Spell For Sophia (2 page)

My skin grafts hurt as if they had been surgically attached yesterday, not twelve years ago. Phantom pain, Mam'zelle had called it.
Meth cook accident pain.

"As you know, She Who Guides Me is t’e spokesperson for six ot’er guides. T’ey checked seven t’reads of possible outcomes for you."

"What did they decide?"

"You mustn't let your parents or t'eir associates find you." A rib-cracking cough choked off Mam'zelle's words. She heaved onto her side. I swept up a faded orange bandana from the dresser and held it near her mouth. Mam'zelle doubled over, clutching her ribs. Tears trickled from her seen-too-much eyes and coursed across the broad expanse of her nose before dripping onto the pillow.

My ribs ached in empathy.
I lose everyone I care about, one way or another.

At last the coughing stopped and Mam'zelle wheezed air into her lungs. My muscles relaxed and I exhaled. Mam'zelle's watery gaze bored into me. She cleared her throat, a sound like bones scraping against sandpaper. I removed the bandana and folded it to hide the fresh spittle of blood. She closed her eyes and I stashed the cloth on top of the dresser next to her ancestor altar.

"Your parents will never forget—" she managed before more coughs wracked her body. "Not after what happened."

"Maybe they think I'm dead."
Or maybe they're heartbroken and sorry.

"T'ey or t'eir boss would have searched the ashes for your bones. T'ey know you're alive."

My face warmed. I closed my eyes against the memory of the lit match arcing through the air and igniting the line of gasoline. The flames from the first creosote bush ignited the next, and then the next… "I'll be ready," I said with false conviction.

"Good."

Sweat dampened my armpits. Three years would not be enough time for my parents or their boss to forgive me.
No amount of time will make them less furious or less dangerous.
My stomach seized as though I had drunk swamp water.
Maybe they are in jail or dead.

Mam'zelle shifted on the thin mattress. "Always wear t'e silver knife."

I patted the sheath at my waist. "I will."

"Now would be a powerful time to cut t’e psychic cords," she said. "It being t’e solstice and all."

My throat thickened. The hand-me-down sweater layered over my long-sleeved tee felt tight. I hooked a finger beneath the neckline and pulled it away from my skin graft.

Mam'zelle shook her head, a slow, sorrowful movement. "After all your parents have done to you."

I lowered my chin and closed my eyes against the rush of memories. The harsh hospital lights after the first incident; the nice nurse telling me, "It will be fine, baby." Though of course nothing would ever be fine again. The hospital had called the cops. And I had been placed in my first foster home.

My mind leaped forward to seventh grade.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
My eyes welled with hot tears. What had I been thinking when I'd seen my parents' picture? That they must have straightened out their lives, because meth heads don't have friends on social media? That they had changed?

"When you're ready, you'll find t'e strength to cut t'e cords," Mam'zelle assured me.

I hope so.

"You can't keep blaming yourself, child. You did what you had to."

"I know." I swiped my eyes with my baggy sleeve. The lie weighed on me like the lies I had told my best friend three years ago.

"You aren't thinking of looking for them, are you?" Ainslie asked as she handed me half of her turkey and avocado sandwich.

I glanced around the school cafeteria. "Of course not."

"Good." Ainslie held an organic apple to her lips. She was everything I wasn't — rich, honey-blond, gray-eyed, and dressed like the teen models in the fashion magazines. She'd never seen the inside of Juvenile Court or worn cast-off clothing from a foster parent's attic. "Because it would be insane. People like them never change."

Her words stung. "They might. You don't know."

Ainslie chomped into the apple. "Yes, I do. I'm the smartest kid in class, remember?"

"Second smartest. I got a hundred on the science quiz. You only got a ninety-nine."

I plucked at the sleeve covering my second skin graft.
I should be able to do it — cut the psychic cords so my parents can't find me.

"Do you remember how to do a binding hex?"

"Yes, ma'am. I have two poppets ready, just in case. Both stuffed with Spanish moss and five-finger grass."
And I hope to Mother Mary I never have to use them.

For days after Mam'zelle had first brought me to her home, I had sat on the wooden footbridge leading to the stilt house. The bayou had gurgled beneath me, slow and stinking of backwater. I had churned over in my mind all my missteps. I must be defective somehow, I had decided. Horrendous stuff doesn't happen to other kids.

Sitting on the footbridge, I remembered how my heart had cantered the day I had left my foster home and had walked toward town instead of toward school.
I'll just meet them for breakfast then be back before second period — third at the latest. Then I'll tell Ainslie after soccer practice that she was wrong.
They had changed. And we were going to live together as a family again.

Except it hadn't worked out that way.

"We should go someplace else for breakfast." Mamá rubbed her nose as she glanced about the parking lot. "Probably everyone knows you here, right? We don't want some nosy jerk calling the school and ratting on you for skipping."

"Okay. As long as I am back by second period so I don't miss Math."

Papá ruffled my hair. "Our daughter the brain. What are you now? A sixth-grader?"

"Seventh."

Before I knew it, I was in the back seat of their patched-up hatchback and Lamorinda disappeared in the rearview mirror. My skin grafts started itching. Papá maneuvered the car onto the freeway. We passed the neighboring town, then the one after it. Worry clenched my stomach. "Don't forget I have to get back to school."

Papá's fingers tightened on the steering wheel, bleaching his knuckles to the color of garbanzo beans. Mamá leaned forward in the front seat and stared out the windshield. "Sure, Sophia Maria. Don't worry. You always worried too much. Even as a toddler."

Her words hit me like a slap. "Where are we going?"

Mamá glanced over her shoulder. "To a little pancake place we heard about." She returned her gaze to the road ahead.

Too late, I realized we had taken the junction toward Livermore and Tracy. No way would we make it back before lunch. I leaned forward and gripped the back of Mamá's seat. "Please take me back. I've changed my mind."

"Relax, Sophia. We're just going out for breakfast." Papá checked the car mirrors. His right shoulder twitched the way it always did before a drug deal went down.

No, things hadn't gone as I had planned.

After three days of sorting out my thoughts on the footbridge, I had strode back into Mam'zelle's house and asked her to teach me magic.

Mam'zelle's cornrows had been wrapped up in a bright orange-and-purple scarf. It added nearly a foot to her petite height. She had crossed her arms over her chest.

"Why do you want to learn voodoo?"

"So I can have some control over my life." Maybe my parents had intended to stay clean. Find legal employment. Become model parents. Maybe they'd had no idea their former meth distributor, a man with pitted skin and hair like an oil slick, would be sitting in the red corner booth of the pancake house.

Maybe the path to Hell is lined with lies, good intentions, and lousy luck.

"Not to control ot'ers?" Mam'zelle had asked. "Or seek revenge?"

"For protection." I held her gaze for a second, then stared down at the candle wax on the scuffed floorboards.

Mam'zelle wheezed, bringing me back to the present. Her bony chest rose, then fell. "You got cords as well?"

I nodded. My stomach grew queasy at the thought of binding and controlling someone through magic. It reeked of bad karma, even if it was intended to prevent someone from causing harm.

"Good. Remember, in t'eir current state the poppets could represent anyone. For the magic to work on your parents or t'eir boss—"

"I'll need to add their DNA." I said. "Strands of their hair, fingernail clippings, drops of their blood—"

"Or dust from their footprints," Mam'zelle added. "Or their signature."

"Yes, ma'am. And invoke the Hermetic Law of Similarity, where an object can embody the characteristics of another object or being."

"You've been a good student." Mam'zelle's eyes grew watery. "I've sent for Breaux. He'll guide you out after I'm gone."

My heart dipped, then took flight like mosquitoes on the water. "Breaux is coming here? How did you—?"

Mam'zelle's eyelids fluttered. "Child, do you t'ink I need a phone or a computer to contact my grandson?"

"No, ma'am."
You probably got inside his head and kept your face in front of his third eye until he had no choice but to—

Mam'zelle chuckled, a surprising sound like a baby cheetah chirping. "T'at's exactly what I did. I sent him a message I knew he wouldn't refuse." Her brow furrowed and her gaze swung to the front door. "I should have sent for him sooner. He being all t’e way in California now."

A familiar pang stabbed my chest. None of us had expected Breaux to leave Louisiana for college.

Mam'zelle's chest rose and fell with a sigh. "You could do what Breaux did. Win a heap of scholarships and land a job on campus."

Yeah, right.
I turned away and blinked back the tears. A former foster girl with a seventh grade education and parents who were ex-felons would never be offered a scholarship. How could she imply such a thing?

When I faced Mam'zelle again, pride flared in her eyes. "Breaux has shining potential. Did you know he decided after Hurricane Isaac to become a lawyer and politician? You tell him not to squander his good luck and brains."

"I'll tell him."

"Or his hard-earned money. He's too generous. A virtue can become a fault, you know."

"Yes, ma'am." Guilt knifed me. Someone must have paid for the textbooks Breaux had given me.
What had he been thinking?
And what about now? Would Breaux's college be on winter break already? He shouldn't walk away from a new job.
Crap, Breaux. Don't let my problem mess you up.

Mam'zelle pinched my sweater cuff. I had dressed in white to keep Death away. A wild look entered her eyes and her voice grew urgent. "T'e gators will warn you if trouble is coming. When you hear t'em, get out as quickly as you can, Breaux or no Breaux."

"I will."
Gators in winter? Won't they be dormant and hiding in the mud to stay warm?
Maybe the wasting disease played tricks on Mam'zelle's brain. Or maybe the gators would be bewitched, summoned by one of her chanting spells.

I must remember everything she taught me.
I pulled back and glanced at the
nkondi
on the nightstand. When the hex illness had crept in on trickster paws, Mam'zelle had driven a nail into the spirit doll and burned a reversing candle.
"Send this dread disease back to its spell caster!"

"Who do you think hexed you?" I implored. "My parents? Maybe they traced me here." I clawed at the scarf around my neck.

"I don't think t'ey have tracked you this far. Your ancestors in Mexico protect you."

"But my parents and I share the same ancestors. What if they petitioned them first?"

"For t'em, only the shadow side would have come forth. You got Right and Light."

"Great. They get the guy who made human sacrifices atop the pyramid."

Mam'zelle choked on a cough.
Stop pressing her. Your fear is making her worse.
I had to be certain of one last thing. "Say my parents did somehow obtain magic or appeal to our ancestors. They would have hexed me, not you. Right?"

Mam'zelle didn't answer. Her ears seemed pricked to a sound or presence outside the stilt house. "She's coming."

I glanced at the door. "Who is coming?"

"Oya-Yansa, Queen of the Winds of Change
."
Mam'zelle began to sing in a reedy voice. Napoleonic French and African dialects flowed from her mouth. I snatched the African bell from the nightstand and placed it in her feeble hand. She managed a single ring, then resumed singing.

Three songs for every spirit.

Fear prickled my skin.
Thud, thud, thud, thud…
Dozens of dragonflies hurled themselves against the windows. The painted chicken feet swayed on their strings. My scarf flew off my neck and landed on the rattan chair in the sitting room. I forced back the scream rising in my throat.
Thud, thud, thud, thud…
The window over the kitchen sink splintered. Mam'zelle writhed on the bed, involuntarily flipping onto her stomach. Her legs, rigid and kicking, displaced the white sheet. I quickly covered her and flicked perfume from the nightstand onto the bedcover. The framed image of Saint Theresa fell from the altar and clattered onto the floor. The glass shattered, tearing the halo around the saint's head. Every candle in the hut extinguished, plunging the home into semidarkness. Smoke seared my nostrils then the back of my throat. The door banged shut. The wind stopped. The dragonflies ceased their assault.

My hands trembled as I searched for a match. My other senses heightened. The hut stopped creaking. The bayou ceased flowing. My fingers closed around the matches. As I scratched a flame to life, I flashed on the noisome combination of red phosphorous, acetone, and ammonia. The memory transported me back to the desert, to the undeveloped cul-de-sac, and the toxic smoke rising behind my parents' pink-and-white camper.

The mandrake pouch for prosperity and protection tumbled from its cord and plummeted to the floor. My body jerked.