Half the Day Is Night (28 page)

She didn't know. She didn't even know what the question meant.

He shrugged, “Papa Legba won't mind.”

Someone took them inside. The front room was filled with people, and across the back was a long table with bread and covered dishes on it. She could smell sweet yams. There were rum bottles, too, she counted eleven. She wondered if the number meant something.

“What did he mean?” Tim asked.

“What?” she said.

“‘Papa Legbo won't mind?'”

“Papa Legba,” she corrected. “Papa Legba is a loa. He's the one that opens the gates.”

Tim shook his head. “All I know about is zombies.”

“Didn't you ever see like the vid,
Horsemen?
” she asked. Everyone had seen
Horsemen.
But Tim hadn't. “Do you know anything about possession?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I've seen vids about exorcism and demons. This isn't like Satanism, is it? I thought it was different.”

“It's not like Satanism,” she said. When she was growing up, the nuns had always said it was, but everybody knew it wasn't. “The loa are like spirits, and they come and mount people's heads, you know, they take over their bodies. But they're not demons. They don't hurt people.”

“So we're supposed to be possessed?” Tim asked.

“No,” she said, “not us. We're not, you know, like part of it. They don't come to everyone.”

“Okay,” Tim said, uncertain.

Someone touched her on the arm and she looked around. A tiny woman was standing next to her. “It is good you came,” the woman said. It took her a moment to realize that the woman was Paul's sister, Layte. She was smaller than Mayla had realized.

“I have a donation,” Mayla said. She pressed the money into Layte's hand. She had brought 50cr. She hoped it was enough.

Layte nodded. “That's good. Come with me.”

Should she have given the woman that much money? Paul hadn't said how much.

The flat had two bedrooms, but the smaller bedroom was completely bare except for a little square table set in the middle, with a post from floor to ceiling behind it. The floor was painted dark red. Marincite maroon. “This is the
sobagui,
” Layte said. “Here, when I nod, you should take the jug, you see, and offer it to each of the four directions. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mayla said. The post was dark, speckled with white paint. On the wall on the back there were three painted
veve:
a pattern of lines like wicker or ironwork; an elaborate cross, something like a grid or a gate with asterisks like flowers; and one quite clearly a ship.

Veve
were roads or gates, things the spirits used to come into this world. When she was in middle school they had been popular as jewelry. She'd had a little wire horse, a cheval, but they had to take them off when they got to school and hide them or the sisters would confiscate them.

She wished she knew more about voudoun. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Ask the loa what is wrong, why your life is like this,” Layte said. “I am sorry, there are three people we have to ask the loa about tonight, and there is the usual Friday night, we must get ready now.”

Mayla didn't know if she should go into the other room or not, but people started coming in and standing next to the walls. Paul pulled her back, so she was standing against the wall, too. All of the wall space was taken up, and Layte came back in. Behind her, people crowded in the door. Three men came in with drums and three-legged stools and sat down on the side.

Layte nodded at her. She felt awkward, and the jug was heavy, but she picked it up and carefully offered it in each of the four cardinal directions. Then she handed it back to Layte and went back to stand by Tim. Another woman came up and took the jug, offered it in four directions, and handed it back to Layte. Finally a boy, about sixteen, took the jug in shaking hands, and offered it to the four corners, his movements jerky with nervousness, his dark face shiny with sweat. Layte went to the door and poured a little water on the floor: once, twice, again. Then she poured a fine stream of water from the door to the
sobagui.
Then she wet at right angles to the first line of water and poured another thin trickle from the walls to the
sobagui.
Mayla expected her to go to the back wall, but she didn't.

Layte knelt down and reached inside a cotton drawstring bag tied around her waist. She pulled out a handful of white powder, like chalk or flour and traced lines on the dark red floor.

Tim whispered, “What are they doing?”

“They're drawing
veve,
like the ones on the walls, spirit gates. That's how the loa come, through the
veve.
”

People around her started singing,
“Fait un vever pour moin.”
Mayla expected the drums to start, but they didn't. The singing was full of rough bits and untrained voices, women singing in little girl voices. Did anybody sing much anymore, except when no one was listening? Or in church?

Layte drew carefully. Everybody watched. Some people sang but a lot of people looked around, not really paying much attention.

There was a bit of commotion at the door, and then three people backed in, two men and a woman. One of the men and the woman carried flags made heavy with spangles of white and silver buttons. They were white or silver on white but they made swirling patterns like waves and lines and spirals. The other man carried a saber. Except for the fact that they were walking backwards they looked almost like a flag corps. The room was so small and there were already so many people in it that the flag brushed Mayla as they backed past and Mayla could see the sweat mark under the arm of the woman's dress. They came slowly and deliberately around the room, sweeping to end up with a flourish right in front of the altar, just at the time Layte stood up. Layte said something in Creole, a strong statement, and the people answered back. She said something else and the people answered back. It took Mayla a minute, but then it became so familiar that she felt goose-bumps on her arms. She couldn't understand the Creole but the response sounded like church.

Saint Barbara, she heard that, she thought.
Les morts,
“the dead.” Bits and pieces, but she didn't even understand French.

The prayer finished. People stood with their heads bowed. There was a moment of silence, and then
“Ave Maria…”
Layte began and the rest of the congregation followed her in the Hail Mary, and then, in Creole, the Our Father. Monotonous drone of recited prayer, as familiar to her as school. They said the Our Father three times and then there was a silence and everyone stood with their heads bowed.

Mayla wondered what the next prayer would be, maybe the Apostles' Creed? Voudoun wasn't anything like she had expected. It was like a storefront church.

Layte shook a shell rattle and Mayla jumped. The rattle was a gourd covered with cowrie shells laced together and Layte shook it, a sound like a rattlesnake's tail, and shook it, and shook it and shook it and stopped.

Silence.

Everybody clapped and the drums boomed and Layte struck the ground with the rattle. The sound in the little room was intense. In unison: the clap, the drum, the thump of the rattle, one, two, three, pause. One, two, three, pause. One, two, three pause. Like knocking on a door. Bam, bam, bam, breath, bam, bam, bam, breath. Steady and slow, a demanding rhythm, relentless. The tension in the room was building, too. Everyone was waiting, watching the drummers. Or each other. Some people were starting to perspire. The room was warm, because of all the bodies, but not warm enough to get people sweating. One, two, three, and then beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-beat for what, half a minute? And then it stopped. Everybody seemed to wait, listening.

In the silence she could hear the echo of the drums in her ears, in her pulse.

Then it started again. One, two, three, pause. She could feel the impact in the bones of her skull. What if her headache came back, here? This was a foolish idea.

But it didn't seem to be starting her headache. Light caused her headaches. But the light here didn't bother her, even though it was just a bare fixture over the altar in a concrete room painted white. Bam, bam, bam, breath, bam, bam, bam, breath. It felt as if the sound drove the air out of her chest and only in the pauses could she breathe. She was clapping, although she couldn't even hear the sound of her own claps.

And then it ended.

What next?

Everybody stood for a moment and then, as if a plug had been pulled in a sink, people began to drain through the door. Was that it? The loa hadn't come? She had paid a donation, had she been taken advantage of? “Paul's employer, she'll pay money, we can tell her the loa didn't come and then she'll go home, anglos don't know anything.”

She let herself be towed along, pulled into the front room. The table had been put against the wall, although nobody touched the food. The drummers came out and Layte followed, backing, pouring a thin stream of water on the floor.

No, it was rum, Mayla could smell it.

Most people weren't even paying any attention. A girl was looking for her handkerchief, she had laid it down. Someone produced it. People were chattering, mostly in Creole. How much longer until she should leave?

The drummers were sitting by the table, setting up as if they might play, but nobody seemed to pay much attention. The door opened and a couple came in. Somebody called, “Ramise!”

The woman waved.

A couple of people had little folding stools and they settled them around the walls but everybody else stood around the room. It was only a little after seven-thirty. It had been sort of interesting, but Mayla wasn't sure she wanted to stay for the party after.

Then Layte called out and everybody answered again. People turned around. Layte called again, and the chorus answered. (In the space between the answer and the next call, she heard someone talking.) Layte poured rum into a little metal bowl and lit a match and dropped it in. There was a flame, nearly invisible.

The drums started again, a more complicated rhythm, and some people came away from the wall and started dancing. Simple steps, two steps forward, one stomp. Mayla felt someone tugging on her sleeve, Paul, pulling her.

She looked up at Tim, pleading, come with me. Tim followed them into the thick. One-two one. One-two one. Simple. An easy motion. They flowed around the room, around the bowl of burning rum. The dancers rolled their shoulders, a sensuous motion that Mayla couldn't duplicate. She felt stiff, anglo. A dumb, awkward blanc. Not my culture, she wanted to say. But everybody was looking at the floor, dancing to themselves, hypnotizing themselves with the rhythm. So she tried staring at the dark floor, rolling her shoulders. After a few turns around the room she felt her shoulders loosening up, rolling like the women around her. She looked up and smiled at Tim, who couldn't isolate the movement and shook his whole chest, but he smiled good-naturedly back at her. Good old Tim, she thought, always ready to go along.

Maybe it was more her culture than it was someone like Tim's.

Her mind kept going and going, her thoughts running like a mouse wheel. What if she could be possessed? What would it be like? It would be great if it were true, if there were loa. She probably couldn't be possessed if she didn't believe in them—and there was something strong in this room.

The drums kept going. Her calves were aching. You probably had to do this a lot to be in shape for it.

She let the drums propel her around, left-right LEFT, right-left RIGHT. Easy steps, and her mind wandered. Like doing exercise, where there was nothing to occupy her. Maybe that was the major benefit? Just letting her mind go, letting the rhythms take her, tiring her body out and not concentrating. She should empty her mind. She glanced around. Some people seemed to be concentrating, some didn't. A few were looking around.

The drums stopped, and everybody looked around. The faces were mostly blank. The drums started again, a different rhythm, a different dance, a kind of step and glide.

She didn't like it, she liked what they had been doing before, the shoulder roll thing, and she couldn't do this glide thing right, but she liked the dancing. The drums were wonderful, calling her, pushing and pulling. She tried to let herself glide into the drum beat and for a moment she thought she had it, if she could just not think she would have it, but she lost it almost right away. She had to sort of think, but she had to just know she was going to do it, and she didn't know that, she was thinking too much, she had to just go with the drums. Maybe if she came on Fridays after awhile she would be out here and she could just go with the drums—

The big drum changed rhythm and everybody broke, the drum just went
thump thump thump thump thump
while the other two drums kept going under and over each other as if the big drum were still playing with them, and everybody took long steps, stride stride stride stride stride, and then the big drum was drumming again and they were all dancing again.

She felt wild and startled, it seemed like a hallucination, that break, with everybody dancing as though the women had not thrust their hips down, the men thrown their legs out and everybody taken those long strides, like giant steps, take three giant's steps, Simon says, or really, the big drum says. Listen to the big drum.

She liked it. She liked it a lot. She liked the dancing. It felt good, heating her muscles up and moving around. She'd be sore tomorrow, but that was okay.

Around the invisible center, a constant motion, a current of water, her legs were getting tired and then the big drum broke again and in that moment a man stumbled, caught himself and went rigid, falling backwards so that the man behind him, who was just in front and to Mayla's right, had to catch him. The other dancers strode past. A woman stumbled away as if struck and then her leg seemed to root to the maroon floor and she pitched forward, as if a current had come from the man. People behind Mayla were pushing her forward, so she went on, craning her neck. The man who had stiffened and fallen backwards had been as rigid as someone turned to wood, but now he suddenly jerked left and right, breaking away from the man supporting him. The woman was still pitched forward, another woman holding her arm. She looked terrified, her eyes wide.
“Merci!”
the woman shouted.