Ayida #3
Madame leaned back, folding her hands slow.
"Was it a stranger to you?" she asked, her tone even but heavy.
That question hung in the air, thick. I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
I didn't have an answer. The voice didn't feel foreign.
It was eerie, familiar, like a half-forgotten song I used to hum in childhood when I didn't even know the words.
It didn't sound like a stranger, but it didn't sound safe either.
Madame watched me closely, her eyes narrowing, reading the thoughts I didn't say out loud.
"You know," she said finally, "in some way, shape, or form, we all still paying for what your mama did.
" That stung. Not because it wasn't true but because I'd been trying my whole life not to think about it.
The words pressed against my chest, unlocking memories I'd kept chained too long.
I could almost smell my mama's perfume again, sweet gardenia and cheap liquor.
The scent of a woman who wanted to be more than what life let her be.
I could see her standing in front of the cracked mirror, lipstick bright, eyes soft but tired.
She used to hum when she got ready, low, and shaky, like she was singing to ghosts that lived in the walls.
Mama had a way of loving men like they were wishes whispered fast before morning could change its mind.
She was twenty when she fell for Fidel Baptiste.
Everybody in the neighborhood knew his name.
Mr. Baptiste had clean money on the surface like businesses, real estate, a family that posed for pictures.
But under that, he ran gambling houses and liquor spots from one end of town to the other.
Power made him magnetic. It also made him cruel.
My grandma told Mama to leave that man alone.
Said his money was soaked in bad spirits.
Said he had a wife who worked the roots darker than most men could understand.
"Ou ap jwe nan dlo fon," she'd warned her.
You swimming in deep waters, child. But Mama just laughed.
She always thought she could outswim anything.
For a while, she did. She wore the gifts he bought her, silk blouses and gold jewelry that clinked like proof she mattered to somebody.
But when she got pregnant with me, everything changed.
Fidel stopped coming around. He sent money through cousins, nothing more.
I never got to have a bond or relationship with him.
Just stories, folded up and passed around like rumors wrapped in newspaper.
Six months before Mama died, we saw him in the store.
He was with his wife and their children, shopping like Sundays were sacred.
He looked right through her. Through me. Like we didn't exist.
Something in her broke that day. She started burning candles at strange hours, whispering prayers that weren't to any spirit I knew.
She'd stare into mirrors like they were windows, her lips moving without sound.
Sometimes she'd wake up screaming, swearing she saw a woman's face behind her in the glass.
Madame Laurent tried fixing her, but by then it was too late.
Whatever had been following Mama had already found her.
They said she died of a stroke. But we knew better.
Fidel's wife had been a conjure woman, deep in dark work.
Her power didn't end when her husband's lies did.
When Mama crossed her, she answered with something that didn't need hands to hurt.
I was eight when Mama died. I remember Grandma making me bathe in salt water, crying into her prayers. "Bondye, pa kite pitit la peye pou peche manman li," she said. Don't let the child pay for the sins of her mother.
But I did. I've been paying ever since. Every time I looked in the mirror and saw her face in mine.
Every time I tried to love and it slipped through my hands.
Every time madame and her friends told me I might never have children and couldn't explain why.
Mama's curse didn't end with her. It just changed shape.
Sometimes, when I'd wake from one of those dreams about Noles, I'd swear I could smell Mama's perfume again and I'd wonder if she was warning me or haunting me.
I looked back at Madame then, my throat dry.
"I just don't feel like it's related. The St. Jeans on they own journey and timeline remember?
" I repeated her words that she said to me when I told her me and Noles were getting married.
She nodded her head sipping from her cup.
"Mm-hm," she hummed, taking a long sip from her cup.
"I did say that." The room felt smaller suddenly.
The smell of cinnamon and orange peel thickened, clinging to my skin.
I held my cup with both hands, needing the warmth to anchor me, to keep me from drifting into the past or panicking about the future.
Then Madame set her cup down with a soft tap, the sound sharp as a heartbeat.
She lifted her eyes to mine, steady and sharp.
"Your husband know you won't be able to give him life? "
Her words hit me like the room dropped three degrees.
My breath stalled. My spine stiffened. My heart jumped and stumbled at the same time.
I snapped my eyes toward her, shock and fear slicing through me so fast it almost made me dizzy.
"Ma..." I whispered, my voice barely there.
She didn't blink. She just stared straight at me, the kind of stare that stripped a soul clean of excuses.
The truth of her question hovered in the air like smoke that refused to clear.
Apart of me wanted to pretend I didn't hear her.
Another part wanted to lie outright. But the biggest part, the part that had been hurting quietly for years, felt seen in a way that damn near made my throat close.
I wanted to block it out of my mind and not believe it, or even argue that my womb was fine, that she didn't know everything, that curses die with the people who caused them.
But since mama died I had a pain deep in my belly like something had been taken from me before I even had the chance to offer it, that part knew. It was true. It had always been true.
I lowered my gaze, watching the tea swirl in my cup like it was trying to reveal something in its ripples.
Tears stung the back of my eyes, hot and sudden, and the shame that rose behind them felt like a hand around my throat.
"I..." I swallowed hard. "I never told him.
" Madame let the silence sit there, heavy but not mocking.
She didn't comfort me. She didn't soften her face.
She let the truth breathe first. "Why not?
" she finally asked, voice still soft, but firm in that way she always carried her knowing.
I shook my head, staring at a dark knot in the wooden table, letting my tears fall quietly without wiping them. "I didn't want to say it out loud," I whispered. "'Cause once you speak something, it becomes real. Becomes yours."
"And you didn't want to claim it," she said.
"No," I whispered, voice trembling. "I didn't." Madame leaned back in her chair, her body shifting like she was bracing herself against grief that wasn't hers.
"You think a man like Noles, full of death, full of destiny, walking with two worlds on his shoulders.
You think a man like that don't deserve to know the whole woman he's tied to?
" My tears fell faster. "I didn't wanna lose him," I choked.
"I didn't want him to feel cheated. To think I was less than what he deserved.
" Madame shook her head slowly. "You think your womb is your worth? "
"No," I whispered. "But maybe a little. Maybe sometimes." She reached out and covered my hand with hers, not gripping, not prying, just offering her palm like a bridge.
"Ayida," she said gently, "the fruit he want from you ain't just one kind.
Some women bear children. Some bear light.
Some bear legacy. Some bear men back from the edge of death.
You think that's small?" Her words struck something inside me.
Something raw and tender that I'd been hiding under ritual and prayer and exhaustion.
I pressed my lips together, trying not to break again.
She kept going, her voice a soft hum of truth.
"You carrying him through the dark right now.
You feeding his soul every night. You standing between him and something that want him for its own.
And you doing it without complaint, without rest, without telling the world you hurting. That's fruit too, Cher. That's sacred."
I wiped my cheeks finally, the tears warm against the back of my hand.
"But what if he wanted—" She cut me off with a lift of her hand.
"What if he wanted you. Exactly as you are.
Ever think of that?" I swallowed. My stomach tightened.
Truth is, I never did. I always thought love came with conditions.
That if I didn't meet every one of them, I could be left the same way Mama was, forgotten when the morning came.