that men do back home? Break us another egg, Cille honey, and I'll tell
Box 128-B
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
November 20, 1936
Dr. Henry Allen Moe, Sec.
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
551 Fifth Avenue
New York City, New York
Dear Dr. Moe,
I regret to report that for all my knocking and ringing and dust-raising, I have found no relatives of this unfortunate Felix-Mentor woman. She is both famous and unknown. All have heard of her and know, or think they know, the two-sentence outline of her 'story,' and have their own fantasies about her, but can go no further. She is the Garbo of Haiti. I would think her a made-up character had I not seen her myself, and taken her picture as . . . evidence? A photograph of the Empire State Building is evidence too, but of what? That is for the viewer to say.
I am amused of course, as you were, to hear from some of our friends and colleagues on the Haiti beat their concerns that poor Zora has 'gone native,' has thrown away the WPA and Jesse Owens and the travel trailer and all the other achievements of the motherland to break chickens and become an initiate in the mysteries of the Sect Rouge. Lord knows, Dr. Moe, I spent twenty-plus years in the Southern U.S., beneath the constant gaze of every First Abyssinian Macedonian African Methodist Episcopal Presbyterian Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Assembly of God of Christ of Jesus with Signs Following minister mother and deacon, all so full of the spirit they look like death eating crackers, and in all that time I never once came down with even a mild case of Christianity. I certainly won't catch the local disease from only six months in Haiti. . . .
Obligations, travel and illness—'suffering perhaps the digestion,' thank you, Doctor Legros—kept Zora away from the hospital at Gonaives for some weeks. When she finally did return, she walked onto the veranda to see Felicia, as before, standing all alone in the quiet yard, her face toward the high wall. Today Felicia had chosen to stand on the sole visible spot of green grass, a plot of soft imprisoned turf about the diameter of an Easter hat. Zora felt a deep satisfaction upon seeing her, this self-contained, fixed point in her traveler's life.
To reach the steps, she had to walk past the mad old man in the wheelchair, whose nurse was not in sight today. Despite his sunken cheeks, his matted eyelashes, his patchy tufts of white hair, Zora could see he must have been handsome in his day. She smiled as she approached.
He blinked and spoke in a thoughtful voice. 'I will be a Zombie soon,' he said.
That stopped her. 'Excuse me?'
'Death came for me many years ago,' said the old man, eyes bright, 'and I said, No, not me, take my wife instead. And so I gave her up as a Zombie. That gained me five years, you see. A good bargain. And then, five years later, I gave our oldest son. Then our daughter. Then our youngest. And more loved ones, too, now all Zombies, all. There is no one left. No one but me.' His hands plucked at the coverlet that draped his legs. He peered all around the yard. 'I will be a Zombie soon,' he said, and wept.
Shaking her head, Zora descended the steps. Approaching Felicia from behind, as Doctor Legros had said that first day, was always a delicate maneuver. One had to be loud enough to be heard but quiet enough not to panic her.
'Hello, Felicia,' Zora said.
The huddled figure didn't turn, didn't budge, and Zora, emboldened by long absence, repeated the name, reached out, touched Felicia's shoulder with her fingertips. As she made contact, a tingling shiver ran up her arm and down her spine to her feet. Without turning, Felicia emerged from her crouch. She stood up straight, flexed her shoulders, stretched her neck, and spoke.
'Zora, my friend!'
Felicia turned and was not Felicia at all, but a tall, beautiful woman in a brief white gown. Freida registered the look on Zora's face and laughed.
'Did I not tell you that you would find me? Do you not even know your friend Freida?'
Zora's breath returned. 'I know you,' she retorted, 'and I know that was a cruel trick. Where is Felicia? What have you done with her?'
'Whatever do you mean? Felicia was not mine to give you, and she is not mine to take away. No one is owned by anyone.'
'Why is Felicia not in the yard? Is she ill? And why are you here? Are you ill as well?'
Freida sighed. 'So many questions. Is this how a book gets written? If Felicia were not ill, silly, she would not have been here in the first place. Besides.' She squared her shoulders. 'Why do you care so about this . . . powerless woman? This woman who let some man lead her soul astray, like a starving cat behind an eel-barrel?' She stepped close, the heat of the day coalescing around. 'Tell a woman of power your book. Tell
Zora had two simultaneous thoughts, like a moan and a breath interlaced:
'Why bother?' Zora bit off, flush with anger. 'You think you know it by heart already. And besides,' Zora continued, stepping forward, nose to nose, 'there are powers other than yours.'
Freida hissed, stepped back as if pattered with stove-grease.
Zora put her nose in the air and said, airily, 'I'll have you know that Felicia is a writer, too.'
Her mouth a thin line, Freida turned and strode toward the hospital, thighs long and taut beneath her gown. Without thought, Zora walked, too, and kept pace.
'If you must know,' Freida said, 'your writer friend is now in the care of her family. Her son came for her. Do you find this so remarkable? Perhaps the son should have notified you, hmm?' She winked at Zora. 'He is quite a muscular young man, with a taste for older women. Much,
'How dependent you are,' Zora said, 'on men.'
As Freida stepped onto the veranda, the old man in the wheelchair cringed and moaned. 'Hush, child,' Freida said. She pulled a nurse's cap from her pocket and tugged it on over her chestnut hair.
'Don't let her take me!' the old man howled. 'She'll make me a Zombie! She will! A Zombie!'
'Oh, pish,' Freida said. She raised one bare foot and used it to push the wheelchair forward a foot or so, revealing a sensible pair of white shoes on the flagstones beneath. These she stepped into as she wheeled the chair around. 'Here is your bocor, Miss Hurston. What use have I for a Zombie's cold hands? Au revoir, Miss Hurston. Zora. I hope you find much to write about in my country . . . however you limit your experiences.'
Zora stood at the foot of the steps, watched her wheel the old man away over the uneven flagstones.
'Erzulie,' Zora said.
The woman stopped. Without turning, she asked, 'What name did you call me?'
