The Good House Part 33

-"CROSS ROAD BLUES"

ROBERT JOHNSON.

We paused before a House that seemed A swelling of the Ground-.

The Roof was scarcely visible-.

The Cornice-in the Ground-.

-EMILY d.i.c.kINSON.

Twenty-Seven.

FROM THE WRITINGS OF.

MARIETOUSSAINT.

WHEN YOU HAVE REACHEDa place of spirits, your bones know it.

You feel their company in the gentle call of the wind, in the laughter of the creek, in the silent conversations between the trees. I have been to many such places.Grandmeretook me to a bayou a few miles from our home as a child that was thick with spirits, harboring one in each water moccasin, in each dragonfly, in the fissured trunks of the saltbrush trees, in each lick of the marshy water, even in the whining mosquitoes. There, she introduced me to my forebears, calling them by name, one by one, and although I could never see them, I knew they were embracing me.

Such was my feeling upon reaching Sacajawea, upon finding the Place. How did I find it? The route was a long one! My plump little Dominique and I spent a year in San Francisco after I dreamed of that countryside rife with visual marvels. The beauty of that part of the country alone convinced me that this must be the spiritual home I had yearned for, the place that would heal my soul after Philippe's death. Yet, after only one short year, during which time I felt both very close to and quite remote from my destination, Papa Legba came to me in my dream and showed me a walnut tree. I also saw a house built on a ridge, but it was the tree I remembered most. It was the tree I was determined to find.

I was happy to leave San Francis...o...b.. then. I had encountered a Chinaman being ridden by abaka,like the corruptions whispered about by Roman Catholic priests dispatched from the Vatican to carry out the dangerous feat of banishing the Evil One. Bakasare perceived in many forms by human eyes, most often as misshapen beasts-so it is rare for one to invade a man in such a way. But any manboknows there is danger of mischievous spirits riding the head in place of the lwasif a curse has been cast, although I do not know why this Chinaman was cursed. Perhaps the spirit followed him from Peking. Perhaps there has been a marriage of demon spirits in this part of the New World. Of this I can only speculate. The bakaI met when he was brought to me was no more Satan himself than I was the Virgin Mary, but it proved a worthy adversary. It was almost the end of me.

With Papa Legba's blessing, and those of Ougu la Flambo and Simbi, I was able to send the Chinaman'sbakaaway from him. Perhaps it flew to one of the forests of majestic redwood trees I visited so often as tears streamed down my face in witness to their beauty. Certainly spirits live among the redwoods, and bakasclaim their rightful place among the spirits. One could not wish for a world without bakasbecause they are willing to carry out the work shunned by the more gentle spirits. But no sound-minded person would invite a bakainto her head, nor her home.

These are words I should have remembered.

The encounter with thebakain San Francisco taught me much I had not known about my own facilities, but it wearied me as no other exercise before it. I was bedridden for thirty days, my body covered with a rash that itched almost to the end of my tolerance. I took daily cleansing baths with anise, mustard seed, lavender, and rosemary, to no avail at first. In fact, I feared I had reached the end of my usefulness as a manbo,just as all people are reduced to a fearful state from time to time. Fear is inevitable, as is fear's parent, death. Moun fet pou mouri.

Papa Legba stayed at my side during this trying time, reminding me of my own strength when I chose to see it, when I was not swallowed in my misery. I think Papa Legba was disgusted with me and my tears, or else I might have healed sooner. He conveyed my messages to thelwasin his own time; often my prayers met silence because Papa Legba stood in my way. This made me angry, but it taught me patience, a trait I wish I had learned better. Impatience has been my undoing.

During this time of rash and fever, as I thrashed in my bed, I had vivid dreams about the walnut tree and the lovely house on the ridge. When my illness left me, I knew I must find them.

Sacajawea is not as close to San Francisco as it might seem by studying a map. I did not know the name of the town where my tree grew, an obstacle few would hope to conquer. With Dominique on my back, I wandered from town to town, not unlike a madwoman, traversing the northern coast of California, then to Oregon, where I spent three long months; and then, finally, I came to Washington, in our nation's uppermost western corner. I always stayed near the water, because I knew water was not far from the place I sought.

I have no memory of why I came to Sacajawea, except that it was not my destination the morning I set out. I came upon it accidentally, as one must happen across all places of great importance in life. I do remember, however, that as I arrived on Main Street in the back of a kind traveler's wagon, one of the first people I laid eyes upon was the tall, st.u.r.dy Chinook whom townspeople had come to call Red John, reducing him to the color of his skin. He saw me right away, given that there were no other people of my skin color in the little town. I think my brashness amused him, because he had a grin waiting for me. I could not have known then that John would soon be my husband, but I knew I was near the Place.

"Do you know a house on a ridge with a great walnut tree?" I asked John as I gathered my traveling bag on my arm and my child on my back, much like an Indian squaw; perhaps like brave Sacajawea toting little Jean-Baptiste on her trek with the white explorers, arriving before me.

"Sounds like the Goode house," John said, and he pointed the way. "He has a few black walnut trees. Do you have business with Mr. Goode?" he asked me.

"No," I replied. "I have business with his land."

That answer satisfied him, so he nodded and wished me well. I would discover later that John knew of the land's power, because he had sojourned there to say prayers since he was a boy with his grandparents, who remembered the place when it was a burial site in their own grandparents' day. When the plague came, John would tell me later, his people's dead outnumbered the living, and there were barely enough men with the strength to hang the burial canoes from the trees. Once, he told me, there had been a forest of canoes in Sacajawea, until the white men removed them.

I saw the tree immediately, precisely as my dream had promised; a large tree with a broad trunk and a large canopy across its crown, although I could tell the tree still had growing to do yet. The tree was young. Like me, the tree was a transplant, brought out of its natural environment to make a new home in the West. The house also appeared as promised, and my dream's vision was fulfilled.

And imagine my surprise!Grandmerewas waiting for me in the tree!

You have done well to find me,cherie, she called from its branches. This will be our new home.

Dominique and I slept in the forest that night, and I felt the rumbling beneath the soil of all the souls that had pa.s.sed this way. There was so much life, and so much death, that I had to shut my ears so I would not go insane. Sometimes a very spiritual place will overwhelm you, and I had never visited a place as restless as this. When I thanked Papa Legba and thelwasfor leading me to such a vibrant place, my whispers went directly to their ears with the force of a thunderclap, and theirs to mine. I smelled roses and lavender where there were none. I cried from joy until I slept.

But while I am a woman of spirit, I am also a woman of practical matters, and I knew I could not hope to live in that wonderful forest undisturbed, not so long as a deed proclaimed it belonged to another. The next morning, I went to the service entrance of the house on the ridge and introduced myself to the man who lived there, a pharmacist named Elijah Goode.

He was an older man, white-haired and portly, and he walked with an elegant wooden cane. He was very polite, as if he had been waiting for me. "You've come in reply to my advertis.e.m.e.nt?" he said.

I knew of no such thing, but I nodded my head. Coincidences are commonplace in the life of amanbo,so I took it as a sign.

He admitted he had reservations about hiring a colored cook and housekeeper to live in his home-that there were no colored people in Sacajawea, and that his neighbors would not understand-but after he'd voiced his concern, he laughed and shook his head. I think he was taken with Dominique, who kept reaching for his cane, callingLeg-ba,because she recognized the symbol of her spirit-father. "Blast them all!" Elijah Goode said. "I'll give them something to talk about."

Well, talk they did. I had been in Eli's employ for only a month when he complained that he had seen a decline in business. Many of his neighbors a.s.sumed I was too young and beautiful to live in a house alone with Eli-which, in the end, perhaps was prophecy on their part. They were quick to attribute l.u.s.tful motives to him, and more so to me, although our lives were very separate. Dominique and I did not have a room in the main house; instead, we were consigned to a small, windowless room in the attic, where the rising summer heat was nearly unbearable, as if Eli meant to prove to any visitors that his colored domestic understood her "place."

Eli was very concerned about his business, which is understandable. He'd been born into some money in New England, which enabled him to build the house and buy the land, but he was not wealthy enough to discount townspeople's gossip. The solution, to my mind, was simple.

"Mr. Goode," I said to him, for that was what I called him then, "if I may say so, you haven't used your land's endowments to their greatest potential. I could make you a rich man."

I then introduced Eli to my teas from the herbs I grew in my garden, and he was much impressed. He had suffered from arthritis since he was in his fifties, and he noticed a marked improvement once he had tasted my blend. I cured his sleeplessness next; and the last blend, though I did not tell him its intent, restored his carnal drives. From that time on, Elijah Goode no longer saw me as his colored maid, but as a healer in my own right. We became friends, reading our favorite books in his library in the evenings while Dominique played on a quilt on the floor. And we discussed business strategies. He agreed with me that a mail-order company would give him financial security for years to come, if I would be willing to give my a.s.sistance.

"But there is something I must ask in return," I said.

"Name your price, Marie," he said, reclining in his great Turkish parlor chair as if he were President Coolidge himself.

"You have no wife and no heirs," I said. "All I ask is that you leave this property to me in your will."

The way he stormed! It was blackmail, he said. Preposterous! He had to consider his nieces and nephews in Boston, his brother's children. Not to mention the scandal it was cause in the town, he insisted. Eli was always preoccupied with the specter of scandal.

"It's no one's concern but ours," I said. "Once you're dead and gone, no scandal will touch you. That's my price, and nothing less."

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 ent.i.tled to this house and my land after my pa.s.sing, 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 G.o.d, 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, a.s.suring 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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.ds, and is worthy of the highest respect. Papa Legba brought us the gift of communion with the lwasand the highest G.o.d, opening the gate between us.

But in my half-crazed state, I rememberedGrandmere'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 G.o.ds against Papa Legba's wishes, barren of his blessing. I committed the offense at midnight, Papa Legba's sacred hour, and on Sat.u.r.day, 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 that 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 ma.s.sive 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 thef.u.c.k 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 b.u.t.ter, 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 att.i.tude," 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 s.h.i.t. 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 h.e.l.l.

"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 p.i.s.sed 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?"