American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World (27 page)

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Authors: Rod Davis

Tags: #Body; Mind & Spirit, #General, #Religion, #Ethnic & Tribal, #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #African American Studies, #test

BOOK: American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World
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Page 169
spicy but mostly just grainy. I salivated a lot and though I tried not to, I eventually swallowed most of the slush.
Baba Tunde told me to face the altar and asked for the paper with the namesI had come up with about a dozen. As soon as I gave Tunde the paper, Baba Kunle put a small, gray-flecked rooster into my hands. I hadn't even seen the bird. It wasn't just the darkness. So many things were happening so fast, and much of it through the Yoruba tongue, that each new command seemed to come from nowhere. I was never sure which of the priests would speak next, or what they would ask of me. But I knew I would accede. I knew what that meant for the young rooster, trembling in my hands.
I held it carefully, trapping its wings and feet so it couldn't get away, and continued to face the altar, silently repeating the favors I wanted from Elegba. I really did pray. When finished, I extended my arms to return the rooster. Baba Kunle accepted it, said a prayer in Yoruba, and moved up next to me.
Taking the bird between his hands as though it were a chalice, he began to clean me, rubbing the perimeter of my head, then all down my body, just as Lorita had used pigeons on her clients. It seemed as though something were being drawn away from me. The bird was motionless as a feather duster.
The two priests faced the altar and prayed in Yoruba to Elegba, Ogun, Obatala, Oshun and the other spirits. I turned to face the altar, too, thinking it best. Just as I did, Baba Kunle held the rooster away from his chest with his left hand and with his right deftly twisted the rooster's neck. In another quick motion he pulled off its head.
He dropped the head to the ground and held the body over the altar. Blood dripped across the god of the crossroads like rain on dry land. Then Kunle passed the decapitated torso over the paper with the names I'd provided. I watched blood slide across something I'd written. I felt an unwanted smile on my

 

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face, but then, I always laugh when I'm really frightened. Both priests continued to pray.
Kunle fell silent, turned, and stood directly in front of me, the headless rooster in his left hand. He brought the body up in front of my face and dipped the middle finger of his right hand into the neck socket. In the African way, Kunle placed his bloody fingertips to the middle of my brow, and traced a line to the back of my head. He then anointed his finger in the blood again, knelt at my feet, and marked dots of blood on both my big toes.
He rose, stepped over to the altar, and lay the carcass at its base, offering more prayers to the spirits. He pinched out some feathers and scattered them across the offering, then retrieved the bottle of gina favorite drink of Elegbafrom his sack of ingredients on the chair. He took a mouthful and spewed it out over the headless ebo. Baba Tunde did the same. Then Kunle spewed another mist on my bare feet and the top of my head. It was cool, astringent, its juniper odor refreshing amid the sweet smell of blood and the tartness of my own sweat.
Baba Tunde knelt to wash his hands in a small container of water. Floating inside were four coconut shellsthe obi, the divination implements I had encountered in what seemed light years ago in the French Quarter. Before casting the husks, Tunde cleaned me with them, as Kunle had done with the rooster. The first throw came up all blackhusk side up. Oyekun: Danger. Of the five possible variables, oyekun was the worstthe ultimate negative.
Both priests fell silent a moment. They exchanged what sounded to me like dour intonations in Yoruba. Baba Kunle went immediately into the house. Tunde prayed. I just stood there.
Baba Kunle returned with three white candles. After cleaning me with one, he told me to hold it in my right hand. They lit the other two and planted them in the sticky mud around the altar. Tunde again cast the obi, several times.

 

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I couldn't see which configurations came up, but on one cast, one of the shells flipped up against the ebo carcass, making the reading two black, two whiteejife, a very good sign. But because the husk had fallen against the ebo, the reading apparently was compromised. I could see the two priests were now even more bothered. Kunle bent down to pull more feathers from the ebo and throw them against the Elegba.
Baba Tunde cast again. I couldn't make out what it was, but it must have been at least a little more favorable. Neither priest spoke. As if something had finally been settled, Kunle leaned down to pick up the rooster's head and then its carcass, and put them in a brown paper bag. Instead of folding it shut, however, he set it on the ground, then poured palm oil and honey all over the remains of the ebo inside. When finished, he spewed out another mouthful of gin. He picked up the sack and brought it to me. He told me to spit everything from my mouth into the bag. Then he handed me the bag and told me to seal it shut.
While I did that, Kunle reached down for a gallon plastic jugone I hadn't noticed beforefilled with a thick, grayish liquid. I knew it wasn't palm oil. I took it in my free hand while Kunle gave me instructions for the completion of the ritual. Once I had left their house, I was to go directly back to my room and shower, then clean myself by pouring the liquid from the jug all over my naked body. I was not to wash it off until morning. Meanwhile, I was to throw away the paper bag containing the ebo. I was to leave the line of blood on my head until I showered.
That was it.
I looked at Baba TundeKunle seemed too distant to approach. That didn't make me feel very serene. What about the four black shells, I asked. What did that mean? Tunde said, ''You may be taking your R&R sooner than you had planned." He said I was overtaxedthis was the warning of the ebo. In

 

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such condition I could make a mistake. Take some days off right away, he said, preferably near an ocean.
I was planning to drive toward Oyotunji, a voudou community along the South Carolina seashore, after visting Athens, but I wasn't sure if this was a warning to skip Athens and head to the sea without delay. Baba Tunde shrugged, as if to say he'd said all he could. He told me goodbye and walked towards the house after Baba Kunle, who had left in complete silence.
I carried my jug of cleaning potion through the puddles and out to my car. I leaned against the bumper and put on my socks and shoes. I eased into the driver's seat and, while the interior light was on, glanced at myself in the rearview mirror. The blood on my head was vivida bright, wide stripe of red. I didn't know who was looking back, and yet I did. He came from some time that found its door in the mists of the spray of gin from a priest's mouth. He was a spirit, a spectre, a demon and a holy man, a blooded creature that felt at one with the heavens and with the flesh. He was invincible. He had dilated pupils and a smile.
I started the car, wheeled around in the street and peeled away back out onto the boulevard of liquor stores and desperadoes. They didn't faze me. They had no idea where I'd been. Near the freeway entrance I spotted a dumpster next to, what else, a fast food chicken outlet. I threw in the bag with the ebo.
Alive, the rooster had been a kind of spiritual sponge, a conduit whose life would gain the most meaning through service to the gods. Now, its own spirit had gone to the gods, and lived in them the way any food becomes part of those who eat it, or as communion crackers convey the spirit of Jesus into Christians. Now the rooster's carcass was just a toxic container filled with all my bad energy. I felt no more for it than for a dead chicken at Safeway. I was glad to be rid of it.
I headed towards Athens. I didn't see why I couldn't go to the ocean later. As I drove through the upscale enclaves of northeast Atlanta and out into the green, hilly, gorgeous and unre-

 

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pentant Dixie that was rural Georgia, I rebelled against the undue caution of the two priests. I didn't feel
that
strung out. Maybe they just weren't used to seeing writers on a long assignment. You get wired in this kind of work; it's not unusual. But maybe it was unusual to them. They had probably just subjectively projected their feelings onto me.
East of Atlanta the vicious heat-storms of summer came again. Fierce this time, as they'd been in Mississippi. Ground lightning popped around me until I could barely see to drive. Then, from the front of the car, I began hearing a rhythmic clunk-a-clunk, growing ever louder, ever more grinding. I knew it was bad.
I just wanted to make it to Athens. I had blood on my forehead and a gallon of mysterious liquid to pour over me and it was nearly midnight and it wouldn't be good to stop anywhere broken down. I asked the spirits to keep me going, and tomorrow I'd take time to fix a lot of things.
I reached Athens, and spent an uneasy half hour trying to find a motel. Rooms everywhere were filled because of a convention at the University of Georgia. I settled for a seedy inn whose spotlit marquee advertised budget rates and XXX in-room cable. The parking lot was filled with muddy pickups and old clunkers. I checked in, forgetting the blood on my head. The clerk didn't say anything.
I wasn't sleepy, so I went to the tavern next to the motel and drank a couple of beers. I guess I must have looked odd, or maybe smelled pungent, because nobody sat anywhere near me. I went upstairs to my room. I stripped down. Actually, rain and perspiration had cleared most of the blood from my brow, but my big toes were still brightly marked. I carried the jug of Baba Kunle's cleaning potion into the bathroom and put it on the toilet seat. I got in the shower and turned the water hot as I could stand it. Lorita had said not to let anyone put anything on me. Yeah, well.

 

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When I'd washed off the blood and sweat of the night, I turned off the water, reached out around the mildewed shower curtain and grabbed the jug. I had no idea what was inside, but it smelled sweet, like apple juice. I turned off the shower, then held the jug over my head and poured.
Mostly, it was
cold
. But my flesh warmed the mixture fast. I watched it trickle down my shoulders, my chest and stomach, over my groin, down my thighs, across my toes. It was gray-brown, filled with chunks of various herbs.
I examined myself in the mirror. Bark and seed pods all over me, my whole torso light gray, as if I'd evolved from the mud. I waited a few minutes for the mix to dry, then sat naked and shivering on a towel on my bed. I turned on the TV. Satellite soft-core. I watched. I don't know for how long. I fell asleep.
In the morning, the sheets were damp and tacky and my head was still wet. I showered again, as I had been instructed to do, then dressed. I checked out, leaving the empty jug in the motel room trash can. I went to get my car fixed. CV joints out, about $300. While waiting, I caught a city bus into downtown Athens and walked past my old haunts alongside the UGA campus. I ate something. Then I took the bus back to the repair shop and headed for the nearest coastSavannah, a half day to the east. On the way storms blew in so fiercely the traffic on the interstate came to a complete stop, and then my muffler burned out. Another $120.
I got the message. I backed off. I found a nice Savannah motel. I went to the clubs along the river and listened to music and ate oysters. I spent a day at the beach. I saw
Batman
.

 

Page 175
PART THREE
THE WAY

 

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13
Africa in America
It would be easy to miss Oyotunjiand although I'd been there before, three years agoI almost did. The I-95 exit halfway up from Savannah to Charleston dumps directly onto South Carolina 21, a two-lane blacktop with the traffic load of a New York thoroughfare. Day and night, cars and trucks connecting Beaufort, Parris Island, the Gullah Islands or the tourist resorts of the South Carolina coast to the rest of the state thunder along as though in transit from the earth to the moon. It's dangerous, distracting, and sometimes deadly to drivethat much worse if you're looking for a faded, hand-lettered wooden sign, half-obscured by brush, proclaiming, "African VillageAs Seen on TV."
I zoomed past it the first time, doubled back, and barely picked it out on my second pass, braking down hard for a sudden right turn into the red-dirt entry road reaching out from the high weeds. Too hard, too fast, for the eighteen-wheeler barreling up my rear bumper at least twice my velocity. Figuring I had maybe two seconds to get off the highway and live, I steered sharply to the shoulder. Loose gravel and slick mud carried me into an

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