As the call for
As the dancers continued their slow circle, Rosalie lifted herself into a standing position at their center. Arms held forward, head thrown back, eyes closed; an invitation for possession. Malvina reached into the bucket near the altar; threw a handful of dried corn and gunpowder towards the girl’s shins, tempting the rooster to draw near. Rosalie lifted a foot to stroke its feathers. The fowl cooed.
Slowly, almost unnoticeably, Rosalie’s face began to change.
Chapter eighteen. Djab
Rosalie fell.
Her red headwrap loosened as her head hit warm, hard ground, her black hair flowing down like water against concrete. Tiny drops of blood dotted the rooster’s beak as it pecked her head and neck. Rosalie’s eyes opened; changed. This was Rosalie. This was not Rosalie.
Malvina rushed forward to wave the bird away, but was interrupted by a fist to the jaw that threw her to the far wall between altar and coffin. The bird made soft chuckles.
The
Bap. Bap-bap. Buh-bap, bap, buh-bap
Rhythm changed, night taken.
Malvina ran towards the girl, but scooped up the rooster. Threw the bird towards the altar, jumped down upon it, held its body firmly between her knees. The rooster protested-pecking frantically at Malvina’s hands and legs in rhythm with the drums, blood now pouring from the mambo’s wrists. Malvina wrinkled her nose at the smell of her own blood before reaching into a small leather pouch she kept tied around her neck, quickly smearing a mixture of bloodroot and honey over the bird’s feathers. Holding the rooster’s neck in one sticky hand, she reached into the bucket by the altar and proceeded to push the dried corn and gunpowder down its gullet with the ball of her thumb. As the bird’s neck bulged, its panicked squawks degenerated into sleepy whistles. A final pinch of hard corn and the rooster whistled no more.
As the bird slipped from her fingers, a wave of dizziness washed over Malvina and gravity urged her down. Lying on her side and facing the bird’s honey-matted feathers, her head felt light, almost peaceful.
Drums pounded like thunder. Arms and legs of dancers flashed like lightening. A smell of burnt coffee hung rich and smooth in the air. The night hurtled on towards something unknowable.
Malvina’s eyes focused hazily on the stomping feet of the congregation. Sound evaporated. Eyes clouded. Thinking.
Thinking of Maria’s grief. Knowing her niece would soon die, that her sister Frances would suffer terribly at the loss. That Marcus Nobody Special could not possibly suffer enough for his crimes, and that any revenge she may bring would not undo the damage he had done. That her own reckless notion of justice had brought this terrible thing-this
Love could go so terribly, terribly wrong.
The rooster woke from its death-sleep to let out a final crow-but not a crow. The sound of an immortal spirit terrified.
The warning crow of
A warning…
Lithe hands reached down to her and lifted Malvina’s limp body upwards by the hair. Malvina sailed across the room, all of her hundred and twenty pounds expertly pitched into the mulatto’s coffin. Malvina lay atop the corpse, felt its stillness, its lack of warmth, its chest that did not rise for air.
Drummers pounded skins and dancers flailed, human thunder and lightning intensifying- faster, wilder-hands and feet blistering with friction of speed. An oblivious foot kicked out at the bucket willy-nilly, causing kernels and black powder to spray waist high before distributing across the dirty floor with weird purpose; settling in lines like the rows of a field. As the
Malvina lay in the coffin, the corpse beneath her no longer still.
A tremble.
Her soul began to tumble. Something had taken her. Leading her downward.
And down she went.
Falling.
She is falling. Through the dead mulatto, through the bottom of the casket, through the table, the concrete, and the ground below. Falling.
The sound of drumming becomes distant, then fades. Finally: To nothing.
Air turns dark and thick, but offers no resistance to the fall. Air assumes color and then is not air at all.
Water.
Green, smooth water. Beautiful, safe, caressing water. She is falling through the womb of the Spiritworld, the city of the dead. Where no harm can come, where finality offers nothing but time. She sucks green, perfect water into her lungs, holds; then expels. She can breathe-but slowly. Pulling the stuff into her lungs gives her a divine sense of relief, a profound serenity.
She closes her eyes. Imagines she is an infant, cradled in the arms of a mother. Now, for once, Malvina Latour is not the mother. She imagines a gentle hand stroking her brow, wiping away all the pain of her life.
There
A magnificent brown-skinned woman is cradling her at the floor of a deep green river, stroking her hair. “Shhh,” says the woman.
Malvina looks into her eyes, into her troubled smile. She feels nothing but love and gratitude for the woman, wants to articulate emotion beyond words, but says only:
“Mama.”
Malvina knows this
