Oh, I guess Sophie thought about it some, maybe even prayed on it, but after a while, when Fred wouldn’t change, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Folks say she and Ada went to Miss Amos and arranged a mojo for Fred, one that would keep him tied to Sophie, mend his catting ways and give her the only man she ever wanted.
They say Miss Amos gave her some powder to put in Fred’s coffee for a week and a reliever in a glass baby food jar that would undo the mojo, if and when it was necessary. Well, Sophie did as she was instructed and sure enough, Fred started changing. He still ran the streets a little, but he seemed to have lost his taste for other women and after a while, he began sticking close to home, Sophie was loving it; finally, her own man acting like he was supposed to, staying at home and treating her the way she was supposed to be treated. Girl, she was in hog heaven! She took the reliever and planted it in the backyard, under her gardenia bush, just in case.
Fred took her to the Autocrat Club for dancing and fried catfish, they went to the movies at the Circle Show and he even took her to see the horses run at the Fair Grounds, life was sweet! But you know, too much of anything gets old after a while and sometime in later years, Sophie got tired. The children were grown, they even had some grandkids and even though Fred was still behaving himself, he began to tap dance on Sophie’s last nerve. Girl, she went to Miss Ida to have her hair done, there he was; she went to Bingo, Fred went too. He even went with her to the St. Ann shrine when she went to pray for her sick son. He was just always everywhere she went!
Around that time, change started happening in the city. The folks that plan other folks’ lives decided to tear up some of the Tremé and build a park. They started buying houses, all those fine old houses, and after they bought them, bulldozed them into piles of wood and trash. They moved steadily until they got to the block before Sophie’s house.
Now Ada and Sophie had taken a drive out to Gentilly where they were building a new subdivision for black folks, Pontchartrain Park, and Sophie, along with Fred attached to the hip, and Ada decided on a nice lot where Sophie and Fred would build a new house. They had found out how much they could get and it was more than enough to start all over, they just had to wait until the developers reached their block.
My Mama said they heard that one night, close to day light, Sophie woke up with a start, remembering the reliever buried in the yard! They say as soon as it was full day, she went out and dug around the gardenia bush, looking for that glass baby food jar ... but it wasn’t there! She wasn’t worried though. See there had been some changes in the back yard, all Sophie had to do was dig a little more and find what she was looking for. She dug, along with Fred, for two solid weeks, tore up that yard, but no baby food jar! She got her sons and two of the winos from the corner and they dug, still no jar. I don’t think she was too worried yet, it HAD to be out there, they just had to find it, and so she kept on digging.
Meantime, the folks came around and offered them the relocation money, but Sophie stalled. They thought she was holding out for more money so they went away but came back, offering more. By the time they had cleared the whole block, Sophie and Fred’s house was the last one standing and they had to sell. Poor Sophie, digging like a mad woman, Fred digging too, although he didn’t know for what, frantic to find her baby food jar, folks began to talk about her bad. Said she was crazy, or must have had money buried but Sophie didn’t care, she was on a mission!
Finally, after all her furniture and belongings had been moved, the yard dug up and her heart heavy, she packed up all the rest and she and Fred moved in with their oldest son. The new house would be ready in six weeks. In that time, Sophie would arrive every morning, Fred at her side, and watch as her house was razed, splintered and turned into trash, no baby food jar was ever found.
They moved into their new house, Sophie planted more gardenia bushes and Fred joined her. They gave a party and everyone remarked that even though she had a new house, a new life, Sophie didn’t seem happy. I bet I know why! There she was, old now, out of her element with Fred stuck to her like glue, and nowhere to turn.
Miss Amos was long dead and nobody talked about conjurers anymore. She was stuck.
One morning, Sophie just didn’t wake up, dead at sixty-four and two days after her children planted her in Mt. Olive Cemetery, Fred had a massive heart attack. They buried him next to her. Poor Sophie, didn’t have enough patience or faith to wait things out, instead, she asked for what she wanted, got it in the wrong way and couldn’t take it back. Bet you Fred is still dogging her footsteps in Glory!
Yeah, they say be careful what you ask for, ‘cause you just might get it!
~*~
The Divorce Quilt
By
Ivouma Okoro
The first thought that occurred to me as I squeezed into the toasty cottage my mother and I called home with a freshly rescued dog tucked under my arm was that my mother must have had the longest neck in all of Ireland. She stretched it out from behind the red tall-backed chair she sat in before the fireplace to look several times between me and the dog before finally settling on me, her lips thinning and the knitting needles in her hands frozen.
“What the hell is that?”
Well, hello to you too. Of course, this wasn't the first time that this thought had occurred to me. My father had left my mother when I was still young enough to not really remember him now and I'd often wondered which of her habits had gone into the collection of grievances and sharp irritants that he felt he couldn't take anymore. I'd never tell her this, but I'm pretty sure the rubber neck receiving had to be high on the list.
I could tell by the smell of the fire that it had been burning awhile, so I set my new friend before it before shirking my coat. He wasted no time making himself comfortable, stretching his thin, wiry body before the fire, his paws straight out before him and his butt in the air for a few indulgent moments, before settling to the floor with his head on his crossed forelegs.
Though my mother was several feet away, she adjusted the bit of knitting that draped from between the needles and out over her legs. She was working on another of her famous divorce quilts. If one could call famous a few quilts for local divorcees and one special order for one of their sisters who lives out in Waterford. This one must have been from a particularly violent divorce; one of the squares of the quilt bore the knitted likeness of a woman setting fire to a man's head, his square eyes bulging. In another square, the man's body lay helpless on a tree stump as the woman wielded an ax the size of her body above him.
With my mother still peering intently at me, I turned toward the kitchen and saw a covered bowl on the counter.
“Jeanette.”
She put the edge in her voice.
“You answer me when I ask you a question, lass.”
“Yes, mam. What's your question?”
Inside the covered bowl was a pale yellow custard, just the treat after the kind of draining day I'd been unlucky enough to find myself at the end of many times these last few months. Moiran and I have been having problems. That's the official statement I have prepared for anybody brave enough to ask. But the only problem really was that between the two of us, I was the only who realized he didn't love me anymore.
“What is that thing?”
“It's a dog, mam.”
Her knitting needles glinted some of the firelight as I approached and sat cross-legged on the floor, bowl in my hand and the dog between us.
“Don't get smart with me, young lady,” she said. “I know it's a dog, I can see it's a dog. But what's in doing in my house?”
“Didn't you see me carry him in?”
The humorless expression she gave me nearly sent custard shooting out of my mouth. I felt it my responsibility to give my mother a hard time. Life had hardened her and she needed some prodding to keep her soft around the edges. But it'd be a bit of a lie, if I said I wasn't enjoying this responsibility.
“He found me,” I said between two spoonful
s of custard.
“Just came running up to me on the moor. But I'm sure he belongs to somebody.”
The wiry dog just stared blankly at the licking flames in the hearth with those glassy, solid black eyes of his.
“I'm sure somebody in Bartle's missing him.” I said.
If possible, my mother's lips grew thinner. I knew what was coming.
“And just what were you doing on the moor?”
“Custard's good!”
“I've told you, haven't I? I've told you not to go out there!”
“I don't see why,” I said. “It's the only place something good ever happened around
here.”
“You're not still on about the old lovers? That's a curse, you know that?”
She nearly whispered the word, as if she didn't want it escaping past the door and out into the night.
“Oh, come off it, mam.”
I excused her. She'd not had the stories told to her by the elders. I could still taste the tangy fruit candies the old ladies of the county store would give me as I sat wide-eyed on the bottom steps of the porch listening to the stories of the old lovers of the moor.
John Hartfordshire had been a handsome but poor English traveler who had the misfortune to fall quickly and deeply in love with the most beautiful woman Bartle had ever reared, Glastiel O'Hara. But when her father realized that Glastiel returned John's affections, he arranged for the immediate marriage of his daughter to an Irish aristocrat. The night of Glastiel's wedding she rushed out onto the moor, blinded by her tears and the rain of the fateful evening and found John there waiting for her. Her dark-haired beloved smoothed her scarlet locks and wiped her tears. And as he leaned in close, heaven and Earth and all of creation quieted to listen for the fateful words that would come next.
“From this day we shall never be parted.”
It was their everlasting vow. And ever after there wasn't a night the moor didn't hold the two lovers as they held each other. At this point in the story, without fail, one of the women would bend her leathery face close to my small, pink one and say in a whisper, “They say if you listen closely, you can still hear Glastiel out there singing her love songs to her sweeta.”
My eyes would pop and they'd all break into gummy, toothless cackles. I listened every night for the singing.
And I never heard it.
My mother set herself to knitting again, her needles moving with practiced speed. Even back then she'd made sure to add her own tailpiece to the folklore.
“I tell you that place is no good for love. John and Glastiel made sure of that,” she said as her needles wove together a picture of the man and woman standing with their foreheads touching, fists clenched behind them.
“It's a curse that's on that moor and if you have the misfortune of running into any John's or Glastiel's out there, heaven help ya!”
I rolled my eyes and the dog angled his head to look at me. Five minutes of knowing her and already he thought my mother as silly as I did.
“That's probably why you and Moiran have been having so many tiffs,” she said under her breath, cocking her head to the side and squinting her eyes at her work.
“Mother.”
I meant it as a warning, already feeling the anger rising inside of me.
“Running to that damn place after every one. You're only making it worse for that.” she said, building in fervency.
“Trust me, I know. One minute he's by your side telling you he'll always be there and the next, you're left in the lurch high and dry-”
“That's enough of Moiran!”
I looked at her straight on, in the way I knew she disliked.
She'd told me years ago that she could see my father in me most clearly when I looked at her this way. I'd spent many hours of my youth, a bare candle dripping a pool of wax on my cracked vanity, trying to decipher his face in mine.
Mother blinked rapidly but her voice was steady, “I don't want you out there is all.”
Her mouth twitched once, but she didn't say anything more.
“There's no curse,” I said, looking into the fire. “Meeting John and Glastiel would be a blessing for love.”
Her eyebrows hitched up and she pursed her lips, clearly objecting but I scooped up the dog and headed to the bathroom before she could say anything else.
~*~
I was just settling into my bed when I noticed the wiry dog eyeing me from the floor, his hair still puffed from a fresh bath.
“Not a chance,” I said. “You've got your own.”
I pointed at the set of extra sheets laid out for him. A warped bit of knitting poked out from either side of the neatly constructed bed.
He only looked at me with those black eyes of his, no part of him moving. I shrugged, pulled my covers higher over myself and blew out the candle.
~*~
I wasn't sure what had awoken me until I looked to my feet to see the dog standing there, its hackles raised and eyes fixed on the window. I could hear through the glass the buffeting of the wind and something else, fainter and higher. I glided off the bed, cold radiating up from the floorboards. Pulling the window open, I was pushed back as the night air rushed inside the room.
There was nothing in the yard; save for the familiar shadows that lived there. Beyond our fence, lay the outline of the moor. In the dim light of the moon, the mist coming from it swirled slowly in the wind, rising and falling in unfamiliar shapes. The moor itself was an unusual color that wouldn't identify itself when I looked straight at it. It reminded me of the color of my mother's face when she'd received the letter from the postmaster about my father. She'd rushed right by me and vomited into the kitchen sink.
I slipped my feet into my boots, pulled on my jacket. The dog leapt off the bed and followed me, its scratchy toes tacking along through the house and out into the night.
~*~
When I had topped the first hill, I wasn't sure if the high, faint noise was a convention of the strong gusts that kept sweeping by but I was growing steadily more confident that it was indeed coming from some place deep in the moor. The moon kept flicking on and off as large, thick clouds sped past it, the clouds multiplying the longer I walked. A bubble of worry began to grow in my thoughts but every time I paused to look back, the high sound would sustain itself a moment or two longer than before and I would set my jaw and continue forward.
It was not long before I came to a cache of wide-trunked trees, the path leading through them shrouded in the darkness they created. I looked at the dog for guidance or warning or anything but he only offered a slow blink before he looked back at the dark trail. I rubbed my palm against my leg, biting back the feeling of apprehension bubbling up from below and trying to keep the image of my mother's thin-lipped scowl out of my head.
The dog's ears perked up as the high noise sounded once again, only this time it came as a distinguishable note, a drippingly sweet lilting of a chord I vaguely recall hearing what must have been a long time ago.
In a moment I was moving forward. In the next, I was completely surrounded by the forest, the dog at my side. I came to a stop just outside a clearing, shrinking down into the shadows there.
Through the leaves of a bush, I could see a woman coming in and out of view. Her frame was long and willowy and her long white nightgown hung off of it, billowing after her every move. Her hair was wavy and loose, and now and again glinted scarlet in the light, though the moon had long since disappeared. I could not see her face, for she revolved in a rough semi-circle around some greedy captor of her attention, opposite where I crouched. She stumbled and scurried from side to side, moving rather like an animal that’d just fallen from its place on a tall limb and was desperately trying to reorient itself.
She went on this way for a few silent minutes, punctuating the shuffling of her movements with what sounded like words that couldn't quite escape her lips. I was transfixed, and must have begun to gain some sort of familiarity with this strange woman's movements because
when she suddenly dashed out of my view and collided with what sounded like a solid wall, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I caught my breath and lowered myself down to my belly, crawling forward under the brush to catch a glimpse of her. Thick drops tumbled from the leaves onto my head and hands but did not obscure my view of the woman pressing all her weight upon a tall, dark-haired man.
He had her wrists firmly caught in his grips and was holding her up, jerking back as she beat her head against his chest, he with a look far more pained than seemed likely.
When she tired with her frenzied attack, she tilted her head back and let out a piercing melody, straining it for several seconds. I recognized it as the call I'd been so resiliently following and felt a chill shudder through me.
He pushed her away from him and she fell in a tumble to the ground before he turned and walked away, all the while unable to take his eyes off her. He was dressed in tan riding pants and a long-sleeved shirt of which it was too dark to decipher the color. His clothes had a disheveled look about them, as if he'd either just hurriedly taken them off or put them on.
He watched her drag herself up and slowly back away, then joined her in the same semi-circular movement, mimicking her from across the clearing with no less amount of wildness than she.
I became at that moment intensely aware of how cold and hard the ground was underneath me and fought the urge to curl my legs up to my chest. Their eyes were so intensely trained on one another's, I doubted they registered the flash of lightning that had just lit up the sky. I brought my hands close to my ears, anticipating the sharp peal of thunder sure to follow. But none came.
Could this be them, the old lovers? Their clothes and descriptions suggested so. But it wasn't love they looked at each other with, not the love that would have brought soul mates out into the moor each night. John would never grimace that way at her touch, Glastiel would never bring harm to her beloved and not in so violent a manner.
I was in the act of setting my hands on the ground to drag my body out from the bush to leave these strangers to their demented dance when I noticed the wiry dog trotting into the clearing.
I sucked in my breath as the two fixed their eyes on the small, wiry body. But no, the body was changing. Inch by inch, so slowly I wasn't sure if it was just some trick of the light, the dog began to grow, it's limbs shooting out from underneath it, muscles stretching and bulging along its form. In moments, what had been a small, innocent pup was now a bulky, hell hound, its shoulders flush with the man's head.