“I can’t save her,” I tell Aunt Pris. “But there’s one thing I can do for her.”
“What?” Fear twists her ever-pretty face. “Anything. What can you do?”
I take Aunt Pris’s hand, grasping it tightly, and look to my mother dying right in front of me.
“You know who I am,” I say, my voice, in spite of the bold words, shaky. “I’m here to make my judgment known.”
“What are you doing?” Aunt Pris tugs on her hand, but I don’t let go. “I don’t want to be part of no spell. What is this?”
“It’s the power of an unbroken line,” I tell her, keeping my voice calm since her fear is evident. “Two women from our lineage have more power than one.”
She stops pulling her hand away. “And we can save her?”
“No, but I think we can help her along the way.”
“No.” Tears spill over her smooth cheeks. “She can’t . . . you have to . . .”
I slowly shake my head, grip her hand more firmly, and turn back to the bed.
“You know who I am,” I say again. “I’m here to make my judgment known. This woman’s soul hangs in the balance.”
I replay all the things I read to Mama, all the things she never said to me, all the questions I’ll never have answers for. Even if she could answer me, it wouldn’t be enough.
I remember all the pain her actions caused me. I live with the legacy of it still.
I honestly don’t know if I have any influence over this woman’s afterlife. She’s practically a stranger to me. So maybe this is just a show for my aunt to ease her coming grief. Maybe in death, I’m giving May DuPree something she never had in life. Or maybe this is a selfish act, and the words I whisper are not for her in the afterlife, but for me in this one.
“I lay a stone on the side of . . .”
I hesitate over the final word like it really will reverberate in eternity, and then I drop it like a stone in water whose ripples are infinite.
“Peace.”
39
Kenan
I really want to reach my destination before the sun goes down. These backroads and swamps are creepy as fuck. Any minute now, I fully expect Google maps to say, “Really, dude?”
If it fails, I also have the directions Iris sent me. She said the last few miles can get tricky.
“Tricky?” I ask aloud, even though I’m the only one in the rental car. “Feels more like Middle Earth than Louisiana.”
The closer I get to MiMi’s house, or I guess it actually belongs to Iris and Lotus now, the more uncertain I feel. It’s not the backwoods, or the alligators, or the trees that seem animated with arms reaching for me as I drive by. I’m uncertain because I don’t know what state I’ll find Lotus in. No one’s heard from her. The last time we spoke, she was heading to New Orleans to visit her mother in the hospital. I was in China, wishing like hell I was back in the States and could go with her. That was a week ago. The team is still in Shanghai, but the game is over. It’s all goodwill stuff and appearances, so I told them I had a family emergency and needed to return early. It’s still pre-season, so things are looser.
It does feel like an emergency. Iris hasn’t spoken to Lotus in three days, not since she got word that May DuPree passed away. Lotus told Iris she was going home and hasn’t been heard from since. Every call rolls into voicemail, and I’m going out of my mind. This could be a fool’s errand, me coming all the way to the middle of nowhere. What if she isn’t even here?
It’s a chance I’ll take. If she’s hurting, I want to be with her. I would want her with me.
The little house is squat, with a trail of stones leading to the porch, and a blue door. I can’t tell if the yard is overgrown or if it always looks like this—like an extension of the swamp but with no water. Hopefully no gators.
I park, leaving my overnight bag in the car in case I won’t be staying because she’s not here. I knock and wait, but there’s no answer. When I try the knob, it doesn’t turn. There’s no car here, besides the one I’m driving, so I’m not sure how she would have gotten here or would plan to get home. More and more, it feels like I’ve wasted my time.
She’s talked about this place so much. I don’t know what I expected, but I have trouble imagining my vibrant, beautiful girl growing up here, so isolated and removed from everything. But she spoke of it lovingly, even longingly. Maybe it was the woman who lived here who made her love it—the world MiMi made for Lotus that she loved. A world where pink clouds chase the blues away and magic trees make you feel safe. To her, it’s not a swamp, but a wonderland of sorts, exactly what she needed after the hell she went through.
People had nothing to depend on but their faith, whatever form that assumed. That was how they survived.
Lotus said that to me at Sylvia’s when we discussed religion and voodoo. Is that what she found here with MiMi and her gris gris and potions and spells? Maybe Lotus found faith, in whatever form it assumed, so she, too, could survive.