In groups of two or families of three and four, finely dressed black ladies in dark blue lace dresses and black men in starched, creased, pin-striped dark brown or black or navy suits solemnly file into a hot and small, yet lavish funeral home. The men's polished shoes shine like the tears that roll down their keening wives' faces. The congregation fills every seat of the white lily and orchid decorated funeral home. In the front pew, dressed in a too big black embroidered jacket and skirt set and oversized, feather plume adorned hat, sits the worn, deflated, emaciated even, Mama Grace. She fans herself, vigorously.
Fifty years earlier, Mama Grace was in her early twenties, high-yella, beautiful, shapely, and known merely as Grace. She and her husband, Adam, the Georgia island's former most eligible bachelor, tried and tried and tried for a baby that would stay. Each time they found themselves happily pregnant, the unborn soul released its grip on her womb and flowed between her legs, leaving her with nothing more than a dark red, sticky reminder of what was supposed to be.
One humid, summer night, the kind where lightning cracks for no apparent reason and the thick, warm winds blow eerie, whistling songs, Grace sat on her bedroom floor, her nightgown wet with her own sweat and blood, her sadness so immense that the tears refused to flow. A baby. A little one to call her own. A little boy with Adam's hands and eyes was all she wanted. Her beloved Adam walked into the bedroom. He swayed from side to side, drunk from drowning his own sadness and anger in bourbon. He clumsily sat down next to his wife, gingerly wrapping himself around her hot/cold, trembling body. Grace looked up at him, her eyes deceptively dry. "Adam, I'm going. I'm doing it."
"Then I'm going, too" Adam said, unblinking.
Madame Ophelia lived on a two-acre chicken farm at the very edge of town. Her splintery, whitewashed, wooden house was made up of one room. Five hundred chicken coops encircled the house. There were hundreds of breeds, each segregated into their own sections; the black and white speckled Wyandotte chickens separated from the buff colored Cochin; the red and green-feathered Asil chickens separated from the flamboyant, white leghorn. A makeshift billboard advertised Madame Ophelia's to drivers on their way out of the small town. It read, Madame Ophelia's Sacrificial Chicken & Voodoo Shack. She's got the cure or your money back*, and then in a barely perceptible typeface: *money back guarantee not guaranteed.
Few visited Madame Ophelia's. Her best clients were the lovesick. Usually teenagers unable to draw the attention of the ones they pined for. She also catered to the chronically unattractive; for which the fluffy, white silky chicken was sacrificed, dried, ground, and mixed into a facial cream. Women whose husbands' wouldn't stop fooling around were prescribed the crushed bones of the loyal Plymouth Rock chicken. The powder was to be sprinkled into their lovers' meals and consumed on the first night of the full moon. Balding men were Ophelia's favorites. For them, the Polish chicken's voluptuous crest of feathers were plucked and mixed into a salve that was to be rubbed onto their stunted scalps.
Grace and Adam uncertainly stepped onto the rickety, blue, three-step stairway that lead up to Madame Ophelia's house. In hand painted blue letters, a sign above the door read, THE MADAME IS IN. Madame Ophelia opened the door before they had a chance to knock. She was a small, dark Geechee woman, dressed in all white. She spoke with a partially island, partially southern accent. A necklace of chicken feet hung from her thin neck. Her long, white robes dragged the polished white tile floor. Long, chicken feather adorned dreadlocks peaked through the top of her white head wrap, adding nearly five inches to her slight stature. A small green snake with ruby red eyes and a flickering tongue encircled her wrist like a bracelet. The room was darkly lit and excessively clean. In a small wire cage on an otherwise bare wooden table, a fat, orange chicken with its feet tied together, squawked shrilly as it wildly flapped its wings. An altar stood in the corner, all dressed up with colorful bottles of spirits, fresh and dried fruit, ears of corn, two red, four white, and three pink candles, a handful of brightly painted seashells, the skulls of both humans and chickens, a dried bouquet of blood red roses, three tiny black dolls wrapped in African fabrics and bound with pink ribbons, and a large golden cross. "Sit", Madame Ophelia commanded as she gestured toward the caged chicken's table. They moved to their seats as though enchanted. Laying on its back, bound legs in the air, the chicken's beady eyes stared through the cage's wire.
From some mysterious compartment beneath the table, Ophelia withdrew a black leather bound notebook, a fountain pen, a pair of square reading glasses, and a large accountant's calculator. She placed her tools on the table and took the seat across from the couple. "So", she said, sliding on her glasses and looking from Adam to Grace, from Grace to Adam. "You want a baby."
Emboldened by the warm liquor in his blood, Adam spoke first. "Yes, Ma'am. More than anything." He grabbed his wife's cold hand.
Grace looked at him, tears in her eyes. "We've been trying, but..." She looked back at the woman and was startled by the way that she was being examined; Ophelia stared into Grace's soul. "...I can't hold them." Ophelia said nothing. She just studied and listened. Her lack of words compelled Grace to babble on. "It's been three years at this point we're desperate obviously I mean we came all the way out here I just hope Jesus has his back turned because Lord knows these are ungodly measures..." A jump in Madame Ophelia's right eyebrow and a slight bend in her neck put an end to Grace's word vomit.
She casually opened her notebook. "You should know, Grace, that there are many parallels between voodoo and Christianity. God works through me. I do not work against God," she said, pointedly. "Now, let's talk numbers." Ophelia began jotting figures into her notebook. She typed away at her calculator, which danced and sang with delight each time she pressed the plus sign.
Madame Ophelia's big eyes peeked over the top of her glasses. She slid her notations toward Grace and Adam. They reviewed her calculations. "There's a twenty-five dollar charge for the cost of the chicken. To that I add a one hundred-thirty dollar and sixty-eight cent product charge and a two hundred seventy-five dollar spell fee. There's also the two hundred thirty-seven dollar and eighty-nine cent incantation and summoning charge, and an eighty-dollar cleanup cost. Add to that my three thousand dollar service fee. That brings your total to three thousand, seven hundred, forty-eight dollars and fifty-seven cents. I take cash," she said in her heavy accent.
Grace and Adam looked at each other and then up at Ophelia. "We don't have that kind of cash on us" said Grace.
"That seems a bit high, don't you think?" said Adam.
"High?" Ophelia asked, arching an eyebrow. "Is the life of your unborn child not worth it? Would you say such a thing to one of these 'so-called' fertility doctors?"
Considering the logic of that notion, Grace reached into her purse. She, tenaciously, looked Madame Ophelia in the eye. "All I have is my checkbook."
"Now, Gracie..." Adam began to argue. She shot him a halting look.
Ophelia regarded Grace shrewdly. "I'll take it."
She began her ritual, opening the chicken's cage door, reaching in, and grabbing the tethered bird by its legs. Its wings flapped so hard that brown and orange feathers floated to the table like snow. "Hold hands" she instructed the couple. Grace took her husband's clammy hand. From her waist, Madame Ophelia pulled a glinting, bone-handled knife. She slit the bird's throat, silencing its high-pitched squawks and drained the chicken's blood into an ivory chalice. Ophelia sipped from the cup, swishing the blood around her mouth then spitting it back in. A droplet of blood fell from her lip onto her white dress. She stood and crossed to her altar, plucking five fragile rose petals from the bouquet while mumbling something indecipherable to herself. She walked back to the table and crushed the dried petals between her palms. Ophelia sprinkled the rose dust into the cup and pushed it toward Grace. "Drink" she commanded, her perfect teeth reddened with chicken blood. Grace did not hesitate. She lifted the goblet, swallowing every nauseating drop. Adam watched, queasily. Madame Ophelia wrapped the green snake around their clasped hands. "Adam, repeat these words:
Baby Baby come to we,
Baby Baby let it be.
Damballa will give life to thee,
Baby Baby let it be.
Life with you will be so good,
Playing games and building wood.
You'll be ours and you will see,
Baby Baby come to we."
He repeated the chant three times. Ophelia covered their hands and the snake with a piece of sheer, white cloth. She walked to a basin filled with holy water. She filled a bronze pitcher and then poured the lukewarm water over their covered hands. The snake writhed as if in agony and then went still. Madame Ophelia laid her hands over theirs and mumbled another indecipherable prayer. She gathered the snake's body into the wet, white cloth and handed the serpent to Grace.
"And now, your homework", Ophelia said with a smile. She instructed the couple to take both the dead chicken and the snake home. Grace was to cook the chicken into a stew. Once the stew began to boil, the snake was to be added. When thoroughly cooked, the bones were to be strained through and buried in the backyard. After the bones were buried, the stew had to be eaten immediately. "Leave not even the smallest morsel in the pot." Ophelia warned. If her words were not explicitly followed, the spell would fall to pieces.
But, Grace was so excited that she didn't fully listen, and Adam was still vaguely drunk and so terribly frightened that he didn't really hear. Grace sped home and, in her haste, left out one very important step...
Within a week, Grace's body felt different. She knew the feeling well; she was pregnant. Although, this one didn't feel like the others. This baby seemed strong.
Grace's first boy, a beautiful round, brown baby called Ashton, died of a sudden fever at just seven months old. Her second son, Avery, at only two, was swept away by a massive wave while building a sand castle at the beach one sunny summer day. He was never found. Anthony, her third son, made it all the way to five years old. But then a stray bullet flew down the street, around the corner, through their double glass front bay window, and struck poor Anthony through his tiny, cage-like chest as he quietly played soldiers on their living room floor. At seven years old, Andrew, Grace and Adam's fourth son died from a savage case of the chicken pox. Doctor Wallace, the small island's only black physician, said that Andrew's case was more severe than any other he had ever seen. Finding no unblemished space on poor Andrew's ravaged body, the ferocious blisters attacked the insides of his mouth, swelling his throat. He suffocated in his sleep.
The death of their fifth son, Alexander, hit Adam the hardest. The child made it all the way to ten, longer than any of the couple's other sons. Oh, how Adam doted on the treasured boy. One day, while playing catch on their freshly mowed front lawn, Adam threw the baseball just a little too hard, a little too far. Alexander tried his best to catch the wild ball, but his small hands didn't move fast enough. He missed it and as he watched it roll out into the street he shouted, "I'll get it, Daddy!" Those were his last words.
Alexander smiled over his shoulder at his father while running forward, toward the street. What Alexander did not realize was that he was running straight for a parked electric company van. "Alex! Watch out there now, boy." Adam warned. Alexander's head spun around in time to see what was ahead of him. Whoa! He stopped himself just before he ran into the side of the van. He turned again and looked at his father, his eyes twinkling as he chuckled his vibrant little boy laugh. Adam sighed in relief. Alexander crouched down to gather the ball that had rolled beneath the van's tires. He reached and reached, but only managed to push the ball out of his grip. He scooted his body further and further under the van until all that could be seen were his size four sneakers. Adam walked toward his boy. "Hey. Hey, Alex. I'll get…" VROOOMM! The van's driver turned on the engine. Alexander tried desperately to push himself from beneath the wheels. Adam watched as the whole thing played out, seemingly, in slow motion. "Wait! Wait! My boy's under your van!" But the driver didn't hear him and didn't know. The van took off, severing Alexander's delicate body into two equal pieces.
It took Grace and Adam ten years to try for another child. It was rumored that the couple's visit with Madame Ophelia had left them cursed. But, just in case it was an "A" name thing, they called him James. Grace and Adam cautiously watched their son from a distance, waiting for some sort of strange, freak tragedy to strike. One never did and they slowly forgot their grief, placing all their focus on their only living child.
By and by, the deaths of his boys proved too much for Adam to handle. When that grief mixed with the excitement of his only living son's eleventh birthday, Adam had a heart attack right on the corner of 3rd and Main. He was on his way to pick up James's birthday cake. Her husband's sudden death prompted Grace to think back to her visit with Madame Ophelia. She grabbed her grieving son and drove out to the chicken farm.
The sign above the door read, THE MADAME IS OUT. "Ophelia!" Grace yelled from the shack's dusty front yard. She held tightly onto James's small hand. Wearing her normal white robes along with long, black rubber gloves and matching boots, Madame Ophelia walked from behind the house. In the thirty-three years that had passed, she hadn't aged a day. She carried a large, Rhode Island Red by its feet. "I paid you good money, woman" Grace challenged.
Ophelia, uncharacteristically, looked shocked, but managed to compose herself. "Hello, Grace. I heard about Adam. I am very sorry for your loss."
"What about the others, Ophelia? What about my boys? The boys I paid you for? You cursed me! And I damn you! I damn you, Ophelia, to an eternal life of loveless misery."
Ophelia shook with spooky, all knowing laughter. "When I heard about the deaths of your sons, I knew I would see you again. Although, I was not expecting it to take so many years."
"You owe me a refund!"
She looked Grace in the eye and squared her already assured shoulders. "I owe you nothing."
"Oh yes you do..." Grace countered.
"You did not satisfactorily perform your assignment. You killed your boys. Not I."
"...I did everything you said."
"Did you? Think back, Grace" Ophelia prompted, calmly. "When you returned home did you make the stew? Did you eat every bit? Did you bury the bones?"
A sudden realization shook Grace's mind, body, and soul to pieces. She dropped to the earth, shaking with sorrow and rue. She hadn't buried the bones. They were thrown away with the stew's scraps of potato skins and onion peels. She clutched her frightened James to her body.
Madame Ophelia dropped her chicken. It fled back in the direction of the coops. She walked over to the tragic Grace and the confused James. Ophelia pulled off her gloves. She stooped low and clutched the blubbering Grace by the chin. She stared into her soul, a moment quite reminiscent of Grace's first meeting with the voodoo woman. "I feel your sorrow. You have a stronger energy than any woman I've ever known. You must listen to me very carefully, Grace. Unless something is done, James will fall victim to a similar fate." Ophelia closed her eyes. When she reopened them she looked at the boy. "He doesn't have much time."
"Please. Please don't let my boy die. I couldn't bear it. I don't think I'll survive" Grace begged. Ophelia sympathetically took in the imploring words. After a full minute of silence she said, "I can bind him to you. No charge."
"Bind him?" Grace asks.
Madame Ophelia looked out toward her house. "I will create an inseparable bond. It will last until your death. But, when you go, he goes."
Grace looked at James who tightly yet stoically held onto her. She was his lifeline and in turn she would never again have to know the pain of lonesomeness.
In the same room that Grace and Adam sat in all those years before, at the very same table, James sat next to his mother. This time, though, Madame Ophelia did not bring in chickens. There was no blood or snakes. She simply placed two candles in front of the mother and son: one red and one pink. Ophelia unraveled a long piece of pink ribbon, which was wrapped around one of her dolls. She sat in her chair, opposite to Grace and James. He did not say a word. He only watched. She handed them each a lit match. "Light the candles. It must be done at precisely the same time." They did as they were told. "Now, hold hands." Again, they did as they were told. She wrapped the pink ribbon around their clasped hands. As she wrapped she recited the incantation.
"'I take your hands in mine,
And with this ribbon I will entwine.
Your souls I will forever bind,
From now until the end of time.''
A cold wind shook the room, extinguishing the candles and cloaking them in darkness.
Well aware of his immortality, James grew into a reckless teenager and an even more capricious adult. His carelessness riddled his poor mother with stress ulcers. Nevertheless, she calmed her worries with the knowledge that he could never leave her.
On the night that James got into the bar fight and Grace received the late-night call from the hospital telling her to come down to identify James's lifeless body, she cursed Madame Ophelia to the heavens and back. She cursed herself and anyone who crossed her path. Grace didn't bother making the trip back to Ophelia's shack. She withdrew into her home and became a hollow, skinny shell of the beautiful woman she had once been.
Now, at seventy-three years old and sitting at the funeral for her most deeply cherished child, Mama Grace cries the cry of a woman who has devastatingly lost everything worth living for. At the head of the funeral parlor, lying on a white bier and surrounded by tall, burning candles, rests James's closed ivory-colored coffin. Next to the coffin, a framed 26"x34" photo of a smiling, handsome, twenty-eight year old James has been placed on an ornate easel. He looks both healthy and happy. He looks like his father.
Behind the pulpit stands the force that is the Righteous Reverend Reynolds. He preaches James's short life, his light brown face reddening and his sweaty brow glistening. The Reverend's large, robed body trembles with each powerful word. "After years of prayer and heartache, Heaven opened up and released unto Mama Grace one of its greatest angels. Can I get an Amen?"
"Amen!" cried the congregation.
Reverend Reynolds preaches James's death. "That angel has found his way home."
"Amen!"
Mama Grace's cries slice through the funeral home's thick, sad ether. She leaps up, running to her son's coffin, throwing her thin body onto the closed lid. She dramatically falls to the floor, rolling around, kicking her feet, and pounding her fists. "Oh! Lord, Jesus! My baby! My BABY! Why wasn't it me, Lord Jesus? Why wasn't it ever me?"
From within the coffin, a deep, muffled voice speaks. "Stop your crying, Mama. You know I can't stand to hear you cry." The coffin lid slowly lifts and then suddenly falls open. James scrambles out. He takes a long, deep breath and surveys the elaborately decorated room. The congregation gasps. Half of James's head unevenly sinks in as though part of his skull and brain are missing.
While clutching his bible, Reverend Reynolds sweats and shakes with fear. "Get back, Satan!" he cries. He launches into the Resurrection Prayer:
"O risen lord,
The way,
The truth,
And the life,
Make us faithful followers of the spirit of your resurrection.
God forever. Amen."
Some congregation members scream. A few vomit in the aisles. Normally sensible people fall over one another, stomping on hands and toes. Dresses are torn. Freshly polished shoes get scuffed. Grown men push old ladies and children out of their way as they attempt to flee the cursed room. Mama Grace faints. James leans on his coffin. "Mama wake up. Can I get a glass of water and a Newport?"