What He's Been Missing (17 page)

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Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: What He's Been Missing
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“Rachel, I—” Ian tried.
“No, wait. You keep saying something's missing between you and Scarlet. That you're missing something. You're right. She's not your equal. Scarlet is just some schoolgirl. A pretty face who knows big words. She's fake. A phony. All those lies about going to the Congo. It wasn't even real. I checked into it. She was lying. She's not right for you. I am. It's me. I'm the one for you. I'm what you've been missing.”
“Rachel, stop! I—I wasn't going to say that to you,” Ian said, getting up from the bench. “I was going to—how could you say those things about Scarlet? You looked into the program? You did that without telling me?”
“I was trying to protect you.” I got up and stood in front of him.
“Rachel, I wasn't going to say that I didn't want to marry Scarlet. I do want to marry Scarlet. I was going to tell you how important you are to me. And that I want you to be by my side as my friend for the rest of my life. That I wanted you to know that things won't change between us.”
“You weren't—”
“I'm in love with Scarlet. Even with her faults,” he said. “She loves me more than anything. And I'm going to marry that woman tomorrow. And you know what? I'm thinking after listening to everything you just said, maybe you shouldn't be there.”
“What? Ian, I was just saying how I felt—”
“Yeah. That's what I'm afraid of. If you felt all this time that Scarlet was lying to me—and you had proof—why would you keep it from me? Why wouldn't you have told me sooner? You wait until the day before my wedding to break this shit out to me? You're not my fucking friend. I can't have you at my wedding.”
“Whoooa! Calm down, Ian. You're going a little too far.” I tried to take his hand, but he snatched it away.
“No, you went too far this time.” He started walking away.
“But, Ian, you have to listen to me,” I tried, grabbing him, but he pulled away angrily
“No, Rachel. You listen to me. I can't do this, stand in between you and my future wife and try to pick sides. I'm not that kind of man. If I marry Scarlet, I have to pick her side. And after hearing what you just said, I know you don't support her, so you don't support us. My mind is made up.”
“Ian, don't do this. Don't walk away. I didn't mean to—I was just trying to—follow my heart.”
6
“What She's Been Missing”
#Wheredobrokenheartsgo? Ian left me standing alone at the Pier. I watched his back for so long, praying he'd turn around and say he was just kidding or he'd changed his mind.
But he never stopped. He never turned around. And soon he was gone.
My heart was suffering. It sank into my toes and I felt every ounce of blood in my body pump toward my eyes to accommodate the outpouring of sad tears that fell once I couldn't see him anymore. What had I done? How had I misread someone I knew better than anyone else in the world? And the price I was about to pay was so high. I couldn't show my face again. Not anywhere.
I started wiping my tears and turned around, feeling like someone was watching me. Like someone saw everything. The band was still there playing their upbeat music. The crowd was getting bigger and ready for the night party. Everyone was smiling. Dancing. Having the time of their lives. To them, this was paradise. To me, it was hell.
“Baybee, yah lost?” the old homeless woman with the cup asked. She'd replaced it with a bottle of gin I supposed she'd purchased with her earnings.
“No. I know where I'm at,” I managed.
“Hum . . . Yah take dis. Sip some.” She handed me her bottle. “Yah lak like yah need it more den ole mi.”
“No. I'm fine,” I started and tried to give the bottle back, but she wouldn't take it.
“Drink, baybee. Yah can bury yah trouble 'til morning,” she said. “Chase it away a lil' while longer.”
I took a deep breath and snapped my head back. I chugged the gin with my eyes closed.
“Das right, baybee. Wash it all away!” She rubbed my back. “See if Monsieur Gin gon be de marshal on yah trouble.”
I took another chug and finished off the bottle. The gin pushed the rest of the tears out of my eyes and I wrapped my arm around the woman to keep my balance.
“Easy nah, baybee,” she said and so fast her voice started to sound like lyrics over the street music.
I felt like my legs were dancing and I didn't know if my feet were taking me to the center of the crowd or the back. I needed to sit down. And fast. But my legs were moving. The music got louder and glimpses of the old woman and the bottle came in and out of view.
“You looking for a good time, sugar?” a fat white lady in cowgirl chaps and no underwear asked beneath a sign that read LAISSER LES BONS TEMPS ROULER.
“Huh?” I focused my vision and looked around. I was far from the crowd and the band. The old woman and the bottle were nowhere. I remembered giving her twenty dollars.
“A good time? You need a good time?” The woman pointed at the sign. “I think you do! You look like you do.”
“I just need to sit down,” I said. “Figure this thing out. Why he left me. Why he doesn't love me. I thought I had it all planned.” I was leaning into the woman. Breathing all the dirty gin in her face.
“Yeah, this is the place for you, sugar. Go in and talk to the pastor. He'll set you right.”
“Oh, this is a church?” I started crying again. I whispered into the chubby naked club promoter's ear, “I have sinned. I have coveted my neighbor's husband. Well, they're not married yet, but he won't marry me. He won't. No one will. You understand now?”
“Sure as hell don't, sugar,” she said. “But that ain't my job. See the pastor at the bar. No charge for you tonight.” She opened the door and the next thing I remember I was sitting at the bar and crying into a bottle of bourbon as I told some black man with one dreadlock hanging from the top of his head, a bull ring in his nose, and a priest's collar around his neck all about Ian and my troubles.
“He was my best friend! My best friend. And I betrayed him!”
“I don't know, sweetie,” he said, flicking his bar towel over his shoulder. “I kind of feel like you betrayed yourself long before you betrayed him. And maybe you betrayed him because you've been betraying yourself for so long.”
The bourbon kept me from understanding anything he was saying. I just wanted forgiveness. For a miracle. For me not to have to walk back into my life and live it without Ian.
“What?”
He took the bottle from me and poured another glass. “You're looking for love. That's why you're acting like you're acting. How you're acting. You just want what he has.”
“I do! You're right. I want love. I want someone to love me!” I looked at an older, gray-haired woman with crossed eyes sitting next to me at the bar smoking a sweet-smelling thin cigarette and told her a little bit about Ian as we passed the cigarette back and forth. My mind started floating away with the puffs of smoke.
“So you have to get what he has,” pastor/priest said, shaking his little dreadlock in a way that made me laugh.
“I can't! I can't just get love,” I slurred. “If it was that easy, we'd all have it!” I raised my hands and nearly fell out of my seat.
“Whoa!” the woman with the cigarette said, pulling me back to the bar. “Well, you're in the right place. This is New Orleans. We can all have whatever we want here.”
The pastor/priest traded sharp eyes with the woman. He started wiping the bar again. Shaking his head.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I know where you can go to make your trouble go away,” the woman said.
“Go away?” I looked up into the ceiling like I was watching my problems rise with the smoke in the bar.
“Go anywhere you want. You pay and it'll happen,” the woman said.
“Pay who?”
“Don't tell her,” pastor/priest jumped in. “She's in no condition to deal with—”
“No! I want to know! I need to know,” I said. “I want to fix everything. Make it go away.” I remembered Ian's back to me. His words.
“Well, if you tell her, I don't want no part of it.” Pastor/priest walked to the other end of the bar.
“What's wrong with him?” I asked.
“He's not from here. He don't understand the ways of the people here. I was raised in the Quarter. Been running in this swamp since those old bells used to ring in the graveyard. People like him don't know those times. They only know what they see on TV. What they hear.” Her voice was so mysteriously seductive. Wickedly inviting.
“Tell me how I can make my problems go away. What I have to do.”
“You go see Tante Heru in the back of the Quarter. In her old shack. You tell her what you want. You make an offering. She'll see that it happens.”
“What? Tan-what?” I laughed. “You trying to send me to some psychic? A fortune teller with a crystal ball? I don't believe in that stuff.”
“She ain't no fortune teller. And she ain't no psychic. She's a roots woman. Been working 'round here longer than time. She born in Treme—in Place Congo—right in the dirt. She has the power of the ancestors in her pot. She can make any magic she wants to.” She blew a puff of smoke in my face. “You go on and see her, sweetheart. She'll make you all right.” She poured me another glass of bourbon and the next thing I remember, before I blacked out, was being carried through the bar—the pastor/priest and his bullring under one arm and the naked fat woman in the chaps under the other.
“Take her to Tante Heru!” the cross-eyed woman yelled and cackled all at once. I was sure she was a nightmare and I'd wake up in my loft in Atlanta. Maybe everything was a nightmare.
 
I felt like I was sleeping in a plastic bag and had just taken my last breath. There was no air. And something heavy was pushing into my chest. No. My face. All over my face. Like a warm pillow or balloon. One of those flat plastic water bottles Grammy Annie-Lou used to have hanging over the bathroom door. If I didn't fight back, this thing would suffocate me.
I jerked forward and realized that I must've been lying flat on my back because I couldn't move my legs. I tried to push back with my arms, but they were being held in place. I tried to open my eyes, but the warm covering that I now thought was flesh—that belonged to the hands holding me down—were completely blocking my view.
“Let she go now, Kete,” an aged and mysterious voice said. “She go die if you don't.”
“I will, Tante Heru, if she stop fighting me so.” This second voice was closer to me. Right near my ear.
“Baybee, you gon' haf stop ye fight, hear ya ma?” A soft, shaky hand was at my head. “Rest easy now. Relax, baybee. Ya wit ya Tante Heru now. Ya come look fa mi? Ya fine mi.”
I just stopped moving with that soft, shaky hand on my head. Then the hands over my arms slackened a little and the darkness around me disappeared as the covering over my face lifted. I peeked at two huge brown breasts that parted down the middle like ass cheeks and looked something like two smoked turkey butts. The farther they got from my face, the bigger they got. A dingy white peasant blouse that looked like it was worn more to showcase the ample breasts than to clothe them was a second thought right at the nipples. A face that was young and cute, fat and simple with brown freckles over the top of the nose sat on the neck above the breasts. She had stringy black hair and baby blue feathers in her ears. She smiled.
“
C'est ça
, baybee, rit. Nah, relax nah,” I heard, and remembered the hand at my head.
I rolled my eyes to the top of my head. “Tante Heru?”
“Good, so wi know who I is.”
From upside down and flat on the table, I saw a whole head of bushy white hair that extended on the chin and over the top lip of a blue black face that looked so ancient I was almost sure I was dead. Nothing like her could still be alive. Her eyes were almost gray. Almost. So many colors that it was clear whatever color they originally had been had long ago been washed away with time.
“Let she go now.” She poked at the young woman with the feather earrings. “She be right now. Right, baybee?” She looked back at me.
The woman let go and I sat up on what was just a long oak table with four uneven legs. Candle wax in all colors was smeared beneath me. It was hard, though, and looked like it had been there for some time. In fact, everything around me seemed old and hard and that it had been there for some time. There was a wall lined with shelves filled with glass containers and old coffee cans, jars, and some books. Dust was on every shelf. On everything. An old woodburning stove with two boiling pots that looked more like something out of a movie about New Orleans than something you'd actually see there were on the lit eyes. The only window in the room, a thirsty square that was kissed with years of dirt and grime, was cracked behind the stove. A single light bulb with a string hung above me, but it wasn't on and giving light. The light in the room came from the candles on the other table beside me.
“There,” Tante Heru said, after watching me gather my surroundings. “Now ya is good. Now ya kin talk to ya Tante Heru.”
“Talk?” I repeated.
“Wha ya want? Why ya come to dis place?”
“I love him. But he doesn't love me,” I said. “He's marrying someone else!”
“Ya wan Tante Heru to stop de wedding?” Tante Heru pointed her wrinkled and knotted index finger to something on one of the shelves and Kete ran to get it.
“No,” I said. “Not that.”
Kete stopped.
“Wha ya wan?”
“I want love. Real love. I want someone who wants to marry me. Not the man who wants to marry her,” I said. “I want what I've been missing: the man of my dreams.”
Tante Heru pointed in a whole different direction at a potted plant that was sitting on the windowsill behind the sink.
Kete went to the plant and there was noise that sounded like a garbage can falling over outside the window. Kete quickly opened what was left of a raggedy and stained old curtain over the broken window and cursed in French at whatever made the noise.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I didn't see,” Kete said. “Probably just some schoolkids. They be trying to spy on Tante Heru.” She said something in French and took a few sprigs from the plant. Handed them to Tante Heru.
“Ya come to auntie in pain, baybee,” Tante Heru said, tossing the sprigs into one of the pots on the stove. “Ya come fa ya love. I kin give it to ya.”
“Give it to me? From that pot?”
Kete put her hand out to me. “Fifty dollars. We take cash or charge. No checks.”
I almost laughed. But they both looked so serious.
“You're saying you can give me true love for fifty dollars?”
“You choose from three wishes. One ta make 'im come in de morning, two ta make 'im appear jes when ya need 'im, three ta make 'im go away,” Tante Heru said.

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