you fix my costume?”
I have not, lazy slut and bad mother. I apologize, she sniffles. We go to Providence. Ms. Lomax volunteers to do the costume. She takes the Burdines bag from me, at the school door, looking at me strangely.
Then I go and spend a very large amount of money. I buy clothes and supplies, and, for seventy-eight thousand dollars, the Guitar schooner. I survey it myself. It’s old but in great shape, all the latest gear, a rich man’s toy. I arrange with the kid who watches it to have it stocked with groceries and gas for a month on the water, and also to have the name painted out and changed to Kite. I change myself, too, a haircut in the Grove, and I slip into an elegant cream linen pantsuit and a straw hat.
By now it’s midafternoon. I have not slept in, what is it now, three days? There was the night at the ile, and then the night when Paz came and took me to dinner and we had our cruise on the bay, and then I took the grel out of Barlow, and then last night and now it’s now. I take a seat at a restaurant overlooking Dinner Key, and order a banana daiquiri in memory of Mom, whose favorite drink it was, and for years virtually her only sustenance. I watch people, I meet eyes, I attract admiring glances. A stylish woman at her ease, alone, a fraud, but they don’t know that; and I find the old Jane has become too small for me, just like Dolores was; a surprise.
The Olo say it was jiladoul, the sorcerers’ war, that underlay the general catastrophe of West Africa, the wars, slavery, the colonizers, the chaos. They may be right; they seem right about so many other things. Maybe it’s starting to happen here, and I feel a pang of regret, even for this city I hate. Do I have the remotest chance? Yes. Weak as I am in myself, there are powers behind me. I think of Eshu standing there in my kitchen when I opened the door to m’arun for the divination, of the orishas descending on Ortiz’s ile. There will be help, I think, if I get it right, if the allies are in place at the time, if I’m not afraid, then the elements will all snap neatly into place, in a manner beyond my understanding, without screws, like my Mauser pistol.
I finish my daiquiri and I’m about to order another when the paarolawats appears. He is (or was, I suppose) a filthy, bearded white man in a fatigue jacket with the sleeves cut off, knee-length shorts black with filth, and combat boots, no socks. His face and the fronts of his shins are covered with small red sores. The tourists don’t see it, their eyes slide away, as they do when they confront its nonzombie brothers in adversity. Maybe he will do something crazy, they are thinking, or demand money. A couple of the waiters are eyeing it, too. Bad for business, this wreck. I pay my bill and leave, toting my elegantly labeled bags. The thing cranks up, wheels slowly, and shuffles after me.
Another one is hanging around the church grounds when I go to pick up Luz at Providence. He’s sending me a message: he’s got me covered. It’s not like him to be so unsubtle and insistent. Perhaps being a witch has ruined his taste.
I’m a little early. The children are rehearsing one of the songs they are to sing at the pageant about Noah’s ark. They are grouped by what sort of animal they are representing and they sing, in turn, the appropriate songs, “Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Then they all sing the “Navy Hymn,” which I think is fine. It was one of the first songs I ever learned myself. My dad taught it to me when I was about Luz’s age. He will be glad to see she knows it when they meet. Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the sea.
After, Luz asks me if I know what a peril is. What? I ask. Sharks, she says, in a whispering voice, lest she attract any. We have a paper bag with the famous costume in it. Luz says she will model it for me, tonight. Oh, not tonight, baby.
We go home. We gloat over the new clothes, the toys. I order a pizza, which amazes Luz, her introduction to takeout. I read her Charlotte’s Web until she grows sleepy, and I put her to bed in her new lace nightie. Then I change into another of my new outfits, a green silk shirt and yellow slacks, Ifa’s colors for my big night.
Paz comes by around seven, looking frightened behind his usual bravado. He eyes Peeper in its cage on the table.
“Tell me not to feel stupid,” he says.
I say, “Don’t feel stupid. I see you’re still wearing your mom’s amulet. That’s wise. Also, you have to give me your gun.”
After a moment’s pause, he hands over a Glock 15 and I put it on the high cupboard shelf, with the other pistol and the kadoul. Which I take down and plunk on the table. He looks at it. “What’s that?”
“African magic sauce,” I say. “Would you care for some tea?”
“What kind of tea?” Suspicious.
“Tetley, Paz. Look, you have to trust me here. This”?here I tap the kadoul with my fingernail?”is for me. I’m the only one going into the unseen world. You’re just along for the ride. Like the chicken.”
“I don’t have to do anything?”
“Just be yourself.” Just. And not what you think you are either. The real Paz, please. I make the tea. My hands were shaking earlier, but now the jaw-grinding trembles have passed off. I am on the down slope. I sweeten my tea with sugar, a lot of it.
“What’s new at the cops?” I ask.
“No comment, mostly. They’re leaking that the killer introduced a gas into the A/C of the hotel and that’s how he did it. Knocked out the guards. The same for the craziness that went on last night. Inspired by that cult in Japan, releasing nerve gas on the Tokyo subway. Terrorism. They’re deciding whether to call in the National Guard. Mostly everyone is going around like it’s business as usual. It didn’t really happen in the way that everyone knows it happened. Occam’s razor.” He shrugs. My heart gives a jiggle, he looks so lost.
“Yes, good old Occam,” I say. ” ‘Do not increase causes beyond necessity.’ But what’s necessity? Occam was a churchman; he probably believed God was a necessary cause. And we restrict the phenomena that are eligible for explanation even before we apply the razor. Two guys detect a neutrino and it’s solid science. Ten thousand people see an apparition of the Virgin on a Sicilian hillside and it’s mass hysteria, not worth investigating. The brain is making drugs every second, but the ones that show us neutrinos are kosher and the ones that show us the Virgin are not. We don’t consider the notorious unreliability of eyewitnesses …”
He waves a weak hand to stop my flow. “Please, Jane, no more philosophy. I’m hanging on by a thread here.” I stop, abashed. He says, after a while, “I saw Barlow. They got him in Jackson.”
“How is he?”
“He says he feels fine. He thinks what happened was a dream. The last thing he’s really sure about is breakfast the day we tried to arrest your husband. Retrograde amnesia is what they say. I don’t think they’ll charge him, but he’s off the job.”
A car scrunches the shell gravel of the drive and heavy steps sound on the stairs. I get up at the knock. Mrs. Paz is looking grim and businesslike in a white dress embroidered around the yoke with blue seashells. She is holding two heavily loaded shopping bags. When I let her in, she thumps them down and looks me and my place over. I do not expect any compliments. We have a little staring contest, too. Her eyes are much darker than his. In them I read suspicion, fear, pain; she blinks before I do. When she opens up again, there is resignation. She touches my cheek. “Is it true you are made to Orula?” Women are never made to Orula in regular Santeria.
“To Ifa? Not the way you mean, but he seems to be interested in me. You’re made to Yemaya.”
“Yes, for many years. She’s given me good fortune, but I always felt that someday I would have to pay back, you understand? I think this is that time.”
He says, “What’s in the bags, Mami?”
“Food.” She indicates one of them with her foot. “Go put it in the refrigerator, Iago.”
“What do we need food for?”
“To eat, afterward, what do you think?” He does what she asks, unloading Tupperware bowls and boxes onto my nearly empty shelves. I offer my dark rum, and all of us have a little ritual drink. No one speaks. Then Mrs. Paz busies herself with the contents of the other bag. She places a little concrete pyramid at the door for Eleggua-Eshu, guardian of the ways. Around her neck she hangs a heavy necklace made of blue and white stone beads, the eleke, and around her right wrist the ide, a turquoise and shell bracelet. On the windowsill over the stove she arranges fan shells set with blue and white ribbons in a plaster base. These are the fundamentos of Yemaya, the depository of the spiritual power of her guardian orisha. She lights incense coils in the four corners of the room and candles made of wax poured into glass cylinders, imprinted with pictures of the santos. Finally, she sprinkles rum in precise directions, chanting. Paz watches all this incredulously. Finally, he blurts, “Jesus, Ma! Why didn’t you tell me you were into all this?”
She continues with her chant, ignoring him. The room fills with the smoke. The chant stops. I seem to smell the sea, now. She says, not looking at him, “You’re an American boy, football, television?I thought you’d be
