April had been an atheist for many years but something about the photos reawakened her long-forgotten Christian fear of Satan and hell. She paused halfway up the stairs. “You sure this isn’t some satanic shit you guys are getting me into?”
“There’s nothing satanic about it. We worship the same God Christians do. We just worship him differently,” Matt answered.
“And how much do you pay this voodoo chick?”
“She doesn’t ask for anything, but there’s nothing we wouldn’t give her if she wanted it.”
“If you don’t pay her, then how does she afford all this? What else does she do for a living?”
“She doesn’t work. She makes herself available to us all day, every day. The house was donated to her along with everything in it. Delilah is much loved.”
“Yeah, she must be. I couldn’t begin to imagine how much all of this cost.”
“Her bedroom is upstairs, just beyond that door. Just knock and go right in. She’s expecting you.”
“I’m not going into some strange chick’s bedroom!” April shouted. She looked at her friend with an expression of abject horror, as if the woman had suggested she rub herself down with bacon and step into a cage full of lions.
“It’s okay. You all come in.” The voice that came to them from the other side of the door was as smooth as song. Deep and resonant and surprisingly articulate, educated. There was only the slightest hint of a Caribbean accent. It was as gentle and melodious a sound as could be imagined and something about it began to relax April almost immediately. April struggled to keep her guard up. It made her wary that the woman could melt her defenses so easily with just a few words.
April was still standing motionless on the staircase when Linda walked up the remaining stairs, opened the door, and walked in. Matt hurried behind her. April took a deep breath and considered dashing back down the stairs and out the door, ready to take the bus if she had to. She stared longingly at the front door and then back up at the open bedroom door her friends had just passed through. Cautiously, she crept up the last steps and into the voodoo priestess’s bedroom. She hesitated just beyond the door, leaving it open in case she needed to make a hasty retreat.
The room was painted a sandy off-white, and every piece of furniture within it was coated with fabric of the same color. White candles flickered by the bedside, and the window was open, blowing a rose-scented breeze up from the garden. Delilah sat on the bed and was draped in clothes made of the same bone-colored fabrics. She stretched out her arms and Linda and Matt rushed to embrace her.
April stood in the doorway as if expecting an ambush.
“This is April. She’s the one we’ve been telling you about.”
“The psychology student?”
“Yes.”
“Come in, chile’. Let’s talk. I think you’ll find we have a lot in common.”
“I seriously doubt that,” April said, trying not to let the woman’s voice hypnotize her into lowering her guard but feeling all her inhibitions melting away nonetheless. The woman seemed to be the same age as them, no older than twenty-three or twenty-four. She was tall and curvaceous, thick but not fat. She looked like a woman was supposed to look, not like the media tried to convince them they should in order to sell exercise and diet products. Her skin was light brown, cappuccino, or cinnamon, with high cheekbones, full lips, a small but wide nose with flaring nostrils, and gray eyes. She had long dreadlocks that hung down past her waist. She wore no makeup and needed none. She was a natural beauty. Nothing like the old crone April had been expecting. At least that made the fact that Linda and Matt had both slept with her a little less disgusting, almost understandable.
April clung stubbornly to her cynicism, folding her arms across her chest as she shuffled into the room, looking skittishly into every corner and casting fearful glances in back of her before settling her eyes on Delilah.
“Come sit with me, chile’.”
April sat across from Delilah on the bed, wringing her hands nervously. Linda and Matt left the bed and walked across the room, where they lounged together on a loveseat beside the window. They immediately fell into each other’s arms, kissing and groping each other as if they were the only ones in the room. April blushed.
“Don’t be ashamed of them, chile’. Love is one of the few joys this world has to offer folks.”
“I don’t call that love. That’s just lust.”
“The two are often indistinguishable from one another. Physical love is just another form of love. A lesser form, baser, more primal, but still love. All love is good.”
April opened her mouth to speak but could not find an argument worth stating. She disagreed but could not articulate why. She felt confused in this woman’s presence. She doubted herself, could feel herself falling under the woman’s spell, and it was as terrifying as it was liberating. Still, April resisted.
She wrung her hands like dishtowels as she appraised her host. The woman was physically intimidating. Her large breasts and ass were almost pornographic in their voluptuousness. Her arms and legs were so muscular she looked like an athlete, like Serena Williams. She was the type of woman April would have crossed the street to avoid if she’d been walking toward her. She hated to admit it, but the fact that she was black made it even worse. Something about black people had always struck her as sinister. That she was a woman made her only slightly less intimidating. Her sexuality, however, was almost overwhelming. It was the most intimidating thing about the woman other than the idea that she communicated with demons.
If it wasn’t for the woman’s eyes, April would not have allowed herself to get this close to her. There was a profound loneliness in Delilah’s face that was almost heartbreaking. April was surprised when she first noticed it. Her voice contained the same touching vulnerability despite its power. When she smiled, sorrow poured from her dark eyes like tears. Despite her heavily muscled physique she looked almost pitiful, helpless, tragic. Her face seemed to have been permanently etched by some pain deep within.
“So what’s your story? How’d you wind up being some kind of guru for lost lovers?”
“Is that what you think I am, girl? I ain’t nobody’s guru. I’m just someone with a gift - or a curse, depending on which end of it you’re on. I know a lot about pain, an awful lot, and I want to help others be free of it.”
“That’s noble enough I suppose. Do you mind me asking why?”
“It’s a long story.”
“You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”
“I know your story already.”
April turned toward her friends and flashed them an angry look.
“If they hadn’t told me it would have been obvious the moment you walked in. From the way you sit with your legs folded beneath you and your arms crossed over your chest, all defensive-like … your loose-fitting clothing that hides your figure, as if you were embarrassed by your own womanhood … the way you look at me as if you expect me to attack you at any minute. Your pain and fear tell your story better than your friends ever could.”
“Okay, so you know about me; what’s your story? What makes you the expert on other people’s pain?”
“My happiness has always been in conflict with the happiness of other folks. For me to be happy, others would need to suffer. It is better that I do the suffering instead. I am better at it than most. It’s what I’ve done all my life.”
“That’s a pretty heavy statement. Ambiguous as hell though.”
“Then let me explain it to you. My grandmother was a mambo just like me, back in Haiti. She tried to teach my mother the ways but my parents were both college educated. They still believed but didn’t want their lives ruled by their beliefs. They were ambitious. They wanted to make money. They left Haiti when I was only five or six, came here to America. They both opened businesses. My father owned an ice cream shop and my mom worked as a paralegal for a law firm downtown, right here in Las Vegas. I went to a Catholic school on Flamingo and we all attended a Roman Catholic church on Sunday morning, the big one down in Green Valley. At night, we met with other Haitian immigrants and some from Jamaica and Trinidad. They were all believers in voodoo. We performed our rituals and worshipped our gods just like we had back in Haiti.”
“I don’t understand how any of that makes you an expert on
my
pain,” April said, shaking her head in exasperation.
“If you’d hush up and let me finish my story you might get your answers.” Delilah locked eyes with April until April turned red from embarrassment and looked away.
“I was twelve years old and had just started menstruating when they took me to a ceremony at the home of a new houngan, a voodun and Yoruba priest from North Africa named Shango Ali. I was terrified of this man almost instantly. I could feel his power radiating off him like electricity. It ain’t good for no man to have that much power and nobody comes by that kind of power honestly. He was into Petro Loa, evil spirits. I knew it and I tried to tell my parents, but they went anyway.
“The ceremony took place in the basement of Shango’s home. I didn’t participate in the ritual; I stood outside the circle and watched. When the Loa began to possess everyone, I knew something was wrong. I had seen many Loa possessions and it was never this violent. Folks were ripping off their clothes and clawing at their skin. They fought and cussed and had sex right there in that dusty old basement. I had never seen anything like it. I was watching my mother and father dancing and convulsing and wondered what it felt like to be possessed, and then I felt it slip inside me. It was a Petro Loa, and it was filled with evil. It took my soul. Snatched it right out of me, but it left me with a gift. I can perform miracles. I can take away folks’ pain.
“My mother and father started using my new ability to help people but also to make themselves rich. They charged folks to come see me and participate in the rituals. But the gift came with a price, and we didn’t know it at first. Eventually I learned how to manage it, but not before both my parents died.”
“What happened? How’d they die?”
“I couldn’t manage the gift back then. It’s not important. You just know that this thing I can do is not to be taken lightly. It comes with a price. It will make you feel better, happier, more free than you’ve ever felt in your life, but eventually it will take something from you in return.”
“My soul?”
Delilah laughed. “No, chile’. Nothing like that. I’m talking about your humanity, the good things in you. It already has my soul. It don’t need yours.”
Delilah’s eyes swept the floor, and April surprised herself by reaching out and putting a comforting hand on her shoulder in that way women do when they are giving you permission to cry. Delilah looked back up at her with those dark gray eyes that looked like storm clouds.
“I wound up in a foster home. Most of the other kids there had stories that made my own tragedy look almost trivial. They had been raped by their parents or siblings, forced into prostitution to support their parents’ drug habits when some of them were as young as I had been the day my mother was … killed. Almost all had been physically abused in some way. Those who hadn’t been raped had been whipped, burned, beaten, starved, or just neglected. They shared their tales with me because they assumed mine was worse.
“I never told them what happened to me. They would have hated me for it. I was never mistreated by my parents. They had just used me to make themselves rich, preoccupied with their own pain, and then they died. I was ashamed by how lucky I was compared to the rest of them. But my luck didn’t last. The one thing anyone who’s been through the child welfare system quickly learns is that abuse begets abusers. I was made a victim by those less fortunate than myself. I became a receptacle for their pain. Rapes and beatings became part of my daily ritual. I learned not to complain. I was so complicit that even the counselors began to take their bad days out on me. Back then, I believed it was my purpose in life to absorb the pain of others. I got very good at it. I made people smile through my pain.
“I remember being raped by a foster parent in a broom closet. He was crying and apologizing to me the whole time. I felt bad for him, so I told him he could hit me if he wanted to. ‘Hit me as hard as you can,’ I told him, ‘It’s okay. It will make you feel better.’ So he did. He hit me over and over again. When it was over, he smiled at me, and I smiled back. That’s when I knew that I had found my purpose. I was the whipping boy.”
“The whipping boy?”
“You know that book by Sid Fleischman? I read it in high school. It’s about this orphan who is kidnapped and taken to the royal palace where he gets beaten every time the prince misbehaves. Since it was illegal to strike an heir to the throne, this little orphan takes the prince’s punishments for him. That’s my job now - to receive the punishment for others so they can be happy.”
“You’re some kind of masochist? Is that what you’re getting at? I mean that’s cool and all. I’m just not into that sort of thing. You guys have fun though.” April stood up and turned to leave.
Delilah put a hand on her arm and turned her around, pulling her back down to the bed. “I don’t get off on being beaten, if that’s what you mean. It was simply my duty to take away the pain. That’s the gift the Petro Loa gave me. My parents might still be alive if I had been able to take away their pain. There’s so much pain in the world. So much anger and fear and hatred. You really couldn’t imagine. I can see what people have inside them. All of their corrupt thoughts twisted by tragedy and hardship. I can see the uncommitted affairs, divorces, assaults, murders, suicides, rapes. I can see it boiling behind their eyes before they even know they have the thoughts themselves. I can feel the pain in you. You are so afraid. I can feel it. I can feel your hatred. I can take it away for you. If you’d trust me I could take it all away.”
“I’m okay.”
“No. You aren’t okay. No one is. That’s why I’m here. Let me take it away from you.”
“I’m not going to hit you, Delilah.”
Delilah smiled. It was the type of smile one uses to hold back tears. “I don’t do it that way anymore. That’s not how my gift works. You just have to give me your love, and I will take your fear and hatred in return.”