nausea when the institutional food smell hits me. I pull a vanilla yogurt out of the cooler box.
I wish to be alone, but I’m spotted by two other medical recorders. Lulu waves me over to a table where she is sitting with Cleo. Dead Dolores, were she here, would be glad of company, and so I go also, doing this in her memory. They’re both eating salads from the bar, where you make them up and buy them by the ounce. They are both sturdy, round-bottomed and — breasted dark women with straightened hair, looking very much alike, although I do not think they are related. Both of them are American African Non-Americans, being naturalized immigrants from the island of Barbados.
Cleo makes a comment about my yogurt and they both chuckle engagingly. Both of them have acquired along with their citizenship the American body thing and wish to keep their size under control. They know that only the thin rise in America. They’re better educated than Mrs. Waley, and speak a more precise English. Both are enrolled at Miami-Dade, and will get their degrees and will ride their clipped imperial accents beyond even Billing, perhaps as far as Administration itself. Mrs. Waley regards them with suspicion; how can they, four shades darker than she, talk and act so white?
Lulu and Cleo feel sorry for me. Lulu is always giving me grooming tips. Dolores, child, that is not the right style for your hair, I must tell you that, no. Cleo, tell her, she should wear it pulled back, away from the face. And she has such pretty eyes, see it, girl! Dolores, you should get you some contacts, like me. They don’t cost that much.
And so on, in that musical voice. I bob my head, grin, and make excuses. I like them both and wish often that I were again myself so that we could be friends. I eat my yogurt slowly, willing my stomach to accept its bland nourishment. Cleo and Lulu are chattering about some neighborhood event. They live in the Grove, too, in the large island community there. They are always complaining about the Bahamians and Jamaicans, and explaining to each other and to me why these are both lesser breeds without the law. And, my word, the Haitians! I allow their talk to soothe me, like the sound of a brook, without much attention to content. Nor is it much expected. Now some remarks about their Episcopal church, their minister. I am consulted here, being a Catholic, and the arbiter of doctrine therefore. I make a mumbling reply. It has been thirteen years and seven months since my last confession. I am badly lapsed but persist in a fragment of belief. Now that I have Luz, I will probably start church again. I wish to bring her up in the faith of my father.
I’m thinking vaguely about finding a church when Lulu says, “The police are not saying anything, but I heard from my cousin Margaret, she lives in Opa-Locka and she knows the family of that poor girl. Margaret heard that she was cut wide open down her middle and the baby was stolen away.”
“Not true!” exclaims Cleo, her eyes wide with horror. My eyes too.
“True, very true!” Lulu affirms. “But, what you can expect, them in Overtown!”
“Terrible, them, but …” Here Cleo lowers her voice and looks dramatically past her shoulder, then confides, ” Youknow what they want with that baby, heh? Haitians.”
“What?” Lulu put her hand to her mouth. “Jesus save us! You think for human sacrifices?”
“What else for? What I think is they should have a care, the authorities, before they allow some of these people in the country. I don’t say all of them by any means, but …” Here she stopped and I felt her stare. “Why, my girl, what is the matter with you now? You look like you are about to be sick.”
I let my spoon fall to the table, mutter something, grab up my cheapo bag, and dash to the toilet. Out of both ends this time, top first, then the other, although I can’t imagine there was much to purge, maybe old rubber bands, pieces of spleen. Another zero-calorie day for Dolores.
After, I find myself at the sink, washing, washing, mindlessly washing my hands until they are red and wrinkled. Am I developing an obsession now? That’s all I need, paranoid delusions, obsessional syndrome, this is what the intern will say when he admits me to Neuropsychiatric. I wish.
Oh, Cleo, it’s not Haitians, no, this is far beyond Haitians. Haiti is strictly minor league for this kind of thing: the most extreme voudoun, done by the most power-crazed bokor in that whole wretched island, is like an amateur company stumbling through The Iceman Cometh in Kankakee. What we have here, Cleo, in comparison, is Broadway, the ultimate source and font and center of all that, the pure neolithic technology, unadulterated by transportation and slavery, barely touched by the colonialists.
Has he found me? I recall once, when we were first in love, idly speculating on where we might live, as couples do, running through the cities, the countries, totting up the pros and cons. San Francisco? Pretty, nice climate, but everyone wanted to live there. Chicago, where we met, good school, teaching opportunities, terrible climate. New York, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere, blah, blah, and I’d said, Miami, and we both blew raspberries and laughed. Which is why I’m here, naturally. The last place we’d choose.
But now he’s here and he’s hungry, he’s building up his ch’andouli, his sorcerer’s power, using stuff that even Olo sorcerers don’t use anymore, that no respectable Olo sorcerer will teach. But he didn’t learn this from a respectable Olo sorcerer. He learned it from Durakne Den, the dontzeh, the abandoned, the witch of Danolo. Oh, yes, Cleo, I know just what happened to that baby. I’ve even seen it done, God forgive me.
I still, stupidly, think of him as he was at the beginning, the way we were together, or how I thought we were together. God alone knows how much of that was real. What above all blasts your confidence, makes you weak and small, poisons the past, erases the memory of joy, cripples even the possibility of joy to come? The betrayal of the deepest heart, that’s what, which is always self-betrayal. No one can do you like you do yourself. The other day, when I was in Kmart with Luz, we passed the candy counter and there they had a display of caramels, a whole glass-fronted case full of caramel cubes, and I swear the color knocked me back, and out of nowhere came the memory of the color of his skin, and synesthetically, its smell. My gosh, how I loved him! And, you know, even after he changed, even after what happened in Africa, I still thought that someday we would get back together. I thought it, actually, right up to the day he murdered my sister.
FIVE
9/6 Air France 852 en route Paris-Lagos
Left Paris at ten-thirty in the morning after flying all night and will arrive in Lagos at four or so. I should sleep to avoid jet lag, but am too worked up.
Fellow first-class passengers are Nigerian kleptocrats, their wives returning from shopping expeditions, plus UN or NGO types, paler than the former group, less expensive wristwatches. Also two drunk Texans, in the all bidnis, lots of all in Nigeria so they tell me. Pronounce the name of the country Nigger-rhea. In Charles de Gaulle before flight, W. away buying duty-free, made themselves at home, heard I was going to Africa for the first time, regaled me with all sorts of useful information about the country. Should’ve told them to fuck off, I am too polite. W. came back and I introduced him as my husband?expression on their faces worth the first-class ticket. W. said I leave you alone for ten minutes and you’re practically joining the Nazi party? This is the last time I’m taking you to Africa! W. not particularly bothered by old-fashioned naked racism of the good ol’ boy type, hates cryptic racism of chattering classes a lot more, his worst hate = unacknowledged skin-tone racism of African-Americans.
Later. The Mediterranean is gone and we are over land again, over Africa. Reading Yoruba cosmology. It is a lot to take in. Yoruba cosmos divided into aye, the tangible world, and orun, the world of the spirits. At top of orun is Olodumare, creator god, but He’s really too high up there to pay attention to the small stuff. Orun is thickly inhabited by a variety of spirits, plus orishas?deities or deified ancestors. Much of their religion = communication with orishas, divination or spirit possession, the orishas come down into aye and speak to their devotees. Key here = two orishas, Eshu, gatekeeper between worlds, also cosmic trickster; and Orunmila, aka Ifa, the orisha of prophecy. Whole thing runs on ashe, kind of spiritual gasoline. Every created thing has ashe?rocks, trees, animals, people? asheboth ground of existence and power to make stuff happen and change. Social relationships determined by flow of ashe, also one’s personal fate and achievements. (Note X-cultural, how different peoples imagine some unseen, yet controllable force underlying life: ashe in Yoruba, ki or qi in the Chinese culture zone, cheg in Siberia. Westerners don’t believe?? Did we never or did we once and lost it. If so, why? Industry? Xtianity?)
Thinking of M., wonder whether I am making a mistake plunging back into fieldwork, especially fieldwork associated with sorcery. Can’t recall more of my experience in Siberia = problem. Some kind of allergic reaction to food or water. Is this true?
W. just up, grumpy and hungover, lovely African flight attendant brought hot towels and orange juice and
