Zamani
Authors: Angelic Rodgers
Zamani
Book
Three of the Olivia Chronicles
Angelic
Rodgers
Copyright © 2016
Angelic Rodgers
All rights
reserved.
No part of this
publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical
methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other
noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Dedicated to all who
have Sasa and Zamani in their hearts.
The Sasa generally binds individuals and their immediate environment together.
It is the period of conscious living. On the other hand, Zamani is the period
of the myth, giving a sense of foundation or "security" to the Sasa
period; and binding together all created things.…[h]istory moves
"backward" from the Sasa period to the Zamani, from the moment of
intense experience to the period beyond which nothing can go.
John S. Mbiti,
African Religions
and Philosophy
Many African societies divide humans into three categories: those
still alive on the earth, the
sasha
,
and the
zamani
. The recently departed whose time on earth
overlapped with people still here are the
sasha
,
the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories
of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and
bring them to live in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies,
that ancestor leaves the
sasha
for the
zamani
, the dead.
James Loewen,
Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American
history textbook got wrong.
The tip of a chair. It seemed like such an insignificant
event, and it would have been, had Rosalie not just stepped off the edge of the
seat, her feet sure in their journey into air.
The dreams had never stopped. This would surely silence them,
she thought, as she tied the rope and stood on the ladder to reach the
beam. She looped it twice, then a third time, wanting to be sure it was
secure and wouldn’t slip. She’d bought plenty of rope for the job, and
she’d been practicing knots for some time now. She was confident in her
ability to tie not only the knot that would secure the rope around the beam,
but also the one that would slide swiftly, ending in a jerk that would snap her
neck. Surely then, she thought, the dreams would stop.
For as long as Rosalie Garnier could remember, she’d had the
recurring dream of the ghost children.
The scene was always the same—night, among the trees. It
would start pleasantly enough, the light of the moon streaming down through the
branches of the Southern Live Oaks, illuminating her way. Off in the
distance she would see movement and a flash of white, and then she would see
the children—all girl children—gliding through the trees.
They made no sound, and as they moved toward her she wanted to run, but her
feet wouldn’t move, as if the ground had risen around them, sucking at her feet
and ankles, keeping her frozen there, transfixed.
The ghost children kept gliding, moving swiftly yet taking
forever to reach her. Then, and only then, could she see the faces of the
young girls with no eyes and gaping mouths opened as if in a silent scream.
The silence was deafening and their hands grasped toward her, grabbing empty
air in front of Rosalie. Their agony overwhelmed her, and she always woke
up screaming and sobbing for them.
The night before, she’d woken as she often did from these
dreams, sitting up suddenly, covered in sweat. Her breath caught in her
throat, her own hands outstretched to meet those ghostly hands.
The dreams were partially why she never allowed Auguste Bellot
to stay with her; the other reason was that she feared what her mother would do
if she had such easy access to Auguste. Rosalie managed to keep his
identity a secret, as much as she could keep anything from her mother, Marie,
up until Vivienne was born. Her mother had spotted him at the Christening
and the ruse was up. They’d argued about it, but the birth of a child offered
some protection for Auguste. That he was rich and married, and thus not
too much in the way, actually helped.
Even when Vivienne was not yet a year old, sleeping in her crib
in the corner of Rosalie’s bedroom, she never stirred when the dream came.
Rosalie wasn’t sure if she ever cried out in her dreams or if Vivienne was just
so used to her mother’s nightmares that she didn’t wake from them. During
her pregnancy, Rosalie feared the dreams were prophecy, that her child would be
stillborn. Far from it; Vivienne was not only born alive and healthy, she
thrived. Rosalie marveled in Vivienne’s perfection. She had hoped
since the baby was fine the dreams would stop, but they intensified after
Vivienne was born. Her only comfort was that Vivienne was the best
baby—she was never colicky and she’d slept well from the start.
Rosalie’s dedicated her life to ensuring Vivienne had
opportunities she herself never had. Marie, Rosalie’s mother, groomed her to
take over in the family business. She was educated, but not in any formal
way.
New Orleans Parish schools had been slow to integrate and Marie
used that to her advantage, keeping Rosalie close to her, citing fears over
what might happen if she sent her child to school during all of the fighting
and chaos over integration. By the time Rosalie was three, Marie had
taught her how to read and ensured she was fluent in French and English.
Her clients were also among some of the most finished and refined women in New
Orleans and they enjoyed helping Marie teach her beautiful daughter. Their own
daughters supplied reading lists and homework examples, and Rosalie often would
work beside those daughters while her mother did their mother’s hair and saw to
their other needs.
Marie was a powerful Voodoo Mambo; in the tradition of the
Maries in her family before her, she ministered to the sick and to those who
needed guidance. Her skill with making charms and gris-gris was well
known throughout the city, and her services were highly prized. She was
happy that her own daughter was forming bonds with the young women whom she
would later serve, just as Marie served their mothers. These were the
friendships that Marie wanted Rosalie to cultivate.
Rosalie was smart and she learned all that she could. Her
cultivation was successful, and it is what drew Auguste Bellot to
her. He saw her first at Mass, taking Communion. She was
sitting a row up from Auguste and his wife. He noticed her as she stood,
her back to him. Her hair was carefully styled. She had long, good hair
wound into a glossy chignon. He wondered how long it would be if he took
out the pins and ran his fingers through it. At that moment, she turned
to the side, and he saw her face and thought she glanced his way, but she was
soon moving toward the aisle. He felt his wife nudge him, impatient that
he was daydreaming and not paying attention to the movement of his own row.
He’d been content to watch her walk ahead of him, a few people
separating them as they moved toward the priest. She wore a cute hat that
matched her blue dress. As she reached the priest, she turned and he
caught a glimpse once again of her in profile. Her skin was clear and the
color of caramel. She closed her eyes as she offered her tongue for the
wafer, and Auguste wished he were the man before her. He grew flustered
and drew his gaze away from her. He placed his hand on his wife’s
shoulder, trying to ground himself.
Once he was seated again, he tried to stay focused and not
obsess about her. She looked young, but not that much younger than his
wife.
Rosalie didn’t know her father. Her mother had a shrine
dedicated to him, but he had died when Marie was pregnant with their only
daughter. There were no photos of him and Marie together, not even wedding
photos. Marie kept one black and white portrait of him as a young man on
her altar. Rosalie would stare at it for hours sometimes, wondering what
her life would have been like with a father.
“Child, stop staring at that picture and come help me in the
kitchen.” Marie called to Rosalie, pulling her out of her fantasy of a
life with a father who bought her sno-balls and took her to Grand Isle to let
the warm gulf waters splash around her ankles.
Marie was a stern mother, one focused on providing for her child
and also teaching her child her trade. Marie cut and styled hair, but she
also had a side business as a confidant and Voodoo practitioner for her
customers. Like her mother before her and spanning back to her famous
relative—the fabulous Marie Laveau—Marie spent her days concocting
charms and gris-gris bags for clients who desired their own children, relief
from an abusive boss or husband, or true love. She was in the kitchen
cooking alongside the woman who did her food preparation, adding herbs and
other powerful ingredients to bottles to infuse oils for her magic.
Rosalie got up from where she sat, slowly shuffling to the kitchen. Marie
didn’t turn to look as her daughter crossed the threshold; she merely said,
“Come here and watch what I am doing.”
Rosalie sat on a high stool to the side of Marie’s
workspace. She knew better than to ask about her father. Marie had told
her the story only once, and she did so only after telling her daughter that
she must listen carefully and remember because she would not tell it twice.
Marie had been quite young when her own father died, not still a
child, but barely a woman. Roland Garnier had been a family friend, and
he was a good decade older than Marie. When her father died, her mother
withdrew a great deal, taking on the rusty black garments of the ever-grieving
widow. Without her husband, she had no use for the outside world.
Roland worried about his friend’s widow, and he was soon making frequent visits
to the Garnier house, where Marie still lived with her mother.
“We fell in love. Yes, he was older than I, but he cared
for me very much. I could not marry him so soon after my father’s death,
but sometimes babies don’t wait for marriage. Just like sometimes,
fathers don’t wait for their daughters to be born before they die.”
That was the story Marie told Rosalie. And, Rosalie knew
better than to ask further. She wished her grandmother, who still lived
in the house with them, could be trusted to tell her more, but she was a mere
shell of a woman these days. Rosalie could see fear in her eyes when
Marie would go help the nurse care for the older woman. She’d had a
stroke shortly after Rosalie was born and had lost her power of speech as a
result. No therapy seemed to help. She was despondent most of the time,
and she loved her grand daughter dearly. Marie limited their time
together and scolded her mother about fawning over the child too much.
“You are too full of grief; you will make her melancholy.” Marie would come
fetch her daughter, pulling her from the elder Marie’s arms. “She needs
sunshine and fresh air, not to be up here, clutching your dusty black skirt and
weeping.”
And in the moment that Rosalie stepped off the chair, she
stepped into the sunshine.
Her true
mother was there, along with all of the ghost children. This time, they ran to
her, their eyes smiling and their mouths open in laughter.
