Good Intention

There’s no secret to voudun magic. This is all it is: bits of mud, smears of blood, spit, hair, fingernails, cornstalks. But also every day objects. Thimbles, needles, handkerchiefs, straps from backpacks, shoelaces, dried plants, scented candles. Objects have no power themselves, only what we give them. It all comes down to intention. Grandmere made them what they were, and sometimes made people what they were. But her clients made themselves victims.

This is what Grandmere says.

Voudoo can be terrible work. What I do, at least, and I dislike it on the best days. There are things in Grandmere’s world that are terrible company, that I can hardly stand to be near, to associate with, and there are things required of voudoo magic that I often wish I did not have to do. Grandmere refers to the things I do as reinforcement of the capitalist monopoly on voudoo. It’s a necessary monopoly, she reminds me. Voudoo pays the bills. Voudoo puts food in my mouth. So I make do, and I try to care for those that I can.

The mud could be reused. Magic stuck to clay in a way it did not with mud, and so the mud because something new. It was shapeless except for one leg. I rolled it between my hands and stretched it gently. It needed a hipbone, and another leg to keep it company. I held the image in my head of a faceless man. I was not to know what person it would become- only Grandmere would know.

The magic had to know what it was, and Grandmere had to know what it was and who it was. When I was younger, I likened her to a funnel. Channeling the magic into one place. Rather, she was a pen, I’d realized eventually. I shaped the mud as vaguely as I could and wished good fortune into it. All the good fortune would not stop Grandmere if she took to the mud doll herself, but good fortune might make them reconsider before they spoke against her, or pause for breath before they said something they would quickly regret.

Or it might do no good, and I was only giving Grandmere the instrument of their pain.

I had finished both legs, hipbones not included, when Grandmere’s client screeched down the driveway. The driveway was really just a long piece of land that had been cleared of only the most disruptive flora. The tired still bit over small, savage bushes. The car he drove said he did not have time for this rubbish, or any rubbish, and he would be taken to speak to the manager. When he pulled to a sudden stop a few feet from me, throwing dust over my hands and the doll, he climbed out of his car. He slammed the door as though a good slam would be just good enough to solve all his problems. His white shirt said he’d like to know how I could make it up to him, and his expression said he wasn’t leaving until he could speak to the most important member of staff because didn’t we know who he was?

His name was probably Greg, or James, or Harold or something. I couldn’t remember all of Grandmere’s clients, but I knew more or less why he was here.

“There’s a tree over there,” I said as he squinted at the house. He was pacing a very short distance, craning his neck to see around the sides of the house, looking over me as though I might have an armada in my back pocket. I didn’t need one. If he’d come to argue with Grandmere, he’d already lost. I clarified, “You can park in the shade. S’cooler.”

Probably-Greg patted his pockets. He didn’t seem to have heard me, though I’m sure he did. He pulled out a packet of smokes and a lighter, then barked in his throat and replaced them in his pockets. I wasn’t sure yet exactly what he wanted, or how I was to help him, if I was. I was sure he wouldn’t listen, anyway, so I waited for him to tell me. I began work on an arm, where I always wanted to describe the inside of an elbow, or the dip in a bicep, as though I were someone specific. I refused my hands and rolled out the most generic forearm I could muster. Sometimes this made no difference. Grandmere had once whispered the common cold over another doll, and it hadn’t mattered that the doll was a woman. It was a man that was admitted to the hospital that night with terrible cold symptoms.

Probably-Greg, who might have been an entrepeneur of some sort, or, I imagined, a bank manager, gave up and rounded both corners of the house, though he didn’t go far. His posture became increasingly dissatisfied.

His shoes were polished, I noticed. I didn’t know anyone in this town who kept their shoes polished unless they also kept them under plastic. A wide face, I thought, as I flattened out the round ball of the head. I’d tried skinny before, and the doll had become recognizable. His rings were polished too. I wrapped some weed around the stomach of the doll. It had recently been living, which was good enough for Grandmere.

“That’s barbaric,” probably-Greg said suddenly.

I glanced at him, then returned to my task. Grandmere would know if I were slowing down, though I would not tell her. I only had so much time. I wondered if it were for the man before me. But she’d warned me he would be by later. Timing was not her strongest suit.  “What is?”

He pointed at the mud doll. It was as recognizable as a brick wall. I could not think of the antonym of distinction, but I held the idea in my head as I molded and rolled. “That. Becoming an accessory to murder or- or torture. Suffering.”

Knowing Grandmere, and knowing her clients, it was unlikely he’d never done anything to cause harm or suffering to someone else. His naivete was nice, though. I always enjoyed, maybe a little cruelly, the way Grandmere’s clients organized the world in their minds before they worked it out. I didn’t respond. I had a doll to finish, and he’d come early. If it was supposed to be for him, Grandmere would be wanting it finished soon.

Mercy, I wished for the doll. Turn back. Leave.

I was not allowed to say these things to clients. I could feel probably-Greg’s eyes on the top of my head as I worked. Fingers neck, and a mouth. I put the shape of probably-Greg’s mouth out of my head so I did not accidentally condemn him. He was probably already condemned, but it was always worth trying. That was what the warning was for. And because Grandmere would have rather had the money than the ruined doll.

“Don’t you know what those are for?” probably-Greg said. It was filled with disgust. I could imagine he probably used the same tone when his secretary misremembered his coffee order. “How can you make those?”

Very easily. I’d been making them a long time and I was quite good. Possibly better than Grandmere. “If I don’t, she will. You haven’t paid her, by the way. You have to.”

“Pay? Not until she fixes it.” He grit his teeth. His nostrils flared. This level of aggression was unfamiliar to him. Grandmere could do that- bring out the worst in people. She said that really, they brought out the worst in themselves. They tied themselves into knots until they frayed and you could see rot in the fibers. “I wanted her to want me. Not to follow me around like a fucking dog!”

Grandmere’s clients never cared whom they were talking to when they were in this kind of mood. “She provided exactly the service you asked for. If you wanted something else, you should have asked for something else,” I told him. It wasn’t his fault entirely. He just should have been smarter. He should have asked for an antidote, something to fall out of love. “You’ll regret it if you don’t pay. She’s being generous allowing this warning.”

One hand of fingers was finished, but as if a storm had rolled over the house, I felt something crackling on the back of my neck. My stomach twisted. Grandmere’s eyes saw much farther than you’d think. She would know before probably-Greg got into his car that he’d refused to give her what she was owed.

“Your payment was due two days ago,” I said. This was my last attempt, and saying it, I knew probably-Greg would not hear it. Finishing the doll seemed to happen in fast forward. There had been a breeze a minute ago and it died down so abruptly it was as if someone had pressed pause. I looked at the shadows under the doll’s brow. There were no eyes there, but the point was there could be. If Grandmere knew who it was, then all the client could hope for was that the mud might melt quickly and end their punishment. This doll was not for probably-Greg, but that only mean Grandmere already had one for him. In my mind’s eye a familiar narrative played out: Grandmere held her sewing needle over a candle flame until it was hot enough to sear, and then carefully drew a line of pricks down a doll’s back.

Probably-Greg looked suddenly dismayed by the finished doll in my hands, though he was still angry. He kicked the rim of one of his tires. There was a layer of dust and beneath that, a mirror finish. I saw my face distorted in it briefly. There was mud on my cheek and a bit of cornstalk in my hair, and some silky fluff on the front of my shirt. I looked a little tired, but mostly like I didn’t care. The doll in my hand flopped.

“What’s she going to do?” probably-Greg asked. He held onto his anger desperately. I saw it as the final wall between himself and the fear. “If she isn’t going to fix it, I want a refund.”

The feeling of ozone around us increased. I couldn’t be sure probably-Greg felt it, but I knew what Grandmere’s gaze felt like. She was probably in bed, nowhere near a window. She didn’t need to be to know exactly what was happening. I carefully drew a circle in the dust, all the way around myself, with a knuckle. The magic was precise and this was just small protection in case it did not know where to go. Grandmere always said it was no business of the magic to determine who was innocent, and that I must protect myself.

“Madame does not do refunds,” I said, finishing up the circle. My knees and back were beginning to hurt from kneeling here so long. “She gave you the fix you asked for. If you want another solution, she will require more payment.”

Probably-Greg bristled. For a moment, greed and his innate sense of justice overpowered his instincts of self-preservation. “She sold me a terrible solution the first time- I am unsatisfied. I want to know how she’s going to make up for it. I am owed recompense-“

This, Grandmere heard. I knew probably-Greg would not make it inside his car before the punishment was upon him. I had failed to hustle, again. The magic rose, like a tide coming in suddenly and powerfully. It was at Grandmere’s bidding, and happy to do as she asked. I had probably also willed mercy into the doll she was holding, but it was not enough. I put my doll down. I’d been unsuccessful again.

Probably-Greg looked down at his legs. The doll in my hand was going to melt soon. Only the fine layer of dust on it was keeping it dry enough not to stick to my hand. The underside of my fingernails was brown. Probably-Greg slapped one of his legs. When that did not work, he slapped the other. Over and over, his hands cracked against his thighs. His knees were beginning to quiver. His back hunched as it realized his legs would not be supporting him long.

Probably-Greg leaned heavily against his shiny car. He looked a little ill. His eyes searched the doll quickly to see what had been done to it, but again he was not quick enough to grasp what was happening.

“What has she done to me?” he demanded.

He squeezed his hands into fists so tight his knuckles looked like a spine.

“You won’t be able to walk soon,” I guessed. Grandmere had a cruel sense of humour. “You will never be able to run away from the woman you’ve made love you, ever again.” He would forever need her help, and she would forever love him. At least, part of her would, the part Grandmere’s magic could reach. Not that one part that belonged only to her. He and she would forever be stuck with one another.

This fate swept over probably-Greg’s face swiftly and catastrophically. I was pricked with familiar guilt. I felt I was never not-guilty, there were only days when I forgot how much of a role I played. This was my eternity, though, trying to warn Grandmere’s unreliable clientele away from their own eternities. If I could only stop failing.

Probably-Greg lurched toward his car. He probably had a couple minutes to make it inside before he could no longer hold himself up. Grandmere would leave his feet functional for as long as it took him to accelerate out of here. Then he was his own problem.

I stood up and followed probably-Greg to the driver’s side. I knew he would not let me help him into it, so I shut the door after him. I left a muddy streak on the door handle. Probably-Greg sweated and shook as he jammed his keys into the ignition.

“Fuck you. Fuck the both of you,” probably-Greg spat. “Witches.”

If only it were both of us. The power was all Grandmere’s. I had nothing but good intention. 

Art by Jenna Barton

Text by Lucie MacAulay