“Shoulda stayed with Jay’s daddy. We’d all be rich if she did,” another said.
This was the other reason Jayden hated the barbecues: his mother was a wreck every time they left. The sisters quarreled for a few minutes before the door of the shed was opened by the third sister in the family of eight kids. She waved for them to come inside.
Gritting his teeth at the thought of putting his mother back together again, Jayden caught his uncle’s latest throw and made a show of studying the time. It was close to noon, and he had to take his mother home before crossing town to his dad’s.
“If we don’t leave now, we’ll get stuck in a few funeral processions on our way out of town. It’s about the time when they start up,” he said, aware that at least two graveyards were between his grandmama’s house and the downtown apartment where his mother lived. “We’ll play next time, Uncle Tommy.”
“A’ight.”
Jayden flashed another smile and jogged to the picnic table area. He grabbed a pulled pork slider, tossed the football on the ground under a massive oak tree and headed towards the house. Dear god, could the elderly voodoo priestess cook! He wolfed the sandwich down and entered the house to grab his keys and wallet first.
The interior was in worse shape than the sagging exterior. It smelled moldy beneath the rich scents of homemade barbecue sauce and collard greens. The wallpaper had long since yellowed or peeled in many rooms. Grandmama Toussaint smoked like a chimney and burned her magical incense to the point that the house reeked. Worn, outdated furniture, filthy drapes, the scent of cat urine …
He paused to sneeze before snatching his belongings then leaving quickly for the backyard. Approaching the shed, he opened the door. A cloud of heavy incense engulfed him. Jayden wrinkled his nose to keep from sneezing again. He ducked beneath the short doorway.
The three sisters, his grandmama, and two of his great-aunts were huddled around a table with a few of his cousins. Wooden shelves lined the walls, cluttered by clay jars, hanging herbs, bottles of discolored liquid – some with unidentifiable items suspended in them – and mummified pieces of animals he’d never stayed long enough to identify.
Jayden hated this place. It reeked of death, despite the incense and cigarette smoke.
“You ready to go, Mama?” he asked.
The women at the table all faced him at once. Every female born in his mother’s line bore the same birthmark in the same place: a small, faint mole between their eyes. His Haitian grandmama said it was the sacred mark of Loa Loko, the voodoo god of healing and herbs from which the powerful priestesses in his maternal line received their powers of protection and healing.
Faced with a table full of women bearing the same mark, Jayden felt a little weirded out. No part of him believed in any form of magic, but the same birthmark appearing on three generations of women struck him as unnatural.
His grandmama’s round face lit up. Her eyes contained a wild gleam, and her grin was punctuated by three gold teeth and three white teeth. Her wide smile almost swallowed her face.
“They said you’d come!” she exclaimed.
He didn’t want to know who said he’d come.
“Are you mambos or grandmama today?” he asked, only half-joking. He’d seen one of her possessions before and planned on running the next time she started.
“Child,” she chided and stood. She was barely five feet tall and round, clothed in a purple gown with a matching headscarf. Necklaces and bracelets of bone and wooden beads clicked together with her movement. “I am always your grandmama, and I always serve the spirits. I have something for you.” Her accent was thick, her pronunciation of English words careful.
“Grandmama Marie, I have what you gave me last time. I’m good,” he said. Recalling the fuzzy … thing she gave him last month, he tried not to cringe as she maneuvered her large body to a shelf and bent over.
He looked at his mother expectantly. She rolled her eyes at his silent plea to hurry and put out her cigarette, leaning down for her purse.
“Your great grandpapa was here last week,” his grandmama continued. “He came to me in a vision and warned me. There is someone in your life who will do you great ill. I prepared a spell for you, my Jayden.”
“Oh, Jayden!” one of his aunts exclaimed.
“A protection spell,” his youngest cousin informed him. “Grandmama chose me as her apprentice. I helped with the rite this morning.”
“Great,” he said, scratching the back of his head. If this crap was real, grandmama would use her magic powers to buy a winning lotto ticket. He repressed a shudder at the surroundings that freaked him out. “Maybe you should become an apprentice for something you can get a degree in.”
“I know, Jayden,” his cousin sighed in exasperation. “I’m only in seventh grade. I can help Grandmama and study for school.”
“Here it is.” Grandmama Marie straightened and reached over the heads of those at the table to hand him a small box.
Jayden took it reluctantly.
“Open it!” his cousin squealed. She was dancing in place.
Jayden’s sensitivity to the feelings of the women in his life overcame his revulsion. He held the box away from him and opened it warily. His dread turned to interest. He withdrew the round, tarnished dog tags on an equally aged ball chain. He was forced to squint to read the name in the candlelit shed.
Rene-Baptiste Etienne Toussaint
“Grandmama, are you sure?” he asked, surprised.
His cousin hugged him. He wrapped an arm around her squirming body instinctively. She pried the tags from his hand and held them up for the rest of the women to see.
“He wanted you to have them,” his grandmama responded with a proud smile.
His great grandfather had volunteered to fight for the U.S. overseas during World War One rather than live in repression in Haiti during the U.S. occupation. The dog tags were a family legacy, one of the few pieces to survive a fire that occurred before Jayden’s birth. As much as he wished he wasn’t related to the people practicing voodoo, he was humbled by the piece of family history in his hand.
“You have to put them on!” his cousin demanded. She grabbed his arm and tugged him down until he yielded and bent. Solemnly, she placed them over his head, murmuring a few words in French he took to be a prayer to the dead man who allegedly wanted Jayden to have the tags.
“Thank you for … uh, protecting me,” he said. “I’ll take good care of them.”
Her eyes glowed. Jayden straightened and tucked the box into one pocket while pulling out his keys.
“And they’ll take good care of you.” His grandmama laughed, along with the other women.
Jayden looked down at the dog tags, amazed by the gift from the crazy woman in the shed.
“Jayden, you must not take them off,” Grandmama Marie said, growing serious. “Ever.”
“I won’t, grandmama,” he assured her.
“No, Jayden.” She approached him, peering up at him with intensity that left him unnerved. Her words were hushed, so that only he was able to hear them. “The white zombie is going to kill you. Your great-grandpapa will protect you.”
Jayden didn’t know what to say. He wanted to laugh. How ridiculous was this?
“Okay, Grandmama,” he said at last.
She appeared satisfied with the response. “You are the hundredth in our line. You are meant for great things.”
“I know, Grandmama,” he said. “But becoming a voodoo priest is nowhere in my future.”
She harrumphed and turned around, returning to the table.
“I’ll call you later, Mama.” His mother rose and kissed his grandmama then hugged her sisters, aunts, and nieces.