enough.
She breathed in, breathed out, great slow whooshing noises which filled the room. Settled herself more comfortably, stretched out that wide black frame housed in colours and fabrics that lapped round her like flowers in a bathtub. Closed her eyes.
‘Well, we got some choices,’ she told. ‘It just depends on what you want to do.’ She described the black cat bone spell – ‘you gotta boil a black cat alive …’ – but trailed off at the drop of my jaw.
‘I always offer that one,’ she shrugged. ‘It’s the most powerful by half, but you whiteys, you got a thing about cats.’ We discussed some more, but –
‘I’m desperate,’ I told her. ‘I don’t want no more sleeping drafts, gin or falling down stairs. I just want to be loved – good and proper every night. His hands, you gotta see his hands, Miss Flint. They hold a girl just right and I just can’t take no more of being alone in that bed. It needs a man in it. It needs my Ronnie in it.’
She cocked her head, the better to scan my face. The beads on her headscarf did a little dance. ‘OK’, she said, ‘There’s nothin’ else for it – we’re gonna have to goofer him.’
Well, I didn’t know what the hell she meant by that, but it seemed Mattie Flint was being practical. ‘He gonna either die or love you,’ she said. ‘There ain’t no middle ground with goofer dust.’
I nodded. I was ready. If there was no Ronnie for me, there’d be plain no Ronnie.
‘That’s the way sister,’ the hoodoo woman chuckled. ‘I needed to see some fire in those eyes of yours. There’s too much water in you from what I see. Water can be good (she didn’t sound so convinced) but things slip through water and away. What you need now is fire. Warm you up. Warm him up. Make that sucker burn till he’s back in your bed.’
We set to work. She went about measuring out ingredients – fresh graveyard dirt (you gotta get it from under the headstone, see, before the spirit flies away), rattlesnake skin that she pounded up good till it looked like grit, some dust from a blacksmith’s anvil, a pinch of sulphur, a sniff of salt.
The mix went into a red flannel mojo bag (she called it a Jack Ball) together with a matched pair of lodestones for Ronnie and me. She whispered some gibberish and then I had to spit on them for good measure (sweet). Last to come was some love-me oil. I smeared it on my hands and rubbed it all over the flannel. It smelt good. I got wet. If only Ronnie could get the feeling back so easy.
The mojo bag was tied good and tight with a long length of gold thread. ‘Now pin it inside your brassiere – it’s gotta be worn next to the skin,’ she said, helping settle it in place.
‘You listening now? Every day at sundown you gotta do the ritual. First pee on the Jack Ball (she moved right on, stopping none for my reaction), then hold it by the hanging thread and swing it back and forth, back and forth, like this (she demonstrated with an imaginary bag). Call his name to draw him to you: Ronnie, Ronnie, love me or die. That’s what you gotta chant. Now you practice,’ she said.
I obeyed.
‘Keep those eyes closed and move to the rhythm. Shift those hips. Feet a little wider. You gotta want him in you, bring him back inside you,’ she lured with her hands. ‘OK. Now you’ve got it. Keep that up till you’re in a trance.’
???
‘You’ll know,’ she promised. ‘You gotta be in the mood, honey.’ She’d almost finished with the instructions. ‘So no more gin. Or coffee. Or sleeping drafts.’
I nodded.
‘You got a gramophone?’
Again I nodded.
‘Then take this record and you just keep playing it till you’re in the mood. And then you start that chant.’
It was dark when I left, the Jack Ball tucked safe next to my heart. Next day at sundown I’d start.
I tried to stay calm, but couldn’t help it. I just got more and more excited all next day. Even went down to Mr Frankel to get some more Lucky Heart love-oil. It smelt so good, I just wanted to drown in that bottle.
I took care to dress just right. Something satiny and low-cut. Oh yes. I’d peed on the ball, dabbed love-oil all over, listened to Betty Smith wail the Lady Lucky Blues. Her voice clawed away inside me, her pain my pain. Rubbed raw, bled dry:
Lady Luck, Lady Luck
Won’t you please smile down on me
There’s the time, friend of mind
I need your sympathy
I’ve got his picture turned upside down
I’ve sprinkled goofer dust all around
Since my man is gone I’m all confused
I’ve got those Lady Luck blues …
I set up a sway in time with the rhythm, the Jack ball swinging back and forth of its own accord: Ronnie, Ronnie, love me or die. Ronnie, Ronnie, love me or die.
I tried several ways – once it sounded like a child’s nursery rhyme. That didn’t do it for me. Other times, it came out too high- or low-pitched. But then I found it – the lyric pathos of a minor key. Oh yeah. This would call the sirens … Ronnie, Ronnie, love me or die. Ronnie, Ronnie, love me or die ...
Trance? What trance?
I saw his face, his smile, his slow moving toward me across the room … his kisses on my mouth, neck, breasts, hands coursing familiar territory far below. His murmurs of sugar, sugar, the bed on fire, oh how I laughed, cried, called out loud and long.
Oh – oh – oh.
It was 11am. The sun was bright, the apartment stripped bare by its insistent glare. It was late. But there I was, still lying in bed. An empty bottle of gin on the floor, the packet of sleeping draft tipped over on the chair. I rolled out of the sheets, love-me oil spilled through its folds. Put on my shoes. And went to sit by the window.
The White Light of Nothing
(inspired by Hopper’s Automat, 1927, in the collection of the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa)
The tiny circle of light held her. Unblinking. When would this call end? All around, fellow traffic girls were answering calls, reaching, pulling, making connections, switches in, switches out, lines, wires criss-crossing here and there, all a-flurry, all a-blur except that tiny circle of light stuck fast someplace behind Eleanor’s eyes.
‘Miss Mendel. Miss Mendel! Is something the matter?’ The supervisor’s voice called from a long way off, a long way off and far behind. Closer to her ear, Rose was calling down a trumpet: ‘Ellie, are you OK?’
Behind a wall of smoke-stained glass, that’s where Eleanor was, with a small circle of light. Everything else stuck, frozen, while the circle grew larger and larger till suddenly it was all white light and she was tipping over, over, and down into a sea of white light ... now the same voices were saying the same things, but directly above her face. She lay on the floor, stool upended beside her.
A nurse arrived – a spell in the rest lounge was called for. Rose could stay while she sipped water. The nurse was a little wooden, patting a cool cloth to Eleanor’s face as she lay on the couch. ‘You’ll need to be examined by the doctor,’ she told and left the room.
Eleanor sat up, stuck in a new frozen moment. The world seemed to shift without her realising, and suddenly a new situation would present itself. The white light, the couch, where next would she be stuck?
Rose held the glass, Rose brought it to her lips, Rose told her to sip, Rose started to cry. ‘Oh Ellie, you know what’ll happen now, don’t you. You’ll have to go away to one of those company rest homes. And who knows for how long!’
‘But Ruth said it’s not so bad.’
‘Well, she would,’ Rose snorted. ‘But look how she’s watched. Mrs Jennings never takes her eyes off her. They’re just looking for another excuse to oust her – and the same’ll happen to you!’ She cried some more.
‘Calm down,’ Eleanor hushed, ‘or she’ll have us both in with Doctor Flynn.’
The doctor’s office at AT&T was like any other’s. Brightly lit, a desk, two chairs, examining couch, papers, books, charts, things.
‘Miss Mendel – a fainting spell, hmmm? What brought that on,
do you think?’
‘I don’t know, doctor,’ she replied. The question hadn’t actually occurred to her. He read her file, every now and then looking at her from over the top of his glasses.
‘It’s your first I see. But your supervisor has noted that you are susceptible to lapses in concentration? Inertia? Inactivity?’ He was clearly expecting some response but she couldn’t just now. She was getting that stuck feeling again. ‘These can be symptoms of nervous exhaustion, nervous fatigue, you know.’
Stuck. Still. Still stuck.
He sighed and took off his glasses. ‘I’ll need to conduct a brief examination,’ he said, ‘but I think the diagnosis is quite clear.’
She was instructed to breathe deeply while the stethoscope did its work. ‘Hmmm, you say you’re well otherwise?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmmm,’ again. ‘Do you enjoy your work here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmmm.’ Then – ‘I think a few days at our Cottage Green Rest Home in Pennsylvania might be in order,’ and started to write on a pad. ‘You just need a small correction to your habits,’ he said to the writing pad. ‘A proper amount of sunshine. Food and rest. A proper view of life, even, which can only be achieved if we take you out of your customary environment and place you in a company rest home for a period of recuperation.’
‘My customary environment?’
‘Yes, yes.’ One hand shooed away an imaginary fly as the other continued to write. ‘Work here, home life and so on. Just a little correction needed, to counter this view of