2008-10-19
ARRRRRRGGH!!!!
Wow! That feels really amazingly good and that guy from Detroit...Props to ya, man!!
Now I wanna say this...
We have no life. I stare into her eyes and wonder if mine are as empty; lifeless. We used to play the mirror game, like in the cartoons, and we got pretty good at that. Until we found out we could do it all the time. Anytime, anywhere. Even here, or maybe most especially here, but that's getting off track isn't it? an inside joke no one else will understand, except for a few people there - in the real world, so called. But I'm sure so many others would appreciate it if they could be convinced.
We are empty now, something is missing and it depresses us, makes us sleepless and angry. When I scream it's her voice we hear and when she weeps it's my tongue that tastes the salt of our tears. We are lonely and empty.
I went to New Orleans, in my head, starting this story in the mirror and letting her finish it, because we haven't tried that before. I went to New Orleans looking for a woman who'd come from Little Haiti in Miami. We found a recess in the dark quarters of the old city. She was black, like the sun had burnt her to a crisp, and when she smiled her lips creased and folded and turned upward as if savoring a sweet crackling piece of fried pork fat. The juice dripping across her chin, glistening oily and making me look away until I couldn't help it. But it was gone. She was reading Paris Match and smoking a cigarette.
The bell on the door tinkled like they always do and I walked around slowly, just looking. Another tourist lost on her way to Bourbon Street. Looking for a bathroom, looking for a picture postcard; or a t-shirt that says "all I got in New Orleans was pregnant" or a voodoo doll. Do they have those? I want one and not a fake one. Not one to show my friends back home and then leave on the shelf until one Thursday I chuck it with my JD Salinger book into the trash. No. I want one that I can keep in the dark, afraid to tell anyone about, afraid to look at, afraid to touch. I want to get it for her.
The taxi driver knew a man on the corner who knew a woman. It was an expensive ride and when I stood there I knew it was worth it. She had snake eyes and wrinkled skin hanging off her thin bones like black crepe. Real voodoo I told her. I whispered it while she blew dead blue smoke in the air and flipped the pages of her magazine.
"Real voodoo."
I couldn't understand what she said, it was old words from sometime else and far away. She said something louder and a man came out, dusting his clothes, black and white and red all over. I smelled him, rich with sweat and fresh blood. Killing a pig, he said. It was late for it, not a good thing, bad for everyone. Especially the pig. The old woman knows voodoo, she can make me what I want. It's easy but dangerous too. It's not for people like me. They look at me and I shuffle my feet. A ploy to get the price up, I think. Staring at her. I told her it's exactly for people like me. I want it.
She wants something personal, needs to put something inside to make it strong, make it work. A thing is a thing; hair is good, blood is better. I start taking off my ring. My mother's ring, it's the most important thing to me. The woman shakes her head and says in the old man's voice, no. From the victim.
"Victim." He says it like he's spitting. But the old woman smiles. I tell her it is from the victim, and more. I ask where the bathroom is and he shows me.
I give the old woman my mother's ring, fitted around a ripped off piece of my menstrual pad. I ripped the cotton from the middle, wet and soggy bloody, and rolled it up and pushed it through the ring like a short pulpy finger. Dripping like a sponge. Like a bit of baby's lung foaming crimson. I pulled a dozen or more long dark hairs from my head and wrapped them around, looping twisting, the ring and my bloody napkin, tying it into one personal intimate thing. I come out and put it on the counter. My mother's golden ring, blood from the center of my being, and bound with hair ripped from my skull. The woman clucks and the man leaves while I press my hands together, feeling the blood drying sticky on my palms. Smelling it in the air around me.
A straw doll, old and dry like paper, wrapped in sack cloth. Button eyes, black and dull and staring. Arms and legs too, and she rips the belly open, using her old yellow thumbnail. The old woman holds it open, speaking in tongues and looking at me, then at the ring and hair and blood. She won't touch it so I pick it up, my eyebrow raised and she nods, gesturing with the doll until I push myself inside it, tucking those parts of me away, inside and out of sight. She sews it back up, quick and neat like she did it a thousand million times. I'm in there now, in that ugly straw doll like a baby waiting to be born. She gives it to me, thrusting it into my arms and crosses herself. Three times up and down. Left and right. She doesn't want money, she doesn't want to see me again. She picks up her magazine and sets her old body back, rocking soft and leaving me to leave.
