The Good House Read online

  He was very angry for weeks, only grunting at mealtime, shifting his eyes away from me when I entered the room. He tried to cultivate herbs himself, but he had already seen the difference my prayers made, so he knew he could not hope to carry out his dream without my help. Eli also probably feared me by then; I believe he realized I could simply take what I wanted from him, and that asking his permission was a formality on my part. I also believe he blamed me because he had grown so alarmingly fond of me, which I knew long before he confessed it; although I will swear with my dying breath that I had no hand in swaying his heart. I had given him tea to improve his manhood, but I had not expected him to fix his attentions onme.

  He came to me one day in the kitchen, standing unusually close behind me. “Marie,” he said in a gentle voice, “I don’t cotton to blackmail. But I’ve come to see this question another way: In a different time and place, without the curse of your dark skin between us, I might have taken you as a wife to comfort me in my twilight years. We both know your mind and soul are as white as mine.” He meant this in a complimentary way, so I struggled to hear the words as he meant them despite the way they rankled me.

  “As my wife,” he went on, “you would have been entitled to this house and my land after my passing, so you and your daughter wouldn’t have needed anything from anyone. Custom may govern me while I live, but I won’t deny you and Dominique what my heart says is yours. I’ll change my will, by God, just as you asked.”

  That night, for the first time, Eli and I shared his bed as we would for our next three years together. Did I love him? Not the way I loved Philippe, certainly. And not the way I would love John. But I loved Eli as well as I could. He was kind to my daughter, and he had welcomed me into his home, giving me access to his land, so I could ask him no more than that. I honored Papa Legba, thanking him for bringing me to his Forest of the Crossroads, where it seemed my life had finally turned for the better. Eli was one of my blessings there.

  I made Eli a wealthy man. We shared the profits from his mail-order business, which performed well once customers realized his products lived up to their promises. Our teas could improve eyesight, cure impotence, promote alertness, and bring peace of mind. Within two years, we had more money than two people could spend, so he secured trust accounts for his nieces and nephews, and I did the same for mine in Louisiana. I took care of my family’s every need, exactly as I’d hoped I could, fulfilling my duties as the head family spirit.

  Our secret remained. Townspeople suspected what we were all along, though they did not suspect our enterprise. Eli and I chuckled over their ignorance, since he continued to prosper although his pharmacy in Sacajawea languished. They never knew what kind of miraculous venture was operating right in their midst!

  Then, in the fall of 1926, Eli left for two months to visit his brother in Boston. He never returned. His brother found him dead in his bed, most certainly from heart failure. He died at the age of sixty-eight, far too soon.

  I grieved alone, since I alone knew what Eli had been to me.

  Within a week of the news of Eli’s death, I received the first telephone inquiry from his brother. Did we have any needs? How long would it take me to move my daughter out of the house? I mailed him a copy of Eli’s will, assuring him that all of our needs had been taken care of. The scandal Eli had feared arrived with hurricane force.

  Eli’s brother hired a battalion of lawyers, and I hired my own in matching numbers. In the end, after many prayers, I won the battle for what was rightfully mine at last.

  John moved in with me six months after Eli’s death. He had been a constant visitor while Eli lived, a handyman and groomsman, and he had also been my only friend during the terrible period after Eli’s death. It was natural that we should have developed feelings for each other, and we did. His sterling soul reminded me of Philippe’s.

  John hesitated to share the house with me, fearful of the neighbors. He had lived so long as the town’s favorite pet Indian that he dared not be a man. “What can they say? The house is mine,” I said.

  Finally, he agreed, and John, Dominique, and I became a family.

  I had been subjected to profanity and terrible glares since Eli’s death, but my neighbors’ rancor intensified when I took John as my common-law husband. When legal strategies and exorbitant tax bills failed to drive us away, the attacks began. Perhaps they saw me as a terrible force “corrupting” their good red man, and feared John’s remaining people would become equally bold, following his example. Perhaps they feared a mass migration of colored and red people, soiling their town. I cannot speak to the motives of such hateful hearts.

  But I will confess this: The longer I was hated, the more I learned to hate in return. I hated my daughter’s tears as gunshots awakened her in the dead of the night. I hated the memories those gunshots unburied in my own mind, forcing me to relive again and again the horrible fate brought upon Philippe. Often, John tells me, I woke up with Philippe’s name on my tongue, sobbing pitifully. I feared that I would once again be forced to stand and watch harm come to those I loved. I hated my fear most of all.

  There are many remedies I might have sought if I had not been blinded by so much anger and hate. I could have prayed to Ezili to foster love in my neighbors’ hearts, to quell their senseless fears. I could have relied upon Papa Legba’s protection, realizing that he would never allow harm to come to us in so enchanted a place.

  But one June night, the night of a rare summer storm, the attack was more horrible than usual. Perhaps our enemies felt emboldened by the shroud of heavy rains, but from the time the sun set, gunshots boomed before our house for hours, shattering windows. I opened my front door to face the cowards, with John at my side with his gun to protect us, and I saw how our door had been savaged by buckshot and lead. Our attackers had left by then, but the damaged door sent me into a rage. I had vengeance in my heart as I made my way through the Crossroads Forest in the driving rain.

  That night, instead of praying for peace, I prayed for war.

  Papa Legba ignored me. I brought him offerings, and begged him to open the gates so I might evoke thelwasand bakaswho would give me the power to harm others as they had harmed me, to send plagues upon them as plagues had beset the Chinook and other tribes who had preceded them here. But Papa Legba laughed at my agitated state. I heard his deep laughter in the thunder above the treetops: Stop this silliness, Marie. You are better than this, my spirit-wife. Pray to me again when you have regained your senses.

  I might have heeded dear Papa Legba’s wishes. He is the highestlwa,the lwawho holds the secret of the language of the gods, and is worthy of the highest respect. Papa Legba brought us the gift of communion with the lwasand the highest God, opening the gate between us.

  But in my half-crazed state, I rememberedGrandmère’s messages to me in my dreams, which had been stronger all the time since I had found the tree where her spirit dwelled. I remembered how she wove the symbols of my ring into language, creating a single word—one word only—that she claimed our ancestors had stolen from Papa Legba in the time before time. I had never uttered the word, nor considered uttering it.

  But on that stormy night, I did.

  “——,” I said, raising my arms high, beseeching the gods against Papa Legba’s wishes, barren of his blessing. I committed the offense at midnight, Papa Legba’s sacred hour, and on Saturday, his sacred day. With the utterance of a single word, I sinned three times and scarred my life beyond recognition.

  But I did not know the scale of the calamity on that night.

  The ground trembled beneath my feet, and I reveled in my power. “Come to me, spirits,” I called to the weeping sky.“Vinn jwenn mouin.”

  Before my startled eyes, the ground became a sea of mud.

  Twenty-Eight

  JULY2, 2001

  TWO DAYS BEFORE HE WOULD DIE,Corey Hill nodded to sleep at the edge of The Spot. His back leaned against the deeply grooved bark of an enormous fallen trunk, a Douglas fir t
hat had lived for four hundred years, although Corey didn’t know the age of the tree, nor how close he sat to death himself. Corey had to sleep in naps now, because he had forgotten the habit of sleeping at night.

  An animal made a snuffling sound high above him. Corey woke up with a cry of surprise, spilling the bag of food he’d been balancing in his lap, and three apples rolled at his feet. He saw a massive gray animal’s breast and legs. Then, hooves. And a snout, above an iron bit.

  Sean was sitting astride Sheba, practically on top of him. Corey was so startled, he felt dizzy.

  “You scared thefuck out of me,” Corey said, tugging his baseball cap down to cut the sun’s glare as he stared up at Sean.

  “Sorry.” Sean flipped his hair out of his face. Sheba’s long neck arched down so she could rip a clump of flowering weeds from the ground beside Corey, chewing a huge mouthful. The weeds stuck out of the sides of her mouth, vanishing as she chewed. “Where you been?”

  “Around,” Corey said. He quickly collected the spilled apples and stuffed them back inside the Downtown Foods bag before Sheba could get to them. He’d also brought cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli, a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a can opener, and some plastic forks and knives.

  “We’re going to pretend like nothing happened?” Sean said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What’s the deal, then? I’ve been trying to find you for three days.”

  Sean sounded like a love-crossed girl after she’d given it up to a player who’d ditched her, Corey thought. He wanted to laugh at how hurt Sean sounded, but he couldn’t.

  “Hey, I’m sorry, a’ight? I’m just trying to get my head on straight.” From habit, he slid his hand across his knuckles to feel the ring there, safe. He always wore it now, except in the presence of his parents. He had a feeling he was supposed to.

  Sean leaped from Sheba’s back and pulled her to the trunk of a thin fir tree beside Corey to tie her. He gazed curiously at Corey’s shopping bag. “What’s that for?”

  “Just some food.”

  “For her?”

  “Why are you in my face? That’s none of your business.”

  “I’m just asking. Drop the attitude,” Sean said, and Corey lowered his eyes. Sean was right, he was being a jerk. But he hadn’t been able to sleep for three nights straight, and he felt like shit. He didn’t usually get nervous when he came to The Spot looking for Becka, but seeing Sean again made his heart trip out. If Gramma Marie’s papers were right, Sean had been here the night he might regret the rest of his life.

  “Sorry, man. I’m just…I don’t know. I’m freaked out.”

  “Well, so am I. Why have you been trying to avoid me? I’m going out of my mind. You told me not to say anything, but comeon, Corey. This amazing thing happened—thismiracle —and we can’t even talk about it?”

  Sean pulled an envelope from his back pocket and held it up for Corey to see. Corey glanced at it and saw that the ivory envelope was addressed to Sean in a handwriting that looked feminine, postmarked from 1992. After seeing the date, perspiration sprang to Corey’s palms, the way it did often since the last time he and Sean had been here. Corey didn’t want to touch the letter. He had hoped it wouldn’t come back, too. Miracle hell.

  “Where was it?” Corey said.

  “In the mailbox. I found it after you left the other day.”

  “The picture, too?”

  “Just like when it came to me the first time.” Sean opened the envelope and pulled out a wallet-sized photograph of a woman with a slightly upturned nose who almost looked like a teenager herself. “That’s my mom. I haven’t seen her since I was six. She mailed this when I was seven. But like I told you, I got pissed that she never called me, so I threw it away. Iburned it with the cigarette lighter in my dad’s car.” Sean’s eyes pranced, maniacal. “Every time I think I dreamed it all, here it is in my hand. My head is coming unscrewed, Corey.”

  Corey sighed hard, hiking up his knees so he could rest his elbows. He held his head between his palms, feeling his teeth grinding. He couldn’t keep this to himself. It wasn’t fair. It was different with Mom and Dad, because they weren’t involved, and he wanted to keep it that way. But Sean had come with him the night of the spell, so he was probably in this just as deep. The magic had touched Sean, so the rest of it might have, too.

  “I thought you’d bepsyched about this,” Sean said. “You don’t look like a guy who could conjure himself up fifty million dollars if he wanted to. I thought we’d be figuring what to do next. You know—world peace? A free cure for AIDS? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Sit down, man,” Corey said. His voice hurt his throat, and he was terrified that he was about to cry. He couldn’t look at Sean’s face. “I didn’t tell you everything before.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just sit down, and I’ll tell you.”

  “No, you tell me first, andthen I’ll decide if I want to sit down.”

  It was too late to stop it. A tear smarted in Corey’s eye and escaped before he could wipe it away. He’d floated through his day when the ring came back, full of a kind of joy he’d never known he could feel. He’d felt staggered by the idea that there wasnothing he couldn’t do . Then, that night, he’d read every page of Gramma Marie’s papers, every word, straight until dawn.

  His joy had disintegrated.

  “Hey,” Sean whispered, seeing Corey’s tear. He sank down in front of Corey like the Scarecrow fromThe Wizard of Oz, boneless. “What’s going on?”

  “We have fucked upbig,” Corey said.

  “How?”

  “The spell I did—I don’t think it worked right.”

  “What are you talking about, Corey? It workedexactly right.”

  Now, Corey looked at Sean. He had to work to keep his breathing steady, because the thought of admitting the things he’d been keeping imprisoned in his head was bringing him close to panic. “In avodou ceremony, you try to pray to gods, right? There’s a whole bunch of them. Whole families of them. There are different gods for different things. They all have different roles.”

  “Yeah, so?” Sean’s eyebrows dipped, scowling.

  “When I found Gramma Marie’s papers, I skimmed around. It’s practically her life story, and I was trying to skip ahead to the good part. But I should have readall of what she wrote, because if I had, I would have known better. She was under a curse. It was a bad one, a curse that could live for generations, she said. One of the most powerful gods, Papa Legba, was mad at her for something she’d done, so he left her on her own. This is the first year the curse could have been broken for good, seventy-two years later. It has to do with stars’ alignments, things like that. But since I didn’t undo the cursefirst, like her papers said I should…I don’t think the gods heard us.”

  Sean half-grinned, but his face looked nervous. “I don’t get it. Then how’d you get your ring and my letter back?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. I think something else brought them back.”

  “Something else like what?”

  “She calls it abaka . It’s a kind of evil spirit.Bakas have powers, too. I think that’s what happened that night. What we did was like…praying to a demon. And when I prayed and fed it that chicken blood, I might have…”Woken it up . Those were the words in his mind, the words from Gramma Marie’s papers, the words that kept him from sleeping. But he couldn’t make himself say those words to Sean, as if there were a physical barrier in his throat.

  Sean’s face was pasty, nearly the shade of Sheba’s coat. “That’s why you have this food? To try to get rid of the curse?” He sounded hopeful.

  At that, Corey sighed again. Sean would never understand why he brought Becka food, nor would he understand why he’d walked half a mile to the gas station on the Four to buy a box of condoms. Maybe Bo had been right about Sean—maybe Sean wasn’t into girls—so he wouldn’t appreciate how sometimes a girl could shake you up, how she could g
et inside your thoughts and make herself at home. Corey’s memories of Becka’s touch by the fire and their lovemaking in his dreams were more vivid now than before. Heneeded to think about her, or else he started shaking. When he wrote poems about Becka, his heart rested.

  He had come here looking for her every day since the spell, waiting, calling for her. Sometimes he could feel Becka watching him, but she didn’t come out. But each day, when he came back to look for the food he’d left, the bag was gone. Why would she take it unless she was hungry?

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” Corey said.

  “Why are you so hung up on this girl?”

  “I said I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “Corey, don’t you remember how she showed up here laughing like a freak? She has serious damage. What’s wrong with you?”

  Sean might as well have been talking about his girlfriend—hell, hissister —because rage welled up in Corey, volcanic. “Isaid to shut the fuck up about her. Stop acting like such a little faggot,” Corey said. He never used that F-word because he knew gay kids at school and he thought all preju-dice was the same bullshit, but it had slipped out before he could stop himself. In fact, he’d wanted to reach over and pop Sean in the mouth, just like the day he’d met him.