It was only when her boyfriend came over, and they disappeared into her room to bring forth the frightful sounds of rattling bed springs and hushed screams, that I would sense any stirrings of life in her; but even then, those stirrings would seem empty somehow—and would always be gone by the time she emerged from the room. I began to think of her room as a magical place; I entered it furtively when she wasn’t looking, expecting some new dimension to appear. However, all I would see was the same room, with its bed piled high with soiled linen and dirty clothes, and with its pervasive stench of baby shit and stale urine. Only in retrospect do I understand why her boyfriend’s face had always worn a look of bewilderment when he left the room—and why, after a while, he stopped coming entirely.
When summer came and the long, hot vacation days stretched out like a cruel punishment, the neighborhood streets became my refuge. The hotter it got, the deeper my aunt seemed to seep into her strange lassitude. After a while, her sepulchral form began to occupy a place of horror in my imagination, so I stayed out on the streets merely to avoid her—and the sense of panic that rose in me when I watched her. One humid night, when the prickly heat made me toss and turn in bed, I shuffled over to the living room to watch some TV. My aunt had gone to bed by then—it must have been past midnight… The Exorcist was on. That must have been the longest two hours of my life. I lay on the couch trembling. I wanted to turn off the TV, but these were the days before remote controls, and I was too terrified to walk from the couch to the TV. I was convinced that the demon that had possessed the girl in the movie would get me if my feet touched the floor. The demon was hiding beneath the couch, getting ready to pounce on me the moment I ventured from the sanctuary on top of the couch. Also, it occurred to me that if I walked over to the TV and turned it off, then I would have to walk back to the couch in the dark! All of these factors combined to paralyze me. I lay trembling on the couch as the demon girl’s head spun around and she threw up green vomit and her body levitated before being “compelled by the body of Christ.” Even when I turned my eyes away, I shuddered and cried at the sounds—and the frightful thoughts—that now seemed somehow inescapable. When the movie was over, I lay staring at the TV but seeing only my projected fears. Eventually sleep did seize me, but I had the most fantastical dreams, in which the demon from the movie chased me through dark ghetto streets. Every crevice in the dream seemed to be a hiding place for the demon and every noise seemed to be a prelude to death.
I awoke the next morning with body aches—as though I had been fighting with the demon all night and had barely escaped. I didn’t awake screaming or anything like that, but with an awareness—a surety—that somehow my aunt had been possessed by a demon. These thoughts circulated through my mind for days—like a virus infecting my mind, my ability to think and make sense of the world. I watched my aunt from around corners. I remember that since she was breastfeeding, her nipples were chewed up and sore. I doubt she made enough milk, because the baby was always crying and seemed frustrated. However my aunt would hardly seem to notice; she would just sit staring at TV, or whatever the case was, while the child cried or chewed at her nipples until they bled. I remembered my aunt as she used to be. In my mind, I had an image of her as playful and loving—flittering about the world like a butterfly. I couldn’t trust these memories, of course, as they came from the deepest recesses of my childhood—where memories didn’t come in the form of images, but sensations. I knew only that my aunt, in some earlier incarnation, had been for me a feeling of joy and carefree youth. Even though she was now only 18, she seemed beyond customary classifications of age—or at least beyond my six-year-old understanding of it. My inability to make sense of things, combined with what seemed to be my aunt’s obvious unhappiness, left me convinced that something evil had happened to her. Moreover, I figured that whatever sorrows she had, had to have their source in supernatural evil (not only the earthly kind I saw daily on the streets). A life and death battle was going on within my aunt—a struggle for her soul; and while this battle raged I couldn’t even sleep, for fear that if the evil won out I would be the next victim.
I had always liked walking through the neighborhood in the early morning, but when my fears for my aunt—and my own soul—began to drive me from the house, I found that early mornings were magical. As night turned into day I connected the banishing of darkness in the outside world to a similar victory within me. Also, the early morning streets were mine. Few people would be on the streets; no loud music or quarrels would invade my thoughts… and I would be free for a few moments.
As many a bewildered parent will tell you, childhood desperation, coupled with an active imagination, can often lead to extremely bizarre choices. There was a voodoo shop in my neighborhood—I don’t know what else to call it. People went there to commune with the forces of good and evil—to soothe heartbreak and find guidance for lives that seemed pointless. The shop was in a dusty, roach-infested storefront; the two-story slum that housed it was on a block where most of the other buildings had been demolished—and where these few standing buildings seemed like rotten teeth in a diseased mouth. In a strange way, I thought of this block as the crossroads of our neighborhood, the nexus of all the good and evil potentialities of our community.
Either way, that morning, terrified by the encroachment of evil into my home, I went to see the proprietress of the shop. Rather, I walked up and down the block hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Madame Evangeline was her name, and the faded sign above the shop advertised palm readings and “spiritual consultations.” The lights of the store were never on and in the dusty display case there were several exotic statuettes of deities, demigods, saints and demons. Like I said before, it was a two-story building. From what I could tell, Madame Evangeline lived in the shop; on the second floor, there was a wizened old man who continually muttered to himself and scratched the same spot on his chest. The talk in the neighborhood was that Evangeline had cast a spell on him for some transgression that no one could name, but which everyone presumed to involve spurned love and/or cheating ways. I never saw anyone visiting her establishment, and before deciding to seek her out, I had only seen her once. It had been about six months before, when I was on my way to school. I think I was late, because I was rushing along, heedless of the shop that had always triggered an eerie feeling in my gut. Evangeline suddenly emerged from the darkness of the shop to throw out her garbage; at the sight of her, a shudder went though me, so that I almost toppled to the ground. Nobody else was around; I stood there helplessly. Of course, I figured that taking out the garbage was too trivial a task for one whom communed with mystical forces. With the occult forces she had at her command, I figured that she could easily disintegrate her trash in hellfire—or levitate it to the curb. Thus, I figured that her foray to the garbage can had to be a pretext whose ultimate design was my mortal soul. Madame Evangeline was a huge black woman of indefinite age. She came out in a discolored (mostly purple) nightgown. Her stockings were rolled down to the middle of her massive thighs and her pink, fluffy slippers clapped indecorously as she sauntered to the curb. I had frozen about five steps from her. Children always imagine such people to be cannibals; as I looked at her, it occurred to me that nothing but the sweet, tender flesh of six-year-olds could account for Madame Evangeline’s huge gut. I watched that gut anxiously, as though paying homage to my unfortunate predecessors. When I looked up, I realized that the occult mistress was smiling at me (and I swear to this day that she licked her lips hungrily!) I turned on my heels and ran!
However, six months later, driven to the brink by the double curse of an active imagination and unnamable terrors, I found myself willing to risk adding girth to Madame Evangeline’s gut. That morning, I walked down the blocks with a peculiar single-mindedness—a feeling that only Madame Evangeline had the power to battle my aunt’s demon and restore her soul. I passed the Arab deli that was our neighborhood’s version of a supermarket (and which had that shelf of porno magazines in the back
that the neighborhood boys were always lurking around). I passed the God’s Heavenly Assembly church, whose sign had a missing section and now actually read, “God’s Heavenly Ass.” I passed Won-Dolla-Fong’s fruit stand, where everything cost one dollar and where people would purposely ask him how much something cost, just so that he would scream, in that strange way of his that negated all the consonants, “won dolla!”
Just as I neared Madame Evangeline’s shop the door opened and she emerged with another bag of garbage. She saw me and smiled again. I forced myself to continue walking toward her. She was dressed just as she had been the last time I saw her, so that it was as though no time had passed.
“You gonna run away again?” she asked me. She had a heavy accent—Haitian.
When she addressed me, I stopped walking, but nodded my head to answer her question. My eyes were already beginning to tear up; and when I could no longer hold it in, I blurted out that I needed her help.
She looked at me warily for a while. Then, grunting and shrugging her shoulders, she said, “Everyone needs help.” She tossed the bag to the curb, so that the few empty cans and other pieces of trash jangled resoundingly in the relative silence of the early morning. “Come with me,” she said then, returning to her shop.
I walked stiffly behind her. In the shop there was an unwholesome odor of musk and decaying things, which burned the back of my throat. A few candles gave light to the darkness, and overhead there were spices and herbs and what looked like small reptiles drying. There wasn’t a counter in the shop—only a central table, on which tarot cards and other paraphernalia of her craft stood in wait. The actual goods that she sold were scattered everywhere in bags, sacks and pouches. She sat me at the table, then sat down across from me. A candle was burning on the table between us, highlighting her face unsettlingly.
The story of my aunt’s demon possession came gushing out—I can hardly remember what I said. I’m sure I was crying by then, sniffling between words and phrases… Madame Evangeline merely nodded to what I said, waiting patiently for my story to unfold—and for the vital facts to reveal themselves. She listened as I presume she had listened to thousands of other clients, people who feared for their lives or the lives of loved ones; people who hated someone and came to her for revenge or guidance in revenge. She sat listening to me; after a while she took out a pen and pad and began to write.
I don’t know how long we sat like that-maybe only half an hour, but it seemed like forever. Eventually, when my tears began to subside and the horror of my tale dissipated into the darkness of the shop, she stopped me. “Okay, I think I understand you perfect.” She got up then, and went to the darkness of the shop—into one of her sacks. When she returned, her face was grave and I shuddered as I watched her. She sat down before me with a heavy sigh, then held out her hand to me. In her thick palm there was what she said was an amulet.
“Take this,” she said. “With this amulet in your hand, you’ll be magically shielded from all the forces of evil.”
“Really?” I said, amazed, a little terrified, and excited by the prospect of being emancipated from my fears.
“Yes, but listen closely,” she continued, looking over her shoulder as though checking for eavesdroppers. She leaned in closely to me then, whispering,
“Don’t lose this sacred amulet! If you do, the forces of evil will be able to take your soul. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, my mouth dry…
“Do you understand?” she demanded again.
“Yes,” I managed to whisper, my eyes wide.
“Good,” she said, a wide, unnerving grin coming over her face again. Then, presenting me with what she had written down while I retched out my story, she said, “Now that you’re protected from evil, here’s a list of things I need.”
I took the list eagerly, expecting to see “eye of newt” or some other magical ingredient, but all it said was, “Milk, bread, rice…” She gave me $10 and I left to go to the store.
As I walked to the store, I felt free and alive. Madame Evangeline, and the amulet that I kept clenched in my hand, were tangible objects of magic to protect me from all the demons of my imagination. It wasn’t until weeks later that I noticed that the amulet had the inscription, Banque Nationale de la Republique D’Haiti. Even then, as I couldn’t read French, and had never seen a Haitian penny before, I thought the writing was a magical incantation. Either way, as I walked to the store I felt as though I had received a reprieve of sorts. In a sense, my observations of my aunt had triggered my first pangs of maturity: a battle between reality and imagination. Madame Evangeline and her amulet had been a temporary loophole out of that.
Also, I suppose that these were the days before I lost my innocence. When I say innocence, I don’t mean the rosy-cheeked, oblivious version seen on TV. By now, of course, I had seen too much for that kind of innocence to apply to me. When I say innocence, I mean that inner sense that manifests itself in the belief that the world was fundamentally just; and that behind all human behavior was the wish for justice and the peace of mind it brought. It now occurs to me that everyone I encountered had tried to take my innocence from me. All the people that I knew, in their words and actions, set about trying to convince me that there was no justice—either to spare me from the unjust, or because they themselves, robbed of their innocence, wanted to justify their injustice toward me.
I remember that downstairs from me there was a sententious old man called Mr. Williams, who spent the summer months sitting on the stoop and dispensing advice to whoever came within earshot. Philosophical gems on everything from the correct way to wear one’s belt to geopolitical realignments that would ensure world peace came gushing out of his mouth. His dentures were too big and were always slipping out. He had a way of clicking his dentures against his gums that I found amazing for some reason. I almost looked forward to the day when I too would be toothless, so that I could click my dentures around in my mouth. I was excited when I began losing my baby teeth, but grew annoyed when new teeth began to appear under the gums. Mr. Williams had an arthritic mutt that seemed as old as he—and which never moved from the step once it had plopped down next to its master. The dog neither barked nor wagged its tail. Only when prodded by Mr. Williams’s heel would it show any signs of life; but even then, it would only meander quietly behind its master with an expression on its face like that of an old convict waiting for death to free him from the farce of life.
Anyway, Williams was always outside during the warm months, and after lecturing me on the correct way to part my hair, or some such nonsense, he would send me to the store to fetch him some snacks. When I returned, his instruction would begin. He would devour the entire bag of potato chips in front of me. Every once in a while he would throw a chip to the dog, and the poor creature would look at him with an expression that seemed to say, “Why don’t you let me starve to death, you old bastard, so that I can end this torture!” Half the time the dog didn’t eat. However, that didn’t concern Williams in the least. His eyes would be on me, twinkling in a strange way as he devoured the snacks. Somehow, I would never deign to ask him for some; and of course, he never offered. Instead, he kept up a constant commentary on how good they tasted; when he devoured the contents of the bag and/or gulped down the last of the soda, he would look at me with a strange new intensity, as if waiting for me to burst into tears. He watched my lips for the telltale trembling that many a neighborhood kid had betrayed during Williams’s career of instructive sadism. It was either complete guilelessness on my part or some morbid streak that kept me going on with the farce. Every time he saw me, he would send me to the store, and I would go without complaint. When I returned I would hand him the grocery bag and his change, then sit down and watch him eat, while he made his usual commentary on the snacks’ deliciousness. I presume that his goal was to teach me that people were greedy assholes, but I somehow refused to give him the satisfaction of teaching me. I’m not sure I was as brilliant and resolute as I make myse
lf sound. All children, I’ve discovered since becoming a parent and retracing the motives of my own antics, instinctively know that the quickest and easiest way to drive adults insane is to refuse to learn what they are trying to teach. This is especially so when the child realizes that the lesson in question is idiotic—as I did with Williams. Day after day he repeated the lesson; day after day I returned from the store with his snacks, and watched while he licked his fingers and belched with forced fanfare. He would watch me for any sign of a plaintive expression. I would only stare. Soon, my morbidity grew so brazen that, when he was finished, I would ask him if he wanted me to put the bags and bottles in the garbage can. After weeks and months of this, Williams’ act of relishing the greasy snacks became strained. He would eat them as one ate straw, seeming at first enraged with me for not learning what seemed to be a straightforward lesson, then questioning others to see if I was retarded. Eventually, he stopped asking me to go to the store for him. Resplendent in victory, I asked him, after several weeks of mutual silence, why he no longer asked me to go to the store for him. Here, even the dog looked up, surprised for once; Williams, now thoroughly convinced of my madness, said that he wasn’t hungry.
I suppose that I must have had similar experiences with other adults in my neighborhood, because they all seemed to regard me as a madman in the making. “That boy ain’t right,” I would hear people whisper about me. Conversations between adults would always cease as I walked past. The same was pretty much true for kids. I was too young to be friends with most of the kids on my block and too indifferent to the unimaginative games of kids my age to find their company worthwhile.