That Voodoo You Do

Everyone in Victoria Town knew the tall lime green house on Lorelai Lane — La Maison des Esprits — The House of the Spirits. A black flag with a skeleton wearing a top hat — Baron Samedi, Lord of the Dead — hung from the eaves over the wraparound verandah.

It was very island, with white-painted shutters against the insistent sun, white cane chairs on the verandah, and carved front doors flanked by two stone lions. A balcony with wrought iron railing hung off the east side of the house, and a tall cupola perched on the roof like Baron Samedi’s hat.

The house dated back to 1822. It was owned by Mama Queenie LeVeoux, a practicing vodun priestess, famous throughout St. Cribbens, the little mom-and-pop country recently given its independence from Great Britain. At 300 pounds, two inches under six feet tall, she was dressed in a red-and-yellow muumuu with a scarlet bandana around her head. Gold bracelets dangled from her wrists, and on the ring finger of her left hand was a gold and onyx ring shaped like an eye. It was said that she harvested bones in her private cemetery for voodoo rituals, and she sold voodoo paraphernalia to the tourists. She also provided other services, for which her visitor, a Mr. Sherpton, had come to see her.

“I need you to hex someone,” said Mr. Sherpton, middle-aged (he’d admit to 40), stooped slightly from the weight he carried in what he called his “grudge bag,” his usually pale skin bright pink, despite the Indiana Jones hat he wore over his graying crew cut. He’d come to St. Cribbens on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, sailing from his native Boston on the insistence of his nagging wife, Cherise, the object of Mr. Sherpton’s complaint. The idea of using voodoo on her had come to him when he heard about Mama Queenie, beloved and held in esteem, if not a wary respect, of the local people.

It was claimed that she healed people of dread diseases, brought the down-on-their-luck good fortune, and occasionally put the whammy on the deserving.

Cherise was deserving. She had it coming to her. Hadn’t she spent his money like water? Abused his ears with her magpie chatter? Given him a good-for-nothing loafer of a son who was a mama’s boy, away at college, but majoring in being a bum? He blamed her for Clarence, for spoiling the boy rotten. He blamed her for his miserable existence, married to a shrew of a wife, and fearing alimony if he tried to divorce her. He wanted to be rid of her. To that end, he’d try voodoo. He didn’t have the cold-blooded nature to murder her, or hot-blooded, either, for that matter, lashing out at her in a blind rage. He mostly held his tongue and suffered under the same roof with her. He loved his house, a big old Tudor-style semi-manse, containing a billiards room with a bar she’d tried to turn into a den, but he’d won that one. He’d worked for it, as he pointed out, making a pile in the insurance business, and he’d be damned if he’d let her drive him out.

“You want to put the whammy on your wife?” said Mama Queenie.

“That’s right,” said Mr. Sherpton, surprised that she knew the hexee, so to speak, before he even told her. “I want her out of my life. I want her gone.”

“What you want is a serious thing, ma son,” said Mama Queenie. “How has she hurt you?”

Mr. Sherpton recited all the harm Cherise had done to him.

“That’s just a bad marriage,” said Mama Queenie. She raised an eyebrow. “But you don’t want to pay for a divorce.”

“Bingo,” said Mr. Sherpton. “Listen, I don’t want to see or hear her anymore. She annoys the

hell out of me. I’ve grown to loathe the sight of her, and her big mouth flaps like a carp’s. She should disappear, if you get my meaning.”

The voodoo queen gave a slight nod of understanding.

“I can arrange it,” she said with a mysterious little smile.

“Great. Ah, how much do you charge for your, ah, services?”

Mama Queenie named a figure.

“A thousand dollars,” said Mr. Sherpton, who had the money but hated to part with it.

“A small enough price to pay, Mr. Sherpton,” said Mama Queenie, “for so large a … service.”

“Okay, I’ll pay it,” said Mr. Sherpton, with the added proviso that he expected results, or a refund for lack thereof.

“Results are guaranteed,” said Mama Queenie. Still smiling.

They went to Mama Queenie’s “setting room,” where she performed her alleged miracles. In the far east corner of the room was a 50-gallon terrarium containing a boa constrictor she used in ceremonies, and grinning masks hanging on the walls that represented loas, spirits of the dead.

Mr. Sherpton sat across from the voodoo lady at a round table covered by a snow-white cloth. Sitting in the middle of the table was a human skull, brown with age and burial, cryptic markings drawn all over it with a black marker.

“That’s Uriah Michel,” said Mama Queenie. “He helps me.”

The skull gave Mr. Sherpton a crawly feeling all over. She hadn’t just given it a name; Uriah Michel had been the name of the man she’d dug up in her private cemetery.

“Uriah is petulant,” said Mama Queenie. “Lazy bones, doesn’t want to work. He was a fisherman, always drunk. That’s how he fell into Emerald Bay and drowned. Don’t give me that business, paresseux.” She was addressing the skull.

Mr. Sherpton considered calling off what he was beginning to think was a sham, but changed his mind. He’d never been superstitious, and didn’t believe in that New Age (or Old, for that matter) nonsense, but he believed this woman was genuine. He couldn’t tell you why.

Mama Queenie asked for a picture of Mr. Sherpton’s wife.

He had a photo of Cherise on his phone, snapped while she was chasing her little pillbox hat in Boston Common when the wind snatched it and tossed it to the ducks. This was his second phone, the one with private information he hid from her. She’d have deleted the photo if she ever saw it. She hated to be embarrassed. He had a few more photos of her looking foolish, a pick-me-up he could secretly gloat over. He gave the phone to Mama Queenie.

She placed the phone in front of the skull — where he could see the photo, she said — and rested her beringed hands on top of the dirty bone.

Closing her eyes, Mama Queenie began to chant.

“Je suis aveugle et sourd à toi,” she said softly.

Mr. Sherpton wouldn’t swear to it, but it sounded like someone was whispering along with her.

Taking a deep breath, Mama Queenie said, “It is done.”

“Now what happens?” Mr. Sherpton wanted to know.

“You won’t see your wife again,” said Mama Queenie.

* * *

When he got back to his suite at the Diamond Inn, the swankiest hotel in St. Cribbens (it had a private bar and room service that catered to your every dietary whim), Cherise wasn’t there. She hadn’t left a note; there was no sign of her. She absolutely always left a note, even if she’d be gone for only a few minutes. The bed was unmade; she’d leave that for the maid. Mr. Sherpton wondered if Cherise was … no longer around, in the more permanent sense. Of course, Cherise might be elsewhere in the hotel, possibly in the spa, or walking on the beach. But a quick check failed to find her.

Did she take it upon herself to just leave? Take herself back to Boston in a huff? She was always in some kind of a huff. If she had, her clothes would not still be hanging in the closet. Had she been abducted?

The clerk at the desk said she hadn’t been to the lobby. “I notice things, sir,” he told him over the phone, and said Mrs. Sherpton had ordered some dinner from room service about an hour ago. Sherpton saw the tray and two plates, one empty, the other with cold fillet of flying fish congealed in a white sauce. Two glasses, one empty and one full of white wine, sat on the coffee table. She’d eaten dinner without him, and drank her wine, a perfect excuse to scold him for being late. “The least you can do is show up for dinner,” she’d say, and yak yak for five minutes about his lack of consideration.

Cherise lived for any chance to bring up his failings. Her take on being a good wife was to mold him into her version of a good husband. Sit up straight. Be more aggressive when it came time to ask for a raise or a promotion. He was vice-president of Mutual Insurers, but she wanted him to shoot for president. You’re such a slob. Are you going to wear that?

He entertained the idea that she might have gone to somebody else’s room. Voluntarily or otherwise. Now he was doing Alfred Hitchcock scenarios. If she was in somebody else’s suite, the hall cameras would have caught her on film.

She was a stickler for keeping appointments, even dinner, strictly adhering to the clock of decorum and proper comportment. One must observe the social niceties, the Boston blueblood setting the standards for the hoi polloi. She wouldn’t go out to a nightclub without him. She always let him know her itinerary, and expected the same from him. She hadn’t been any more mad at him than she usually was; they hadn’t argued, which didn’t mean anything, because even if they had, she would still leave a note. As if to say, You’re not getting rid of me that easily.

He thought to check the hospital (there was only one in Victoria Town), but if an ambulance had come for her, the clerk would have told him.

She was gone.

He almost giggled. She liked going out in boats. But once again, not without him in tow. Too bad. It would have been so sad if she fell overboard like that Uriah guy and drowned in Emerald Bay. He’d have had a fine funeral for her, and laughed like hell when it was time to give the eulogy.

“She was a nagging bitch,” would sum it up.

With a little skip in his step, Mr. Sherpton went to the coffee table and snatched up the full glass of wine, draining it to the dregs. “Don’t gulp it!” he could hear her say. No, wait. He couldn’t. No hen cackle, no complaints, no prompts toward his best behavior. “O frabjous day! Callooh callay!”

He lifted her empty glass — empty, how apropos — refilled it from the bottle sitting in a silver bucket with melting ice, and mock-toasted his not-even-once-beloved (he wasn’t even sure why he’d married her.)

“To Cherise!” he said to the empty hotel room. “Goodbye!”

Suddenly the fork next to the empty plate, cleaned of her dinner, jumped up and struck him.

What the hell!

How strong was the wine? he wondered. Did it contain some local hallucinogen the St. Cribbeans liked to spike their drinks with? The plate rose from the table, all by its damn self, and flew at him, missing, and thunked on the plush carpet, unbroken.

“Cherise?” he said tentatively, as if testing her name.

His plate flew at him, making a safe landing on the cushioning carpet, like the first one, fish and sauce splattering the white carpet fibers.

His flesh crawled.

“I need a doctor,” he said to himself, he hoped, but no, he was sure of it — she was here.

* * *

So she was dead. And her spirit had come back to haunt him. What else could it be? The voodoo lady must have caused her demise. Make her disappear, he’d said. Well, she’d done it. And now he was an accessory to murder, however hard it would be to prove. Forks don’t throw themselves. Cherise had always been a utensil thrower. She’d throw her cereal spoon at him at breakfast when he wasn’t paying attention to whatever codswollop she was coming out with. She was letting him know she was present.

I need to get out of here, he thought, clear my head. Look at the situation logically. He didn’t believe in ghosts, or this voodoo stuff for that matter, regardless of whether he’d taken a chance

on hexing Cherise. Seeing was believing, wasn’t it? He’d seen what he’d seen.

He needed to think. Take a fishing excursion. That was the ticket. They were planning to go on a charter boat later. It might do him good to inhale the sea air and pretend to fish for tarpon or tuna or some other scaly creature he had no interest in. Cherise was the one who liked to fish. You got away with it, Sherpton, he consoled himself. Just not far enough away.

In the lobby he saw the clerk, Randall was his name, a tall young fellow with high hair and skin brown as his loafers, decked out in his navy blue blazer with nametag: Hi, I’m Randall. How can I serve you? Randall was standing behind the check-in counter, having a conversation with someone … who wasn’t there.

Randall seemed to see him, or her. He nodded once or twice, speaking as if there was a person standing right in front of him. The clerk waved him over. He wondered if someone was calling him from Boston. But why wouldn’t they phone him direct? Reluctantly, he went to the counter, asking the clerk what he wanted. He hadn’t meant to sound surly, but he didn’t offer an apology either.

“Mrs. Sherpton,” the clerk said to the empty space next to Sherpton, “I think it’s better if you talk to your husband directly.” He was apologetic and a little embarrassed. He laughed. “Couples have spats all the time,” he said in an off-hand way that implied he was used to the things couples got up to, wink-wink. “Yes, ma’am, yes, of course.”

He turned to Sherpton.

“Your wife,” he said, “says she’s tired of being ignored. Please, sir, I am not a marriage mender. Kindly answer the lady. You’re causing a scene.”

He was, in fact. Guests were staring in his direction, pretending not to be interested in the little brouhaha going on at the counter. Sherpton frowned.

“You see my wife?” he said.

“Of course,” said Randall, looking at him as if he was drunk. “She’s right there.”

Maybe this guy was psychic, could see spirits. Could anybody else see her?

Sherpton looked where Randall was looking, and jumped when someone pinched him.

“Ow!” He rubbed his arm.

That was one of Cherise’s little tricks when he wasn’t paying attention to her, like throwing things, and calling him out. “Alan, I’m talking to you!” she would yell.

“Please,” said Randall, “I don’t want to have to call the manager.”

Keeping his head, Sherpton apologized and quickly walked off.

“Please, ma’am,” Randall called after his fleeing form, “keep your voice down. You are disturbing the other guests.”

Ma’am? Who the hell was he talking to? He didn’t hear anything.

It would be just like Cherise to yell at him in public. She was immune to what anybody else thought about it. She thought of herself as upper class. Other tourists were goggling at him. He hadn’t made any noise, was just walking, walking toward the automatic doors, the nearest exit.

Under the porte cochere, he waved for a taxi. A pink ’50s Oldsmobile with big fins pulled up, and he got in the back seat. He told the driver to “Go!” Where didn’t matter. He just wanted to get away from the hotel. “Head for Jamaica Wharf,” he decided. He’d charter a boat, maybe head for Aruba.

“How are you folks today?” the genial driver asked. He was a burly man wearing a yellow Hawaiian shirt with hula girls on it. He smiled in the rearview mirror, showing a gold tooth.

“My name is Humphrey, I be your guide to the sights. You folks from out of town?”

Folks? He had the cab to himself. Something jostled his elbow. Jesus, she was following

him!

“Stop here, driver!” said Mr. Sherpton.

The cab lurched to a stop, and Sherpton leaped out, throwing some bills at the driver. He ran back toward the hotel. They’d only gone 50 feet, so it was a short run. Sherpton went through the automatic doors, which opened again a few seconds later, though nobody seemed to be there to activate them.

“I will have to call security,” said the clerk, Randall, getting on the house phone as Sherpton headed for the elevator and his room. What in the hell was he going on about? he wondered. No running in the lobby? People were gawking again, but their eyes were moving as if they were watching something, or someone, swiftly dashing across the lobby behind him. Cherise had been a dedicated jogger, had often nagged him into jogging and other exercise, prodding him into a “healthier lifestyle.” She’d even run in marathons. He’d never outdistance her. Could a ghost run?

Now he was scared. She was taking her revenge on him, clinging to his quivering carcass like a limpet. He dodged into the crowded elevator, praying she hadn’t reached it before the doors closed. He got to his room and slammed the door behind him, locking it. A few seconds later, he heard someone angrily banging on the door, then there was a click — she’d had one of those plastic cards that unlocked your room, hadn’t she? — and the door swung open.

“Cherise,” he said, “I’m sorry! I can’t see you.” He frantically looked around. “I swear, I didn’t mean for anything to happen to you. You’ve got to believe me.”

There was a rustling of stationery at the ornate Chippendale desk, one of the antiques the Diamond Inn provided for VIP guests, and a pen suddenly rose in the air. The pen scribbled a note and set it down. Cautiously, he went to the desk and picked up the paper.

“What do you mean you can’t see me?” said the note. “I’m right here.”

He explained about his visit to Mama Queenie, almost babbling, said it was all a lark, he was just playing, and who knew this voodoo stuff worked?

The pen rose in the air again, pouring out a torrent of invective aimed at no-good husbands who never cared for their wives; of the hurt he’d caused; how many years of her life she’d sacrificed; the regrets she suffered because of him. She started on another piece of paper, continuing her rant, while her husband glanced at the exit and made for it like he was straining toward the finish line at the Preakness.

In the hallway he saw two uniformed security guards heading with purpose for his room. They gave him a look, as if they were about to talk to him, but he just nodded and kept going. Rather than wait for the elevator, he dashed down a stairwell used as an emergency fire escape, bolted through the lobby again (sorry, Randall), and once again sprinted out through the automatic doors.

If the security people were after him, he didn’t notice. He waved down a cab, jumped inside as if a lion was on his heels, and told the driver to get moving.

“No worries, man,” said the taxi driver, not as ebullient as Humphrey, but who cared? The guy didn’t indicate there was anybody else in the cab with him. Sherpton thought to ask but kept quiet. If she was there, she’d let him know. Cherise wasn’t the shy and retiring type.

The cab driver asked, “Where to?”

Mr. Sherpton gave him the address of La Maison des Esprits.

* * *

He sat at the round table in Mama Queenie’s sanctum. He hadn’t made an appointment, but fortunately the big lady was available.

Sherpton found himself quivering. All the trappings of the vodun priestess now had significance for him, including the skull she used in spells. The dirty brown globe with the missing front tooth looked like it might whistle through the gap in its dentition. It wouldn’t have surprised him.

Sherpton poured out the ordeal he found himself in, pleading for the voodoo adept’s help.

“She’s haunting me,” he said plaintively. “I wanted to be rid of her, but now I’ve got more of her. Cherise invisible is like Cherise to the tenth degree.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Please, undo the hex. I’ll pay whatever you ask. If you can bring her back from the dead, then maybe she’ll leave me alone.”

Mama Queenie’s eyes crinkled. “Your wife is not dead, Mr. Sherpton.”

Sherpton looked nonplussed. “Her ghost is tormenting me,” he said. “I mean, she’s not there, if you follow me, but she is.”

Mama Queenie shook her head. “Do you remember what you said? You didn’t want to see or hear your wife ever again. That can be taken in more than one way, Mr. Sherpton. I just used my own interpretation. I made you blind and deaf to her.”

Sherpton quelled a surge of anger. They both knew what he’d meant. In his most private thoughts, he’d considered the possibility of the perfect murder. Just in case there was something to this voodoo. A tragic car accident, a sudden heart attack from a needle through a doll’s chest.

Cherise hadn’t quite disappeared, but there was no point in quibbling. She was worse than a ghost. She could cause him no end of trouble. He would look like a lunatic if he told people he couldn’t see her if she was plainly visible to everybody else.

“Undo that voodoo you do,” he said in resignation.

Mama Queenie asked for his phone, with the picture of his wife, and placed it in front of the skull.

“I put you back with your body when you finish the job,” said Mama Queenie to the skull. “Stop complaining, Uriah. He says there’s no rest for the wicked.” She gave Sherpton a subtle smile.

Placing her hands on top of the skull, Mama Queenie chanted, “Ce qui est fait est maintenant défait.” What is done is now undone.

“That’s it?” said Sherpton.

“Your wife is restored to you,” said Mama Queenie.

Another thousand bucks gone, and Cherise not gone, but in this case it was worth it. He’d just have to get a divorce, give up the house and half his money, as he should have done in the first place. In the first place, he should have stayed a bachelor. He couldn’t say it would be good to see her again; then again, there was a certain relief in that. But he was leaving, so he’d have to take Mama Queenie’s word for it that everything was back the way it was before he’d met her. He’d confessed what he did to Cherise. There was already no living with her, and he hadn’t wanted to in the first place. He’d tried to kill her (indirectly), and now there was nothing to do but start over. Change his phone number, find a new address, and quietly disappear.

Mr. Sherpton didn’t even bother to pack his bags. He skipped the hotel and went right to Churchill Airport, where he winged off an hour later for his native Boston.

* * *

Another visitor came to the big lime green house on Lorelai Lane.

Cherise Sherpton found the address easily enough. In his fear, Alan had given her the name, Mama Queenie LeVeoux, and the cab driver knew the way to her place. Apparently she was famous. She couldn’t believe he’d resort to voodoo. She couldn’t believe she was here, either, but what was sauce for the goose …

He’d tried to blot her out of his life, of all the nerve. As if she was going anywhere. The only yoke he had around his neck was marriage. A husband needed to be molded, if not held on a leash. She’d been too soft on Alan, coddled him. Oh, but that was going to change. He had potential. She’d spent the last 20 years trying to get it out of him. Alan was a project she just kept adding on to; a rough version of what she thought he could be. She told the voodoo queen what she wanted.

Miss LeVeoux nodded.

“Do you have a picture?” she asked.

Though she had met the husband, it went better if you used a visual prop. Cherise handed her a photo of Alan, the one she’d taken on the ferry boat to Martha’s Vineyard, his face turning green from sea sickness. She liked to show it to her friends.

Mama Queenie put her hands on the skull sitting in the middle of the round table and began to chant. “J’ai l’oeil sur toi.” I’ve got my eye on you.

* * *

Cherise wanted to go out to dinner. There she was, wrapped in the mink stole he’d bought her for her 38th birthday, her athletic form wrapped in a blue sequined dress that must once have seemed attractive to him. She had him wear a tux and made sure his shoes gleamed. They were going dancing, too. He’d try to like it, try to seem enthusiastic about spending another week in St. Cribbens. It looked like they were going to spend a lot of time together.

She refused to give him a divorce. He’d planned to leave her, buy another house somewhere outside of Boston, so he could still be close to his work, start a private bank account, and have the place, and his life, to himself. The trouble was, he couldn’t break away from her. Hours after his plane landed at Logan Airport, he found himself landing once again at Churchill Airport in St. Cribbens, barely remembering buying a return ticket on Air Caribbean.

He was never out of her sight, 24/7. Not for want of trying. Wherever he went, there she was. “Till death do us part,” she reminded him. How long could that be? Twenty, thirty years?

They were going out on Emerald Bay in a charter fishing boat this afternoon. If he jumped into the bay, he thought, would she follow him?