Orleans (11 page)

He take me to the cottage when I be out of my mind with fever from the burns. My arms be healing, but they scarred thick for good. He tie me to the bed again, and when he pierce me, it ain’t with a needle, but his own hot flesh. When he done, he untie me and shake his head. My legs still be smooth, he say, but it be too easy to kill me, taking blood that way. I ain’t worth the trouble when there be a houseful of kids to choose from. When he leave, he don’t shut the door.

Mama Gentille don’t come for me. The man don’t want me. I guess she don’t, neither. If this been a test, I guess I failed.

My body be sore, and my arms itch from the burns, but I finally dress myself and go outside. I see Alfie on the back porch, beating rugs, but he don’t see me. Nobody try to stop me, so I walk on away from the house into the bayou.
My name is Fen de la Guerre,
I tell myself.
I am an O-Positive.
I’ma find a tribe, or let the swamp take me. But one thing for sure, I ain’t never gonna cry again.

10

MAMA GENTILLE.

The church house feel like it shifting beneath me and I come back to myself. Baby Girl wake up and start wailing, but she right to cry. These children be older than Alfie and Alice, but they still belong to Mama. Stupid of me not to see it, but I done swum into a crab trap. Baby Girl and I both as good as dead.

Brother William and Sister Henrietta be at the front of the church now, swaying to the music William be making from a little skin drum. There ain’t nothing between me and the exit, but I ain’t a fool. If I shinny down that rope right now, guaranteed Mama’s people be waiting for me at the bottom. This supposed to be sacred ground, but it a spiderweb. Brother William and Sister Henrietta just be a front, honey to draw the flies.

A woman’s voice, deep and strong, come pouring out the back room. I remember that voice in my dreams and it just about stop my heart. The curtain to the kitchen swing open and out come Mama Gentille.

Mama be big as a house, fat and squat, but somehow she feel tall, like she filling the room. That be her mojo rolling off her, her power, rising like heat from a fire off her coffee-brown skin. For the life of me, I can’t see how she got here. No way did she come up that rope ladder,
’
less she slithered up it like the snake she be.

She look around the room with eyes all painted peacock colors, lips red as blood. Then she see me and she stop singing. She smile wide. Seeing her again set the scars on my arms to itching. I remember what I told myself back then: never let her take nothing from me again.

But here we at.

Mama be wearing one of her crazy muumuus, pieced together from all kinds of fabric. She got on a hat that look like a turban, with feathers and things wrapped up in it. She look ridiculous, like some messed-up bird done fell from the sky. But she ain’t nothing to laugh at.

“Fen!” she say in a big voice. She draw out my short little name so it seem like to snap in two. I freeze with Baby Girl in my arms. “Fen de la Guerre,” Mama purr and hold a hand out to me. I don’t take it. Her eyes drop down to the baby I be holding and she smile.

“Oh, now, Fen,
chère,
don’t be like that,” she purr in that awful sweet voice. “Mama Gentille be so glad to see you. Her favorite little girl, Fen de la Guerre. How long has it been, child?”

Six years and then some, but I ain’t never gonna tell her that. Not long enough be the real answer. I glare back at her, swallow hard, and stand my ground.

“What you doing in a church, Mama Gentille? You ain’t no Christian.”

She shrug and reach out to pat my cheek with her fat hand. My skin crawl.

“God a business, just like any other. And occasionally there be blessings, you know? Miracles. Like you being here. And your baby. You came back to Mama Gentille,
ma chère.
After so much time, did you miss your Mama?”

I ignore her question. Mama saved my life, just to throw it away again. Now she got her sights on Baby Girl.

I got to play this right if we gettin’ out of here okay. What I need be time to think. “Ain’t no miracle,” I tell her. I drop my arm, let the sling take the baby’s weight. I be reaching for my knife.

“Fen, girl, what you doing? This a house of the Lord,” Mama say. I see her face go hard when she look at my burnt-up arms, and she cluck her tongue. I turn my arm out at the elbow, let her see how she ain’t never gonna get another pint from me again. The wounds done healed and kept me safe from other needles, but safe be a relative thing.

Her face go sour, but then she laugh. “You was strong, girl. Strong like your Mama Gentille. I thought you was something special, ’til you let that man use you like that. Let him take away your power. Now look at you, underfed with some bastard whelp in your arms. Fen, Fen, Fen. You could have been mambo after me.” She shake her head and turn away.

This be the woman behind the freesteader nursery? I know what she doing to them kids. I spit to get the bile outta my throat. It land on the bare wood planks with a smack. Mama Gentille recoil in disgust.

“You lose your manners,” she drawl, and cut me a look that once upon a time I’da tried hard to dodge.

“I ain’t never been your girl, Mama Gentille,” I tell her. “I just been your slave.”

Mama Gentille smile and use her wide shoe to smear my spit on the floor. “Now, Fen, we talked about this. There ain’t no slaves in Orleans. Only them as know they place, and them what’s got to be told.” She say the last word with emphasis, and it take a lot to keep me standing right there, two feet from her, instead of trying to run.

“Now.” She clap her hands. “Sit down. The second service be about to begin.” She return to the pulpit, and Brother William bring out a big chair woven from dried vines. She settle herself and start singing.

One thing about Mama Gentille, she ain’t no Christian woman, but she something, all right. She talk to spirits the way them Ursulines pray to they crucified god, but Mama’s spirits, or loas, help her get her way like I ain’t never seen other gods do. Mama be a true priestess, a mambo.

I look around and everyone be swaying in they seats, all except the smuggler. Slowly, slowly, the drums start to rise and Mama take off her turban, letting her hair swing down. Her hair be long and black like she got Indian blood in her, it so shiny and thick. Brother William take that button-up shirt off and I can see his ribs and the needle marks on his arms. He and Henrietta spread out and Mama Gentille start to say something, but my ears be full of the sound of my own heartbeat now. I know what she be doing even before Henrietta jerk to the center of the circle. Mama worship something between spirits and gods. She can bring them loas down from the air into a body. I seen it when I been with her. I ain’t never wanted to see it again.

Henrietta come out to the center of they raggedy circle and sweep her arms down to the floor, then up to the sky. She be moaning when she do it, and it got a rhythm, the same rhythm coming from the drums, from the swaying, from Mama Gentille. I be scared now like I ain’t been in years.

Mama take blood from children for selling and trading. She use folks up gentlelike, for years, ’til they run dry. Then she give them to her loas. Them loas climb up and ride a body the way some folks ride a horse or donkey. They climb inside and take over, use a body to walk the earth. Henrietta about to be ridden by a god.

I can’t move. Incense be thick in the room now, and I be caught up in the trance like everybody else. It hard not to watch, like seeing a snake in front of you about to strike. Behind her pulpit, Mama Gentille smile, big and wide. She rise up and sway her hips left and right. She the mambo in this house and she be in charge of everything, and everyone.

Mama Gentille run her ring-covered fingers down her plump brown arms, shaking her hips as she dance. It give me a shiver to see it. For all the folks she done bled, nobody ever done bled Mama. She say that why she such a powerful mambo now. When I burnt my own arms, she seen it as a sign of power. She think I been something special. A daughter, or an heir. But then she gave me to the gentleman, I guess to see what I would do. I didn’t fight him, though. He used me up and I ran away.

I shake my head to clear it, and look around. I ain’t a little kid no more. I learned how to fight. Across the floor, Henrietta be stalking around, proud as a peacock. She strut past Mama Gentille, who reach beneath the altar and pull out a bowl of stew. She call to Henrietta’s loa, “Ibo Lele,” and hand him a bowl of stew. Henrietta smile wide, so wide her face almost split in two. I guess Ibo Lele be pleased.

This a bad night for being here, with the spirits swinging low to earth this close to All Saints’ Day. I feel myself moving forward, drawn to the circle, drawn by the drugs in the food and the incense in the air. By the power. I try to fight it, but even Mama Gentille going under, pulled down by her own spell.

Mama’s head jerk up, her eyes roll back in her head, and she boom in a voice like thunder. I try to run, but my eyes be closing. My legs feel heavy unless they moving to the beat, my body weighed down unless I be dancing. So easy to let go, to let the spirit ride me. When the loas come up over you, it take you out of yourself, out of Orleans for a little while, and it feel so good. I ain’t felt good in a long time. I want to lay this baby on the floor and let the spirit take me. That be all I gotta do. Just let Lydia’s baby go.

11

THE RAIN WAS COMING DOWN SOFT AND
warm. The smell of heated pavement rose up, wet and mineral, from the broken road. Daniel kept his eyes on the ground. The humidity fogged his face mask and the rain dotted his vision with tiny magnifying droplets, giving him a sense of vertigo. Evening was falling fast. He adjusted his goggles for lower light, his breath heaving like a bellows in his ears. The Superdome was ahead of him, where Poydras Street was partially blocked by a wall of debris. According to the datalink, he needed to go west of the Dome, into Uptown. But the Superdome was an icon of old New Orleans—the defining silhouette of the city’s skyline, the sports stadium that had housed thousands of football games and concerts in its heyday. Now that he was here, he couldn’t help but take a look.

A causeway of broken concrete had been laid out like a dam, a crossing for the earliest funeral parades. At LaSalle Street, the young river that was the far end of Poydras became a pond. He could see the dull grayish sheen of the water up ahead as he came down the road. And then he saw the memorials, like faces of the dead peering up out of the water—masques made for Mardi Gras of years past sunken beneath the surface as if pulled under by mermaids or undines.

The Drowned Dead, names painted lovingly along the cheeks and brows on the masques, slowly deteriorated beneath the muck. It accounted for the milky quality of the water leaking from the pond into the river stream. Daniel had mistaken it for silt of some sort, minor pollution. But it was the face paint and the decorations of these memorial masques, washed away by the gentle lapping of the dammed pond.

Thirty thousand people had huddled inside the Superdome after the first of the big storms. Katrina turned the Dome into a refugee camp. Lorenzo turned it into a morgue. Jesus turned it into a tomb.

INQUIRY:
Number of dead buried in the Dome?

RESPONSE:
The New Orleans Superdome can seat up to seventy-two thousand people. Number of dead unknown.

The street was wide and exposed. Daniel was grateful that the sun had set, leaving a dim twilight through the fading rain. He had no desire to run into any of the locals. He reached the causeway, the peaked tumble of rocks and debris that blocked the flow of water and lead across Poydras to the ramps of the Dome. Daniel looked at the footing, the tiny slides where the rocks were unevenly stacked. Marking his path, he hauled himself up to the crest. The path was surprisingly even on top. For a moment, he could picture the long line of mourners two-stepping beside the shrouded bodies.