Nearly a week had gone by since Victoria had knocked on Willow’s door. Willow had steadied herself, a hollow feeling in her belly. Her sister rarely came into her room so she figured bad news was the reason for the visit. Instead, Victoria told her she had a surprise. “I’m giving you a week off. A vacation. Nickie is going to cover for you. You can do whatever you want.”
Willow didn’t believe her. “Whatever I want? How about Hawaii?”
“I meant whatever you want to do locally. More of a staycation. I know you haven’t had time off in a long time and things have been busy for us. I think it might be good for you. And for Nickie. She wants to learn about the business.”
“Fine. As long as this time off is paid, why not?” Willow said, rationalizing that, if her sister was joking, she’d had multiple opportunities to come clean.
At the time, she accepted that her sister’s intentions might be genuine, with Victoria finally recognizing how hard she worked. But after her sister let slip something about Nickie being boy crazy, it occurred to her that Victoria hadn’t given her the week off because she cared about her mental health. The impromptu vacation only provided a ruse, one that wouldn’t work, Willow knew. She wouldn’t be able to keep Nickie away from Felix.
It wasn’t until she’d gotten away from home that Willow realized she never got away. She’d been pinned to that house, to the women in it, to her sister’s business for too long. In just the last few days, she’d gotten a gel manicure (not believing the technician when she told her it was okay to reach in her purse for her wallet without her nails drying under the fan), fallen in love with tonkotsu ramen, spent two hours and three hundred dollars in a Lego store, and drunk what was called a yard of beer.
But today, she had a task to complete, one that required her to reference her trusted book, which she currently had hidden in a cabinet behind the desk in the reception area outside of Victoria’s office. She needed to get Nickie away from her post. “Is Mrs. Cole in there, Nick?” Willow gestured to the office door, interrupting her niece as she read a paperback.
Nickie dog-eared her page before closing her book. “They just started.”
Good. That’d give Willow some time at the desk alone. “Well, I’m back. I have to...check on some billing stuff. You can leave for the day. I’ll wrap things up here.”
“But, my mom—”
“Don’t worry about your mom. You’ve been here all day. I bet you didn’t even get lunch, did you?”
“It’s okay. I wasn’t that hungry. Nana brought me some cookies.”
Willow smirked to herself. “We gonna have to unionize. Anyway, get on up. Let me finish so I can start some dinner for us.”
Nickie stood and collected her things, then stepped around to the other side of the desk so Willow could get by. But she didn’t leave. Willow adjusted her chair, lifting herself an inch, dialing up the lumbar support. Nickie drummed her fingers on the desk.
“Aunt Willow?”
“What is it, Nick?” She didn’t make eye contact with her niece, trying to seem occupied as she put on her glasses and leaned in toward the screen, vigorously wiggling the mouse, quadruple-clicking the button.
“Do you think I have some kind of a gift?”
“Gift? Like another birthday present?”
“No, Auntie. A gift. Like my mom, I guess. Like... Lanora?”
Willow looked up and pushed the mouse aside. “So your mom’s been telling stories in between clients, I see.”
“Kind of. She brought it up the other morning.”
Willow sighed, shaking her head. Her sister had become desperate, it seemed. First by diverting Nickie’s time and attention to the practice and then filling her mind with talk about Lanora and her blessing. She knew Victoria had planned to bring up this topic with Nickie one day, but such a discussion should have been mapped out in advance and involved the whole family, not just Victoria bumbling through on her own.
“What did she tell you? That just one of us got Lanora’s blessing?” Of course Victoria would have focused on that detail, something she long ago gloated about.
“I don’t remember that part of it...”
“That’s what we were always told. And that’s what the song says. You remember the song?”
Nickie put a hand on her hip. “Some of it.”
She hummed a few notes, then patted her niece on her shoulder. “Of course you have a gift, baby girl. You’re beautiful, you’re smart. I’m sure you’ll make a terrific therapist, just like your mom.” Willow was bullshitting the girl, but she was anxious to move things along.
“But she said something about, like, feeling people. Or knowing things.”
Willow shook her head again. Damn her sister for leaving her to fill in the mystifying details. “Your mother just needs to be patient. Hell, she didn’t realize her gift until she was almost twenty years old, after she had you.” She’d used her fingers to etch quotation marks in the air when she said gift, regretting it right away. She didn’t need to confuse her niece even further. While she tried not to let it show, talk about Lanora rankled Willow. A shiv to her gut. She’d done well enough over the years not to think about their family’s chronicles, but sooner or later, she knew her sister would share them with Nickie—the good, the ugly, the downright unbelievable. Victoria could at least have given her a heads-up, time to prep for Nickie’s questions. She was doing okay so far, encouraging her niece to take a seat, talk low, keep an open mind. But there’d be questions, she knew, she simply couldn’t answer for the girl.
Nickie shrugged. “Well, I don’t feel anything, Auntie. I...can’t even tell if boys like me.”
Willow understood. She could remember being seventeen, feeling like she had no control, no clue, even if she gave off the opposite vibes. All she could think to do was to have Nickie write it all down.
“Like, a journal?”
“Exactly, baby girl. Get it all out. Your frustrations, your dreams, your ideas. And sooner or later, you’ll detect a pattern. You’ll see what you want and what you’re good at, and see how the gift works for you.” She didn’t know this to be true, but it seemed like a sound suggestion, maybe wisdom she could use for herself.
“You think that will help?” Nickie asked, hopeful.
Willow nodded, too emphatically. “You sit outside your mama’s office long enough, you learn some things.”
Having answered her questions, she waited for Nickie to head upstairs. She worked hard at pretending to scan the screen, scrolling up and down on a Wikipedia page about Wikipedia, the first thing she could think to type into the search box. But Nickie didn’t leave. She sat down on the love seat near the reception-area window.
“What else is it, Nick? I’ve told you all about Lanora. You got something more to ask me?”
Nickie threw her head back and closed her eyes.
Willow was curious what her niece might ask next. If she’d told her about Lanora, could Victoria have decided to confess other family secrets? “Spit it out, baby.”
Nickie blew out a breath. “I need your help.”
“What do you need, some condoms?”
“Auntie, I’m serious.”
Willow straightened, laced her fingers together on the desk as her niece got up and kneeled beside her chair.
Nickie rubbed the back of her neck. “Ortho Tri-Cyclen, Auntie. I need you to pretend to be my mom so I can get a prescription. It’s supposed to be, like, the best thing for my skin. I read it online. But I know Mom will freak out because it’s kind of like...birth control.”
“Wait, wait. Hold up, now. Birth control? Oh, see, now I wasn’t too far off asking if you needed condoms.” Not only would her sister kill her for getting Nickie a birth control prescription but then she’d trash her name in the spirit world, comparing her to Ti Jean Quinto, one of the most unloved loa.
“I don’t need condoms. I want something to help my skin clear up. But my mom will think I just want to be on the pill.”
Willow leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms. “Do you?”
“Would it be so bad if I did? The last thing we need in this house is a baby.” Nickie turned toward the office door as the word baby bounced around the space. She glanced at Willow. “All I’m asking is that you help me out. I just want to feel better. I... I like Felix. I want him to like me too. I need to at least say I had a high-school boyfriend, Auntie.”
“I think it’s better if you talk to your mother.” She hated saying this to Nickie, knowing a talk about birth control with Victoria would be unwise, but she’d panicked, not expecting Nickie to jump right to contraceptives. The girl could barely swallow a coated Tylenol without gagging.
Nickie groaned, dropping her shoulders and looking at the ceiling as if it might tell her the right thing to say. “I just have a feeling my mom will have an issue with all of this. She wants me to focus on school, you know. She keeps talking about me getting my license. Not my driver’s license, Auntie. My therapy license.”
Willow felt for Nickie. She really did. But Willow wasn’t going to get trapped in the web Victoria and Nickie were weaving around each other. “Sweetie, your mom has goals for you. That’s all. And I want to help you, believe me. But I can’t afford to piss off your mama. I know I made a big deal about not being her assistant, but she is my employer, you know? And my landlord. Every now and then, she accidentally does my laundry.”
Despite Willow’s attempt to let her down softly, Nickie’s eyes glinted with hope. Maybe there was something else she could do to help, something more subtle.
Her phone vibrated just inches away from her niece, who lifted herself up to look before Willow could grab it. “Who’s January?” Nickie said at the sight of the green box that had popped onto the screen.
Willow snatched the phone and let it fall into one of her shopping bags. “A friend. Just like Felix.”
“Felix doesn’t send me messages asking for tit pics.”
Tit pics? She’d never heard the term before and didn’t think January could have meant what the words implied. “He’s just being silly. We joke like that. Anyway, I can buy you a pretzel from Hot Sam’s. Just go on upstairs and put on something comfortable and we’ll go.”
Once Nickie left the reception area, Willow swiveled in her chair to the corner and reached for a sliding cabinet panel, hard to spot because the knob was missing. She pulled out the thick book, careful not to let anything fall out as she opened it on her lap and flipped to a page titled “Thursday’s Attraction Spell.” In the margin next to the spell’s instructions, she wrote:
—For Nickie, irresistible to Felix.
Her print was small, hardly legible, but it didn’t matter. Willow knew what she’d written. It wasn’t her first choice, but it was a good substitute for a more potent spell since she didn’t have an eyelash from Felix or anything else of his to use. With this spell, Felix would tell Nickie of his attraction to her, but only if it already existed. Unfortunately, it didn’t spur attraction. Otherwise, Willow would have used it years ago with Boris Kodjoe or Lenny Kravitz. But Willow knew that Felix wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of bringing over wine and having dinner with them if he didn’t like Nickie. Although it wasn’t a smart idea, undermining Victoria, she couldn’t wait for her niece’s sweet little smile when she arrived home one day, the bearer of dreamy news, that Felix had called her beautiful. Perhaps then, she would tell Nickie what she’d done. It would be Willow who could gloat—despite her sister’s so-called abilities, Victoria could never show Nickie any magic like that. Would Nickie still think of her as just an assistant after that?
Willow recognized her sensitivity to the word, and it was just a word. But she’d played the same role for over a decade, consistent as her sister’s accomplice, assistant, and hype woman, and she was starting to feel typecast, the loyal best friend, unswaying supporter. She had tired of it, wanted her own part. Sitting behind the desk for so long, she’d forgotten about any hopes and dreams of her own.
She’d been young when she’d gone to New Orleans under the guise of checking on the shop Nanagusta still owned in the Quarter. Tasked with signing a new tenant, she’d instead moved right into the space, selling her own perfumes and soaps and hand-dipped candles, eager to make something of herself and in no hurry to return to the situation she’d left behind in California. Nickie had just been born weeks ago. She didn’t consider herself a mother type. She’d never held a baby before Nickie, never smelled that clean, fruity scent, felt the way she squirmed in her arms in search of just the right comfort. Leaving her new niece, her sister, was the hardest thing she’d ever done, but staying in California at the time had been impossible.
The club had been turned into a touristy restaurant, a wooden arrow directing folks upstairs to the shop attracting only a few customers each day. “There’s a gal who used to do root work up here when I was a little girl,” a woman named Teliscia told her one afternoon as she perused, sniffing sachets of potpourri. Willow figured the gal in question must have been her grandmother.
By Teliscia’s third visit within two weeks, Willow had readied a blessing oil she made from the instructions in the thick book she’d lugged from California, swiped from Nanagusta’s bedroom while she was busy watching baby Nickie. She’d spent a whole day on it, boiling pomegranates, searching the city for essential oil of peppermint, collecting fallen bits of tree bark from Armstrong Park. “Use it under your feet, to tell the ground what you want when you step on it.”
Her next time in the shop, the woman brought feedback that filled Willow with great pride. “Ms. Willow,” she said, “I’m going to need a larger bottle this time. What’s it been, three days? You wouldn’t believe the miraculous things that have happened to me. You got anything that can help me get rid of my boss?”
From there, word spread. For anyone who knew to ask, she could mix up a few ounces of Capricorn oil made with red pepper and sage. Or combine holy water with water from the last rain, some from the river, some she’d carried with her from the Pacific to make her version of Marie Laveau’s Peace Water. It was the family business, smothering out the problems of other people, offering hope they didn’t think was available to them, removing obstacles to happiness. It was a good time, her mother, Madelyn, her biggest hype woman, bringing in new clients when she was clean.
Two months into her side hustle, she phoned her grandmother with an inkling she wanted to discuss—she thought she might have Lanora’s gift. She had believed this back when she was still in high school, experimenting with the spells in her grandmother’s book, but she hadn’t been ready to share that gut feeling with anyone else. Now, the happenings at the shop had confirmed her suspicions and increased her confidence. Willow could use the gift the same way Augusta had back when she’d run the shop in New Orleans. But she didn’t get a chance to share her news.
“Willow, I have something incredible to tell you about your sister. She’s got it, sweetheart. Your sister has Lanora’s blessing.” Willow’s heart seemed to stop for a moment. She only heard a few phrases after that, something about Victoria going to school, Nanagusta paying for everything. But it had been settled. Victoria had been chosen, the torch passed to her from Augusta, Madelyn having already been deemed a lost cause.
Willow often felt alone in the house, different from the others. Even from Nickie, now. But though she’d never told her grandmother or sister, two decades later Willow still held strongly to the belief that she was indeed the gifted one.
Before putting away the book, Willow flipped to the back, drew out a small green sachet, and slipped it into her desk drawer. Satisfied with her work, she retrieved her phone from her shopping bag.
January
Send a picture of those fantastic breasts of yours. Front and side views pls.
A laughing emoji followed.
How did he know how fantastic her breasts were?
“Willow, what are you smiling about? And where’s Nickie? I need her to print out a referral list and check out Mrs. Cole.” Victoria stuck her head out of the office.
Willow swallowed, sliding the phone to the corner of the desk. “No problem. I’ll handle it. I need to pay a couple of bills so I told Nickie she could go upstairs.”
Her sister stepped aside to let Mrs. Cole pass. “Willow’s here instead. She’ll print the list.”
Victoria said she’d be right back, and Willow quickly tugged open the drawer and handed the satchel to Mrs. Cole, who put it in her purse. Hushed, she said, “Sprinkle that around your bed, making sure to use the entire bag. Do not sweep it up or vacuum.”
“Ever?” said Mrs. Cole.
“Not until your mother-in-law moves away.”
The woman frowned. “You sure? It gets dusty in our room. My husband has allergies.”
“You want her gone? He can sleep on the couch.”
Before she got a chance to say anything more, Victoria returned. “Alright, Mrs. Cole. Two weeks good? We’ll send you a reminder.”
Mrs. Cole looked down at Willow, who gave the woman a thumbs-up, both an agreement with Victoria on the two weeks and a You got this, girl for the powder in the satchel. Willow didn’t doubt things would be better for Mrs. Cole very soon. She’d put her trust in the right sister, even if Victoria believed it was her work that made all the difference.