I was drawn outside by the agitated whistles and croaks of a white-throated sparrow. In an effort to attract more feathered friends to my backyard, I’d planted a triad of elegant Savannah holly trees alongside the perimeter fence.
Hovering in the midst of the middle tree’s glossy, green leaves, fiercely guarding a cluster of red berries, was the squat source of the fuss. Beneath the sparrow, whizzing aggressively around a pot of wisteria, a crimson-throated hummingbird.
All I’d wanted was to entice another note to my morning birdsong ensemble, and here I had introduced another problem. Like their human counterparts, always in a state of conflict, they would have to learn to coexist.
I strolled over and took a seat on the little canary-yellow bench outside my garage-turned-peristil, Le Petit Temple vodoun. The glassy surface was cool and smooth beneath my touch. The crisp October morning was dawning with a mottled-gray sky that left the question of whether it would be a sunny or cloudy day as yet a mystery.
I inhaled the scents of the city yawning its way to life: sizzling fried eggs, the sharp lingering twang of freshly mown grass. Leaning my head back, I coaxed my pores to expand. My body was a sieve, sifting through gaseous muck. I cast away the nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Banished trace amounts of argon and neon.
All that remained was pure oxygen. With an almost-imperceptible suction, I sipped on those delicious morsels of moisture-laden air.
A full minute passed, maybe two. A flood of warmth surged, then peaked, screaming through hundreds of nerve endings. Fluidly free. The world’s solidity quivered at the edges.
A tug pulled me back.
I was a servant of the Iwa, more specifically, the spirit Erzulie. Through she ruled the rivers, water intoxication was a slim but ever-present danger, even for me. And what I did could also have cataclysmic effects on the weather.
With an effort that grew more difficult each time I feasted, I closed the draw, shrinking my pores.
Fully alert now, I took in my surroundings as if through laser-enhanced vision. Everything sharp as the dagger of sunlight that lacerated the last of the clouds. It wouldn’t last, the effect a temporary one, but I’d enjoy it anyway.
From this vista, it was clear that inside a year or three, my home’s exterior would need to be completely repainted. The royal-blue trim was in worse shape than the white siding. The yellow door, a tribute to the goddess, was in remarkably pristine shape. Channeling the damp from the air inside-battling the tenacious threat of mold and mildew-was within my control. Doing so outside was not.
Most bemoaned these inconvenient costs of homeownership, and even though I didn’t have the money, I had no idea how I would come up with it, I was grateful to count this among my life’s challenges. The Iwa wouldn’t let me fall too far, after all.
If you have ever been uprooted, yanked away from your home in a frenzied rush, you crave the sort of permanence a home provides. The shotgun house and peristil, the creaky front door, even the rust stain in the aged claw-foot tub, were mine. At least, according to my rent-to-own agreement, they would be in a few years.
Few memories of my life atop Jacmel’s bustling hillside remained. South of Port-au-Prince, the town was a coastal oasis virtually unknown to tourists. Aside from the Bassin-Bleu pools, what I recalled most was the dizzying blur of those elaborately trimmed gingerbread-style houses that we passed as my father ferried us to the airport.
When our family disembarked from the cool, stale-aired confines of the plane, the tastes and smells of Haiti still clung to us like the last vestiges of a second summer.
The early days and months passed, somehow both painfully and effortlessly. All that was familiar deserted me with a swiftness that was alarming. Those precious bits and pieces of our home- a nascent accent, the omnipresent rumble of packed tap-tap buses shuttling people up and down the road-shed like autumn leaves.
We eagerly embraced our new home as if we had been desperate exiles making land after weeks clinging to a flimsy rubber innertube. New Orleans has its way of sinking beneath the skin and making itself comfortable.
Papa had agreed to New Orleans only because, with the exception of Haiti, and the source, Benin, there were few places where the god Bondye’s spiritual messengers were more omnipresent. The Iwa had sustained their followers on the brutal journey to the Americas and throughout the African diaspora. Here they were reshaped and venerated under the brilliantly cloaked guise of Catholic saints.
We lived. Eventually we thrived. But the spirits exacted their prices.
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