CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Angelique:
Ia€?ve been here before. A whisper memory rushed over me, made me feel weak, helpless. I shivered as we drove through wrought-iron gates covered with wisteria and wild bergamot, past lonely columns set like sentinels along the winding carriage road. Abandoned slave quarters stood to the left, a fleur-de-lis carved in the sagging door. Many considered the stylized iris to symbolize either the Virgin Mary or the holy trinity. But it didna€?t mean that here.
There was little, if anything, holy here.
Russell lived in one of those antebellum mansions built in the mid-1800s. Tucked away in a secret corner of the city, filled with all the magical beauty of the bayou. Here the Mississippi River branched into one of the countless slow-moving streams lined with crape myrtle and camellia, oleander and oak; Spanish moss dripped from the trees like syrup; yawning alligators slithered through the freshwater marshes. Legends say that the estate belonged to one of the first New Orleansa€? voodoo queens, a woman with an exotic blend of Haitian, French and African slave blood; that her mother was one of the filles du roi, mail-order brides sent by King Louis XIV for his settlers. She left a touch of gris-gris throughout the property that couldna€?t be erased. Carved in the trees were recipes for her renowned fetish bagsa€”spells that would revive love, bring wealth, heal the sick.
Perhaps she left a curse behind as well.
My legs shook as Chaz led the way up wooden stairs. Plantation shutters stood open at the windows and incandescent light filtered through.
I wasna€?t going to survive the night. Something in me was going to die, some innocence, some part of me that I had been clinging to like a raft in a turbulent sea. It was going to wash away and drown, and at the same time something else would be born.
Inside the house, children laughed and danced, and their sounds echoed through the centuries.
I had a child once.
Joshua.
Chaz and I crossed the threshold and my past lives began to unwind, a spool of flesh-and-blood memories tangling around my feet and arms, a thread of images that turned serpentine, that coiled, ready to strike and bite. Each pierce of venomous fangs brought a visceral rush, an encyclopedic volume of smells and sounds.
I found myself pinned to the wall from the weight of it, unable to move or speak. Trapped in my own delight and horror, I was unable to stop its progression.
Around me, everyone began to dance to the slow-fast-slow rhythm of zydeco music.
Inside me, another dance began. The dance of life and death.
The dance of penance and pain.
The dance of remembering.