Learning the Banda: Act Two
Intermission
--
Act Two
The Pendulum told me that, as everything moved- earth,
solar system, nebulae and black holes, all the children of the great
cosmic expansion-one single point stood still: a pivot, bolt, or
hook around which the universe could move.
And I was now taking part in that supreme experience.
New Orleans, the Big Easy, the Crescent City, the Jewel of the Mississippi, old Nouvelle Orleans rising from the swamp and bayou at the turn of the river, a city which should never have been. You learn, quickly, that she's all of these things and none of them at the same time, just like she's more and less, bigger and smaller, so very rich and empty-hand-to-hungry-mouth poor, full of contradictions in the same way you are. It explains why you feel so instantly at home, even at sixteen, even in a new place without any support system to think of.
You move into the back half of cousin's home. She has a bed and couch set up for you, a kitchen ready for you, a bathroom with hot water that never runs out. She shows you around, tells you where the nearest hounfor is and invites you to the next celebration, and then she pounces. You don't mind, not one bit; she's got to be twenty or thirty years older than you but you're both part of Papa's family and sex comes naturally. It's a better way to get to know someone than living side-by-side with them in wartime.
She's not the tightest but she's hot like burning and wet enough to cover the tops of her thighs with it; she hisses when you bite her nipples but moans so pretty when you've got two fingers pressed against her clit, fucking her through her orgasm and coming only once she's rolled you onto your back, straddled you, got you inside of her again.
"Like this," she says, and yeah, coming's always been easier when you're on your back, when you're not in control, when someone else is setting the pace. At times, you wonder if this is a remnant of Papa taking over your body when you were so young, introducing pre-pubescent limbs to the frenetic rhythm of the banda, but you think it has less to do with Papa and more to do with him. He's possessive, demanding; even though you've never heard him speak, you know this about him. He likes control and you give it up so easily.
"Ain't with me," your cousin says, scratching her nails down your chest, deep enough and hard enough to draw blood.
A whine hits the back of your throat as you thrust up inside of her; you're desperate to come but you're not there, close but spiralling away from it, because something is missing. "More," you say, and she knows exactly what you mean. This time, when she bends down, riding you like her life depends on it, she bites your shoulder -- bites it hard. You howl at the pain, come at the same time.
When you've both caught your breath, lying side-by-side on the floor, she twines her fingers in with yours, strokes your calluses like they're something precious. "Don't bring that to my house," she says. "Please."
You turn your head, look at her, ask, "Bring what?"
She snorts, then lets out a loose and languid sigh as you cup your palm over her mound, fingers dipping into her cunt and coaxing out your own come. "I know the family's got a bloody history," she says, as her hips start to move -- without her even noticing, you think. "And I've heard what it's like out there in Texas. But New Orleans is different. Mel's group, you all bite and claw and cling to the family and you ain't afraid to do that to people, either, when the family feels like arranging it. But it's not like that here. It's too hot here for blood, too humid. We find other ways."
What she's trying to say -- you think you understand, and your palm slips a little to set the base of your hand on her clit as you roll to your side, use her tits as pillows. "Papa danced the banda in me when I was eleven," you tell her, feel her breath stutter under your cheek, your hand, at the statement. "And he's done it every year since. You're right; Mama's group, we were fierce. We all lived the banda, every day, and when Papa wasn't answering us, we tempted him, convinced him to look at us again. I won't bring that into your house," you tell her, "but I'll need a place -- and people, if there are any here who come from a tradition like Mama Mel's or would feel comfortable with it."
"The Baron has some people here that might work," she tells you, now consciously riding your hand, one hand on top of yours to keep you moving. "And Ezili, Ogou too. You cook dinner for them, I'll tell them to come."
"Sounds good," you say, and then, wicked smile crossing your lips, you say, "But I think you should come now."
She does.
--
You don't know, then, how much meeting Ezili's people is going impact you. You have no idea that Ezili's brood will adopt you as one of their own, that you'll come to feel a reluctant love for Ezili herself, drawn in by her gentle invitation and ferocious protection.
If you had, you probably would have gone for something fancier than the chicken and pasta casserole you cook with your great-aunt watching hawk-eyed over your elbow. You hope this is good enough, hope that the wine your cousin left on the counter is good enough, hope it doesn't feel awkward or that they'll give you any flack for leaving your own group of cousins and coming out here to invade theirs because you're not here to do that.
You possess no desire to take anything over, you have no urge to change the ways offering happens in New Orleans. You're here because it's safer -- strange to think of it that way, but Papa wants you here and you've always been safer walking on his path than any other -- and because he's no longer in Texas. He's not here, either, but he's been telling you about this city for a long time, writing stories of swamps and bayous, of pirates and whorehouses, of the way blood and disease make up the very foundation of the city, writes all of this onto your flesh with his fingers. He'll come here -- maybe not now, maybe not soon, but eventually. You know that like you know Papa. Maybe when he does, you'll finally get to hear his voice. You think, perhaps, that you'll come the first time you hear it.
It's one of the things you tell the others when you're all leaning back in your chairs, bellies full and wine flowing like waterfalls down throats and into guts. A few of them exchange glances and you cock your head, say, "What?"
"How long since you were given a chosen?" one of the Baron's asks. "Or, I guess, how long've you known about him?"
"I was nine," you say.
The six or seven of the Baron's family look amongst themselves, silently discuss this revelation, and then one of them, the leader, you think, of this scouting group and also those who belong to the Baron here, in this town, stands up. "We'll celebrate with you," she says, "but we ain't dancing the banda with you. Good enough?"
You nod, watch without words as they file out of the room, out of the house, out of your day-to-day life after such a brief introduction to it. Five of Ezili's stay, as well as two of Ogou's, and they all exchange glances, a few hand motions and shoulder shrugs and drawn eyebrows.
"I'll celebrate with you," one of Ezili's says, "and dance the banda when Papa comes to visit. But I can't have any part in anything else you do. Blood's never really been my thing, sugar. I'm sorry, truly, but I came to my own peace with that a long while ago."
"No apologies necessary," you tell her, stand up and kiss her on her forehead, send her off with a gentle smile before you turn back to the six still at your table. They look at you, each and every one of them, but there are different looks coming from Ezili's than from Ogou's.
One of Ogou's, the man, shifts in his seat, purposefully drawing your attention. "Our family don't mind a little blood-letting," he says. "Pride ourselves on it, time-to-time. Ogou's never much cared for Papa's children, though. Not here in New Orleans, leastaways; I got no idea how they relate in Texas. We'll celebrate and we'll offer with you, but anything more."
"And your patron will get upset," you say, finishing the man's sentence when he trails off. He grimaces, nods, and doesn't do a thing to argue. You look at Ogou's other, the woman, and asks, "You agree with him?"
"To an extent," she says. Her brows are furrowed, her eyes narrow and piercing. The look of a survivor is written on her face; she's a warrior who has seen battle and come out the other side -- not whole, but alive and with a savage desire to face the battlefield again. "I think we're gonna have to talk about it, all of us, not just the two of us who came tonight. Up to me, I wouldn't celebrate or dance with you, but I'd offer with you. Think maybe getting our hands a little dirty together is as far as I'd wanna go." She pauses, then adds, "You got a look of trouble hanging all around you," blunt, straight to the point. "I only wanna get involved in the kind that offers a little violence alongside."
You sit down, nod slowly as you think through her words. "I understand," you say. "Do you have any other questions for me, before you go?"
A polite dismissal; Ogou's snort in unison, stand up at the same time and in the same manner. You wonder if all of his in this city move the same way, the almost military precision of every muscle tensing, relaxing, in time, together. "We'll be in touch," she says. "It was -- interesting to meet you. Thanks for dinner."
They leave and you look at Ezili's four, study them the way they're studying you. Three women, one man, all of them with long hair, all of them wearing some form of pink or red, lace or silk, colours and fabrics glossing over an attitude of coy invitation and heart-deep territoriality.
You met a few of Ezili's back in Dallas, only once or twice and not for very long. It's nothing personal. Most of the others don't care for Papa or his family, much less those who call him patron; it's something you've never really understood but have come to accept. Still, the way these four look at you, it's not like the way the ones in Texas did. These four, they're -- they're just more, like they know Ezili and her family, like they know themselves and their places in the world, back to the moment of creation with no speck of doubt.
It's the same as the stories you've always heard, the ones about New Orleans, about your cousins that make their home on the curve of the river: that they know more and know it deeper; that they live much longer in the darkest shadows of the families; that they are tight in a way that's less like having Papa at the base of your skull and your spine and your dick, the way you do, and more like breathing in sync, minds melding together so easily, so perfectly, that they can be bridled at any time and no one would ever be able to tell.
You're not sure you'd ever want to be that close to Papa -- not when so much of your life already revolves around the banda -- but you respect it. You respect them. You think they can read it off your face already, so you let your barriers slide just enough to let it out of your mind, too. That's not one of Ezili's gifts, not normally, but these four, they're different. They're more like Texas than you expected to find out here in New Orleans.
"Control," one of the women says. "You have the hunger sure as you have Papa, and you got ways to channel it, but you can't control it."
"We can teach you," the man says. "So you're ready when your chosen gets here."
One of the other women laughs, adds, "Chosens have a reputation for possession, baby. He won't like you sleepin' around, not at all, not when he's gonna wanna own you, every inch of you, every cell and breath and drop of blood."
That -- you realise that is something you probably should have thought about long before now, long before you started going crazy, fucking everything and everyone that offered. Papa keeps you safer than you really have any right to be but he won't like it. He won't share.
An answering noise from behind you, amused agreement, and you resist the urge to turn. He's usually on your side. He usually doesn't speak. He usually doesn't sound as if he's right there behind you, a lick away from the tender nape of your neck. Every part of you aches for him, yearns for him, and you wonder, not for the first time, if he feels it too, if the distance between you is the cause of his restlessness, rootlessness, bloodlust.
One of the women -- one who hasn't spoken yet -- narrows her eyes, glance darting between you and the air over your shoulder. You raise an eyebrow in question but she shakes her head once, twice, and keeps her eyes pinned behind you as if she can see him standing there, one palm resting on your shoulder while his fingertips press in tight.
"Ezili's never gotten along with Papa," you say, slow and careful like there are politics here to be cautious of but you can't sure of where the soft spots are. "Will she mind?"
The four of them laugh -- not in sync, like Ogou's would have, thankfully; the noises ring out true and clear but varying in pitch and sounds. "Papa keeps his people on a tight leash," the man says. "Ezili's leash is a little looser, a little different."
"'Sides," one of the women says. "She's a lover and a mother, down deep in her heart. You come in here, asking for our help, looking so young, eyes so pretty, mouth so lush, every inch of you designed to be inviting without you even realising it? She's already given you a chosen and she hasn't taken him away; she's not gonna turn her eyes on you and say no, not to you, baby -- and neither are we. You want us, you got us. We'll celebrate with you. We'll offer with you. We'll dance the banda with you whenever it takes you away and even those times when you need to call it back. And we'll teach you, Jensen Ackles. We'll pick up where your Mama left off, because chosens are Ezili's specialty, not Papa's, and anyone she blesses with a chosen is always, always worthy."
You look at each of them, the way they're sitting, the way they're open, waiting. Your mind opens wide, reaches out and brushes each of theirs, and you find nothing but honesty, delight, anticipation. "I accept," you say. "Thank you."
"Oh," a woman says, the one who's been silent up to now. "Don't thank us yet, darlin'. You will not enjoy some of what we plan to put you through."
"I've been put through a lot of things I haven't necessarily liked," you reply, meeting her eyes, holding her gaze. You don't say anything else, no platitudes about how the end justifies the means, no worshipful reverence about how Papa knows best or resentful bitterness about how he gets off on stretching his people far past their breaking points, no anger or heat in your voice. It's a statement, nothing more, and the four sitting across from you, they all know it.
The man stands, stretches; you see a couple of tattoos on his arms. "But you did them anyway," he says, as the three women move, stand up as well. "That's all your Papa cares about. The fact you saw them through and you're still here, part of the family and askin' for more? That's what matters when it comes to Ezili."
You're going to have to think long and hard about that, what it implies, what it reveals. Not now, though. The last four leave, you have the remnants of dinner to clean up, and Papa is surprisingly quiet. You'll put everything in shape and go to bed, sleep on it, on the offers you accepted and the hands that never opened to you.
Tomorrow will come fast enough.
--
It does, as they always do, especially in your life; since you've moved here the days have passed like clouds above you: always changing, never solid, never steady. It rings in with an early morning thunderstorm and a knock at your door. You aren't even out of bed yet, though you are awake. You're thinking about last night at the same time you're lazily jerking off, one hand around your dick, the other dipping fingers into and out of your ass. It's been too long since you've had a dick in you and, at this point, with this craving in your blood, you aren't sure if you're the one missing it or if it's merely Papa's hunger running free and fast through your body.
You ignore the knocking at first but then it turns into a pounding, and as much as you'd like to receive one right about now, you aren't wishing for this kind. You get out of bed with a groan, pull on some pyjama pants but don't bother washing your hands or hiding your hard-on as you go to open the door.
One of Ezili's from last night is standing there, grinning at you, her arms full of roses. Her eyes dip down to your crotch and the grin gains an edge, sharp enough to slice. "Ain't gonna learn control like that, darlin'," she says, right before she brushes past you, comes inside without an invitation.
The sky is grey when you look up at it, silently ask Papa for patience even as there's the beginnings of a smile on your face. You have a feeling that the next little while is going to be -- interesting. You find that you're actually looking forward to it.
--
Her name is Jeanne. While Ezili's group here don't have a defined leader, if they ever did make it formal, Jeanne would be their Mama. She doesn't look it -- appears to be in her mid-twenties, a hungry, shark-like smile that makes you think more of the Baron than Ezili, black hair in strands that are more kink than curl and radiate out from her scalp in the humidity, the light step of a woman who knows exactly what her place in life is and has chosen to break right out of that box and make her own way.
She is Ezili's, though, head to toe -- she's beautiful, both in body and spirit, and the lessons that come from her are made a little softer by virtue of it. You may not always like the lessons -- you don't, in fact, not at all -- but she never gets frustrated with you or derides you or judges you. For being one of Ezili's, she's not bad. You do think, sometimes, that if Ezili ever sees fit to revoke the blessing of your chosen, you would be content with Jeanne; she always smiles when you say that but never agrees.
Times like those, she's more possessive of your chosen than you are.
It's a thing you learn about all of Ezili's: as much as Ezili leads them and the finality of her decisions wraps them into a family of their own, the favour of having a chosen gives you a place among them. They accept you but they adore your chosen, want to hear every little thing you can tell them about him -- about his psychopathy, about his tongue and the way it strokes yours as you kiss, about his bloodlust, about the heat of his skin pressed against yours, about his deep and covetous love for this city, about the way he rarely leaves your side, now that you're here in New Orleans, this place to which he will eventually find his way.
Jeanne loves to hear stories about your chosen and sometimes, when her mind's lost in thought or tangled up with Ezili, you think she can see him standing by your side, one arm thrown over your shoulders, or sitting next to you, his thighs pressed against yours, or resting on you, using your shoulder as his pillow or your lap as his foot rest. You long to ask her, to know what she sees, to know what he looks like. You even ask her once; she invites you to an offering that night, the first of Ezili's you've ever been invited to.
You go, of course. You may be learning to control the hunger but the reach of your curiosity has only grown here in New Orleans, spread tendrils beneath the city and risen like an ash cloud above. You want to know everything, for your benefit but mostly for his; you want to fall in love with this city as deeply as he has, want to have this in common with him the way you have other things in common with him.
That night, offering a heart to Ezili, a heart and a gift of lace, rosewater, your own blood, you ask Ezili if you can simply have his name -- ask for a name but open your cavern of fear to her as well. You stay there, kneeling in front of the fire, until one of Ezili's comes over and kneels behind you, wraps you in his arms.
"I ain't under her reins," he says, "but she gave me a message for you. She's pleased with your offering of gratitude. She loves you the way she so rarely loves one not her own. She thanks you for being so open to her, to her people. And so she offers this vow, an offering in return: you will meet him. You will be ready for him. He is going to want you the second he sees you -- probably even before that. You have him, be content with that. What use are names when you already know his soul?"
He leans forward, presses his lips to your hair, and you smell Ezili clouding around the two of you, can feel the strong embrace of her protection.
"Thank you," you tell the fire, and even when the man and his patron leave, you stay there, in front of the fire, watching the flames until they burn down to ash. You'll wait. You can wait, having been given this promise. Papa's not good at patience but Ezili knows how to suffer silently in increasingly hopeless desperation.
He'll come. That's all that matters.
--
Ezili swore; that's the only thing you have to hold onto when the desperate need to know him, to touch him, grows deeper and deeper in your gut, a longing that will only be put to rest when you see him, when he sees you. Jeanne helps, reinforces Ezili's promise every time you need to hear it, but she helps with other things, too. She teaches you but she also walks along the river with you in silence when you need company but not conversation. She drags you around the state to meet other enclaves of your kind, from Lake Charles to Shreveport to the far southern bayous of Grand Isle and Port Fourchon and Venice. She teaches you how to cook like you're a native, talk like you're a native, live like you're a native.
She is the only one you need when you get the brusque letter from your father, forwarded to you by Mama Mel, and learn that your mother died on a Wednesday. In New Orleans, the sun shines miserably hot on your swollen eyes and damp cheeks and Jeanne is there to offer Ezili's love like a blanket and a hot cup of tea on a humid winter night.
Foucault's Pendulum is the only book you read for the next fifteen months.
You skip the Brazil chapters every time.
--
The lessons come hard and fast -- just as you do when you're allowed to touch yourself. You don't have sex with anyone once Jeanne begins your education and you ache for it, constantly kept on the edge by Papa, under the tightest control you can afford yourself thanks to Ezili's teachings. You surprise yourself most of all when you manage to dance the banda without giving in to the manic need for physical connection. You think Mama Mel would be both proud of you and horrified by what you're willingly doing to yourself, even if it is for the sake of your chosen.
While the lessons go on, grow in both difficulty and reward, the other hours of your days pass in a haze of part-time jobs and aimless wandering. You develop a fondness for certain parks and spend time propped up against trees, sometimes reading, sometimes just watching the lives of other people come so close to intersecting with yours before veering away. Your nights fly by as you dream every moment you're asleep -- mostly of him, though sometimes you catch the trail edges of other people's unconscious thoughts.
There are times when you can't express how much you feel like the pendulum but even the pendulum returns to a fixed point, never leaves its starting position, really. You're more like blood -- which only makes sense, considering what you are and who he is. You follow someone else's path, over and over and over again, cycles of life and death and rebirth, and there's no escape except for startling shocks of horror that you flinch from, remembering that one day of decision outside Mama Mel's.
The pendulum, the blood, the book, the offerings -- they're enough to see you through while you wait for him. They're enough to be your companions as you live for years in the back of your cousin's home before you buy a place, fix it up, plant dozens of dame de coeur rosebushes, move out. They're enough to cling to as you work for other people, sometimes your cousins, sometimes not, for years before you open up your own shop thanks to the information you've gathered, the connections you've made, the things you know. They're with you as you make a life of your own, here, in New Orleans, when years ago, in the early days of your Creole-tinged life, you never thought something so unlikely was at all possible.
--
Jeanne and the rest of Ezili's group teach you three things in those years:
First: the banda is passion, more than anything, and under Ezili's guidance, passion can be channelled, transmuted, revised. Without the outlet of sex, you turn your passion into perfection. Your house is always clean -- to a more sterile degree than it really needs, though he approves -- and your shop remains stocked -- both the front and the back. Perfection becomes the killing of animals and the splitting apart, saving, of their bones and tongues and blood and hooves and beaks and eyes. Perfection becomes an arrangement to the myriad contents of your shop, nothing out of place though it may look haphazard to anyone else. Perfection becomes a deeper delving into Papa's gifts so that every charm, every amulet, every spell and gris-gris and hex bag that you make and send out into the world works and works well.
There are times, true, especially in the early days, where the process threatens to take you over, turn banda-inspired passion into clinical obsession, but Jeanne is always there to pull you back from the edge. She is your closest friend, your confidant, and if she wasn't so reluctant to touch one who has a chosen, if she was Papa's instead of Ezili's, you think perhaps the two of you would have mastered each other in every single way. Still, you learn the depths of her beauty when she's helping you slaughter animals, learn the breadth of her humour when she takes you out drinking, learn her curiosity and patience and the seemingly-endless wells of love she possesses as the two of you exist, side-by-side and yet so different.
Second: the banda is joyous abandon and there is no hiding when one dances the banda. In order to fit in better, you learn something of subtlety; in order to deny the advances that your appearance invites, you learn to avert attention. Jeanne is the one who teaches you this, who takes you into shop after restaurant after boutique after gallery after bar and expresses a different level of sly coquetry in each one. You learn how to slide beneath people's notice and politely deflect interest from Ezili's children, because in Papa there is impulsive recklessness and laughter but Ezili understands sorrow -- how to cause it, how to end it, how to feel it, how to suffer through it.
This is a hard lesson for you to learn. Raised as you were by Mama Mel and your cousins in Texas, having the companionship of shades and spirits and him for so long, sorrow is not something that comes easily to you. You live with lust and joy and sacrifice and there is no sorrow in any of these things. When you receive word that the banda has taken Mama Mel, though, you begin to understand. Underneath your rage and helplessness and the empty black hole in your chest, sorrow hums. Sorrow builds, an incessant bass tone that grows in pitch and volume until it's all around you, the only thing around you apart from him.
On the nights you cry yourself to sleep, he holds you tight, rubs his nose in the back of your neck, wipes the tears from your face with his tongue. "Thank you," you tell him, and he takes the words from your mouth and feeds back his own with every touch of his fingers.
Third: the banda is communal, a rite to be shared, a spark meant to be set alight by the family and then progress through everyone until it's a raging fire, spreading wildly and out of control. Jeanne teaches you control, as she promised the first night you met her, but you come to an understanding of the personal all by yourself -- yourself and Ezili.
You have always been at your most comfortable in a crowd. In childhood, there were neighbourhood friends and invisible imaginings, in your youth there was the family, since coming to New Orleans you have Jeanne and her cousins, as well as a handful of others, more distant, who grow to like you the longer they know you. The only person you're completely comfortable being alone with is him -- of course, even then, even when he's gone, you have Papa. After this lesson, though, you learn to enjoy the silence. You grow to appreciate the honesty and intimacy of interactions when it's just you and another person. You learn the power of words when you've always known the power of the mind, thanks to Papa, and the power of the body, thanks to the banda.
The perfection to your spells and the yearning ache that drapes over you come together in this awareness, expand the gifts Papa gave you and lines them with emotion. A woman comes into your shop; thanks to Papa, you know why she's here and what she needs. Thanks to Ezili, you know how to listen to her story, how to empathise, to give her both what she needs and what she wants. Your gift of picked-clean bones and spiderwebbed-dirt and nail clippings painted red and a curl of hair from a three-days-dead child will serve her well. Making the gris-gris serves you well.
--
The pendulum swings and you along with it, tracing out your own mystic rose over the city with blood instead of motion, on streets and porches and hardwood instead of sand.
You go into bookstores and hardly open your mouth except to show off the manners Mama Mel taught you, charming the city's grand-dames and listening to their stories. You go to the bars and make friends with a rowdy bunch of dock workers, letting Papa speak through you, all crass and lewd, telling jokes like you're living the banda through words instead of the body. Sometimes -- at first when you're really drunk but later, not so much -- you sing, something you have always been self-conscious about. Eventually you become comfortable on stage, even enjoy it, and you sing the blues with the emotion of a man who's still waiting for the love of his life to appear. You work in your shop, front room and back, selling knick-knacks and gris-gris, selling old things with tales of their own and hex bags to stop any tongues from wagging in the future.
Life is good -- and then Katrina comes.
The less said about that bitch, the better -- even after the water goes down, when the city dries out and people start coming back, New Orleans feels like it's caught underwater.
She does bring you one thing, though, propels one bright and shining light into your life in the midst of all the loss and rage and anguish permeating the city along with the humidity. Six months after the levees break, with everyone and everything still in a hopeless sense of shock, he comes to the city. He's near, at first for a day or two at a time, and the spectre of his presence starts to turn the clinging aura of loneliness surrounding you into space for him to occupy. It's not long before he moves to the city for good, probably the Marigny, possibly St. Roch or the south Seventh.
You long for him.
Maybe it's because he's close, now, or maybe it's a gift from Ezili, but he never leaves you alone. You wake up to the press of his lips on your forehead. You work on repairs, restock your shop, feel the urge of the banda in every square inch of your body while the nearness of his body eats up the air around you until he's the only thing left to breathe, to see, to love. He sits next to you on the porch swing when you have your evening hot toddy; he tangles his feet with yours under the kitchen table when you eat breakfast. When it's time for bed, another day done, another day closer to your inevitable meeting, he gets into bed with you, lies on his side and pulls you close, kisses the back of your neck, one hand splayed possessively over your belly. Sometimes the phantom echo of his fingers reaches down into your pyjamas, coaxes out the suppressed banda, and those nights are delirium, end with you feeling so very, very used. You love it. You live for it.
He's always there. Once, you may have thought that would feel suffocating, stifling. It isn't.
--
Years of waiting. Years of holding tight to the promise of your chosen. The sinking realisation that you're going to die in a hurricane before you ever get to meet him. The even more depressing reality of life after Katrina. And then it's six months after the bitch blew through and he moves to New Orleans. Your hope is restored.
The pendulum turns and time passes. One year goes by; you start to feel him even outside of his ever-steady spiritual presence at your side. A subtle haze surrounds him, an aura of something approaching pure silence. After a lifetime hearing everything around you, the quiet is a blessing. You bask in it, bask in his presence, the way you can feel him with you but also the way he's sinking into this city, making it his own, connecting with the instincts of neighbourhoods and parks and water.
The months go by fast but when he's been in the city one year and one week, and hasn't crossed your path, you pour a bottle of rum over a child, slash its throat. When the blood's drained and you've swallowed down most of it, you light the corpse on fire. You very rarely offer by yourself but you're the only one to see the flames jump and there's no need to wait before you settle in front of the fire; sometimes it's nice to do it this way.
"Please," you say to Papa. "Please," you ask Ezili. They listen, they are with you, they know what you're asking for when you can't even find a way to put it into words. Papa's answer is silence. Ezili sends a dove diving into the fire. It burns and its flesh smells like rosewater amidst the flames.
You sit there until the fire dies down to ash, then even longer. The sun's just appearing when Jeanne does, ghosting close to you, standing behind you and keeping watch. Her presence is a comfort and you'd thank her for it but you're not ready to leave, not with Ezili's feather-kisses on one cheek, the bloody grin of Papa's mouth on the other, the taste of him on your lips, so familiar.
You've been on your knees for hours; you can't feel your feet and need Jeanne to steady you once you rise. "You could have asked me for company," she says, pulling a bottle of water and a protein bar out of her satchel, pushing them in your hands. "I would have offered with you."
"I know," you tell her, once you've downed half the bottle, wiped your mouth on the back of your arm. "But I wanted -- I don't know what I wanted," and you laugh uncomfortably, looking away from Jeanne to unwrap the protein bar.
"Oh, darlin,'" Jeanne murmurs. "It's all right. You ain't gotta explain. We've all been there. Though," she says, with a light and easy laugh that echoes in the dawn, "maybe not all of us get so messy." You shove the protein bar down your throat, practically swallow before you've even chewed, and then follow that up with the rest of the water. "Come on, Jenny," she says, taking the wrapper and plastic bottle from your hands, shoving them back in her bag. "Let's get you home, yeah?"
You inhale deeply, exhale even deeper. The scent of charred bone and burned meat is everywhere. Funny how even that can be a comfort of sorts. "Yeah," you say. "I don't think I'll open the shop today."
Jeanne takes your hand, tangles your fingers together and squeezes. "I think that's prob'ly a good idea."
--
Two years.
The waiting is killing you but this is the way of it: a blessed must never seek out their chosen, must allow the chosen to realise the connection between them without interference. As much as you want to ignore that rule and go to him, show up at his door like a present ready to be unwrapped, you don't. Ezili made you a promise, first through one of hers and then through the dove. You trust Ezili, you do -- maybe even more than you should -- but there are so many nights you spend wrapped in his arms, wishing they were real, wishing the dick you sometimes feel moving inside of you would leave more than phantasmal come in you, would leave your hole bruised-red and puffy, would leave your throat raw and turn your lips swollen. You have had him as a ghost lover for years -- the only reason you survived when you evolved the expression of the banda within you -- but you want him in your bed, in your arms, in your body. You want the temperature of his skin and the moisture of his breath and the noise he'll make as he fucks you, as he takes from you what you are so desperate to give him.
Two years, one month. You leave New Orleans to visit cousins in the Acadian parishes and think about staying there. You don't. Part of you wants to, but you don't. Instead, you offer a female child.
Two years, two months. A man comes into your shop asking for a charm to draw fortune his way. You toy with the idea of crossing it, reversing it, cursing it. You don't. Part of you wants to, but you don't. Instead, you offer a casual acquaintance.
Two years, three months. You finally meet him. You were ready to offer yourself.
--
--
There's a cast-iron kettle sitting in the corner of your shop, shoved halfway behind a pair of ornate glass vases that catch the light and steal the eye. It doesn't fit well with the other contents of your shop -- coloured crystals and carved wood and worn-out pages -- and you're not sure why you have it except that Ezili told you to buy it and Papa told you to pay the pretty penny the previous owner asked for. Clear orders, and Marie whispering at you as well, so you did, brought it back to the shop and stuck a tag on it, let it seep out of your mind. You forgot about it completely until someone walks into your shop and heads straight for the corner.
This man -- you can't get a read on the tenor of his mind. That never happens, it's impossible, and you're intrigued and worried, attracted and cautious. You track his movements through the shop with every ounce of intensity in Papa's gifts that you can pull from your bones. Even then, when you lower your barriers and reach out, you slide across the surface of where his mind should be, get trapped like a fly in a web of emptiness and silence.
It's nothing you've felt before and the newness of it makes your blood beat hard. You're not used to silence; this is -- intoxicating.
You're still trying to parse what you're feeling when he comes to the counter and stands in front of you. Tall, taller than you, which is not something you encounter very often. Long, floppy hair, left down to turn wavy in the humidity and free to tangle in the breeze. His eyes -- you're not sure what colour they are; they seem to move from green to brown to gold in turns and you wonder if they reflect the speed of thoughts moving through his mind. You want to know every inch of him, lick the sweat beading on his forehead, taste the meat of his inner thighs, bury your nose in the trail of hair leading from his navel to his dick.
Marie purrs in your ear, an old Creole that's more French than English and lacquered over with bayou slang. Your grandmother's behind you, one hand on your shoulder. You wait for his touch and realise that he's gone.
Guilt floods through you but it's not enough to quench the longing, the want, the marrow-deep need that lets loose a deeper banda than you can believe even exists. You take precious moments to fight it back, to not lose yourself to the red haze of lust covering your vision, to stay on this side of the counter, stay on the stool, gain control over your tongue.
"Find everything you needed?" you ask. Your voice is steady, thanks to Ezili. The banda pounds in your head.
"I've been looking for one of these for a while," he says, and his voice rings in your ears, down the back of your throat.
You swallow it down, savour it, and smile at the taste. He smiles back at you.
"Glad I could help, then," you say, and you want to add how much you want to help him, in what ways you want to help him, but you hold your tongue. Instead, you tell him the price, watch as he rifles through his wallet to pull out a few crisp bills.
His hands are wide, fingers long and graceful in the way of the Baron's family, but you've never before wondered what the Baron's fingers would feel like inside of you, opening you up, teasing you. He offers the money and when you reach out to take it, your skin touches his.
Sensation, knowledge, an instant bond -- everything happens in that one split second, everything, anything that will ever mean something, an everything so total that you're one mind in two bodies, one soul struck down the middle and left bleeding, waiting for the moment when it joins back together, becomes whole, becomes the pair of you, becomes heartbeats and breath and footsteps in sync, becomes.
You jerk back with a flinch, can't help it, and you fumble your way through the rest of the transaction as the realisation hits: he is your chosen. This one, this is the man that Ezili chose for you with Papa's blessing. This is the one who wraps you in his arms every night. This is the one whose desires and inclinations impact you more and deeper than even Mama Mel saw, back in the early days. This is the one you know better than you know yourself -- of course there's nothing of his mind for yours to feel; you are a joined pair, a matching set, the chosen and the one lucky enough to be blessed.
Holy fuck.
He wants to ask, you can see that, but he doesn't. You've always known that your will is no match for his self-control, his determination, his stubbornness, but seeing it in person makes your knees weak. Your dick throbs and you plaster a smile onto your lips, drinking in the sight of him. He takes his change, leaves with a polite nod, disappears out the door.
Two years, three months. You can't breathe, you want to run after him, you want to tell him everything and beg him to stay with you, swear you'll do anything to keep his favour. You don't. You want to, bless Papa and Ezili and the whole goddamned lot of them, but you don't.
Instead, every beat of his heart echoing in your throat, you call Jeanne, tell her, "I've met him."
"I'll be right there," she says, and it's not even a second before you hear the dial tone of an ended call.
--
As soon as she opens the shop's door, she stops, sneezes, says, "Darlin', if all you did was meet, please, for the Mother's sake, give me a warning before you two fuck. Shit." She shakes it off, waves her hand in front of her nose for couple seconds, then steps inside, lets the door shut behind her before she switches the sign from 'Open' to 'Closed.'
She comes to the counter, leans against it, elbows on the surface, and asks the one question that matters. "Does he know?"
"Not yet," you answer. You know him, can feel him at your side again, can smell the humour as he bends, rubs his nose in your hair and wraps his hands around your throat. "He doesn't know, not yet. But it's close."
Jeanne smiles. After a moment, you smile, too.
--
You see him around the city, physical self haunting you as much as the spiritual side of him has from your childhood -- a constant companion except for when the two of you are in the same place now, as if his soul can't be parted from his body when he's that close to you. You never make eye contact, never talk, never interact in any way, but everything inside of you is aware of him, of his presence, and the shade at your side delights in the goosebumps that rise on your arms when you feel him nearby and glance around, searching.
He watches you -- gorgeous vulpine eyes hiding a hunger you can practically taste -- over the top of books when you make your rounds of the old shops with their lace and must and the grand-dames twittering at you. They call you Mr. Ackles, a few of the ancients pat your hands or your shoulders and make you drink demitasse after demitasse of chicory coffee. He watches this, takes it in, clenches his jaw when they touch you but softens again when they coo over you, glares with intent when they say that you are un pauvre homme, to be sans amour. They chide you and say that being alone is not allowed, not for one such as you, monsieur, not where there are so many young ladies who might be found pleasing, and you feel, rather than hear, him snort. You wonder if anyone else can read the direction of his thoughts so easily, from just a twitch of his eyebrow or a harder-than-normal turning of the pages.
You don't interact with him but you see him looking over the books you touch, lifting them to his nose and deeply inhaling once you've moved on. You wonder if he can taste your need, growing and spiraling throughout every part of you, growing more and more every day. The part of him that stays with you, that has always been with you, it seems, from the beginning, bites the mark of his claim after you leave and his eyes no longer eat you alive. Those are the nights he leaves you aching and sated with it, limp in his arms and oh-so-comfortable.
He watches you from the corner of dark, smoke-filled bars, listening as you sing, eyes glittering above the liquor he drinks. It's harder to ignore him here; Papa's riding loose and easy in your bones and all you talk of is sex, all you see is him, his lips, his eyes, his hands cradling shot glass after shot glass, all of them looking so small in his fingers, the ones you so desperately want around you, inside of you, part of you. You give no sign that you notice him. You think this intrigues him.
Intrigue or not, it amuses him enough that those nights are tender -- as tender as he gets -- and he leaves you panting and breathless and sticky, debauched beyond even that first night the banda expressed itself in you.
You are filled with the urge you to go to him, to learn him, to fuck him. You want to. You so desperately need to. You don't.
--
Two years, six months after Katrina, a lifetime after Dallas, an eternity waiting from the moment of your birth, he comes into your shop again. It's a Thursday, rain in the air and a traffic jam on the river, a vase of yellow roses on the counter to liven things up, and you're reading the book again, tracing over your mother's notes on candomblé with a light touch. The rain does this to you, sometimes, now that you have Ezili's sorrow: it makes you melancholic for the days before you took your first step into Mama Mel's hounfor, when you had family and friends but all you needed was your mother's smile.
"A lodestone, little wolf," Marie reminds you.
You're about to ask her why she's bringing this up now when you've read the book without her commenting on it a thousand times already -- but then the bell on the door rings and a wide river of desire fills the air between you and him.
"Afternoon," you say. Marie is laughing behind you as you add, "How's the kettle working out?"
"You're going to have to put the book down soon enough," Marie mutters.
You take a deep breath, keep your eyes focused on words you cannot comprehend, not as he comes closer, not as he says, "Does the Queen send her greetings?"
Your heart leaps in your chest, you can't stop it, because he knows, now, this means he knows at least that you are not your own, that there will be more to your lives than just the two of you.
"Polite," Marie says. "A good façade. Yes, little wolf, give him my greetings." Marie ruffles your hair.
When you look up, his eyes are fixed on you. You set down the book, feeling like nothing more than prey in a predator's eyes, and straighten up because you are Jensen Ackles, the only one in fearless Papa's family who has also been adopted by fierce Mother Ezili. Death is nothing to someone like you. You embrace it, live it, love it.
"It took longer than I thought," you say, and he counters the implicit accusation with an apology. The tone of his voice goes straight to your dick, electric fire spreading out, flooding your spine, your nerves, your blood. The banda leaps up, spins through every inch of the channels you've so painstakingly marked out for it, and would have you reeling if you didn't have the flashpoint-stab of pain from nails digging into your jeans to focus on.
You ask him what he wants -- it's a stupid question, you'd give him anything -- and he closes the space between the two of you, sets two Tupperware containers of blood onto the counter. You look down at them, look up at him, and say, "Let's talk."
He follows you into the back room and you sit down and watch as he touches everything, glancing fingertips over glass and eyes over wood, paper, fabric. Your mouth is watering for him, for just a taste, something, anything, and the blood he gives you, your serial killer psychopath, it's good, far too fresh for how long it's been, but you don't care. You tug him close, wrap your thighs around his, lean up as he bends down to meet you, and you could almost cry with having him here, finally, after all these years.
Technically, you're pushing against the edges of Ezili's rules; he should have been the first one to make the move, the first one to initiate physical contact. Ezili doesn't seem to mind, though. She burns through you the way only Papa has done before, turns the banda inside of you to a lush, tempting thing, an embodiment of her and Papa, mixed together, the blessings they've both given to you over the years, a rhythm that doesn't so much scream for flesh as moan for sex.
You can feel him like this, so close, so nearly one, and even though the taste of blood settled a fraction of the roaring need, your mind reels. You cling to the one anchor in the storm of lust that's raging through you, an anchor you've had almost as long as Papa's had you: him. You kiss, you open your mouth to him, you moan against his teeth, you want more, more, more; you are one soul split into two bodies and there is nothing you want more than to make your flesh match your soul.
When he thinks a question, you answer without hesitation. "Death," you say. "And sugar. You feel like St. Louis Number One on a moonless midnight and a wild run across Canal when all the lights are green and it's raining." There's no other way to describe the taste of him, no other way to encapsulate the danger, the joy, the daring, the element of death at every second but the promise of intoxicating power should you survive and make it to the other side of the street, clothes drenched through, rain dripping from your hair into your eyes and down your face as you laugh, turning your head to face the sky, arms open wide to embrace the cold, the wet, the dark.
He looks pleased. You wonder if he followed your thoughts -- all the words you didn't say -- as well as you can follow his.
--
You talk, negotiate over corpses and blood, speaking about people as if they're nothing but meat and gristle and bone. That means something to him and he's worried, for a moment, that you might judge him for it. Then the tenor of his thoughts changes and you get a glimpse of everything he's been imagining. It makes your head spin, gives him enough time to step back, away from you, and the banda rages, screams to get him back, to fuck him, to let him fuck you, to join together in the most primitive of ways, the ways you've been dreaming about, craving for long, lonely years.
You're still connected to his thoughts. You're able to see, first-hand, how possessive he is, how territorial and protective and, to a degree, controlling he'll be. He wants you -- all of you, with as much pent-up desire as you feel for him.
For a very brief moment, you can imagine it, see what it will be like, know how it will feel, and there is no better proof that you have changed from that boy who shut out Papa and nearly left the family, because you want it, too. He's a teasing, sly creature, one who wields pain and pleasure in equal amounts, blood and come, lust and, one day, love. You're past ready. You've been waiting too long already.
He asks you to wait just that little bit longer.
Coda