth.”
William O’Connell sang the first lines of that same song about the emerald hills of Connemara. But now his faultless tenor was as joyful as if he actually were roaming those bonny green meadows.
“Thank you,” said all Marie’s clients.
“Our number’s come up,” said Clement Moevius.
“This whiskey’s better than sherry or island rum,” said Pascal Chartier.
“On the other side of the mirror,” said the emperor of China, “there won’t be half a world between us.”
“Good party,” said the snake, sipping champagne cadged from Freda-Erzili’s bottle.
“What a way to go!” said Baron Cemetery, dragging her onto the dance floor for a few measures of his duck-walk, which now—under the influence of St. John’s whiskey—seemed bouncy and endearing. “Better than a Crucifixion, don’t you think?”
“Much better,” said Marie.
“Good party!” said John the Baptist, falling against her.
Marie Saloppe hugged her again. “You never could let go,” she said, praising her with the old warning. “Like I told your mama, like you couldn’t let go of that caul blanket in her womb, you got it here with you right now. You held onto it right around the wheel baby. That’s how you got us here ...”
“We’re your punishment and your reward,” said Doctor John. “That’s what you get for keeping one altar for the gods and one for the devils.”
Jacques put his arms around her, held her close. Marie felt her stomach flutter, that unmistakable weakness in her knees. “Under the water,” he said, “You can do it like whales, standing up in the ocean thirty days without stopping. And love never goes away. Wild love lasts forever.”
“This is the world I would have chosen,” said Christophe. “This is what I was searching for in all those books. This is what I meant.”
“Welcome to the Holy Family,” said Victor, slapping Christophe’s back. “Thank God for yellow girls and their little bastards.”
“I knew this birth would be so much easier for both of us,” Delphine told Marie.
“You’re Makandal.” Finally Marie noticed the black man’s flowing white robes. “You’re not Samson Moses ...”
“No. Samson Moses is alive and well in Canada. Sometimes I wish he weren’t—it’s time to set his soul free to try again. We missed our chance ... you never did understand.” “Understand?”
“Any fool can slit a bull’s throat.” Markandal smiled, rueful-drunk. “What counted was the next day. If we’d won that morning, it would’ve been like this all the time ...”
“Everything will be fine,” said Madame Henriette. “I promise: Everything will be all right.”
“Don’t worry if your hair gets wet,” said Sister Delilah. “I’m right here to fix it.”
“Wet?” Marie looked up. Rain was leaking in, beating the roof in time to Sunny King’s drum. She ran to the wall and looked out.
Water was rising around the shack—a brown river, two feet deep, bubbling with tree limbs, bulrushes, lacy rafts of Spanish moss. Mud swirled over the doorstep, wind smacked against the house. The music was no longer audible.
Too drunk to care about the storm, Marie rejoined her guests. The house shook, cringing before each blast of wind. The roof curved and billowed like a sail. The flood rushed against the stone foundation, nudging it loose.
Five inches of water covered the
floor. Kicking up spray, the drunken dancers skipped through it. The candles stayed bright. The guests stayed dry.
Drunk as she was, she heard the wind calling her name from way over the lake. “Marie Laveau. Marie Laveau.” Its voice grew louder. “Marie Laveau.” Closer. Closer. Almost in her ear.
“Hear that?” asked Marie. No one answered. The dancing and talking stopped. Everyone listened: “Marie Laveau.”
“That wind’s got your name on it,” said Baron Cemetery. “It’s asking you to dance.”
“Now you’re dancing!” said the snake and that was the last thing she heard.
Wind wrenched the house from the ground like a tooth from its socket. The floor vanished under brown water. Dancing again, the guests moved their limbs through the flood. The drinking resumed—honey whiskey mixed with sweet river water. John the Baptist’s drunken laughter rose above the rushing tide as it mingled with the joyous voices of his friends.
Wholly submerged, the shack skimmed along beneath the water’s surface, swift and steady as a sound craft. Marie felt the exhilaration of sailing, the breathless speed of flight.
Marie gulped some whiskey and looked around. Drums and flutes played the dance tunes sweeter than she’d ever heard. It was the best party she’d ever been to—and it seemed like it might go on forever. Everything would be all right.
Marie Laveau closed her eyes and breathed the sweet air beneath the surface of the water.
CHAPTER XXXIX
MARIE LAVEAU HAS come back from the dead.
“We saw you go,” said Sunny King when Marie appeared at his house Sunday demanding to know why he wasn’t playing the dance in Congo Square. “I was right by that clearing when you went inside that empty shack. I wasn’t even getting wet, but I was scared for you inside there, rocking in the wind. Then just when it looked like the storm was almost over, that big wind came up from nowhere, funneling up the bayou, mowing down oaks like a machete. We knew where it was headed—straight for you. And we knew that little shack couldn’t stand it.
“I saw the wind pluck that house right up. Then it stopped dead and turned around in the opposite direction, washing the shack down towards the lake like the wind and rain had come special to get you. That’s when the cabin collapsed down to a heap of wet logs and splinters, nothing but a washed-away beaver dam. You died in that wreck. I saw it. Nobody could’ve survived.”
“I did die,” said Marie. “And now I’ve come back from the dead. Let’s get this dance started.”
Marie Laveau has come back from the dead.
“I saw her come back,” said Sister Sally Depeau.
“Three nights after the hurricane. I was still mopping the mud off my floor when I heard the knock.
“You didn’t get many visitors on Lepers’ Row back then. But I opened up anyway. There was Marie Laveau—pale, soakmg wet, weeds and mud in her hair. ‘Marie Laveau,’ I said. ‘I used to see you up here visiting that Doctor John.’ Back then I was used to people being shocked when they first saw my face. So it took me a while to figure out that Marie Laveau wasn’t surprised at me—just surprised at finding me there.
“ ‘You’re at the wrong place,’ I told her. ‘Doctor John’s been gone years. No one but me would take this place—scared the Doctor’s spirit might still be hanging ’round. But I’m a good Christian. I don’t believe in that voodoo stuff. That’s why I took the house. I thought: How could the spirits hurt me worse than this leprosy? But you knew the Doctor hasn’t been here since ...’
“ ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m a little dazed.’
“ ‘A little wet, I’d say. Come in and dry off.’
“ ‘Where you been?’ I asked her. She was looking all around—maybe trying to see what had changed. The answer was: Everything. The Doctor had left his junk but I’d thrown out every piece. Didn’t want none of that in my house.
“ ‘I’ve been down beneath the waters,’ she said. ‘I’ve been drowned. And now I’ve come back from the dead.’
“The way she said it—I knew she was telling the truth. I touched her. She was flesh and blood, all right. Her skin a little wetter and colder than mine—a little smoother, too.
“ ‘Glory be,’ I said, handing her some rags to dry off. ‘Back to tell the tale. How was it? What happened?’
“ ‘It was just fine,’ she said. ‘The best party I’ve ever been to. Then that hurricane got me ... the water ...’
“I watched her towel her hair. ‘Considering that,’ I told her, you look great. But then you always did. Suppose you’d been like me—twenty-five years of leprosy?’
“ ‘The water washes you pretty clean,’ she said.
“ ‘That’s nice to hear,’ I said. Marie shook herself like a big lady cat. My house was as cold as the outdoors. But she seemed comfortable. Sitting at my kitchen table, she didn’t look like somebody itching to leave.
“I was hurt when she refused my dry clothes. I thought: She’s afraid of catching something. But maybe they just weren’t her style. ‘Can I get you anything?’ I asked.
“ ‘I could use a drink.’ She smiled. ‘A stiff one.’
“ ‘Honey whiskey is all I’ve got.’
“ ‘That’s perfect,’ she said.
“I poured two shots, holding my breath to make sure she wasn’t keeping her lips from touching my best glass. Another shot and she was telling me how she’d gone into the shack during the hurricane, found St. John there drinking with everyone she’d ever k|rown. She’d stayed underwater for three days. Then she’d decided it was high time to surface.
“ ‘What for?’ I asked. ‘Sounds nice down there.’
“ ‘It was. Real nice.’ She laughed. ‘I guess I just couldn’t let go. Besides ... there’s work to do.’
“At the time, I thought: It couldn’t have been so easy. She’s recovered pretty quick. That’s how much I knew then.
“She stood up—straighter, I’m proud to say, than when she came in. She thanked me, kissed me real quick on the forehead, then left.
“I never did find out what she wanted with Doctor John. That wasn’t the end of the story. You can see the end of the story yourself. I touched my forehead where she’d kissed me. My skin was as smooth as yours.
“So don’t tell me Marie Laveau didn’t come back from the dead. I saw it myself. I was healed.
“Like I told Maire: I’m a good Christian. I never believed in voodoo—still don’t. But what that voodoo woman did for me seems like something Jesus might have done.”
Marie Laveau has come back from the dead to face the same disappointment which broke Jesus’ heart: Some folks won’t believe.
“It’s her daughter,” said the doubters. “That’s how she did that trick, dying and coming back. She died, all right. But she didn’t come back. She put her daughter up to say she was her mama—you never could tell those two apart. She says the daughter went up north to start her own business. But I’ve got friends as far north as Buffalo, New York. And nobody knows nothing ’bout any Marie Laveau traveling up that way.”
This Sunday in Congo Square [ wrote the Louisiana Mirror], a long-standing controversy in the city’s (black and colored) voodoo community was finally resolved.
Marie Laveau, self-proclaimed “queen” of the voodoo church, led the traditional dance, stopping only to apparently “cure” Perre Delisle, 66, of Feliciana Parish, previously afflicted with spine trouble. At the end of the festivities, Marie Laveau asked the departing crowd to remain for an important announcement:
“I am Marie Laveau, ” the “queen” was quoted as saying. “If I hear one more word about my being my own daughter, I’ll make your hearts dry up like talcum powder and blow out of your chests with the first deep breath.”
The “queen’s” remark referred to a debate on a question of identity which has raged through the community since Marie’s alleged death in the hurricane of June 23.
According to reliable sources, people have taken the voodoo queen at her word. The subj
ect has not been mentioned since Sunday.
Marie had asked Ti-Marie for help. But she’d never asked her to become her.
That had been Jesus’ idea.
On the night Marie Laveau had left for her vacation at Franklin Midnight’s shack, Ti-Marie (there was no one alive who called her that now—she wouldn’t answer to the name) had sat in her mother’s parlor, wondering what to do.
Her mother wanted her to handle the emergency cases. But suppose she couldn’t—she wasn’t even sure she wanted to ... Her thoughts spun until she was dizzy, slightly queasy, nausea creeping up like the edge of sleep ...
Someone opened the door and entered the house.
“Marie’s forgotten something,” she thought. But the footsteps weren’t her mother’s. “A burglar,” she thought. Frightened, she stood up to find she was dizzy, took one step and fell back into the chair, wondering why a burglar would be carrying a bright lamp from room to room, closer and closer ...
Jesus walked into the parlor. Ti-Marie thought: He’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.
His deep eyes were warm brown. His auburn hair curled against His white shepherd’s robes—not the flowing garments of the holy pictures, more like a skirt with a cloth wrapped diagonally across His chest, baring His sunburned shoulders and arms.
Ti-Marie had never seen such arms—smooth, muscular, darker and thicker than the pale sticks in the paintings. “He’s a man,” she thought. Tongue-tied, she couldn’t speak one word of welcome.
“Good evening,” said Jesus, gracious and mellow as could be.
“Evening,” said Ti-Marie. Her voice came out in a croak.
Jesus sat in the brown leather chair, resting His long hands on its arms. Ti-Marie felt dizzy again. “You’re not working tonight?” He asked.
Ti-Marie searched His sweet face. “No,” she said.
“Are you tired, Marie?” His voice was as kind as a lover’s.
Ti-Marie flinched. “You’ve got it wrong,” she said. “I’m Marie’s daughter.”
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