Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [36]
But now, as he sailed through the market streets, his mind was washed clean of all that arithmetic that had burdened it earlier, for Doctor Oliver had simply answered his prayer— without knowing it he had obeyed the will of èzili Je Wouj, not because he knew her or served her the way Magloire did, but because he was a good man of the right instincts who could let himself be moved to restore order to the universe by folding a twenty-dollar bill into the warm pale palm of Magloire’s hand. Tout pou nan amoni, Magloire was practically singing to himself as he fractured Doctor Oliver’s deuce into larger soft piles of Haitian currency, the bills limp and fragrant with a fruity, sweaty smell and so blackened from passage from hand to hand they were entirely illegible. He purchased small but double rations of charcoal, oil, rice, and dried beans, and canned milk for the children, then green coffee beans for his mother and a handful of ibuprofen tablets for himself—his head had hurt a good deal earlier from the all the transactions scrambling in it. At another stand he bought two red candles and a ball of black string. There were then left four hexagonal coins; enough for a basket of green oranges.
He divided his purchases into two sacks and the smaller of these he locked in a cupboard when he returned home, putting the iron key into his pocket. Anise looked at him sourly as he did so, for she knew very well what that was about. When he gave her the condensed milk for the boy she brightened, then asked him sharply about the medicine, but he pointed out that it was no longer needed, for the boy was well, happy today, teasing the chickens out in the yard, and then he gave Anise the oranges. As for his mother, when she received the charcoal and coffee she smiled at him with all her four remaining teeth.
Magloire had to hasten now, fast, the red light in his head compelled him, over the unpaved road that wrapped around the outside edge of Morne du Cap beyond the dwellings of the town, then splashing across the beach where the tide was coming in, as the sun, still blazing hot, tilted just a little toward the west. Hopping from boulder to boulder around the next point, he climbed into the walls of Fort Picolet, which in the time of the heroes two hundred years before had been the scene of a great battle between indigènes on shore and the French warships. Now the fort was full of spirits, and there were other sèvitè there pursuing their own missions. Magloire paused to draw breath and looked down the black stone spikes of côte de fer, where two or three youths were scribbling on school paper, just above the spring of èzili Freda, but it was èzili Je Wouj who would catch and deliver his desires. He climbed a little further, till he was facing her grotto. There he lit a red candle for her, and left a complex little bundle of black string, a figure eight bound to itself with a tightly wrapped waist, like the waist of a wasp that might sting.
Descending, his head began to hurt again, perhaps because of the heat and sun, which now flashed directly into his face from the mirroring sea. He had already taken two ibuprofen. Could they have failed so soon? If he had more money he would buy sunglasses like those Doctor Oliver always wore. The luminous red glow of èzili Je Wouj was fading from his brain, and a grimmer something else began to replace it. The boys above the spring were smiling at him and showing him their scraps of paper, on which they had been scrawling phrases over and over until the papers grew dark and confused as a jungle at midnight and finally became a perfect graphiteshining black.
These were Vodou passports the boys had made, and they wanted Magloire to purchase them, or maybe just admire them. His other mind was forcing itself back, the one with the calculations. The tide had certainly come in now and he would undoubtedly get wet when he crossed the shoal. He could not wait, so procuring dry trousers would be added to his