Victoria fought back a yawn as she sat across from her last client of the day. Slumber had troubled her the last few evenings, darkness shaking her awake after a couple hours, not letting her reach deep sleep, which left her grumpy and worn. She hoped she hadn’t taken it out on any clients. She’d asked Loco, the patron of healing, to free her from whatever ailment rustled her from sleep each night, but he hadn’t responded. Victoria had written it off as him being busy, what with the tumultuous world they lived in. If in another day or so she still couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep, she’d make a batch of sweet potato fries and leave them for Gran Bwa.
Asking the loa might help her sleep better, but she knew the real issue was everything happening with Nickie. In the last week, Victoria had shared with her so much, yet barely anything at all. She could teach a graduate-level course with all the knowledge she had of the loa, lessons she’d learned from Nanagusta, and even more information she’d researched herself as she grew more confident in her abilities, more aware of how she could help others.
But it had all started with Lanora. As young children, she and Willow had learned the Song of Madame Lanora, it seemed, even before the alphabet song, before Old MacDonald and Happy Birthday. They always sang it just as Augusta had taught them, their voices first crawling and deep, a crescendo as the story moved along, the two of them shouting the chorus, out of breath and wispy.
Lanora was born a free woman of color in New Orleans in the mid-1800s, and grew up next door to her best friend, Akili. The two of them were conspirators of no good, audacious in disobeying their parents, hanging out at the Bayou St. John, watching the Voodoo rituals. As they neared adulthood, they fell in love. She with him. He with someone else.
The fateful day the truth about Akili’s heart was whispered in Lanora’s ear, every organ in her body deflated. Imploded. She did what she could to stop her body from reacting, pushing her fingernails into the bittersweet dirt, flipping the city inside out. Though after her death she’d become a wondrous and mighty loa in the spirit world, Lanora hadn’t known of her abilities before that day, had only thought herself an ordinary young woman. Her heartache had rattled awake her senses. She pried herself out, stuffing her insides back where they belonged, and lost herself in the Bayou St. John, praying to those living and dead for Akili’s love, dancing with snakes. In the metallic blue of night, you could see her chanting, shouting, stomping his love for the other woman out of him. Then she got word that the two were to marry. Forever, under God’s holy covenant, her love would be someone else’s.
Their grandmother always finished the ballad, slowing the tempo as she chanted the last verse. After mourning for many years, Lanora found comfort in speaking wisdom to those hurt or otherwise challenged by their lives, able to tune in to fears and wants, what others needed to hear. She’d come into her destiny, a role in which she took great honor. As foretold to her in a dream, a destined daughter in each future generation would inherit this gift. But when Lanora herself became pregnant later in life, her miracle baby was a boy, and it would take until Augusta for a daughter of Lanora to be born.
As Victoria sat in her office, she hummed the song in her head, the precise words escaping her as her mind continued to drift. How could Nickie share the gift with future generations if she couldn’t even fall in love without great harm? Their family was both blessed and cursed, and the burden of one had been pitted against the other. No wonder a headache had settled in.
When she failed to keep in another yawn, Victoria’s client stopped midsentence.
“I’m so sorry, Nina. I’ve... I’ve been having trouble sleeping at night.” She hated making excuses and didn’t share personal information with clients, not even as a show of commiseration. But she didn’t want to come across as rude—Nina had only been meeting with her for a few weeks.
It seemed to work. The woman’s face sagged with empathy. She leaned forward, hands on her knees. “Tonight, heat a cup of water and mix in bit of honey and a shot of rum. You’ll be out within an hour and won’t wake until the sun’s up.”
Everyone wanted to be a conjurer. “I’ll try it. Thanks,” Victoria said, knowing such a concoction would only make her tipsy and in want of another shot.
She ended her session, waited for Nickie to schedule Nina’s next appointment, and then smiled, proud of her daughter’s work all week. Perhaps she’d recount a funny story about an anonymous client (Willow always had a few) or something interesting she’d noticed in one of the therapy videos she’d encouraged Nickie to watch. But her daughter only sat quietly, tugging on the elastic band around her wrist.
Victoria couldn’t accept defeat. “It’s your last day, Nickie. Payday.”
“Oh,” said Nickie.
“Matter of fact, the way business is going, I could use a second person. How about you cover for Willow every day once you’re home from school at four for my late sessions, and cover Saturday mornings?” Victoria could show Nickie more about the business, maybe have her create a social media account for the practice, though she hardly needed the publicity. She was already so busy.
“That’s okay.”
Victoria laughed. “What do you mean, ‘That’s okay’?”
“I just really don’t want to work. It’s my senior year. I want to have...fun. I mean, maybe in a few months. After things settle down and I feel comfortable in my classes. But I can always fill in for Aunt Willow again if she needs more time off.”
Victoria fixed her gaze on Nickie. Her eyelashes were lush like Willow’s. She was wearing mascara. Had Nickie been sneaking out to see Felix? Had she been sneaking Felix over to their house at night? It was not an impossibility. Even sharing a room with a nosy sister growing up, Victoria had managed to sneak Jimmie and others before him into Augusta’s home in Carson.
“Nickie?” Victoria took the girl’s hand and held it tightly. She hoped to get a feeling if now was the right time, if she should just spit out the truth about the curse, about Jimmie’s death. But that was the thing with Nickie. She could never read the girl, Victoria’s power essentially gone when she touched her daughter. If Nickie was hiding something, had a secret or her thoughts centered on something forbidden, she couldn’t tell. Which, in Victoria’s mind, meant Nickie’s abilities might be even sharper than her own.
“Are you wearing mascara?” She’d punked out from saying what she really wanted to, but the mascara needed to be discussed as well.
“Oh. Um, yes.”
“You’re not supposed to be wearing makeup.” This wasn’t a rule she’d ever implemented, but she said it as if Nickie had been warned about it before. “What about your classes?”
“What?”
“Your elective,” Victoria said, putting weight on her toes, bringing herself a smidge taller than Nickie. “Did you choose economics?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Let me see.” Though Nickie had given off nothing, she had the feeling something was working against her, some other force countering her petitions to the loa.
Nickie twisted one of her rings back and forth. “Well, it’s not on there yet. I have to petition. And go the first day of class.”
“Petition? You sure?” She supposed it was possible although that sounded more like a college thing. Nickie nodded and sat back down. Victoria didn’t know what was going through Nickie’s head, but she knew dishonesty when she heard it. When she felt it. “You know, I think I’d like to move your laptop downstairs to the dining room. Let’s keep it there—we hardly use the dining room table to eat. That way, Willow can share with you. I prefer she do all her social stuff elsewhere, not on here.” Victoria tapped the desktop computer on the reception desk.
Nickie seemed taken aback by this decision but didn’t respond. So Victoria ramped things up, telling Nickie she’d be selling her camera—it didn’t seem she would need it if she was going to take econ for her elective. Her phone snapped better photos than that clunky camera Nickie had been hauling around, anyway. She didn’t say it out loud, but she would also cut off Nickie’s data plan and limit the Wi-Fi, extremes the girl would have to deal with for now. Victoria and Willow had certainly found enough trouble to get into when they were younger without technology helping them out. Maybe if Victoria had discovered her gift sooner, she’d have been able to avoid it all. But she hadn’t.
She knew the sooner Nickie moved past Felix, the better. There was too much at stake. Though she barely knew the boy, she didn’t want Felix to become another victim of the curse. If he did, Nickie would experience a loss as immense as she once had, and Victoria would have to live with the fact that she didn’t do enough to try to prevent that outcome this time.
If her grandmother had done the same with Victoria, Jimmie Wilkes might still have been alive today.