full of stars; no trace of it remaining.
Malvina rose to her feet. Looked at the door. Quiet, smokeless. Squinted her eyes. Nothing. As if the awful night had not taken place at all. A reprieve from God? Malvina took a step forward. Still nothing.
Then. Something:
Orange water.
Streaming lightly through the front door, down the steps and onto the grass. Just a trickle at first-then more than a trickle. Bright orange with slender streaks of red and yellow. The color of flame. Pure, smokeless, liquid flame.
Orange floodwaters progressed along the ground with a low-toned hum, rushing towards Malvina’s bare feet. The mambo held her ground, said a quiet prayer to
Prayer and wishing stopped nothing as the sound of rushing liquid steadied into a roar. Malvina Latour-a mother to none, a mother to many-opened her mouth to scream. Sound poured from her soul and into the night as orange water flowed to, around, and past her ankles. But there was no pain in its touch, no heat, not even warmth.
The sensation was of cool water. She bent down to place a finger in. Stared into it, noted nearly transparent streaks of pink, flitting past. Like wisps of human flesh, the pure flesh of the not-quite-born. Immortal, bloodless flesh.
Closing her eyes, she listened.
Beneath the thick drone of wet motion was a kind of music. Sweet, light music; a rich, tinny echo of happier times-times both past and yet to come. And the echo carried with it a familiar rhythm.
The carpet of wet surged onward from the yawning mouth of the coffee warehouse; covering the ground, running into and past the street, into and past Congo Square, soaking into the dry, coarse dirt of the yard at Parish Prison. She watched as the water headed towards the Old Basin Canal, kissing oblivious dirt streets as it passed.
It was beautiful, the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Tonight she’d committed grave error and witnessed resultant death, but in the here and now there was only epiphany-a culmination of mystical things beyond her understanding. Feathery tongues of recent dream continued to nag at the edges of her mind- wanting to understand, knowing that she would not, could not. She acknowledged a strange joy in the not-knowing. A voice interrupted her rapture:
“Keep yer damn mouth shut, nigger witch! People trine ta sleep!”
Malvina hadn’t realized she was screaming.
She looked up at the irate pink face sticking out of a second story window, feeling oddly thrilled at the sound of a human voice, even an unfriendly one. She smiled and waved in his direction.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she cried.
“Crazy whore! Opium eater!” the man shouted before slamming the shutters.
As the window smacked shut, the sky drained of color, the humming ceased-and a series of recently loosened gears in Malvina’s soul clicked and snapped into place. The door of the warehouse stood closed and silent as before.
Once again: no apparent trace of blackest night.
Suddenly: Aware of a lingering scent. The metallic, acrid smell of burnt coffee. Something remaining. In the air. And she knew that something else remained, too. Something that had gone towards the waters of the bayou.
“Shoes.”
“Kilt her is what.”
She would never clearly remember her journey through the grave that night, through the waters of the dead. Nor would she ever fully recall the gentle caress of
But she did-and always would-remember the orange water with its thin streaks of pink. Would always remember the tinny music, its distant echo. These memories would become a part of who she was. That could not be changed.
She had called it. It was here. It remained.
She’d never sent it back, didn’t know how. Wasn’t sure if she would want to. It had been so beautiful, this thing that consumed both life and death before retiring to the stagnant waters of the bog. Maybe, she thought, it would eventually leave this world of its own accord. Maybe it would die in the swamp. Or maybe it was sleeping and biding its time.
Awaiting rebirth.
She decided that if it did return, she would be ready for it.
“Goddamn shoes. Always in my way.”
“Where that little girl go?”
And so she had waited. Going about her day to day life, but always, in the back of her mind; waiting.
Fifty-three years had passed with no sign of the thing that had gone into the canal. And now Coco Robicheaux, the Cajun bogeyman of children’s’ tales, had seen fit to plague her sleep with dreams; old, sour memories mixed with something new, and something darker still at the creases of her mind. In dreams, Coco Robicheaux is looking for her-without benefit of eyes.
Frances had known none of it. Had only walked around the house, leaving her damn shoes everywhere and searching for the ghost of her long dead Maria.
“Damn shoes.”
In fifty-three years not a word had been spoken between the sisters. Not to each other.
“Maria?”
Not directly.
Chapter twenty-one. Typhus
The sky was dark and moonless as the sound of footfalls thudded past. Nowhere near sleep, Typhus Morningstar heard them perfectly and ignored them completely.
The youngest of the Morningstar clan hadn’t slept much since the death of their father fifteen years ago. With so many unanswered questions having plagued him since then, Typhus’ youthful knack for understanding had long since left him of its own accord. Served him right, he figured, for being so smug in his judgment of grown-ups back then-their avoidance of bothersome truths being the last thing he really did
In the now and so many years after Noonday’s passing, it was just Typhus, Malaria and Dropsy who kept on at the old house-along with the occasional and welcome addition of young West Bolden. For lack of anywhere else to go, Diphtheria’s nine-year-old spent most of his nights (and a great many of his days) here at the Morningstar place while his mother plied her trade on Basin Street.
Over the years Dropsy had grown from wispy and thin to thick and sturdy, but his inner transformation to manhood had been less plain. While the other Morningstar children allowed their spirits to harden at least marginally after the loss of their father, Dropsy had maintained a steadfast tenderness, never relinquishing his innocent fascination for everyday things. Some of Typhus’ earliest memories were of his older brother’s eyes examining the journeys of ordinary threads through ordinary fabric (be it shirt, rug, or sock) for long minutes. He imagined Dropsy’s wide brown eyes searching for hints of code, probing imagined or hidden meanings within the woven color of fabric-as if the fabric of an old shirt might also contain answers to the fabric of the universe itself. Dropsy, now twenty-five, never lost this odd penchant for rug pondering-and Typhus often found himself grinning
