The Brand Ch. 07

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Victria plays with fire.
5.3k words
4.72
9.3k
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Part 7 of the 15 part series

Updated 06/07/2023
Created 10/14/2014
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Abraxis
Abraxis
81 Followers

The world is a lusty and ravenous whore. Her chewing us up and spitting us out can't be prevented. Nothing can keep her from sticking her fangs into the ripest of us and sucking us dry. She fattens us for her slaughter; enriches us, lets us drink heartily from her breast until we are so full enough of happiness and contentment, that, when she comes to finally show us her gaping inescapable maw, we accuse her of betrayal, as if we'd never had any prosperity, success or love to show for our lives.

Living; is being set up for ultimate failure. So; why try? We try because that is the construct; to grow from the known, to venture, to create, experiment, mold, synthesize, postulate, establish, fortify, secure, illuminate, perpetuate, preserve, prolong and extend.

These are all viable methods of waiting, of killing time. Because who can really die; without living first?

It was on Saint John's Eve, a week after her eighteenth birthday, in New Orleans, two years after Katrina's deluge, where Victria found herself facing the fire. Its flames rose high, but was otherwise constricted for the sake of jumpers. Such is the tradition, for over two hundred years now, that bonfires are lit on the evening before the 24th of June, so that any person, devotee or drunkard, might leap the flames to celebrate the birth of the Saint that prepared the way for Christ's coming, to dare the city's devils or to ward off the demons in their own troubled hearts. So had Victria been told by an old Octoroon woman selling purses on a street side table. Alone then, she wandered; drawing ever closer to the steady beacon like a moth to an ever fleeting moon.

Once she'd arrived at the east bank of Bayou Saint John, Victria's path became wrought with singing and dancing revelers and devotees; drunken with their own natural happiness or happiness induced by libation. She too would be drunk, but not until she'd jumped the fire. Victria had walked its perimeter as sweating men, their bare chests and backs gleaming black or gold, built it up. Slowly she walked, deliberately; studying the bomb fire to find its shallow spots, its faults, its weaknesses.

The men fueling the fire, arrogant and playful, flirted with her, taunting her to jump. We'll tell you when to go, they'd said. We'll catch you on the other side, they'd assured. So they'd spoken until Victria had made her seventh pass, when suddenly she'd become transfixed by the sight of a young black woman. She stopped, blocked by the creature in her path; the bright black and white enigma in her eyes, and the glowing dark brown skin of her face, neck and bear arms. She wore a sleeveless blue dress; simple, tailored, by her mother, an aunt or perhaps by her own hand.

"Where are your friends?" the young woman had boldly yet pleasantly inquired, "Tourists always have their friends or some; companion."

"I didn't bring anyone." Victria had answered, "I'm just; me."

The pretty black woman, matronly yet alluring, assessed Victria in her tight white jeans, sleeveless white shirt and yellow discount store flip flops.

"Hmm. You have no one to care for you after you jump through the fire?"

Victria turned to glance at the dancing flames, writhing like spellbound phantoms, and then brought her gaze back to the woman.

"Well; I'm not sure I'll be jumping through that fire." Confessed Victria.

"But you want to."

Victria paused to study the woman. She was of a maternal yet sensual port in air; her figure slim, her back straight, her neck slender and inviting, a necklace of simple black cord arrayed with a variety of dried leaves and twigs covering the clef of her breasts. From her ears she'd hung a variety of gold loops, and her long hair was tied back with a blue silk scarf, the rich wiry black weight of it, thick and long as a horse's tail.

"I'd like to; yes." Victria finally answered.

"Well alright then;" smiled the handsome New Orleanian, "So let's get you wet."

Victria became suddenly flushed and was so caught off guard by the woman that she'd realized too late that she'd been seized. Eyes wide and mouth verging on uttering some protest, the tourist looked around her to see that her arms were being held by two men she recognized as the keepers of the fire. Then a third, a Creole man, came round the front of her, carrying a five gallon pale of what looked to be fairly murky water. Victria's objections came in nervous laughter and high pitched screams as the man hoisted the pail over her head and dumped its contents.

Victria screamed with raging laughter as the briny water drenched her hair and saturated her clothes. Then, the men laughing and letting her loose, Victria regarded herself. She looked down, aghast; her white clothes pasted to her skin, the pink and pride of her nipples visible through her shirt as was the dark patch of hair between her legs. Her arms still out stretched, as if poised for flight or crucifixion, Victria raised her eyes to the woman smiling before her. She had been uttering something in a language Victria didn't recognize, her long fingers intertwined in a single fist, the knuckles held beneath her chin.

"What name do you go by?" asked the woman; dropping her hands and then folding them again behind her back.

Water beaded and dripped from the tip of Victria's nose as she glared at the woman.

"My name is Victria." She said.

"I am Francisca Botchwey." Said the other, "And I say go on now! Jump! Show these lambs! Send those demons back to where they belong Victria, mighty Victria!"

Seething with anger and sensual zeal, her wet hair clinging to her cheeks, Victria regarded Francisca Botchwey. The woman stared defiantly back. Then, in a sudden burst, Victria sprinted toward the fire, leaped into its center, and boldly lingered inside the controlled inferno.

Its flames licked her body as her vision became obscured with the steam of her baptism. Then, before fear could take its hold, Victria catapulted herself out from the blaze and landed on the other side. She fell just short of slamming her knees against the paved walk, crouched, hands out, the sudden sting of asphalt scraping the skin from her palms.

Quickly, she rose again and turned to look over her shoulder at the conquered fire. Her senses were suddenly keen as her heart beat wildly in her chest and a storm of jubilant applause rang in her ears.

Victria prepared to move. But, realizing that she was rooted to the spot, she looked down and saw that her flip flops had melted to the pavement. Gasping, Victria laughed, slipped her feet from them, and then searched the crowd for Francisca.

As the delighted Creole men settled another log onto the fire, the woman suddenly appeared at Victria's side. She looked down and raised a quizzical eye brow as she probed Victria's melted flip flops with her own sandaled feet. Then, turning her gaze back up to meet Victria's, the radiant black woman said:

"You are born again this night brave Victria. Shall we find you new shoes to commemorate the occasion?"

As they whiled their way back through the French Quarter, the two women exchanged brief histories, though Francisca spoke long to answer the many questions Victria had about New Orleans, its people and how they were getting along after Katrina's floods receded.

Francisca's accent was West African in nature. She'd emigrated from Ghana, where English was as native as the language, Twi, that she'd spoken in her mother's house. Arriving in New Orleans, three years before the storm, Francisca stayed with relatives, worked at odd jobs throughout the city and saved her money.

Then, over those fateful twelve hours in August of 2005, Francisca watched the sheets of rain fall, the bayous rise, the levies break, homes crumble and the dead float by on flooded streets like so many rolling logs of fallen timber.

Her uncle's home had floated away. Along with countless others, he was lost. Francisca had only time enough to gather her six little nieces and nephews and herd them up to the older part of the city. Her intended destination was the great Cathedral Saint Louis.

Together they ran, hands linked, avoiding piles of bricks in the road that were chimneys hours before. Francisca and her charges just put Burgundy Street behind them when a two-story brick and mortar structure, a former slave quarters, collapsed and shook the ground.

Screaming, crying, blinded by the plummeting rain, Francisca called for the children to run to the Cathedral Saint Louis. They'd scurried up the steps to the two hundred and eighty year old church and banged their fists against the door, but no one came.

Then they hurried around the back, looking for another way in, but that too was closed. In that instant, sheltered enough under the church's awning, Francisca gathered the children around her. Whirling her head, her attention was drawn by two sharp cracks.

Peering into the courtyard behind the cathedral, where the great marble statue of Christ stood, his left hand outstretched, Francisca watched in terror as two large oaks, at opposite ends of the courtyard, pulled up earth and nearly thirty feet of wrought iron fencing as they plummeted, in crisscrossed paths, down upon the statue.

As the huge trees shook the ground and settled against the earth, Francisca stared incredulously at the great stone Christ that still stood, unscathed but for the index finger and the thumb of its extended left hand.

"Why do you look at me so Victria?" asked Francisca.

The two young women sat across from one another at one of the tables set outside Vieux Carre on Bourbon Street. Victria lazily stirred her gin and tonic as she studied Botchwey nursing her glass of wine.

"I'm sorry," she said, "It's just that I'm frankly astounded; by you, your experiences."

Francisca slowly closed her eyes and shook her head.

"I am nothing." She said, "I am a creature seeking comfort, trying to keep the peace in my heart, to survive in a city I came to love, was broken, and still love."

Francisca gazed off toward the canal. Passersby had become numerous; the French Quarter at its liveliest at the witching hour.

"And your nieces and nephews," asked Victria, "Where are they now?"

"With the money I'd had earned up until then," Francisca answered, "I sent them to our extended family north, in Chicago. I had been; overwhelmed. I; broke down gradually, over the course of the following days, as the flood waters rose and then receded."

Francisca paused and, unable to see the canal through the boisterous crowd, she rose to her feet and gestured for Victria to follow. They walked a few blocks in silence, until they arrived before a dimly lit, ramshackle shoe store.

"This is my friend Roba's shoe store." Francisca intoned, "Please buy your shoes here. He too has seen fit to stay, though his wife and two sons were lost."

A sudden glaze of helpless pain coming into her eyes, Victria began to stare at the woman. Presently, she sighed, took Francisca by her hand, and then dragged her into the store.

"The herbs around your neck," inquired Victria after they'd left the store; each carrying two large plastic bags of four boxes of shoes each, "That's; that's a Voodoo thing, right?"

"They are an everything thing." Francisca laughed, "Voodoo, my Voodoo, is what Christians have termed as Pagan, interwoven into one system of Christianized beliefs and practices. From parts of West Africa, like Ghana, Voodoo gave the best of itself or was adopted by the early Spanish and Haitian New Orleanian that settled here and lived among the generations of freed slaves."

As Francisca spoke, Victria stared about her, to the brightly colored FEMA funded housing projects on one side of the street and the vast open fields of tall grass on her right that bordered the Mississippi.

"The herbs represent the collective wisdom of the ancients," Francisca continued, "Passed on from woman to woman. Voodoo respects that wisdom. Aida Wedo is the West African counterpart to the Virgin Mary, while Legba is counterpart to Saint Peter; the keeper of the keys to the-

"Oh my God." Victria said; interrupting Francisca.

Botchwey followed her gaze. A solitary house stood, abandoned, crumbled foundations on either side. Over the second floor, the face of the house was wounded, cut through, hacked from the inside out, perhaps by an axe or hammer. Below the wound, on a stretch of storm beaten shingles was spray painted the message: 1 dead in attic.

"Karma," Francisca said in a hushed voice, "Karma is ultimately what we remind ourselves of through Voodoo. It is not possession, reading the splattered blood of a slaughtered chicken or hurting people by sticking needles in dolls."

Victria stared at the fluorescent yellow words on the ragged gray shingles. Her skin began to crawl as she sniffed the salt air, testing it, in spite of herself, for corrupted flesh, and then imagined a pile of forgotten bones, an old woman's skull, leather skinned and wisps of white hair raised by the living wind that came off the great river.

"We do our best to live well," continued Francisca; facing Victria, "To pay homage to our ancestors, so that we might die as well as we'd lived."

Victria met the beautiful African's gaze.

"Come mighty Victria. I will show you my Voodoo."

A quarter mile later, the dawn still more than an hour away, the two women arrived at a lot, marked at the curb by a single standing stone lion, its twin having been broken off and carried away by the flood. Victria followed Francisca passed the lion and along the walk through the door yard, sleeping chickens nestled together beside the porch. The structure was obviously not the original home. Victria could hardly conceive that, whatever size it was, that the former dwelling had been carried away by water. But, it was true, and in its place stood a modest cabin of heavy oak planks. Francisca quietly opened the screen door, withdrew a key from her pocket, and then unlocked the door.

"Sit." Said Victria's hostess as she stepped to the right, around a card table upon which still burned three candles floating in a shallow bowl of water.

As the woman stooped and rummaged around the room's back wall, Victria whiled her gaze around the small space that served as Francisca's kitchen. In the far corner were stacked packages and whole three gallon containers of drinking water. To the left of them sat a large, white topped, red cooler. Scanning ever left, Victria saw that the whole place, though bare bones, was perfectly clean. As she breathed, she realized the place held the fragrance of rosemary. Looking off into the space's depth, through the dim light of the candle light, Victria could make out what seemed a larger room, a mattress, properly made, on the floor and a blonde wood armoire against the far wall. It seemed to her that there were things set upon the armoire, things that shown or glistened weakly from the kitchen's candle light.

"Show me your hands." Instructed Francisca as she set things down on the table and took a seat beside her.

"My hands?"

"Yes; your hands. I saw that you'd injured them when you leapt from Saint John's fire. Come; let me see."

Reluctantly, Victria raised her hands, and then opened her palms to Francisca. The picture of tranquility, Francisca gently took one hand and then the other, delicately probing the areas of Victria's palms that had been scraped clean of skin. Next, reaching to the table, the woman took a Ziploc bag that contained more of one of the varieties of herb that hung from her necklace. Withdrawing the nest of limp leaves and twigs, Francisca divided the stuff in half, and then laid it upon the worst of Victria's abrasions.

"What's that?" asked Victria as she began to feel the soothing effect of the herb's cool dampness."

"It is yarrow." Francisca answered as she unraveled a length of gauze, "It is used for healing wounds. Its oil has anti-inflammatory effect."

Victria watched as Francisca wrapped one hand, and then secured it with a safety pin.

"Also," she continued, "It is said that yarrow can ward against evil."

"And you; believe that? Victria asked shyly.

"Of course I do." Said Francisca; smiling warmly as she met her patient's gaze, "Pain, damage, are effects of harm. Medicine, healing, are good intentions. Wounds are therefore manifestations of evil and healing magic are simply wisdom and good will."

Comforted, enchanted, Victria stared at Francisca's passive face as she bond her other hand.

"The gods and their universe," the woman continued, "Are no more complex than that. Voodoo, magic, the calling upon and the aid of spirits, are natural things and so not a mystery at all."

Sighing, Victria looked away; returning her gaze into the dark room beyond.

"This is a haunted place," she heard herself suddenly whisper, "I mean; New Orleans, since, since Katrina."

"This; has always been a haunted place. That's why people keep coming here."

Victria swung her head back around to see Francisca thoughtfully regarding her. Then, after having gathered her materials, the woman rose from her seat, and went about returning the things to their proper places. Presently, a freshly lit candle in her hand, she returned to her guest and beckoned for her to rise. As Francisca stepped into the larger room, Victria followed, suddenly keenly aware of the odd feeling of her skin inside her damp clothes and the fêted smell of bayou water in her hair.

Stepping around the bed, Victria looked on as Francisca placed the candle in a square plate set at the front center of the armoire's roof. Arrayed behind the candle's light, and flanking it on either side, was a menagerie of represented people, animals and places. Diamond flecked stones, jagged and smooth were laid across the alter. They were arranged in pairs and trios, and held up photographs of family members and friends. Francisca explained who they were; her mother and father back in Ghana, the aunt and Uncle Katrina had taken for herself and the nieces and nephews she'd protected and then shipped off to better care and stability in Chicago.

There were branches and twigs, bound clusters of rosemary and dried lemon grass. There were small sculptures of indigenous wildlife and fish. Patchwork dolls of both male and female persuasion were seated on some of the rocks or stood beside them; their costumes artfully sown, their heads sculpted in clay and carefully painted. Then, along the wall, the saints and gods stood over them all; John, Peter, winged Gabriel, Mother Mary and the crucified Christ himself, peering up from his cross rather than down at the assemblage beneath him.

"Now express your gratitude." Francisca instructed.

Victria, suddenly embarrassed, leveled her gaze at Francisca. It was true, she thought. I suppose I do owe her some thanks. As for herself, she never expected any formally expressed gratitude, at least not from those closest to her, and she didn't expect any thanks from Francisca because she'd been happy to help her friend Roba at the shoe store.

"I'm sorry." She said; turning her body to face her healer and hostess, "Thank you; very much."

"Oh no Victria." Francisca laughed, "Not me. Thank God, the saints and my ancestors. I told you. I am nothing."

"Nothing." Victria repeated; turning her gaze back onto the alter.

"Yes; nothing." Francisca maintained.

"So then; I'm nothing too." Said Victria, beginning to play with a few matted strands of her hair.

"Well, I cannot speak for you." Francisca laughed gently, "Whether you can convince your ego as to whether you are nothing, is your problem. I certainly won't be able to help you solve it here and now. I can only speak to you from my truth."

Victria glanced at Francisca then, turned to face the alter once more, bowed her head and said:

"Thank you; everyone."

Abraxis
Abraxis
81 Followers
12