American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World (8 page)

Read American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World Online

Authors: Rod Davis

Tags: #Body; Mind & Spirit, #General, #Religion, #Ethnic & Tribal, #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #African American Studies, #test

 

Page 41
was at the sales counter, which served as a barrier to the rest of the store, selling a pickled pig's foot to a teenage boy trying to pretend he wasn't wondering just what kind of a place he'd walked into. I watched the boy's eyes make a rapid recon, starting with the ceiling-high shelves of oils, candles, soaps, superas and other items of the trade which formed an alcove around the cluttered desk on the other side of the counter where Lorita, unusually business-like in crisp tan cotton dress, sat, brow furrowed, phone at her ear. A hand-lettered poster on the freshly painted white wall said:
All reading are $25.00 per person. If two people wish to enter the room at the same time, $25.00 per person. Except if you are bring someone who is sick are not able to understand. You are allowed to ask questions in your reading but additional information is extra. Please be prepared to pay for your services rendered. Yours in Christ, Rev. L. Mitchell.
Please pay at the front first. Thank you.
The boy considered the sign a moment, looked at the woman at the desk, then leaned forward around Juanika to check out the rest of the shop, where the alcove merged into a larger room, mostly vacant except for a refrigerator and restroom. And a balsa crate containing live roosters. Plastic sacks stuffed with dead ones. A bucket of crabs parked next to a 48-quart Igloo cooler. Most of all, a cast-iron cauldron in the far corner. It was partly covered by a white cloth, but you could easily see the kettle was full of bones, iron nails and bundles of wooden branches, or palos in Spanish. In the Kongo, where the use of the palo pot originated, it is called an nganga. By any name, it is a repository of spirits of the dead.

 

Page 42
The boy glanced back at me with widened eyes and a thin smile, declined Juanika's suggestion of a Big Red, paid for the pig's foot and made a quick U-turn out the door. Usually, Lorita would have taken care of such shyness, or at minimum called out, "Come back, baby," to any potential client who came in and left, but she was still on the phone, and it didn't seem to be pleasant.
She fussed with her gold necklace as she talked. According to her itá, gold was the only kind of jewelry she could wear. Not even diamonds. Her face had gone ashen, haggard. Rising from her chair, eyes glowing, she began to pace as far as the phone cord would allow. Her voice rose, then dropped to a growling mutter. It was Gary, and from what I could make out, it was about the car. Ten minutes later she hung up, sat down and rubbed her neck, and I knew her wrecked Cadillac Brougham, the pride of her possessions, still wasn't repaired. It was a touchy subject, so I turned my attention to the radio.
A white fundamentalist talk show preacher was healing people on the air, spacing out the broadcast miracles with recorded hymns. Lorita didn't think white people, most of whom she believed to be Catholic, could pull off gospel music"they try, but it all sounds like, what is it, 'Old Rugged Cross'"but she listened to white shows anyway. The Lord was the Lord, church was church, and singing for Jesus was singing for Jesus.
Presently her temper cooled and she talked to a steady stream of clients on the phone for over an hour. About five, she asked me to give her and her family a ride home. We piled into my car just as the heavy air turned to raindrops so big I could barely see to drive. All the way home Lorita tried to remain cheerful, dispensing advice on curing Antoinée's cold with goose grease and honey.
It wasn't just the Caddy. It was everythingthe last three years. In some people this would be a mood; in Lorita it seemed more than that, some power, some bad thing always out there,

 

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Shelves of candles, herbs, and other religious supplies inside St. Lazarus
botanica. Candies, pop and other snacks, foreground, helped add to the 
bottom line.
Room behind main counter in St. Lazarus botanica. In corner under blanket,
palo mayombe pot filled with bones, iron nails and bundles of wooden
branches. Machete wedged to one side. Next to palo pot, Igloo cooler hides
bucket of crabs to feed Elegba. In foreground, crates of live roosters and chicks.

 

Page 44
always to be fought, not always to be defeated. Since I'd last seen her, she'd changed churches, started a new business, fought with her Cuban santeria advisors. She'd nearly lost everything when a fire inflicted heavy smoke damage on the triplex, and the insurance wasn't paying off a black woman preacher of some weird inner city religion, and the truth was going thirty days at a time right now. Forget credit cards. And now the Caddy was being held hostage by the mechanic and the whiplash hurt and the lawsuit against the taxi that hit her was a nightmare and she hated physical therapy but wouldn't take pills because they were drugs and she didn't like drugs, which was why she was dressed up; she'd been to the clinic that day.
Just before we got to her house, Lorita asked me to stop at a Baskin-Robbins. She ordered a banana split, and that was dinner, as a small can of barbecue flavor Vienna sausages had been lunch. Before I left she asked me to come by the shop early the next morning. Gary had to work at his catering job and she would need help getting ready for three "urgent" clients. I promised to be there at eight.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
I had barely said good morning when she told me to take down a bunch of bananas bound by a purple ribbon tacked to the ceiling just inside the door. They were an offering for Shango, to help draw money, but had gone sugary black in the heat. I pulled them down and tossed them into a black plastic garbage bag. The phone rang. Lorita told the caller she'd try to work her in. While we waited for the first client, she finished a long overdue chore, wiping smoke film from small vials of oils salvaged from the fire.
She was still peeved about the Caddy, her neck still was achy, and she was still nursing a grudge against me for telling her last week a CAT-scan of her neck wouldn't be so bad. I offered to

 

Page 45
run down to McDonald's to get us some coffee and sausage biscuits. By the time I returned she was puttering around in her readings office, and soon I heard her singing. I took in a biscuit, but she put it to one side. In that room of her own, where the powers of Jesus and her voudou spirits worked in harmony, Lorita found the real nourishment of her life. Sitting at her cloth-covered divining table, she hummed absent-mindedly as she arranged the few things she kept on it: a thick, cream-colored Bible, three small goblets of water, a statue of St. Lazarus and another of Whitehawk (one of the Native American spirit guides popular in New Orleans), and a note pad. Like most priests, not to say therapists, Lorita kept track of the progress and problems of her clients, and referred to her notes for repeat visits.
I slumped against a wall, next to a black palo staff with a serpent carved down its length, and sipped my coffee. The far corners of the 10×20 rectangle were crammed as ever with sacrificial altars on behalf of clients. Among them were two fist-sized Elegba statues similar to one near the botanica entryway out front. The crossroads god in all three cases was rendered in the standard symbolic manneran inverted, cone-shaped head molded of laterite and featuring cowrie shells for eyes and mouth. A pointed nail, imbedded in the laterite before it hardened, stuck up from the top of the flat crown. In all, the figure resembled the shape you'd get by filling a paper cup with sand, turning it upside down, and pulling the cup away, then sticking in shells and nails. Surrounding the Elegbas, which had been set on plain ceramic plates on the floor, were offerings of bloodied feathers, ripe bananas, and red candles.
I noticed at least one new altar, next to the Elegbas, for Ochosi. Equated with the astrological symbol Sagittarius, Ochosi's talismanic symbol is a U-shaped metal band linked at both ends by a chain and pierced lengthwise by a sharpened rodit looks like a tautly drawn bow and arrow. Among other

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