Voodoo Queens of New Orleans - Vol. I | ✓

Chapter 2: Did You Hear That?

I woke up the next morning with sweat sticking and dripping in places I wish it hadn't.

Mama's laughter—her loud, cackling, deflating balloon laughter—could be heard across the hallway in our kitchen. I assumed it was Mambo Nene she was laughing with, since Mambo Nene had the best sense of humor out of the entire Coterie and always made Mama laugh.

I got out of bed and walked out into the dark hallway until I made it into the sunlit kitchen. My suspicions were right about Mambo Nene being in there. Priestess Qadira was there, too, but she was preoccupied with a transcript she was reading.

"I told that ole white cat that he'd have to find a root doctor to get rid of an itch like that," I heard Mambo Nene say right when I walked in. "And guess what this fool did, Alize? Go on, guess!"

Mama was crying-laughing at this point, "Oh, lord. Nene, stop it!"

"He pulled down his damn trousers! Had me looking at some shit I had never seen in my life, and I'm old as hell! He must have gotten that shit skinny dipping in one of the bayous because it was the ugliest rash I had ever seen. Alize, I swear it took everything in me not to laugh; Kizzy was traumatized, that poor baby! I gave him a remedy and told him I had left it in my special cabinet to ferment and get real potent. Guess what it really was? Cortizone with coconut oil."

"Go to bed!" Mama cackled.

Mambo Nene reveled in the laughter from others at her jokes. I swore that if voodoo wasn't her priority and profession, she'd be a comedian. That comedic spurt stopped once she saw me, replaced with pure joy that came out as a suffocating hug.

"Look at Miss Little Alize!" Mambo Nene exclaimed. Mama stood up and watched Mambo Nene squeeze me around like a ragdoll, her bangles and bracelets chiming together.

"You're killing her, Nene," Mama said after a few seconds. "Let my baby breathe."

"Sorry." She finally let me go. I could see her clearly then—her skin smooth and ageless but her dark eyes and grayed hair were filled with history and tales to tell. Mambo Nene was much older than Mama but barely showed her age. She specialized in alchemic properties—remedies, potions, essential oils and so on. So, it was no secret why she looked twenty years younger than her real age.

"It's just been so damn long since we've seen you," Mambo Nene said up to me. "I thought you'd be coming down for Mardi Gras since all the kids do. Qadira, how long has it been, you think?"

Qadira was wrapped deeply into what she was reading; when the question was asked, she was studying whatever was written with an odd looking magnifying glass. When Mama said her name, she acknowledged that there were other people in the room.

"What? What happened, now?" Qadira asked. Wha? Wha happen, nah? is what it sounded like; her Cajun tongue was the strongest out of the Coterie.

"We were just talking about how long it's been since Lisa's visited."

Qadira lost a bit of her defensiveness when Mambo Nene clarified. Between the three of us, we knew that something was wrong with Qadira. But only Mama and Mambo Nene knew what it truly was.

"What's the matter?" Mama asked.

Qadira's eyes kept landing back onto me from Mama's figure. I felt out of place at that moment; a few minutes' prior, I was warmly welcomed. Now, I seemed like a nuisance. An inconvenience to their conversation.

"Cunja," Qadira replied. That's all she had to say—that one Cajun word that I could not translate for the life of me. My mama's eyes grew bigger than a pair of blue marbles you'd toss around outside on a summer day. Mambo Nene, short and stout as she was, looked like she was ready to fight someone at that word.