Papa Legba’s Steadfast Daughter

Prologue

VISITORS FROM THE TROPICS AT THE CROSSROADS

There was apparently no one home when Taya walked through the battered door into the leaning Creole cottage that she shared with Clive and her children. She poured Haitian rum into a cup on the altar at the doorway, praying to the loas, Mama Marie and Mama Lou, not for protection, but for wisdom, and to Papa Legba to interpret and open the doorway to the world of spirits if necessary. She then walked with what she hoped was confidence and presence through the colored cloths and beads hanging in the doorway of her temple, the air of which was already thick with sweet ritual incense and cigar and ganja smoke. Around the pato mitan, central pole, three mambos drank rum out of coconut shells and watched her with their dark eyes—detached, predatory, amused.

Taya approached the altar, poured rum for the loas, lit more incense and another cigar and blew smoke toward the women. Although the air in the temple was hot and muggy, without even the benefit of ceiling fans that cooled other rooms in the cottage, none of the visitors showed any signs of sweat or discomfort. Ti Genét held Taya’s wanga that had been Mama Marie’s, a small rattle filled with snake bones and covered with the skin of a frog. No words could have been more powerful than the sight of that cherished rattle in Ti Genét’s hands. Taya shivered in the heat. She seated herself on one of the cushions surrounding the altar, poured herself a cup of rum and then offered the bottle to Ti Genét, who refused. Another bad omen? Could Ti Genét’s refusal of her hospitality possibly relate to her own feeling of impending doom of that morning? Taya had no time for contemplation. Ti Genét commanded her attention.

Ti Genét so resembled the great black mamba snake that she immediately inspired fear in those who had acquaintance with the coffin-headed serpent, though to others, quite like the nondescript brownish-colored snake, she appeared unthreatening. Her smooth skin was light colored, what they call café au lait. She was slender, petite and subtle, with rather protruding black eyes that seemed to shine from within. But like the mamba, she was easily perturbed, and her strike was fast, sure and deadly. Because of her small stature and nearly lineless face she appeared younger than the other mambos, though she had initiated both. They had previously undergone initiation also with a male Vodou priest, a celebrated houngan, though Ti Genét’s rituals were the more grueling. Men these days, though often cruel, simply did not have the stomach for the kinds of sacrifices required by her Petwo spirits.

Of all her initiates, Taya was her favorite. Though the younger woman had yet to learn all the treacherous and venomous ways Ti Genét knew, Taya had the raw power, determination, and ambition that Petwo demanded. Now she was to be tested again. This would be the final test if she proved intractable.

Ti Genét had been a Vodou practitioner for most of her more than seventy years, as had her mother and her grandmother before her. They were both now placated gros-bon-ange, big good angels with their god, Bondye. They had been adherents of the way of Rada as Ti Genét had been. Her gradual slide from honoring the cool sweet loas of the Rada to that of the hot bitter loas of Petwo could be paralleled with the political turmoil in her poor and wretched country. Papa Doc was bad, Baby Doc was worse, but for Ti Genét, Cédras, who was not even president, was the worst of all. Taya knew what Ti Genét had suffered throughout those dictatorial regimes and felt sympathy for her.

Taya’s momentary mental diversion was abruptly interrupted by Ti Genét’s sonorous voice that belied her small size. Are you ready for the taking of the asson? she queried about Taya’s final and most perilous initiation yet to come, as though she had casually asked how Taya was feeling on this day.

Taya searched almost frantically for her loas, wanting to be mounted, wanting the strength of Mama Marie or Mama Lou, to be able to slip from the physical plane to the spiritual, but felt nothing. This test was for her alone, a test perhaps greater than any she had previously undertaken. I am honored by your presence, Ti Genét, she said as calmly as possible, and, of course, Rosalinda and Jeanne-Marie. She acknowledged the two larger, darker and seemingly more imposing women.

Taya did not see Ti Genét move, but the large gold hoop in Taya’s left ear was suddenly seized and the movement forced her head back, a ceremonial blade caressing her throat. "Do you think, my Taya, that you can hide from us? Do you imagine, young one, that we who have shared blood and rum, the Mysteries and each other are not aware of the very thoughts in your brain? You are mistaken." Ti Genét released Taya’s head with a growl and a force that caused a small cut on Taya’s neck, resulting in a thin but steady stream of blood down the front of her white robe.

Ti Genét resumed her cushion as quickly as she had departed it and tossed the wanga into Taya’s lap. This is not a game; you know that. You may not continue with your white man and your movie project, Ti Genét spit out with such vehemence that the candles on the altar actually flickered.

However, she breathed, allowing the anger to depart, we are willing to, she paused, seeming to search for a word, "negotiate." Ti Genét strung the word out into several syllables, with her most Haitian accent. The air in the room filled with anticipation, as Taya searched for words that might placate her teacher.

Do not say anything, Ti Genét nearly shouted, reading Taya’s mind and temporarily losing control of herself. We will give you the rules and you will play by them or not at all.

Taya wondered at the use of we. Was this indeed a collaborative decision, only led by Ti Genét, or had Ti Genét had to concede something to the others in order to convince them to even consider a negotiation? Taya was aware that Jeanne-Marie did not love her; in fact, she was quite nearly hated and feared, a deadly combination. The cruelly scarred Rosalinda had always treated her kindly, but Taya felt no warmth from her today. She suddenly became aware that her very life had been in the hands of Ti Genét since the beginning of her training. Instead of feeling relief she felt apprehension.

The easiest thing to do would be to abandon the project, although Taya could not very well force Russell to do so. They were already arguing over the focus and marketing of the film. She wanted him to produce a documentary that would once and for all present Vodou as a valid religion, which like any other provides strength, courage, organization and leadership for the community. She wanted to show honestly the political climate under which its adherents struggled. There were bad people in every religion, but Taya was convinced that Haiti, the new world’s first independent black nation, which would probably have never gotten a start nor have survived without Vodou, was not a practice of bad people. Despite all the oppression, military occupations and now United Nations sanctions, Haitians continued to survive because of Vodou. It was a message she wanted the world to know. Surely, Russell would honor her wishes even if they could no longer film in Haiti. She knew her message was powerful.

What could Ti Genét and the others do? They could refuse her the asson and ban her from Haiti, but they didn’t have any power here in New Orleans, at least no more than she. She had dedicated this project to Papa Legba, to Mama Marie and to Mama Lou. She could not abandon them because Ti Genét would not give her a final initiation. She would find someone, someone outside of Haiti who would. She had a great deal of knowledge already, and unlike Ti Genét, she could read and communicate with other practitioners through mail and the phone. Despite the backwardness and cruelties of Haiti, it was 1994 and people needed to know the truth about her religion.

The temple was silent, even the street noises seemed to have stopped. The women’s breathing was soundless and the air in the room was heavy and alive with portent. Taya felt the heartbeat in her breast, the rum in her veins, and the taste of fear, which she could not ignore, in her mouth. She remembered the refuge of losing herself to a loa. She remembered her grandmother, Mama Marie’s insistence that Rada was the true way. And although Mama Lou was not even a practitioner, like all women of her time, she performed her own spells despite her Baptist proclivities. Taya knew that she must resist the Petwo way, the hot violent and vindictive spirits who had been born in the blood of the people of Haiti. She could now see how the Petwo’s terrible, seductive power had corrupted the women seated before her; especially Ti Genét who in her own way loved Taya like a daughter.

She remembered the coolness and sweetness of Ti Genét’s body against hers after her kanzo initiation, when her very soul had felt singed and burnt beyond recognition. These thoughts happened in an instant. Her eyes focused on Ti Genét’s, whose had taken on the impersonal gloss of those of her black mamba relatives. Yes, Taya was serviteur, but not to Ti Genét, not to the Petwo loas, but to her own loas, her own zanj, and to Rada and Bondye.

I’m sorry, she said. Take whatever sanctions against me that you feel are necessary. I have no way to repay you for your gifts of knowledge, and I will continue to honor you in my temple. The message of healing and hope is too strong and if I have to make personal sacrifices to deliver that message, then I accept the consequences.

Ti Genét sipped from her cup, looked to Rosalinda and Jeanne-Marie, then swift as her serpentine relatives, crossed the room and plunged a double pointed syringe into the soft flesh of Taya’s breast.

There was no time for thought or protest. Pain, such as she had never felt before, coursed throughout her body with the virulent poison of the island. It was worse than the pain of all her initiations, childbirths, shattered bones, and violent rapes combined. All the physical pain Taya had ever experienced centered in her breast then spread throughout her mortal being. She felt her body convulse as shards of pain like crystal spears pierced her flesh.

The mambos finished their rum, then silently departed into the growing dark sweetness of early evening and hailed a cab for the airport.

Part One

August 29 to September 3, 1994

and before

Chapter One

THE HOME FRONT

Had it only been five days? It seemed to be weeks ago since that rain-soaked evening when Arabella had met her plane coming in late from Miami. I take you to dinner, Sister. That Clive takin’ care of the childern. Taya had been too exhausted to even attempt a polite protest and allowed herself and her few belongings to be ushered into Arabella’s beat up Toyota and driven through the fresh-smelling tropical darkness.

I know you, Taya, you be worrying about them childern and that good-for-nothin’ brother of mine, and don’t even take care of yourself. Runnin’ off like that, not eatin’ proper by the looks of it, always doin’ for someone else. Arabella’s round and kindly dark face belied her scolding voice and Taya lay back on the patched seat with closed eyes and a feeling of security she had not had for many days.

She had to admit it was a luxury to be led, literally by the hand, to the tiny neighborhood Eats Is On restaurant and served up sweet tea without asking or being asked. The ceiling fans had hummed a welcome home sound, and Arabella’s voice was familiar and comforting. Although the red bricks peeked through the green-painted walls in places and the black and white floor tiles were chipped, the little restaurant was assiduously clean. Taya’s stomach growled at the smells of fresh gumbo, spicy boiled seafood and fried meats. It was a small family owned and run establishment. Miss Katie cooked, her daughters Angelina and Evangelina waited tables and gossiped, and son LaMont bussed tables and kept everything swept and in order. They were a fresh-faced, honest family that worked hard and served good food at a fair price.

LaMont was preparing to go to LSU after this, his senior year at McDonough 135. His older sisters had proudly framed his various academic and athletic certificates in Hobby Lobby plastic frames. Particularly prominent were a series of photographs of him playing trumpet in his maroon and gold uniform with fringed epaulettes. These were exhibited alongside Saints football and Zulu Mardi Gras memorabilia, news clippings of hurricanes and gossip columns featuring their restaurant’s more famous patrons.

Arabella chatted amicably with Angelina and Evangelina but waited until they served red beans and rice with fried pork chops, with a generous choice of hot sauces, a small fresh green salad, and Leidenheimer’s French bread with real butter, before bringing Taya up to date on occurrences during her absence.

Taya’s oldest daughter, Layla was firmly ensconced back at St. Mary and Martha High School, thanks to her grandmother’s funding, and was already complaining about the required uniforms and extensive homework. Marie, Taya’s second daughter, who had turned seven this past March had loosened a tooth during a softball game at school, but it had tightened up again and wasn’t going to fall out. Practically adopted by the Delachaise Mardi Gras Indian family, Jacques, who was six and named after Taya’s great-grandfather, had been accepted into training with that Mardi Gras Indian tribe. He was learning to sew beads and to chant their tribal songs; Indian Red was his favorite. He wanted to be a flag boy so he could be one of the first out on the streets Mardi Gras Day. Jean-Paul who was four and one half, ‘almost five excuse me,’ was getting ready to go to big school kindergarten in another few days and was impatient to leave the babies behind. A burst pipe at McDonough 115 had delayed his school opening. Clive, Jr. and twin Taya were the same happy creatures their mother had left in Clive and Arabella’s care just a few weeks previously, so she could go to Haiti.

Taya loved Arabella, who really was like a sister to her. Taya’s own sister had died before Taya was born. Likewise, Arabella had only Clive, so she and Taya really felt like each other’s first sisters.

Taya enjoyed her meal, especially remembering the meager meals of rice and peas, and sometimes a scrawny piece of chicken that she had been lucky to get while in Haiti. As she savored her food, neighborhood gossip floated in the air like another layer of atmosphere, entered her being and filled her with the sounds of home. Taya was almost able to forget the frightening and strenuous initiation rite she had just undergone. When their plates were cleared and they were finishing up their tea, Arabella sat herself up straight and got all serious.

Really, Sister, you know I love you, and would even if you hadn’t taken that worthless Clive off my hands, but why you got to go down there to that awful country and fool around with those hoodoos? Arabella silently crossed herself without even thinking. I mean, I know, you done taken up yo’ grandmama’s work there, and readin’ cards and doin’ medicine what helps folks. That’s fine, but them hoodoo people down there, I just don’t think you should be messin’ with them, girl.

Taya understood Arabella’s concerns and shrugged noncommittedly, smiled wearily and put her hand over Arabella’s. I am almost finished with my training, and after one more time I won’t be going down there anymore. You know too I have this other project to complete that is very important.

Arabella humphed. She knew that Taya would never give her any more details, but she worried about her anyway and she wasn’t sure if it was worse or better to not know. It was bad enough that Taya kept that snake in the house and fooled around with all those other practitioners as they called themselves, in the Quarters and even the swamp. However, going out the country to Haiti, that was beyond Arabella’s comprehension. Despite her misgivings, on that evening Taya looked so exhausted and so sweet to Arabella, that she just hugged her as they left the restaurant and decided to leave more discussion for another time.

Chapter Two

A CONVOLUTED HERITAGE

Taya DuChamps was a kind of hereditary priestess of New Orleans Vodou, as her Granny, Mama Marie to her followers and clients, had been. Marie passed and her funeral and wake had been one of those weeklong New Orleans affairs, culminating with a burial in St. Roch Cemetery in the same tomb as her mother. Marie the first had invested in the crypt many years previously. I don’t want my family disturbed by folks coming around and putting X’s on the walls of my nice clean tomb, and leaving all kinds of gris gris that they don’t even know what they’re doing with, she proclaimed accusingly to her wayward daughter, who she recognized had chosen a path for herself that did not entirely meet with her mother’s approval.

Marie the first referred, of course, to the famous New Orleans Vodou priestess, Marie Laveau, whose white-washed tomb in St. Louis Cemetery, however careful the caretakers, was continually covered with red X’s, rubbed by strangers’ bare feet and covered with offerings from those wanting her assistance, even long after her death. Mama Marie insisted that she and her mother had not been named after the infamous Marie Laveau, but the haughty, enigmatic and powerful Marie Antoinette.

Mama Marie had explained to Taya that her grandmother had been a quadroon. Her father was a white attorney who Eugenie Victoria Lirette met at one of the last quadroon balls held in the old Orleans Ballroom behind St. Louis Cathedral. Eugenie’s daughter, Victoria Catherine, was not Vodou, but a pious Catholic. Victoria’s daughter Marie however, received training from a houngan, a powerful male Vodou practitioner who claimed to be a direct descendant of the original Dr. John, Marie Laveau’s rival and colleague. Unfortunately, her namesake, a third Marie died of childhood disease at a very young age, and the second Marie, Taya’s grandmother, became afraid she would have no heir.

Looking at the daguerreotypes, Taya saw that Mama Marie had once been undeniably beautiful, passé blanche though her dark hair curled tightly, and her wide nose would have appeared even wider when her nostrils flared with indignation or anger. Against her mother’s wishes, when she was only fourteen, she had married young Jacques DuChamps, a jazz musician with steely blue eyes and toffee-colored skin. Jacques disappeared, then reappeared infrequently over the next thirty some years, as such men are wont to do, leaving Marie eventually with four children born, all of whom inherited his startlingly distinctive looks, if nothing else. He was like a ghost, Mama Marie had remembered.

Then Jacques appeared for one last visit when Marie was in her forties. Her two sons were grown, and her little daughter was long dead. He arrived during a dreadful tropical storm and melted her heart one more time with his seductive eyes, sweet soulful songs, and Caribbean rum. When he left a couple of days later, Marie was pregnant with Marie Victoria, Taya’s mother. I knew my prayers had been answered, Cherie, Mama Marie had said. She had a daughter on whom to pass her healing skills, her little house on Chartres Street and the few valuable heirlooms bestowed on Eugenie Victoria by her patron.

Marie Victoria, growing up in the 50s and 60s proved not to be the child of that dream. After a rebellious childhood full of tantrums, drugs and running away from home, she too finally arrived ghostlike at the old cottage one stormy evening as her father had done, leaving her baby girl, LaTaya Victoria with her mother. You were such a delightful little thing, Mama Marie had remembered. The spitting image of your grandfather.

Thus Taya, became the initiate, heir to Mama Marie’s legacy as well as her property. Mama Marie had built up a wide-ranging clientele crossing the numerous racial, class and religious divides that are so confusing to New Orleans newcomers. For over sixty years, she had been the power in the practice of Vodou in that part of the world, regardless of the number of fakes and minor practitioners who walked the streets and ran shops in the French Quarter.

Chapter Three

CHANGES

Like the women before her, Taya became pregnant as a teenager and the cottage was once more filled with childish laughter. Taya played with the child, Layla and helped Mama Marie run her business, taking on more responsibilities as Layla grew older and Mama Marie grew frailer. She was therefore devastated by the death of her Granny, who at 89 was little more than a child herself, though her mere presence gave Taya strength. Even though she was basically running the business by the time of Mama Marie’s passing, times changed after her death. Taya first had to sell all her great-great grandmother’s jewels and crystal that had been so meticulously cared for by the two Maries. Then, she was nearly forced to sell the house on Chartres Street because she simply could not afford to pay taxes or to repair it. Her mother, Marie Victoria had a new life and husband in Chicago, but she settled Taya’s debts and arranged further disbursements to allow Taya to remain in her home with necessities and little else.

Ree, as Marie Victoria called herself, urged Taya to leave New Orleans and seek a better life away from the bigotry and ignorance she remembered