Butterflies in Heat (25 page)

"Slow down," came her commanding voice over the earphone.

In the clearing, almost completely obscured by dumps of banana trees, was a wooden shack, with a patched tin roof and unpainted walls.

"Pull in here," came her second order.

"Are you getting out?" he asked, after he'd opened the rear door for her.

"No, darling," she said, "not this morning." Reaching into her pearl-studded purse, she carefully handed Numie two one-dollar bills, fingering each to see that none had stuck together.

"What's this for?" he asked. The mystery was growing by the moment.

Leonora looked over to him. Should she tell? Bring Numie into her confidence? "For the voodoo queen inside," she finally said. "You can go right in—no need to knock."

"Voodoo?" He hesitated. Was Leonora crazy? "Just give her two dollars and split? Why, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Her reward, " Leonora said softly.

"For what?" Numie was determined to know. After all, he could be walking into some sort of trap.

Leonora touched her breast softly. A sharp pain was shooting through her chest. "When I was very young and all the other children were making fun of me—the ugly duckling, remember?—that sweet old soul in there told my fortune." The pain subsided. "Bless the dear heart, she's still alive."

"What'd she tell you?"

"It's a long story. Do you really want to know?"

"Yes, if I'm going in there. This place gives me the creeps."

She gave him an extended look. "It was at a county bazaar to raise money for our boys in World War
I.
She had a little booth. Everybody was in costume. I, a gypsy girl." She paused a moment, trying to recall if she were beautiful then. "I still remember what the voodoo queen said to me" "You will suffer great hardship. But in the end you will triumph over your
enemies. You will go far in the world, dazzling friend and foe alike with your charm and talent. One day your name will
be
known in every corner of the earth."

"She told you all that?" Those lines sounded more like something Leonora would say, not some voodoo queen.

"Of course, she told it to me," Leonora said, her patience tested. She had been told something like that. Not the exact words, maybe, but close enough. "Do you think I just make up things?"

"No, but why the two dollars?"

"I give her that every week," Leonora said nonchalantly. 'Two dollars a week?"

"Naturally. You may think that extravagant for a fortune told so long ago. Back then, I paid a quarter. I've always been generous, as I've told you. It's a fault, I know."

Numie had just the opposite reaction. Leonora was about the tightest woman he'd ever encountered.

"Ever since I returned to Tortuga and found out she was still alive, living in this horrible poverty, I've paid her this gratuity."

"Why doesn't she go on welfare?" Numie asked.

"I've tried to get her to avail herself of public assistance, but she's too proud—and I, of all people, understand that." Leonora sank back into the leopard skin. "The only thing she has to live on is the money I give her."

Taking the money, Numie was heading for the shack, feeling he was part of some ritual between Leonora and the voodoo queen he didn't understand.

A tall shrub beside the front door shimmered and glistened, with bits of glass, mirror, and tinfoil tied to its branches. It reminded Numie of a Christmas tree. But what was its real purpose? To scare away evil spirits?

Inside the main room was dark and rancid smelling. Unpainted walls held a bizarre collection of voodoo artifacts. Pinned up was a double-page spread of a nude white girl, surrounded by pictures of animals. Underneath it was a childlike drawing of Satan, mounted on velvet. On a shelf rested dried chicken heads in Dixie cups. Held by a purple and gold ribbon were a group of chicken feathers, a collection of snake skins, and oddly shaped cutouts of bright tin.

On a carpet in the corner lay a huge beast of a mulatto woman. Her eyes were closed. No longer brown, her skin was almost elephant gray. Huge rings of colored glass covered every finger; and bracelets of brass and wood dangled from her neck and both arms. Purple lipstick, put on badly, coated her thick mouth. In one limp hand she held a voodoo doll. Her hair was a bleached-out yellow gray. Suddenly, she opened her eyes. They were like those of a caged animal, their vision cruel. With her long red-painted nails, she started to claw at the voodoo doll.

"Hi," Numie said. In the dazzling heat, he stood fascinated. "Miss De la Mer's here. Parked right outside" His nervousness was growing. 'Told me to give you this" He placed the two dollars on a low brass table holding a group of lit candles.

Her stare continued.

Not knowing what to say then, Numie looked up at the ceiling. A pumpkin-sized mirrored ball revolved back and forth, casting a psychedelic illusion, as it picked up the reflection from the candlelight below.

Propping herself up on the cushions, the woman raised her head. "Whose errand is it you running?"

"Miss De la Mer's." He felt he was really looking at a freak now. "She's right outside waiting in the car."

"Let the white bitch wait!" She shot him a look that could burn skin.

At first, he thought he didn't understand. "What did you say?"

"You heard me the first time. Let her wait." Her face twisted as she raised herself higher on the carpet. "That white bitch, coming around every week with her no-good two dollars. Giving me money—like I'm a common nigger. She don't know who she's talking to"

The wind from the ocean blew a broken shutter, sending it banging against the shack. Numie jumped as if hit. "Just who are you?"

The woman's face was filled with contempt. "That's none of your business." Then her face softened. "Except I'm proud of who I am. I'm Erzulie."

"That's a strange name."

"Not strange at all," she practically hissed.
"If
you wasn't so dumb, you'd know that's the name of the Haitian Venus. But I don't have time to start educating the messenger boy of that white bitch."

Numie was growing increasingly irritated.
If
Leonora had a feud going with this queen of the freaks, let Leonora handle it. He almost turned away in disgust. But curiosity drew him into one more attempt to learn something about Erzulie. "She claims you told her fortune when she was young."

At this, Erzulie spat. "The bitch is older than lam." She wiped something off her chin. "She's got me mixed up with a woman who died thirty years ago." Erzulie spat again. "Besides, I'm no goddamn fortune teller."

"Why don't you straighten her out?"

She broke into a spasm of desperate giggles. "I've told her fifty times, but she don't believe me" Erzulie's teeth were yellow fangs.
It
was as
if
she'd sharpened them. "Said I'm senile and don't remember." That giggle again. 'Thinks I'm crazy, she does. She don't know she's the crazy one." Her voice echoed through the house.

The feeling was eerie. The rancid smell of the room was now penetrating to him. "I've got to go."

"Give her one message from me, seeing you're running a telegram service around here. Tell her one day I'm going to make a doll and get her!" Staring him right in the eye, Erzulie laughed loudly.

Even the hot sun outdoors, the blinding glare, couldn't blot out that crazed look.

Back in the Lincoln, Leonora said, "You took long enough. Was she grateful?"

Numie sighed. He'd run from one mad woman to another. "Sure was," he replied. "Couldn't live without your weekly gift."

"So many people, so many depend on me," she said, sinking back once more into her soft leopard skin.

In the distance was a playground, its meager grass slowly consumed in a dust bowl. Steel lids of garbage cans, smashed whiskey bottles, and old beer cans littered the grounds, along with popsicle wrappers.

In the back, a tangle of bushes propped up a sagging fence, on which a rusty Nehi beverage sign rested. Someone had tried to build a shanty, but had abandoned it. Tarpaulin layover the unused materials.

Leonora surveyed the scene. She feared
she looked tired today.
It
had been more than a week since she'd last slept well. At the playground she always liked to appear looking her best. "Our next stop," she called to Numie.

"Here?" he questioned, thinking he hadn't heard correctly.

"Here!" she said more firmly.

Helping her out, he led her over to a broken-down picnic table. In the distance, four boys were playing ball.

"The first night I met you, you said you liked to keep in touch with the young generation," he said. "Is this how you do it?"

Her tension was visibly surfacing, and his question infuriated her. "Don't
be
impertinent."

"Didn't mean to be," he said, fearing her anger. "I just didn't know you liked kids, that's all. In fact, I would have guessed the opposite."

A disturbing memory nudged her brain, but she was fighting its coming into focus. "I loathe children." The statement didn't seem quite complete. She added, "Especially one called Ruthie Elvina."

Numie surveyed the boys playing. "Then why did we stop?"

In the glare of the sun, she looked up at him, but chose not
to answer. How could she explain it to this simple hustler? She used to play on this very ground when she was but a young girl. A school had stood nearby, but it burned down. She hadn't wanted to join in the games, but her teacher had forced her. None of the other children ever wanted to play with her. The boys always made fun of her, always calling her a scarecrow. Slowly she ran her hands down her side, as if to assure herself of its curvaceous line.

The girls hadn't wanted to have anything to do with her, but they never jeered. The boys always did, though. She grew to hate them, considering them the cruelest and most heartless creatures on earth. Men were hardly better, but boys were the worse.

She got up and walked back to the car. Reaching the Lincoln before Numie, she opened it for herself.

At this point, a red-haired boy, fifteen or less, braked his bicycle at her side.

She raised her hands to her face to shield it from the dust. Who would dare intrude on this private moment of hers?

Tan and lean, the boy was wearing tennis shoes, a T-shirt,
and jeans.

Catching up with them, Numie contrasted the boy's openness to life with Leonora's elaborate dress and haughty manner.

"That your car, lady?" he asked.

Annoyed, she tried to control her temper. "Yes," she said stiffly, hoping the boy would go away.

"This is a pretty swell car, but I know an old Rolls-Royce that's better. Also this black chick I've seen has got a white Facel-Vega. "

That did it! Arching her back, Leonora glared at the boy. "My automobile is the finest on the island—a lincoln custom made in 1926.
It
has everything"

"Is that a phone?" the boy asked, peeking inside.

"An earphone so I can speak to my driver up front," she said. She'd decided to let the boy have a look. He couldn't be left with the impression that Lola's Facel-Vega was better than her limousine.

"I thought I knew a lot about cars," the boy said, "but I ain't never seen a car with a phone in it."

"It's not a telephone," Leonora said.

"Is that a real leopard?"

"Yes," she said coldly.
"If
there's one thing in this world I can't abide, it's imitation leopard skin"

The boy stepped inside, putting his knee on the seat, running his dirty hand across the leopard skin. 'Wow!"

"Do you mind getting out of my car and out of my way?" Leonora asked harshly. When the boy didn't budge, she seized his shirt and yanked.

The boy quickly got out.

That memory nudging her brain, she knew what it was.
It
moved to the forefront. This teenaged boy could be the grandson of the one of long ago who'd led the pack taunting her. The exact image, or so it seemed.

The boy stepped back. "I was just taking a look," he said, puzzled.

"Look some place else, " she said, climbing into the compartment. She slammed the door shut, narrowly missing catching the boy's fingers.

He jumped back. "What's the matter with her?" he asked Numie.

"She just doesn't want to be bothered, kid," Numie said. "Simple as that."

Behind the wheel, Numie pulled the Lincoln out of the playground. He called back to Leonora. "Just where did you get that leopard skin?"

"A famous novelist whose identity I don't care to divulge presented it to me," she said. "He killed the leopard on a safari in Africa. I took the skin, but turned down the proposition." She welcomed this opportunity to present a more glamorous picture of herself to Numie, after her difficulty at the playground.

Saying no more, Numie kept his eyes on the road straight ahead.