We hurried home; a shaft of bright light and hope had finally pierced the dark clouds over us. When we pulled into our driveway, we saw a tall, slim black woman leaving the house. She wore a long red skirt, sandals, and a bone-white blouse. Her bracelets were made of animal bones, and her dangling earrings were silver embedded with what looked like cats' eyes. She glanced our way, but didn't pause. I saw she had a scar across her right cheek with a triangular cut at the top end of it right beneath her sharp cheekbone.

"Who the hell is that?" Daddy muttered.

The woman disappeared around our gate. We hurried inside and up the stairs. Mommy wasn't in the bedroom, but a can of brimstone was burning on each nightstand. The scent of sulfur permeated the air.

"What the . . ." Daddy snuffed them out quickly. "Where is she? What is she doing?"

"Don't yell at her, Daddy," I warned. "She's—"

"I know what she's doing. I know exactly what she's doing," he said and left the room. I followed him downstairs. Mommy wasn't in the sitting rooms, the study, or the kitchen. We finally found her in her studio. She was sketching on an easel, but on either side of her burned a blue candle.

"Ruby," Daddy said and she turned slowly. "Hello, Beau."

"What was that woman doing here? Why were you burning that stuff in our bedroom? And what is this with these candles?"

"I had to get us some good gris-gris and fight back, Beau. Don't be angry. I feel safe again. I'll start to work, too." She smiled at me, but I thought it was a strange smile, the smile of someone who was under a spell. Like Daddy, I wondered what that voodoo woman had done.

"I can't believe this," Daddy said. "Stinking up our bedroom . . ." He shook his head and then remembered why we had rushed home. "Anyway, we've got some good news. Pearl got Pierre to drink some juice."

Mommy just stared at him, that same strange smile frozen on her lips.

"Didn't you hear what I said, Ruby? Pierre has drunk some juice. Perhaps he can be taken off the I.V. soon. There’s light at the end of the tunnel," Daddy said, obviously annoyed that Mommy remained so unanimated.

"Of course there is, Beau," she finally said. "I knew it. It's because of what the voodoo mama did here. Don't you see? Nina's going to help us . . . from beyond." She lifted her eyes toward the ceiling. "She's going to help us."

"Mon Dieu," Daddy said. "I can't believe this. Don't you want me to take you right over to see Pierre?"

"Not yet, Beau. I'm not ready yet. Soon."

"I give up." Daddy threw up his hands. "You talk to her, Pearl. Maybe you can get her to regain her senses so she can visit her son and not act like a lunatic," he cried and left the studio.

"Beau's always been so skeptical," Mommy said. "But he'll change." She turned back to her sketch.

"Mommy," I said, going to her. "You can't bury yourself in these rituals and charms now. You've got to come with me to see Pierre."

"Not yet," she said. "There are still some things to be done. Otherwise I'll only bring him bad luck. He'll understand. Later I'll make him understand. You see I'm right, don't you, honey?"

I said nothing. I gazed at the sketch Mommy was doing. She was drawing Jean floating in the swamp. "Mommy . ."

She continued her work as if I weren't standing there. After a while I started to turn away, but she sensed it and reached for my hand. "You've got to do something with me, Pearl. We've got to do it tonight. Only you must not tell your father. I know he'll try to stop us; he just doesn't understand."

"What, Mommy?"

"We've got to go to the cemetery at midnight. Mama Leela will be there with a black cat. We will be able to speak to Nina and see what else we can do."

"Oh, Mommy, no. We can't do that."

"We must," she said, her eyes wild. She was digging her fingers into my skin.

"Okay, Mommy. Okay."

She relaxed. "Promise not to tell Daddy."

"I promise," I said. Now I was feeling as if I were making a deal with the devil.

"Good." She smiled and turned back to her painting.

I watched her for a moment and then left. I found Daddy sitting on the sofa in the office, sipping from his glass of bourbon.

"Can you believe your mother?" he asked as soon as I entered.

"She's having her own sort of nervous breakdown, Daddy. We've got to be sympathetic and indulge her for a while, until she returns to her senses," I added.

Pain flashed in his eyes. "I thought she would want to rush out to the hospital with me. Instead, she's burning candles, painting weird pictures, and mumbling about chants and gris-gris. I've got only one friend now," he said and lifted his glass.

"That's not any better than what Mommy's doing, Daddy. You've got to stop drinking," I warned.

"I know," he said. "Soon. Well, I have to attend to some business problems. We'll stop in on Pierre after dinner. Maybe Ruby will snap out of it and come with us."

I didn't want to discourage him, but I didn't think she would. "We'll see," I said.

Mommy wouldn't come with us to the hospital, of course.

The nurses told us Pierre had eaten some soft-boiled egg and drunk some milk. He still didn't speak or act as if I heard what anyone was saying, but we were all encouraged. It was enough to buoy Daddy's spirits. He was more talkative and energetic.

"You've got to come with us tomorrow, Ruby," he told Mommy when we returned home and found her in the sitting room listening to music and reading.

"All right, Beau," she said, giving me a conspiratorial glance. "I will."

"Good. Good," Daddy replied and looked at me. I could tell from his face that he thought things were finally turning around. "I'm going up to bed."

"I'll be right along, Beau," Mommy told him.

"Pierre has made good progress, Mommy, but he needs to see and to hear you now," I told her.

"I know, dear. And he will as long as you remember what you promised."

"Mommy . . ."

"I'll come by your room at eleven-thirty and knock softly. Be ready," she said.

I stared at her a moment. What was I going to do? Then I looked down at the book in her hands.

She was holding it upside down, just using it to stare at her own maddening thoughts.

"Mommy, it's too dangerous to go to the cemeteries at night. Daddy would be very, very angry at both of us, but especially at me. Please," I begged.

She gazed at me. "Okay, Pearl," she said. "If you don't want to do it, it's all right."

"But you're not going either, Mommy, right? Right?" I insisted.

"I won't go," she finally said, but I didn't believe her.

I pledged to stay awake and listen for her footsteps just in case.


7

  Beyond the Grave

Despite my urgent and great desire to do so, I had trouble keeping myself awake. I tried reading, but my eyes were drifting off the page and my head was nodding more and more. I told myself it would be easier to just-lie quietly in the dark, but almost immediately after I put out the lights and lowered my head to the pillow, my eyelids closed. The next thing I knew, I woke with a start and when I glanced at the clock, I saw it was nearly a quarter to midnight. If Mommy had come to my door to knock or if she had walked by, I hadn't heard her. I couldn't imagine her going out at night to a cemetery by herself. Confident I would find her still in her bed, I rose, put on my slippers and robe and tiptoed across the hallway to my parents' room.

The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it gently and peered in. The amber light of a half moon outlined the silhouettes of the dresser, lamps, chairs, and vanity table. I could see Daddy's head on the pillow, but when I looked closer, I did not see Mommy's. For a long moment panic nailed my feet to the floor. She must be in the bathroom, I told myself. I waited and listened, but there was no sign or any sound of her. I knocked gently on the door and waited for Daddy to lift his head. He didn't move.

I entered their bedroom and whispered loudly, "Daddy."

A heavy, resonant snore was his only response. I went to his side and touched his shoulder. I didn't want to wake him abruptly and frighten him. He might think the hospital had called about Pierre. But he wasn't responding.

"Daddy." I shook him. He moaned and turned over, still not opening his eyes.

The strong odor of bourbon reached me, and I saw the nearly empty tumbler on the nightstand. When I shook him again, more roughly, my father groaned and his eyelids fluttered but barely opened.

"Whaa," he said.

"Daddy, wake up. Where's Mommy?"

"Whaa." He closed his eyes and turned on his side. Frustrated but frantic about Mommy, I retreated from the bedroom and hurried down the stairway. I searched the rooms, all of which were dark, and then I peeked in the kitchen, hoping she had gone there to make herself some warm milk. But I found only the night-lights on and no one anywhere.

I thought for a moment and then hurried down to her studio. Even though it was dark, I could imagine her sitting there, so I flipped on the lights. My heart throbbed in triple time as I held my breath. She wasn't there, but her recent picture caught my attention. I drew closer to it and saw that she had added more detail.

It was a sketch of Jean's face on a ghostlike body floating out of the swamp, but vaguely suggested in the water below was the figure of a man, his eyes wide.

I studied the picture and then stepped back and gasped. This was the face I saw so often in my own nightmare; it was the face of Paul Tate, who was thought to have drowned himself out of grief when ,Mommy went to live with Daddy. It was a face that obviously haunted her as well.

I turned off the lights and hurried through the house to look in the garage, where my worst fear was confirmed. Mommy's car was gone; she had driven off to meet the voodoo mama in the cemetery in which Nina Jackson had been buried. Upstairs, Daddy was in a drunken stupor. What was I to do?

I dressed quickly and drove Daddy's car to the cemetery. In the glow of the moonlight the burial vaults took on a pale flaxen glow, and the shadows around them deepened, creating long corridors of darkness that wrapped themselves tightly around most of the ovens and permitted only the very tops of monuments to be seen. The darkness resembled a sea of ink.

I hesitated and then drove slowly around the cemetery. At first I saw nothing and hoped Mommy had gone someplace less ominous; but when I made a final turn, I saw her car near an entrance, and she wasn't in it.

My heart began to thump. I pulled up behind her car and reached into the glove compartment for the flashlight. Then I turned off the engine and the lights, allowing that sea of ink to rush in around me, too. A wave of anxiety washed over me and sent my throbbing heartbeat into my bones. My fingers trembled when I reached for the door handle and stepped out. For a moment it felt as if the ground beneath my feet had softened into quicksand. Every step toward the cemetery took great effort.

I turned on the flashlight and directed the beam down the corridor ahead of me, not daring to look back or to my left or right. With my attention glued to the ray of light, I walked on, listening, hoping to find Mommy quickly and get her out of here and home.

Suddenly the screech of a cat sent sharp shivers through my chest and made my stomach do flip-flops. Blood drained down into my feet. I stopped and waved my flashlight over the ovens, cutting across the stone figures, the engraved words, and the embossed faces of the dead. A second screech was followed by a snarl, and then all went silent.

"Mommy!" I cried into the night and waited for her response, but I heard nothing except the drumming of my own heart in my ears. "Mommy, where are you?"

A shrill laugh pierced the silence. It didn't sound like Mommy, so it sent me retreating a few steps. I spun around when I heard loud whispering on my right.

"Mommy, it's me! Where are you?"

The whispering stopped. I waited and then turned down another corridor. A few moments later the voodoo mama whom Daddy and I had seen leaving our house the other day crossed in front of me. She had a black cat in her arms. She didn't look my way. She walked into the darkness as if she had flashlights for eyes, and just as quickly as she had appeared, she disappeared. A moment later Mommy stepped out of the darkness, cupping a white candle in her palms, walking as slowly as a somnambulist, the glow of the candle turning her eyes into pools of gray light and making her cheeks glitter.