Voodoo Queens of New Orleans - Vol. I | ✓

Chapter 41: An Invitation Shrouded in Darkness

"Mama," I said. "Marie II possessed you. She was speaking to Hezekiah through you. You don't remember any of this?"

Mama's mood completely changed when she heard that name. She was taken back like the mere idea of Marie II was of the highest form of offense. She got up from her chair to stand above me.

"Marie II?" she questioned, but she wanted no answer from me. "Alisande have you lost your damn mind? What business you got, talking about that woman like that?"

"Mama, she was talking to Hezekiah through you, telling him all of this shit about Marie Laveau's death, and...and his wife and daughter and me, she was talking about me! I achieved tempus summatum, Mama. She said it herself!"

"That man must have knocked the sense right out you," she said to me, disgusted. I couldn't believe what I was hearing - what I was witnessing. Mama refused to believe me; she refused to believe that Marie II possessed her. But the reasoning was clear: if she believed this, then that meant she would have to come to terms with the fact that Marie II was her djab, not Marie Laveau.

I stood up, too. To get away from her. I took cautious steps back out of the kitchen, shaking my head at her. "You're in denial," I whispered.

"How dare you!?"

"There were witnesses, Mama. We all saw what happened. We saw her come into you! How can you deny that!? How can you deny that the woman in Hezekiah's locket was me?"

"Because it isn't true!" She yelled at me. "None of it is true! None of it! You're a fool to put any kind of trust in Hezekiah, the man who Abraham sees as his goddamn son! You think Abraham wouldn't be smart enough to somehow manipulate that photo? He wants you to think that's you. He wants you to believe in this tempus summatum bullshit!"

It was like watching yarn unravel, listening to my mother speak - together, then slowly falling apart into a tangled mess on the ground. There was no way she could have believed the words coming out of her mouth; it would have been worse if she did. The deranged look in her eyes and the trembling state she was in made me realize that this was most likely her attempt at hiding something from me - shielding me from myself. Then Marie II's words suddenly came back to me. They were words that I had heard before, from Aza and even Sajida the Shunned. And I decided to phrase it into a question - a question I didn't know how Mama would react to.

"What is a 'child of an unholy union'?"

There was nowhere for her to hide. She couldn't cuddle me and tell me I had a bad dream. She couldn't convince me that these words were less than what they actually were. And she definitely couldn't tell me that I wouldn't understand. There was nothing she could do to hide - I was out in the open. I was exposed to this. I was involved more than I ever expected to be. And I needed to know the entire truth:

I had achieved tempus summatum, but how? My djab was a woman of immense influence in my family, but who? Hezekiah knew me more than I knew myself, but when? And I was the child of an unholy union, but of what?

I was special; unique. And if Mama answered these questions, I would know exactly how I fit into all of this. But if she would have just answered me what the child of an unholy union was, I would have understood all that was meant for me to never understand. But she didn't answer my question. She only stared with doe eyes that were almost pleading with me to let it go. But it pained her to know that I would never let it go until I knew the truth.

In our tense silence, Aza came down the staircase and right in between the two of us. She spared no time to ask what had happened between us.

"Ben is awake," she told us, uncaring of how deeply Mama and I were staring at each other. "Y'all need to come up. He got a lot to say."