Marie Laveau Read online

  “No one’s been doing me wrong. He hasn’t been doing anything to me at all.”

  “So that’s the kind of sickness it is,” laughed Marie Saloppe. “Well, that’s the easiest kind to fix. What’s his name?”

  “Jacques Paris.”

  Marie Saloppe scratched her head. “Don’t believe I know the family.”

  “No reason you should. He’s a mulatto. A carpenter. He hasn’t got a penny.”

  “Ooh, baby,” said Marie Saloppe. “You must be out of your mind, letting your heart get broken by some poor mulatto boy.”

  Marie sighed so unhappily that Marie Saloppe bit her tongue. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do what I can. But first I want to see him in the flesh. Come back tomorrow and take me out for a look.”

  The next day Marie and Marie Saloppe strolled arm-in-arm down Hardwood Alley. Jacques Paris was sanding a table in the doorway of the carpenter’s shop.

  “Miss Marie!” he shouted. “Good afternoon!” The sandpaper crumpled in his hand and dropped to the ground. “How are you this afternoon?”

  His formality surprised Marie until she realized: they never met outside her kitchen. She felt as if they were strangers—but they weren’t. “If we were strangers,” she thought, “I could look him in the eye.”

  Instead she kept her face toward Marie Saloppe. “I’m just f ine, ” she said. “I’d like you to meet my dear friend Marie Saloppe. We’re on our way home from a walk in the governor’s garden.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” saidJacques, gawking at the root doctor. “Nice day for a walk.”

  The two women nodded and strolled on. As soon as they turned the comer, Marie squeezed her friend’s arm. “What do you think? Isn’t he beautiful? What should I do?”

  “No, thanks,” said Marie Saloppe, shaking her head vigorously. “I don’t want nothing to do with it. You got no business messing with that boy—asking for trouble. He’ll bring you more trouble than your little head ever dreamed.”

  “Why? What kind of trouble.”

  “Bad trouble. Can’t you see? That boy’s your double. Your twin from the other world. Your soul in a man’s body. You even look alike, like pictures of somebody’s grandma and grandpa. Don’t fool with your double—run for cover. When you see your double, bad trouble’s on its way. Destruction’s peeking at you from around the corner of the other world.”

  “You’re the one who’s crazy. No one in their-right mind would ever take us for twins.”

  “Your faces are different,” conceded Marie Saloppe. “But your spirits are two halves of the same apple. I can see it. You’ve got the same secrets, the same dreams. I bet you were born under the same sign.”

  “Then you bet wrong,” Marie said triumphantly. “He was born under the bull—that sweet, gentle bull.”

  “He’s got some spider in him somewhere,” insisted Marie Saloppe. “And I don’t want nothing to do with this scorpion dance.”

  They walked on in silence. “If we’re so much alike,” said Marie, “it means we’re fated to be lovers.”

  “How do you know?” screamed Marie Saloppe. “How do you know what everything means?”

  “I know I want Jacques Paris,” Marie said calmly. “I know I’ll do anything to get him. Isn’t there some kind of gris-gris you can give me to make him love me?”

  “You don’t need no gris-gris to make him love you,” mumbled Marie Saloppe.

  “What?”

  “Oh, honey ... if I were really looking out for you, I’d put some Confusion Powder on your doorstep so that boy would never bother you again. But I don’t have it in me. Likewise I couldn’t bring myself to go against my good sense and help you fix his heart. But the fact is, I don’t need to. You’ve fixed his heart already. You don’t need my help.”

  “How can you say that when he’s never even touched me.”

  “You got eyes in your head. You’ve been out in this world long enough to see for yourself. His face got all tight when he saw you. His hands were shaking. He dropped his sandpaper on the ground.”

  “If he loves me so much, why won’t he spend the night?”

  “Maybe he’s scared of you. You’re Marie Laveau—a fancy quadroon lady with a fancy reputation from the fancy quadroon balls. And he’s Mr. Poor Mulatto Nobody—no wonder he’s scared. But he’ll get over it. Someday soon he’ll come to your house and stay all night. He loves you, honey—don’t you worry. Men don’t shake and drop their sandpaper for women they don’t love.”

  Marie threw her arms around Marie Saloppe and kissed her.

  “Watch out,” Marie Saloppe pushed her away. “That boy’s your double—it’s dangerous. And now that you’ve cast your spell on him—you better watch out. Love’s a homing spell—like a boomerang, like a pigeon. It goes around and comes around on the person who cast it—heavier than anyone could ever throw.”

  On the evening of November first, Jacques appeared in Marie’s doorway with a bottle of dark rum.

  “A birthday present!” cried Marie. “Rum for my birthday!”

  “Happy birthday,” said Jacques, who’d had no idea. All he knew was it was All Saints’ Day. He’d spent the afternoon at his mother’s grave. He felt mean and evil as an owl.

  The memory of his mother always made Jacques feel awful. She’d been a slave. Her master was a good Catholic who’d come back from confession on the day of Jacques’s birth with two deeds of freedom and enough money for a woman and child to get from St. Martinville to New Orleans.

  In New Orleans she’d worked as a cook. She’d tried to be a good mother. She’d brought home the choicest leftovers, civilized people’s food. But her son had grown up a wild animal—roaming the bayous with his friends, staying out for weeks at a time, dirtying her clean floor with sawdust, leaves, twigs, animal bones. She never forgave him.

  On the day she decided that Jesus would make a better son, she became a saint. She’d sat in her chair, staring into space, glassy-eyed, teeth chattering, laughing and crying at once. She talked to her son Jesus, and He made her so happy that she cried herself to death.

  All afternoon Jacques had brooded beside her crypt. At dusk he left her a chrysanthemum wreath in the form of a cross and headed home to get blind drunk. He bought some rum and turned down Royal Street, then found his feet carrying him to Marie Laveau’s—where he hadn’t planned on going.

  Marie filled two glasses and gave him one. “Happy All Saints’ Day,” she toasted him. “Flowers for the dead, rum for the living.”

  They’d been drinking and talking for seven hours when Jacques noticed the beginnings of a fierce drunk-hunger. Too drunk to move, he looked desperately around the kitchen.

  A bowl of gumbo appeared magically on the table before him. He slurped it down, then smiled. “It’s good,” he said.

  “Sure, it’s good,” said Marie. “You could’ve been eating that good gumbo for months now. How come you wouldn’t try it?”

  “I wasn’t hungry.”

  “A big man works an eight-hour day and isn’t hungry? Come on, now ...”

  Jacques laughed. “All right,” he said. “I was scared you’d put something in it.”

  “Put what in it?”

  “You’ve got a reputation, Miss Marie. They say you’re magic. They say you know voodoo people. They say your granddaddy was a voodoo priest, that you’re good luck in gambling, that you know roots and fixes . . He stopped himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The rum’s giving me one loose mouth.”

  He was relieved when Marie laughed. “Now, what could I put in that gumbo to scare you so bad? Besides, I’m not magic. That’s just some crazy gossip.”

  “You are magic,” he went on, listening as if someone else were talking. “I know you’re not voodoo. But you’re the most beautiful woman I ever saw—that’s magic. You’re smart and proud and graceful—that’s magic. You might as well be voodoo—that’s how heavy a fix you’ve put on my heart. I wasn’t planning on visiting you tonight—but my feet took me here. T
hat’s how strong your magic’s working.”

  For the first time since her clumsy debut at the ballroom, Marie was at a loss for words. “You don’t have to tell me this,” she said. “You don’t need to sweet-talk me.”

  Jacques flinched. “It’s not sweet-talk. It’s the truth.”

  “It is sweet-talk.” Marie stopped, startled to hear someone else’s voice coming out of her mouth. “And you don’t have to do it,” the voice went on. “I’ll go to bed with you even if you don’t say another sweet-talking word.”

  She sighed. The hardest part was over. Jacques squirmed. It was clear as a dance call—grab your partner, swing her right... Steadying himself against the table, he walked around behind Marie’s chair and put his hand on her shoulder.

  As she stood up, her head banged into his chin, throwing them off balance. They stumbled into a kiss. But something was off, out of step. Their kisses seemed to start and end at the wrong moments. Finally they stopped. They hesitated, giggling nervously, unable to meet each other’s eyes. Then, for lack of a better idea, Marie took Jacques’s hand and led him into the bedroom.

  They undressed quickly on opposite sides of the bed and slid beneath the blanket. They gasped when their long bodies touched. But something went wrong again. Their joints creaked when they embraced. They felt stiff to each other, brittle as skeletons. There was no comfort, no ease—just sharp elbows, pulled hair, wrenched necks, the crunch of bone on bone.

  Marie kept reminding herself it was the first time—they were nervous. They’d gone so far already, there was nothing to do but go on. But when her hand settled on his groin, she realized they weren’t going anywhere at all.

  “It’s the rum,” he muttered. “Or maybe you did put something in that gumbo.” “Now, why would I put something like that in the gumbo?” she laughed. But Jacques wasn’t in a joking mood; she felt his weighty sadness through the bed-springs. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I’ll fix it.”

  She used her hands, her lips, her hair, all the tricks she’d learned from the girls in the dressing room, the magic which had never failed to turn half-dead Creole grandpas into raging billy goats.

  Nothing worked on Jacques Paris. “I been fixed all right,” he said. “Somebody’s fixed me fine.”

  “It’s not a fix,” she said gently. “You’re just scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of me.”

  “Of you? Why should I be scared of you?”

  “ ’Cause I’m a lady. A quadroon lady from the St. Philip Street Ballroom.”

  Jacques raised himself up on one elbow and glared down at her. “You’re no lady,” he said. “No lady tells me I don’t need to sweet-talk her. No lady drags me into bed the minute I’ve got a little rum in me and don’t know any better.”

  Shaking with fury, Marie rolled to the far edge of the bed, where she stayed, hating Jacques for making her wait so long, stirring her up, leaving her cold, then acting like it was all her fault.

  They lay on their backs with their eyes closed. A bitter silence hung over them. Finally they fell into a drunken sleep.

  She dreamed that she and Jacques were fishing knee-deep in a clear pool stocked with golden fish. Whenever the fish neared their hooks, giant waves rocked the little pond, frightening fhe fish away, shaking them off balance on the slippery bottom.

  Someone was shaking her awake. She opened her eyes. Jacques Paris was smiling at her in the pale morning light.

  “Hey, Miss Marie,” he said. “I’ve got a little something for you. A little birthday present.”

  “What’s that?” she said, knowing even as she reached out for it, hard and tight against his belly. Later there would be time for kisses and long, slow love; right now she was ready for him. Opening her thighs, she raised herself up. Jacques rolled onto his knees and entered her.

  “Right now,” she thought in the instant before her mind was submerged in the pleasure washing over her body. “Right here is where I was born to be.”

  They stayed in bed for six days. They couldn’t bring themselves to go out for food. When the gumbo ran out, they survived on apples and oranges. Eventually Marie remembered the carpenter’s shop but kept quiet, reluctant to mention it.

  “I don’t need to go to work,” said Jacques, reading her mind. “I’ve got my work cut out for me right here.”

  They made love everywhere. The house was covered with sperm. Their spirits left their bodies and danced through the sperm-covered house. They ate apples and oranges and made love some more.

  “We haven’t left this bed for six days,” said Marie, laughing happily. “There’s something wrong with us.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with us,” he said. “It’s nature’s way. We’re nothing compared to the turkey buzzards—they need their loving thirty times a day, and if they can’t find another turkey buzzard they get themselves a nice fat dog. And the whales—they do it standing in the middle of the ocean. The hoopsnakes do their loving on the run, two little hoops rolling side by side down the road ...”

  “You’re making it up,” she said.

  “No. It’s the God’s truth. Get dressed. I’ll show you.”

  They spent that day in the bayou. They watched five bubbles on the surface of the water. He gave her a chunk of amber. He showed her how to talk to the wind and listen to the spirits in the trees. He pointed to a tiny run-down wooden shack on Bayou St. John.

  “See that shack? It’s magic. You can feel the magic when you walk by it at night. An old black man named Franklin Midnight used to live there. He was blind and deaf and he never slept. At night he sat in the darkness all alone. That’s where the magic came from—his solitude and his power. Even now, that shack’s the best place to go when you’re in trouble.”

  “Trouble with the law?” Marie smiled, loving his little boy’s eye for safe hideouts.

  “Spirit trouble. Franklin Midnight’s power can fix it.”

  Later he showed her God’s handprint—five giant fingers mashed into a boulder. Without a word, they stripped off their clothes and lay down in the palm of God’s hand. Marie shivered as Jacques’s weight pressed her bare back into the smooth stone. Through narrowed eyelids, just before she came, she glimpsed the sun swimming across the sky like a golden fish.

  That night Marie dreamed Jacques caught a magic fish, bright as that afternoon sun. “I’m sorry,” said the fish. “But there’s no way to make wild love last forever.”

  The fish’s words were still in her ears when Jacques awoke her to ask if she would marry him.

  CHAPTER XII

  ON HER WEDDING NIGHT, Marie dreamed that Jacques was marrying another woman. She dreamed she attended their wedding banquet, which was much fancier than the simple lunch she’d shared with him that afternoon. There were cakes, champagne, chicken, fine liqueurs. Hundreds of guests—all strangers—sat at long tables on a grassy meadow.

  Marie didn’t want the newlyweds to notice her. But she did want a good look at Jacques’s other wife. Keeping away from the head table, she edged around the field until she could see.

  Jacques’s bride was a pretty, dark mulatto with curly oily black hair, sporting an outrageous wedding gown—bright pink lace and taffeta with blue embroidery—and lots of garish makeup. One arm was draped coquettishly over Jacques’s shoulders. Her purple-painted lips were open wide, and she was laughing...

  Marie was awakened by the sound of a woman’s laughter. The air smelled of jasmine perfume. She sat bolt upright and looked over at Jacques. He lay very still with the sheet pulled up around his shoulders. His face looked doughy and pale, much paler than that night at the Charity Hospital.

  Lighting a candle, she searched for the source of the perfume. There was no one else in the room.

  A tremor shook the bed. Jacques was shivering. “Jacques!” she whispered. “Wake up! You’re having a bad dream.”

  But he wasn’t asleep. His eyes were wide open, locked in a glassy stare. He wasn’t seeing her.

 
; “Jacques!” she cried. “What is it?” She couldn’t imagine what was wrong—though now she remembered how oddly he’d been acting all week. He’d blackened his thumbnail at work. He’d been useless around the house, unable to light the fire or work the pump. “Bridegroom’s nerves,” she’d told herself, hurt by the coldness of his kiss after Father Antoine’s wedding service. Later he’d seemed better—relaxed and happy on the way home from church and all through their late lunch. High on champagne, they’d fallen asleep, planning to wake up and make love ...

  Marie looked at the clock. It was midnight.

  Suddenly Jacques sat up and began to laugh—a wild, terrifying giggle, broken with shrieks, shrill gasps, hiccoughs. It was the laughter of the woman in her dream.

  Marie put her fingers in her ears. The laughter stopped. Now she was shaking too. She put her arms around Jacques. But he couldn’t feel her touch. She didn’t exist for him.

  He laughed again—softer than before, a woman’s musical laugh. Slowly, languidly, he put his hand on the nape of Marie’s neck. He rubbed his chest against hers—sinuous but slightly awkward, like a flirtatious teen-aged girl. His left hand grazed her breast. His fingers groped in the air as if stroking some imaginary lapel.

  “How tall you are,” he said in a singsong lisping falsetto. “I do believe you are the handsomest and cleverest thing I ever saw. I’ve had my eye on you for oh so long. Now tell me, honey, wouldn’t you like a sweet little baby like me?”

  Marie recoiled from his touch. Holding him at arm’s length, she studied his face. He was smiling shyly, lowering his gaze, batting his eyelashes, pursing his lips like some hideous imitation of the girls at the dances. But it was more than an imitation—his face had become a woman’s face.

  “Now, honey,” he murmured, slithering closer. “Don’t be scared of your sweet little honey when all I want to do is make you feel just fine ...”

  “This is my man,” Marie told herself, trying to keep calm. “My husband.” Summoning all her strength, she pushed him away. He rolled over lightly to the edge of the bed.