Authors: Multiple
“More impressed now than when we first met?”
“More scared. “
“You really are learning. Do you know what a Loa is?
“Is it a boy band?” Based on her look it was apparently not.
“Ever hear of voudoun?
“Is that like voodoo? A few years ago I was in New Orleans and met
a drag queen who was somehow related to Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen. I never
figured out how—I just assumed he had been adopted by the family. There
was a very long and boring story about her apprentice, Madame LaLaurie and how
she ended up being the devil's wife in a little town out in the sticks of
Louisiana. There was a deformed baby who grew up and murdered the drag queen's
ancestor. Their last name was Winter.” I thought back for a moment. “His name
was Martin Winter—Lady Chartreuse.”
“In New Orleans, they include a Loa named Black Hawk, and much of
what they do was learned from the Taino People who were among the first to tie
up Columbus' ship. That was how I became involved—through the Taino. I've
always been local. I got incorporated into the Loa as part of Ghede Nimbo.”
“Understood Black Hawk and Columbus, but pretty much all the rest
was blah, blah, blah.”
She exhaled through her nose, and it sounded really, really ugly.
“Think of a Loa as the same as what you would call a
Tamanawis
, or what
some of your Coastal relatives would call a
skookum
. They're a type of
spirit that gets intimately involved with humans.”
“And this is related to voodoo, how?”
“I am connected with Ghede Nimbo, who can govern over issues of
death and rebirth. Think of me as similar to your Eagle or Deer, who are
connected with the Warrior or Lover aspect of your Creator. I play in a different
sand box.” She turned away from me. “Usually I just have to tell people like
you how I'm simply another Native spirit. None of you ever bother to ask if all
of us have lives outside of what we do with you.” She frowned in a way Daisy
never would. “You're all human people—you just express yourself in
different ways and we do the best we can trying to keep up.”
“Why do you need us at all?”
“You feed us. If you sing our Songs, or keep the rituals alive,
you keep us alive.” She looked away from me again. “There are a lot of spirits
who starved to death when their Songs stopped being sung.
I sat back and wondered what sort of conversations I'd have with Eagle or Deer.
“Are Eagle and Deer Loas?”
“Water is water, no matter what language you're using. I think it
would be better if you ask Eagle or Deer directly. I wouldn't want to have them
explain me.”
“You can bring Scorpio back?”
“It's not a situation where I just snap my fingers. It's
ritual—it always comes back to ritual.” She seemed to be listening to
something I couldn't hear. “Martin Winter is a houngan.” When she saw me frown
she added in a sigh, “What you'd call a voodoo queen.” She rose and turned in a
circle the way we would when we joined in a worship dance. We're told when we
turn in a circle, one of our sins fell off. For a moment I wondered what sins a
spirit might have. “Martin Philip Winter—Lady Chartreuse—I
Call
you.”
I felt the temperature plunge and wished I was wearing my coat.
A bright shimmer appeared in the air and Lady Chartreuse was
there. He was several pounds heavier and in full drag the way I had only seen
him in the photo stashed in the corner of the mirror in his dressing room.
“Shit,” he muttered, “this isn't about using the white goat instead of the
black one is it? They were out of black goats.” Then he looked at me and his
eyebrows shot up. “Pocahontas!” he screamed and then grabbed me and swung me
around the way he had back in New Orleans. “Girl, you sure turned out pretty!”
He looked at Moth who was perched on a log and said, “What, you
again?”
“Papa Ghede sends his regards,” she said dryly.
Lady Chartreuse looked at me and said, “You've picked up some
heavy hitters since I last saw you.”
“He needs you to bring back his brother,” Moth stood up and then just
wasn't there. Great.
“Jesus,” he said, “I hate it when outside spirits get involved in
Loa shit. Fill me in fast because I don't know how long I'll be here.”
“Brother drowned. Wants to come back. Moth says you can show me
how to do it. Goes against everything I was taught about keeping the Harmony,
but she says I'm just narrow minded and you do it all the time.”
He crossed his arms. “I've done it.” He turned away from me,
“Wouldn't describe it as all the time. It requires a lot of prep work. We'll
need Papa Ghede. He's the Loa that will permit your brother coming back.”
“Like a gatekeeper?”
“Yeah,” he laughed, “and he expects to collect a toll. One thing
about the Loa is they always have their eyes on the tab.” He looked very
serious. “Nothing is ever for free.”
“How does it work? Will he get to keep his old body? It's pretty
rugged looking at the moment. They dragged his body out of the River.”
“Flesh is flesh,” he said dismissively, “think of it as clay that
just needs reshaping.” I shuddered, remembering having to endure the pain of
having my body reconstructed with the baking clay. Reshaping Scorpio in the
everyday world seemed to me to be different than doing it in the in-between
space. I could be faux Coyote in the in-between space, but not the Everyday
World—not now. Or could I? In a world where the dead could rise again,
maybe Coyote could be anywhere. My head felt full again. Did I really want to
live in a world where Coyote existed 24/7?
He picked up my yew staff that just happened to be there, and
pounded it into the ground. “We need a
Poteau-mitan
for the Loa to slide
into this world. This is raw, Pocahontas—normally we'd be a lot more
formal and we'd be surrounded by drums.” I knew something about drums.
“This is new to me,” I said, walking about my staff. “What should
I expect?”
“The last time I saw Papa Ghede he told me he had enjoyed a
Saturday night in the Ginen while drinking Christ under the table with shots of
chili rum.” He must have seen my surprised expression and said, “Which means
you don't always believe everything he says because he considers himself a
comedian. He loves children and loves even more to scare the living hell out of
adults, reminding them to enjoy life because it's always on the edge of ending.
He is the only one of the Loa who never disguises himself when he mingles with
humans and will stroll around Bourbon Street to allow people to take pictures
of him, but they never come out. They say he places HIV on every ninth needle.”
He made some adjustment to my staff and added, “He is the Loa of
eroticism and his best trick is to pick out the most sexually repressed person
in the room and possess him or her. He then has his
cheval
act out in
the most lascivious of ways.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.
“What's a
cheval
?”
“It means horse in English. A
cheval
is the person the Loa will
mount—possess.” I thought about this. Normally I'm pretty sure I would
never be considered “the most sexually repressed person” in any room, but if my
chances were fifty/fifty, I don't know if Ghede would pick Lady Chartreuse over
me. People often were ridden by their Spirit Power during the Winter Spirit
Dances. In some cases, the person with the Spirit Power would have another
dance in their place, or have a ritual object that they'll make dance like my
grandmother and her dolls.
He started to sing an unfamiliar song and in the distance I
thought I heard the seven drums of our Longhouse. He said something that I
recognized as French. “We honor the Legba,” he told me. “None of the Loa may
pass into this in-between place and then enter the Everyday World without his
permission.” He glanced my way. “You owe me, Pocahontas—consider this put
on to your bill. You will pay. If you don't pay by the second of November, then
it will be all hell to pay.” In one hand he held a bottle of some sort of
alcohol he poured on the ground and the smell hurt my nose. He flung five coins
unfamiliar to me and when they hit the spilled liquor it all burst into flame
and formed a circle around my yew stick, and then spread out into a design I
thought I had seen in the Voodoo Museum where it was labeled a veve. There were
four medicine wheels in the center, like the ones Scorpio had drawn on the tomb
of Marie Laveau when we were in New Orleans.
An elderly man was suddenly there, leaning on a cane, his skin the
same color as Valentino's had been. Lady Chartreuse spoke to him rapidly in
French and he stepped aside and extended his hand to my yew staff. The flames
of the veve wavered and formed a different pattern that looked more like a
plain Christian cross. The old man disappeared and in his place was a man in a
fancy tailed coat and a black top hat like the one Mr. Peanut wears on the can
of nuts. He had his back turned to us. He was holding a smoldering cigarette in
his left hand. He turned slowly to face us, shirtless beneath the coat and
wearing dark aviator glasses with one of the lenses missing. He took them off
and smiled at me. “I have missed you, my little fishy,” he said. His large almond
eyes were a disturbing purple, but as I watched, they shifted to match my own
color.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You know each other?” Lady Chartreuse looked at me with
suspicion.
“Surely you realize Papa Ghede knows everyone.” Then he laughed
and added, “Or will know everyone.”
“He wasn't calling himself Ghede when we first met,” I told Lady
Chartreuse.
“If it makes you feel better, Moon of the Singing Frogs, think of
me as moonlighting.” He laughed again, obviously finding this a funny comment.
“Are you moonlighting as Ghede or Coyote?”
“Do you really care about what uniform the pizza delivery guy is
wearing as long as you get your pizza?” He tipped his top hat to me and then
tossed it to Lady Chartreuse but as the drag queen reached to catch it, the hat
vanished with a little puff of purplish smoke.
He moved gracefully towards me, picking me up effortlessly and
kissing me gently in what felt like sincere affection. Then he turned me around
and forced me forward and ground himself into my ass. “If he rides you,” said
Lady Chartreuse, “Papa Ghede will definitely be getting his rocks off tonight.
When I said he'd claim his price, I wasn't just talking about rum or hot
peppers.”
“I don't bottom,” I said, pulling away. “It only seems fair if
anybody gets ridden it should be Scorpio, since he's the one getting
resurrected, not me.”
“Oh, baby,” Lady Chartreuse whispered, “You never refuse a Loa. If
he say you dance the Massissi dance, then you damn sure start shaking your
money maker!”
“Oh, mon petit Chartreuse, he does not refuse me. He is but
playing hard to get. He knows how much I enjoy the chase.”
“Let's get back to Scorpio. I like the idea you bring him back and then you get
to ride him. He's the one who deals with the dead!”
“He's no longer the only one,” Moth laughed. She landed on the
shoulder of Ghede who was beginning to look more and more like Coyote. His
fancy coat was gone.
“Fine,” I said. “I'll drum.” What the hell, I figured we were
still in the in-between. “In the name of Coyote, I
Call
seven drums.” I
reached up and in one hand I held the drum I had used when Justin had attacked
me and in the other my familiar drumstick. Six other drums from the Longhouse
formed a line as if invisible drummers were holding them and we were ready to
sing our worship songs. I automatically turned in a circle to begin and the
other drums spun in mid-air.
“Oh, my little fishy,” Ghede laughed, “You are truly imitating the
Imitator!” In response I began the drum call that lets the community know a ceremony
was about to begin.
I had no idea what song to use so I began with the Moth Song. Moth
launched herself from Ghede's shoulder. In mid-flight she shimmered and took on
her human shape. She plucked a drum and drum stick from where they were
fLoating in the air and joined in her own Song. Lady Chartreuse began to dance
in a way that looked a lot more like twerking than anything I had ever seen in
a ceremony. His ass looked really huge as he lowered himself so close to the
ground as he kept up the rhythm of the song I was worried he'd split his dress.
Ghede took a swig out a bottle in his hand that I swear was
smoking. He laughed and then drained it, letting it drop but it vanished before
it struck the ground. He was now holding a gourd rattle that was webbed with
bright colored beads that seemed to be glowing. When he would shake it, the
beads slid across the surface, giving an additional sound. “Why did I not think
to make the drums play themselves?” He laughed again and suddenly six more of
the rattles materialized and fLoated above the drums around me blending in
their sounds. Ghede danced in a circle around my staff, using the movements I
knew from the Medicine Dances we do in the Spring. When he had completed seven
circuits, he held up his hands and all the drums and rattles sped up the way we
would do in certain healing songs. Then the drums were struck so hard I feared
they would split, but there was a moment of silence and Ghede began a different
Song that I assumed was his.
A bright purple glow grew in front of my staff and Ghede looked me
in the eye. He no longer looked like Coyote, but his face and body had become
as dark as my hair and his face was a skull. From the glow a procession of
dancers emerged, picking up his song, but blending it into harmonies we would
not use in the Longhouse. It was very pretty and I concentrated on keeping up
with the shifting rhythm. More dancers dressed in strips of white cloth
continued coming out of the purple light and they carried the ruined body of
Scorpio, lifted above their heads. Keeping up the rhythm of the dance they
placed his body on the ground and I regretted he would not lie on a Pendleton
or the more traditional woven reed mat. I kept singing, my throat feeling raw
as I added a part of myself to the song. Moth looked at me, seemingly surprised
and I wondered if I had managed to piss off the spirit world again.
Ghede was suddenly facing me across from Scorpio's body, wearing
the top hat again. He held a bottle once more in his hand. He drank from it and
then he did what I had seen two of my uncles do, spitting it out in a fine
mist. For us this was
Alquat
Power—Frog Power. It was considered
one of the strongest of the healing rituals. It was as if a cloud suddenly
covered my brother and my nose stung from the strength of the alcohol. Ghede
snapped his fingers and the mist burst into flame. I had sympathy for Scorpio
because I knew only too well the pain of this fire. But when the mist burned
away, his body was once again whole. He remained in the stillness of death.
Then Ghede stretched his arms above Scorpio's body and he sang
with such strength my ears felt as though they would bleed. He brought his
hands up and down while flexing his fingers as if he were a puppet master and
suddenly Scorpio began to jerk to match the movements. His eyes were still shut
but as Ghede seemed to pull at him with invisible strings, he sat up and then
impossibly he was standing. Human bodies don't bend that way. I wondered just
how human his body was at this point. The white clad dancers lifted him up
above their heads and took him around my staff, turning him in a circle at each
of the cardinal directions, the way we would do with a casket in a true
funeral—as they might even now be doing in the Longhouse. The time of the
in-between space continued to confuse me.
When they had completed the circle, they placed his feet upon the
ground once more and he unsteadily tried to keep standing. He opened his eyes
and looked into the skull face of Ghede and he screamed.