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The words hung in the air between us, bearing down on me. Yet I did not understand them — it was as if he was speaking some other language which I had never dreamed of.
“Herbert?”
He glanced down at me — briefly, as if the sight of me drove daggers into his eyes. “Out, Carolyn. Gone forever by five o’clock. Do you understand me?”
I flung the glass shards away from me and scampered across the room to his feet. “Please, Herbert, please, tell me you don’t mean it, please, I need you, Herbert, I need you,” I gushed, tears flowing freely from my eyes. I clutched at his feet, and felt the burn of humiliation as he stepped over me and out of my grasp.
“You disgust me,” he said over his shoulder. “Look at you. Dignity, Carolyn — don’t you have any?”
“Please,” I moaned, crawling after him. “Please don’t do this, Herbert, I need you. Please, I’ll change, Herbert, I promise I’ll change—”
He said nothing more to me. He simply picked up his jacket and his briefcase and shut the door on his way out — gently, as though afraid of alerting the world outside of what lay within our house: my quivering, skinny body, with my hair falling out and my skin all yellowed and my voice catching in my throat as I moaned “Herbert, please,” over and over again, pressing my lips to the hard floor. I’d be dirt, I’d be lower than dirt if only he might come back through that door and forgive me.
I do not recall it, but it must have happened: I stood up, gathered the few things that were truly mine, and left that house, the house of my marriage and my adult life, for good. I took a taxi to my mother’s house in Jesup with the last of my money. On the drive, and for the next several days, I thought only of what I’d lost and perhaps never truly had. I slept and did not eat. I hated Herbert and I needed Herbert. I was nothing, swallowed by nothing.
My mother’s heart was broken for me, and she suggested I go back to Mother Yewande. But before I could muster the strength to visit, my mother heard from her good friend that Mother Yewande had passed on to the next life. Upon hearing this news, I wept afresh, but my tears were for myself only. My last bit of hope snuffed by a rogue blood clot in the old woman’s brain.
It has been ten years since those dark days, and not much has changed for me. My mother passed away some five years ago, and since then I have lived alone, with nothing but my memory to sustain me. I have not heard from Herbert once in all these years.
Yet there are, now and then, days when I can gather the strength to take myself out of the house and walk. And when I do, I am reminded of the simple joy I had in the first years of my marriage, before I lost everything. Sometimes I think life is a wheel, never letting us move forward but only bringing us back to where we began.
This story begins thirteen years ago, with a girl crying hysterically in her mother’s arms. My mother told me about Mother Yewande, who had treated her for her paralyzing arthritis.
She sent me on a rowboat with a friend of hers to Wassaw Island. Mother Yewande’s “rootwork,” as my mother called it, was capable of almost anything, including fixing my hurt.
I remember clearly meeting Mother Yewande for the first time. Joanna back in those days was much younger, but she answered the door formally and smiled a sweet little smile at me. She led me through the hall and into the room where Mother Yewande was watering her plants. When she saw me with my bloodshot eyes and tangled hair, she cooed at me gently, “Girl, what’s wrong?”
I sniffled, but I couldn’t answer her immediately. She had, however, an intuition the likes of which I have never seen replicated, and said, “Some boy, I reckon. Run off with your poor little heart. And your mama sent you to me.”
I nodded, and at Mother Yewande’s ushering, I sat on the couch. It nearly consumed my slim backside. “There, there, sugar,” she said to me as I cried, using the sleeves of my sweater to mop up my tears. “Ain’t no use crying ’bout a boy. There’s millions of ‘em, and every one better than this.”
“There isn’t, there’s no one like him, and he says he doesn’t like me and I can’t go on,” I whispered.
She sat back, watching me from the far side of the couch. I do not know what she was looking for, or if she found it. I do know that she stood up and went back to watering her plants, though her attention remained on me.
“You want this boy, Carolyn?”
I had not told her my name, but maybe my mother had. I said, “More than anything.”
“I can make girls forget the boys they love. I can make ‘em happy again, I can make them pretty if they’re ugly or smart if they’re stupid. I can make ‘em rich, brave, lucky. And you gonna give all that up for one boy?”
I watched her put down the watering can and turn around slowly to face me. When I understood she was waiting for an answer, I said, “Yes.”
“I can make him love you,” she said. “I can do that. But I have my price, girl, and you got to follow my instructions carefully.”
She went to the large cabinet and opened it. I could not see what it contained, but soon enough she pulled a ceramic jar out of the cabinet and turned back to me.
She handed the jar to me. I carefully lifted the lid and looked inside, where I saw a red powder, finer than confectioner’s sugar.
“My price is high. Give him some of that every day. If you run out, come back for more. Don’t give him too much — a teaspoon in his coffee. Every day. Don’t forget. Stay close to him.”
I stood up, holding the jar carefully. Warmth spread through me, to the tips of my toes, and I went for the door, unable to wait any longer.
Mother Yewande stopped me with a hand on my arm. I recoiled from her touch, and her face hardened. “There will be no children,” she said.
“I understand.”
“No children. Do you hear me, little girl? That’s my price. This is blood magic, you understand?”
I nodded, and she let me go. Holding the jar to my chest, I went through the hall, out the door, to the boat on the shore. I climbed in, protecting the jar like it was my child, my face rising up to meet the wind, willing the boat to fly.
About Katherine L.P. King
