{"collection":"African","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/afr/vno/vno19.htm","path":"afr/vno/vno19.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/afr/vno/vno19.htm","text":"MADAME CAZAUNOUX WAS in a drinking mood. She demanded both wine and beer, not only for herself, but also for Madame Jean and Gaston Fontaine, who are spirits and without whom Madame insisted she could not be one of the current Voodoo queens of New Orleans.\nWhen the wine and beer were brought she mixed the two together and set out three separate tall tumblers of the concoction on the table beside her rocker. She drained one quickly, then picked up another. \"Ah, Mimmie, next time I will give you whiskey,\" she promised an invisible personage, and drank about half of the contents of that glass.\nMadame, very small, stooped and probably a quadroon, I thought she was about eighty years old. She confessed her name used to be Agatha May Wilson, but that she had changed it upon the advice of Madame Jean when she decided to become \"a hoodoo woman.\" Huddled in her chair before the low fire in the grate, her faint mustache wet and glistening, her eyes bright, she seemed to have no objection to discussing her profession. However, Mrs. Lombardo, the white woman who shared her house and business, kept glancing at her, as if to warn her.\n{p. 162}\n\"You can't pay to go to a Voodoo meeting,\" said Mrs. Lombardo stiffly. \"You gotta be invited. That's why lots people don't believe they still have 'em.\" A woman of about fifty, very tall and thin, Mrs. Lombardo had black eyes that looked as if their owner was about to lose her temper.\n\"The sonofabitch is speaking the Lord's truth,\" said Madame, who has always been proud of her proficiency at swearing.\n\"You know we have to be careful,\" said Mrs. Lombardo, \"People misunderstand us.\" She sighed heavily. \"And it is absolutely necessary that you be opened before you can do any work. The opening is really what makes you one of us, but we can't take in nobody unless we can trust 'em.\"\nMadame Cazaunoux had started on the third drink. \"Ah, Madame Jean,\" she cried. \"I sure love you, ma ch\u00e9rie!\"\n\"Me, I always say the fewer the better,\" said Mrs. Lombardo. \"God knows there's enough of us doing the work now, Of course it is really up to Grandma. She's the one who has the power.\"\nMadame put down her glass and tittered. \"Goddam!\" she said. \"Listen who's talking! Some day she's gonna double-cross me. I been warned lots of times. I done taught her too much.\"\n\"Shame on you, Grandma,\" said Mrs. Lombardo. \"If you think it's all right I'll go get Rooster.\" With that she vanished through a door leading into the rear of the house.\nAs soon as she was gone Grandma shut her eyes and went to sleep. The small room was hot and very odorous. Doors and windows seemed to be sealed, and it was certain that no air had entered the place for weeks. In one corner a shabby iron bed was covered with torn and dirty blankets. Numerous straight-backed chairs lined all the other walls, except in one place near the door leading into the street which was occupied by a small altar covered with white cloth and holding two green candles, one blue and one pink candle, a dried lemon, a rosary and a picture of Saint Peter.\nMadame overheard a discussion about the candles. She\n{p. 163}\nopened her eyes and looked about the room as if she had never seen the room before. Then she said, \"The green candles is for money. They is for Saint Raymond and he is good for money. The pink one is for love, and that is to Saint Anthony. Blue is for Saint Peter. He is good for anything.\"\nMrs. Lombardo came into the room, followed by a tall colored man who carried a market basket with a white cloth covering it. \"Grandma, I brought Rooster,\" she said. But Grandma was asleep again. From then on she paid little attention to the opening ceremony.\n\"You-all must do everything Rooster does,\" said Mrs. Lombardo. \"That's the only way this will work.\"\nRooster began by stripping himself of his coat, vest, tie and shoes. Everyone did the same. Then he spread the tablecloth on the floor in the center of the room.\n\"Nothing must be crossed,\" said Mrs. Lombardo. \"Be sure your legs and arms ain't crossed or this won't do no good at all and the spirits won't come near us.\"\nRooster took the picture of Saint Peter from the altar and stood it in the middle of the cloth. Then he began spreading out the articles he had brought concealed in his basket, working silently and quickly, as if it were all routine.\nGreen and white candles were stood on end on the cloth and other candles of various colors were placed beside these, in a circle around the picture. On each side of this circle he placed a quart bottle, one containing cider, the other raspberry pop. He laid saucers and small dishes here and there, one filled with steel dust on the right side of the picture, another holding dried orris root in front of it. A plate of dried basile was placed on the other side of the picture and another plate, containing the flat hard cakes called \"stage planks,\" was put in front of the dried basile. Behind the picture he laid a five-cent box of gingersnaps. Around the edges of the cloth he laid dishes containing mixed birdseed, cloves,and cinnamon, and on each side a bowl of congris. A small bottle of olive oil was placed at the very far edge of the cloth\n{p. 164}\non the left side, and behind this was placed a small paper sack of sugar. On the far right he put a hand of bananas with a saucer of small red apples nestling close to it. A branch from a camphor tree was carefully laid in front of the picture. Then, in front of all, he placed a pint of gin and a bottle of beer.\nRooster now took a box of matches from his pocket and lighted the candles. Mrs. Lombardo turned off the single electric bulb that dangled from a cord in the middle of the room. The room suddenly became alive with light and shadow, and the face of the Voodoo man seemed to come to life with it. Until now he had seemed a sullen, dull-witted being, performing some meaningless and mechanical motions, but now his thin face was tense, his eyes glittered and his lips were drawn back, showing pointed animal-teeth.\nRooster knelt on one knee and everyone did the same. He rapped on the floor three times and said the Lord's Prayer in Creole, and everyone again followed suit.\nThis over, he sprang quickly to his feet and began a song, at the same time turning in circles, first slowly then more rapidly. All the participants imitated him. He flung his arms over his head, glared fiercely toward the ceiling and chanted his song louder and louder until it seemed he must be heard a block away. He stopped this as suddenly as he had started and stood quivering and shaking, his eyes shut now, his arms straight out before him, his fists clenched and trembling. He seemed to be in a trance. He came out of this with a loud grunt, his lids raised and his lips moved. Sounds poured forth in a coarse guttural outburst that no one could understand. \"The spirits is on him,\" said Mrs. Lombardo, in a shrill whisper. \"He is speaking in the unknown tongue.\"\nHe stopped and picked up the bottle of gin, removed the cap, placed the bottle to his lips and took a deep swallow, A third of the contents of the bottle vanished. Still holding the flask in one hand, he began to whirl again, singing the same song and stopping to take additional, though smaller, drinks. Now he began another kind of dance, a sort of cakewalk, with\n{p. 165}\nintricate forward and backward steps, until he was standing in front of Mrs. Lombardo, who had also been executing the same sort of dance. Stopping before her, he took a mouthful of the gin and spat it directly into her face. She fell back, shuddering and with both hands over her eyes. \"We got it now!\" she screamed. \"We got it! We got it! We got it!\"\nRooster sprang at her, swung her from the floor and over his back and began whirling with her in this position. She shrieked in ecstasy, her arms spread out, her legs flailing the air. When he set her down, she fell to her knees and remained there, her eyes shut, low gasps emanating from her lips, long shudders vibrating through her body. Each person in the room except Grandma, who still slept peacefully, was given a whirl on Rooster's back and each ended on his knees before the altar.\nNow Rooster dragged a tub from one comer of the room and into this tin vessel he poured the contents of the bottle of beer, the bottle of cider and the one of raspberry pop. Then he added a little of everything in the saucers and plates on the altar. In this mixture he washed the feet of each of the participants, this rite being conducted in silence, except for soft sucking noises Rooster kept making from between his pointed teeth. The insides of everyone's shoes were then rubbed with a mixture of steel dust, dried basile and cinnamon, so, as Mrs. Lombardo explained, \"good luck will always guide your feet.\"\nEach person was given a small white candle also for good luck and a green one to guarantee that he would always have money. As he gave out the candles, Rooster passed the flame of each through his mouth to extinguish it. He took a red candle and broke it into small pieces and distributed these pieces. This was for evil work, though of what sort he didn't explain, other than that each piece could be lighted and burned while the owner concentrated upon someone he disliked.\nThe apples and cakes were also given away. The apples were to be thrown into the path of a person smaller than one's\n{p. 166}\nself, thus giving one power over that person. The cakes were to be given to the birds. \"They is the dove,\" said Rooster, \"and the dove is the Lord.\" He then offered to sell the water in which the feet had been bathed for a dollar a pint. \"It's good to wash your front steps with to keep enemies out,\" he carefully explained. There were no sales.\nMadame Cazaunoux woke with a grunt. \"Me, I was the best damn hoodoo queen what ever lived!\" she exclaimed, apparently for no reason at all, except that she seemed to be in the best of moods. \"Outside of Marie Laveau I was the best. You hear me, Mimmie, I was the best.\"\n\"Grandma, you're sure a case,\" said Mrs. Lombardo.\n\"You goddam. fools, I was the best,\" said the old woman, grinning broadly.\nIt was over, and it was a relief to step out into the brisk winter night. This had been a Voodoo rite and everyone present was now technically a Voodoo. Yet in a few minutes it all seemed unreal and very far away. A huge plane climbed past the stars overhead. This was 1944. This was a period we fancied was modern and fairly free from superstition. A century ago Voodoo might have been a living thing, but the last Marie Laveau had been dead for more than forty years,\n\"How many people in New Orleans believe in Voodoo?\" someone had asked Mrs. Lombardo.\n\"Plenty,\" she said. \"I don't know exactly how many, of course, but there are a lot of hoodoo churches and things like that. Of course it ain't only in New Orleans. It's all over the country. But I guess there are more workers here than anywhere else. In this town there must be thousands of people that follow it.\"\n\"Thousands?\"\n\"Sure,\" she said. \"It ain't all alike. They have different kinds like everything else. Then there are lots of people who say they don't believe in it that are sure scared of it. I seen some funny things.\"\n{p. 167}","title":"18. You Gotta Be Opened","type":"page"}