I wept, helpless with rage and grief. Jake’s hand was cool in mine.
With relief I heard the French girl bang the front door. My heart trembled in my breast. I followed her, turned the “open” sign to “closed,” and locked the door. I watched from the botánica window as she ran down the street. I hated to leave Jake’s body just yet, but I wanted to be perfectly alone to make my next phone call.
First I called my roommate Baz. He didn’t answer. I tried to speak to his voicemail, couldn’t, hung up, and texted him instead. won’t b home 2nite Jake has died i must arrange abt the body.
It was hard to go back into Jake’s room. There he lay, limp and quiet, his head lolling at the wrong angle, every muscle relaxed. I could smell that his bladder had given way. His smile, the strongest muscle in his body I would swear, now drooped with the rest of him.
I watched him a long time. I wouldn’t put it past Samedi to visit his serviteur for one more minute, just to blanche my liver.
At length, with one eye on the body, I opened my briefcase and found my tattered address book, and in it, one of the oldest entries, written in fountain pen more than eighty years ago.
I took a deep breath. What I was about to do terrified me. Only the sight of Jake’s body lying there, heavy as gold, foul and dangerous and saddening and cooling, could force me to make the call.
“Bonjou,” said a woman’s voice in Kreyol.
“Madame Vulcaine?”
“Oui.” It couldn’t be the same one. Her daughter, perhaps. But she was my only contact.
My bones were already jelly. “I have to inform you that your kouzen Jacob Pierre has passed on in Chicago. It has been some time since he was a regular celebrant in your house, but, I assure you, he had no other affiliation. You have the right to claim his remains.”
There was a long silence. “Who is calling, please?”
I couldn’t possibly know this woman. She was very likely not born yet when I fled New Orleans with Jake, eighty years before. Yet her voice had that same thick mambo authority. I took another deep breath.
“I am Clarence Gide Sans-Souci de Turbin.” I paused, then, with the greatest reluctance, gave her my vodou name.
She made no comment. “Can you prove his identity to me?”
I gave her Jake’s vodou name.
This silence was even longer. “I see. The address?”
I told her. “He asked for a proper vodou burial.” At once, I wished I could recall the words.
Now I was committed.
“Did he?” The mambo’s voice dripped scorn. “And who will help me bury him? Now that you have kept him away from his family all these years?”
I clenched my teeth, then opened my mouth, longing to hang up. “I will.”
“Do you know how?”
“I’ll google it,” I squeezed out.
She said, “Good luck.” I shared her evident skepticism about the internet’s accuracy regarding anything vodou. She said, “Then you know you must wash the body. You are his nearest living relative. It must be done immediately.”
“I know.” I took a deep breath. “What herbs must I use?”
She told me. I knew they would all be in the jars on Jake’s wall. “And you must be present for the full nine days, to tell his life, so that he may become one of the ancestors.”
Nine days! “I’ll be here—as much as I can.” I didn’t want to spend nine hours with her. And I had urgencies. My plan, my dream, as Jake called it.
And this pestilent French girl had my leash.
Mme Vulcaine commanded, “Be there when I arrive.”
I clenched my teeth. “When?”
“I think no more than eighteen hours. Do you have the herbs?”
“Yes.” Jake had had everything. For a man who practiced a community-based religion in solitary, he had been extraordinarily well-equipped. He’d never tried to compel me to share his observances.
I’d always known that avoiding them would bite me someday.
This must be the day.
In the silence over the phone, I heard clicking. “Bon. I have a seat tomorrow on a five p.m. flight from Louis Armstrong Airport, but it is not direct, so I land at O’Hare at nine p.m.”
“I have no car to meet you.”
“I’ll come to you,” she said drily. “Be there when I arrive. You have much to explain.”
My heart rammed up into my throat with every beat. “I know it.”
She hung up.
I set my forehead down on my arms and started to tremble.
Then I went into the back to find the herbs and perform the first of my final obligations to my cousin and my oldest friend.