Crossroads and Unholy Water

Dieudonne

 Dieudonne In Dieudonne’s room, my finger foraged in crumbling holes for small matted balls of her own hair placed there to attract protecting spirits. Her bed exuded the unblossomed smell of her life as Grandmother’s spinster maid. Her enormous breasts hung above me, and she walked away from my disbelieving glances, balancing her weight gracefully. I shivered before I climbed onto the straw chair to investigate the faces. They were gathered high in a single frame beneath the screened-in vent. Old and young faces she had arranged in rows of six, passport photos for trips they never took. Old and young black faces of people who did not come to visit, except a godchild sometimes, a girl with large bows tight around stiff braided pigtails, fanning out wide like her skirt. She advanced shyly on skinny legs, to kiss her childless aunt. At Grandmother’s house on Palm Sunday I discovered, in the downstairs bathroom, blood between my legs. I ran upstairs to my mother. It is done, she said, I would be fifteen soon and the time was right. From the balcony she yelled out to my father standing by the poinsettias, supervising  the building of a garden stairway. Yes, he answered, after a long silence. I missed the scented darkness in Dieudonne’s old room, her virgin body and selfish elation, her black and white rows of waiting ancestors, those for whom she did not yield. I sat and stared. Obsessed. I can bear a child. Pass on. I am to pass. ...