Love Charms (137 page)

Chapter Four

I looked at Scorpio and wondered if I should mention what had
happened in the dressing room. But then he looked at me and smirked and I
decided he either knew or if he didn't—he didn't deserve to know. Then
the bus pulled out and took us to the mansion of a famous Jazz musician, (where
the house was tiled and smelled of cardamon), and finally we ended up at a
place called the KlitKat Klub. The outside was of red brick and smelled of
stale beer and old perfume, along with a rotting undertone of the ever present
Mississippi River.

The audience looked boring (except for us) which meant I
invested my time watching my family. Clearly the most fascinating member was
Libra, who didn't look as if she belonged with the rest of us. Eye color, hair
color, skin color—not even a close match. Round face—no cheek
bones. From the moment I became more aware of what was going on around me, most
people had concluded she was the child of rape, the child of an affair, or
adopted. We were judgmental back then. I'm sure I would have been much more
sympathetic if it weren't for the fact I was an obvious member of our family
and she wasn't.

The MC was a transvestite in a glittering green dress and a wig
of peroxide, who said she was from California, "...the land of fruits and
nuts." Then a true drag queen lurched out unsteadily (from the smell, I
think this was more due to gin than to the high heels) and lip-synched to an
ABBA song, while I watched in fascination. I wondered how large the drag
community was in New Orleans, since this was not a place for gay men. I glanced
around and saw the audience and the performers seemed to be in a different
reality than what I had seen on Bourbon Street. There would be no Lady Chartreuse
to be found here. No one was “fierce” at the Klitkat Klub.

Taurus, sitting next to me seemed a bit twitchy and I wondered
afterward if he didn't really want to take her place--when we returned to the
reservation with our car trunk stuffed with chicory-flavored coffee, I would
sometimes catch glimpses of him late at night in the bathroom, holding a
hairbrush for a microphone, humming ABBA and with a yellow towel wrapped around
his head in imitation of the beehive hairdo he had seen (which made no sense to
me--his own hair was as long as mine, and he could have played with that,
although perhaps he felt it was the wrong color. When he was 17 he tried to
bleach stripes into it, but the stripes turned an odd green. Hair as black as
ours doesn't really bleach--or perm for that matter. But it is good for
whipping lovers.

Aries seemed a bit jealous that the performers looked better
than she did, but we never really talked about it. Years later, the man I would
sleep with that night asked if I had ever been to a drag show before (he
announced we were going to one where he would perform--not as a drag queen, but
as a "wonder stud," one of two "masculine" men who
basically served as living props for the performers to play with during their numbers--his
first act was with the two of them in French sailor outfits standing at
attention while a Cher lookalike emoted to "If I Could Turn Back Time.”).
I told him I had seen my first when I was half his age--drag shows didn't seem
to have changed all that much other than since we were in Wisconsin, the first
performer smelled of beer rather than gin. My new lover looked good in the
French sailor outfit. Later in the evening he looked much better without it.

Chapter Five

I was relieved when we were released from the Klitkat Klub and
ended up back in the French Quarter. My head was filled with the different
smells and I liked looking at the fancy iron work—locals called it iron
lace. On the bus tour it was mentioned iron work like this had been used in
other cities, but it had been ripped away and used to manufacture weapons
during World War Two. New Orleans had managed to keep the beautiful curves and
designs of their balustrades and verandas. I traced the realistic ear of corn
with my fingertip that was a few inches high and brightly enameled, repeated on
the fence that surrounded the Corn Stalk Hotel.

The older siblings had been given some cash and turned loose
with instructions to meet back at the Cafe du Monde at six in the evening. I
enjoyed being on my own, crossing back and forth, using Bourbon Street as my
point of reference. That was how I ended up on Dumaine Street and saw a name I
recognized—Marie Laveau. Curious, I walked into the Voodoo Museum. A
portrait of a woman who looked part Native was prominently displayed, wearing a
turban, much more elaborate than the one that Lady Chartreuse had used to hide
my hair.

I smelled a mixture of bitter things, old things, and
tobacco—the leaves—not cigarette stubs, and followed the scent to
what appeared to be a type of altar. There was an interesting collection of
items identified as “gris-gris.” We would call them medicine bags. These were
made of cloth and seemed very commercial. A framed newspaper article yellowed
with age indicated at one time all New Orleans policemen carried gris-gris.
That made me wonder what sort of criminals police expected to encounter here.

I read a little on Marie Laveau's history. Queen of Voodoo. Nice
to know how Scorpio self-identifies. I was pretty sure Aunt Pork wouldn't
compare herself to Marie Laveau. Everywhere I looked, everything seemed vaguely
familiar. It was as if what was called voodoo had a Native American base which
then got tweaked with a lot of other influences. The voodoo dances where
participants were possessed by spirits called Loa seemed very similar to our
Winter Spirit Dances.

A gris-gris could also be a doll. Apparently when White people
first encountered sacred carved objects used by the African peoples, they
assumed they were playthings, and not ceremonial items. Still keeps happening
with us. I held a gris-gris doll in my hand and thought of my grandmother's
dolls. I decided to buy one for her, although the story that would go with it
would be more valued. A true artist keeps track of what others in her field are
doing, much in the way one cat keeps an eye on its sharp-toothed neighbor.

I paid and stepped back on to the street. “Pocahontas,” I heard
from behind me. “What were you doing in that shop? It's strictly for tourists.
Come with me.” Lady Chartreuse put his arm around my shoulder and escorted me
back in the opposite direction of the Cafe du Monde.

“Were you stalking me?” He had a tank-top on, and he smelled
freshly showered. He was more attractive than many, but not someone who would
really catch your eye. Perhaps that was Lady Chartreuse's function.

“No, I'm running errands—picking up a few things I'll need
for tonight. I saw you walking out of the Voodoo Museum. I figured it must be a
sign. My own family history is tied to Marie Laveau but it's something that was
never talked about to outsiders because it involved the only murder that could
be traced back to her conjuring.” He laughed. “Our family covered it up the
same way they tossed my ass out. Get rid of anything that could bring them
shame. Nothing much has changed since the 1800s.

“It is more than a twice-told tale,” he began. “A Creole woman
named Camille fell in love with a Scotsman because she felt it was a step up
for her to marry not just a true White man, but one whispered to be descended
from the Lairds of
Caledonia. But a spurned Creole lover came to the Priestess Marie
Laveau, asking her to use her powers to force Camille to love him. When she
shook her head, he said if he could not have her then no one should so he
wanted her dead. 'If this is what you ask, it can be done, but you will pay
greatly,' --and then she spat on the ground in front of him and stomped on the
spot with her expensively shod foot. 'Make it so!' She told him the items he
needed to bring her for the gris-gris she would create.

“Then did the Priestess go to visit her apprentice, the fabulous
Madame LaLaurie, in the aristocrat's parlor of scarlet. She had been teaching
the woman for many years, and she was a talented student. Unfortunately, her
interests were even darker than Marie knew. For the most part, Marie Laveau was
a healer. But part of being trained as a healer means learning how to kill,
since one role of a healer is to combat assassinations in all forms.

“Over the months that followed, Camille became pregnant and her
world was bright. But then her husband and mother began to show signs of
depression and were haunted by dreams. Camille sought the intervention of the
Priestess, and Marie Laveau told her the unborn child was in danger from great
evil that had begun with a ancient curse in Scotland, and the real reason her
husband had escaped to New Orleans.

“Because Camille was told the only chance for the baby's survival
was to have Marie Laveau herself act as midwife, when her labor began, she
summoned the Priestess. It was a labor of great difficulty and Camille died in
the process. When the Priestess summoned Camille's family to give them the
terrible news, she also showed them the horribly deformed child. In the
stories, the baby boy was usually called the Devil's Child. Camille's father
asked the Priestess to keep the infant because he would not have the
abomination in his house. He let Marie know the Scotsman had gone insane and
had been locked away by the Ursuline Nuns.

“Thus did the Priestess step into the darkness with the child,
tightly wrapped to hide his truth. When she turned the corner she was face to
face with the Creole who had asked for Camille's death. 'What have you done to
me?' he cried, because this man who had been so handsome was now as crippled
and hideous as the child she held within her arms. “

He opened the door to a shop that looked very new and clean. The
air conditioning made me shiver and I was fascinated by the mixture of
antiseptic and herbal smells from shiny glass cases. My first impression was
this is what would happen if you merged a medical marijuana shop that I had
seen on a news report and a New Age bookstore. We make all of our own stuff
back home. I guess this is where we would come to buy things if we lived in a city.
I even caught the vanilla like scent of dried Sweetgrass.

“What happened with the Creole man? It was something to do with
the evil of his soul now reflected in his physical body?”

“It was so the world could see he was the one who would spend the
rest of his life paying the price of Camille's death. Then she dismissed him
because he was now so ugly he offended her sight. She left him and returned to
the home of Madame LaLaurie, where it is said Madame called in a priest to have
the infant baptized while she stood for him as his godmother.”

“How is this all related to you and your family?” I asked
politely, since I was much more interested in exploring the store than finding
out what happened to a legendary Devil baby. I had heard very little French at
that time and all the names were getting hard for me to follow.

“Madame LaLaurie assumed responsibility for the child. It is said
the two of them would use the infant to summon his true father, but I believe
the Priestess would never have done such a thing.” He turned to look me in the
eyes. “She was a good woman.” I personally thought I would hesitate to describe
a historical figure who had just been accused of murdering a pregnant woman,
driving the father insane, deforming a Creole man—and apparently
deforming a baby, as “a good woman.”

“No,” he said, turning away from me and focusing again on his
story. “It was not the Priestess who did such things, but Madame LaLaurie
herself. A few years later when her house caught fire, the authorities
discovered the bodies of her slaves who had been brutally tortured and
mutilated as part of her dark arts. She fled with the young boy, just before
she would have been put away. Most people believe she returned to France.” He
stopped, pausing for effect. “But now you know she really escaped to St.
Francisville. She established herself there when the Sterlings had bought the
Plantation and renamed it the Myrtles.”

He picked up a slender glass container that held small metal balls
and seemed to judge its weight. “The people of the area called her the Devil's
wife. When her godson was an adult, he sometimes went by the name Web or
Webber. It was because his familiar was a monster spider. He was the one who
murdered William Winter on the seventeenth step of the Myrtles' porch.”

And that was somehow related to why Martin Winter, aka, Lady
Chartreuse was now standing in front of me, poking at a tube of something
labeled
kufwa.
“What's that?” I asked. It was well sealed so I couldn't
smell it. It was a greasy yellow.

“Do you know what a neutron bomb is?” I shook my head to indicate
I did not.

“It's like an atomic bomb, except it is designed to leave the
buildings standing and just kill the people inside through radiation. The
military uses them now to combat troops that are in armored vehicles. Kufwa is
the neutron bomb of gris-gris. The word is originally from the Congo and means
'to die.' It was one of the ingredients Marie Laveau used when she made the
gris-gris for Camille.” He saw me frown and quickly added, “You mix it with
graveyard dust and that camouflages the yellow color.” He replaced it in the
stand and added, “That's why the combination is called goofer dust.”

I looked at it with greater respect and wondered if I could do the
same thing with ground up death camas. I considered buying some, but at that
age, my enemies’ list was fairly small. I wandered around trying to better
understand what a lot of the stuff was. The labels were well-printed, but I
didn't know what “Two Head Root,” “Dragon's Blood,” or “Tears of Blanc Dani,”
were, let alone how to use them. I considered asking Lady Chartreuse but I was
worried I'd have to sit through another tale of his family history. My thoughts
were interrupted by a gray-haired White man who came out of the back room and
placed a small quartz crystal into my hand and then closed my fingers over it
while he whispered something.

The quartz responded by growing quite warm, but didn't feel threatening or
dangerous. “I have been saving this for you,” he said. “I am honored that you
have come into our shop.” This was the first time this happened, but over the
years I have quite a collection of crystals White people have given me as soon
as I walked into a New-Agey place. For a long time I felt complimented, but I
finally realized they gave me these items the way on my father's reservation,
the vendors will always cover up their tables and leave a small gift for the
Sacred Clowns to placate them. All my crystals were a sort of mystic mafia
protection fund. I suppose it worked. I never harmed anyone. Well, I never
harmed any shop owners.