Her eyes drift to the open mouth of the ground swallowing Ron whole, and she smiles. “It’s his soul I’m here to discuss.”
You’ve never seen men scurry like these two at her words. Their shovels drop. They take off. It was a two-hour bus ride from St. Martine, our small parish town, to the city, but even here, folks know MiMi. In a world full of phonies, she’s the genuine article. And when she says leave, you go.
We stand over the grave, and though the casket is closed and splattered with the first clumps of dirt, I shiver like Ron might sit up and climb out.
“There’s nothing to fear,” MiMi assures me, her face aged and eyes ageless. “Take my hand.”
She extends her arm to the side for me, but trains her eyes on the coffin.
“Feel my words in your mouth,” she says, and I do. The syllables she utters vibrate on my lips, tremble on my tongue. “Feel my power in your veins.”
She squeezes my hand, and the lightning that split the sky hours ago strikes through my blood. She spares me a quick glance and a smile of satisfaction from what she must see on my face.
Awe.
“It’s the power of the unbroken line,” she says with a gentle smile. “Two women from our lineage together. There’s power in that.”
She turns her attention back ahead and glances up at the sky, now quiet and awaiting her wishes.
“You know who I am,” she says, her words, her voice, bold, confident. “I’m here to make my judgment known. This man’s soul hangs in the balance.”
At MiMi’s words, a chill descends in the summer air.
“I’m here to lay a stone on the side of hell. As he begins his journey, I send him on with these words.”
Her eyes open, and she slowly turns her head to look at me, and it’s exactly as she said. I feel the power in my veins. And her words, I feel them on my tongue, and we say them in shocking simultaneity.
“No peace,” we say together.
In the years to come, I would ask myself many times if I really believed we consigned Ron to hell that day. Like so many things I gleaned from MiMi, I have no explanation. I only know that once our words were spoken, that rainbow, the multi-colored promising path from Heaven to Earth, was nowhere to be found.
“Wild women are an unexplainable spark of life. They ooze freedom and seek awareness, they belong to nobody but themselves . . .
she'll allow you into her chaos, but she'll also show you her magic.”
— Nikki Rowe, Once a Girl, Now a Woman
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