Dead to Her(54)
The coins were one thing. The conjure ball was something else.
Auntie Ayo had made a conjure ball once. Keisha had seen it. When Auntie Ayo’s best friend, Winnie, was left broken-hearted and with her bank account emptied by her cheating husband, Frank, Auntie Ayo had shut the doors to her special room, melting wax and earth and blood and whispering the darkest of words, and not come out for two days. Keisha had seen, through the crack of her bedroom door, when her aunt had come out and shown a lumpen black sphere to Uncle Yahuba, who’d muttered with a contained displeasure that he didn’t have the balls to ever really release.
Keisha hadn’t known what it was then, the conjure ball, but she heard Auntie Ayo, drunk on rum, tell the story later, after the funeral. She’d slipped it, weighty with dark wishes, into Frank’s jacket pocket, and a month later he found the first lump in his unfaithful testicles. It was, of course, too late. He went downhill fast. Too fast to divorce Winnie for his floozy, and Winnie got the house he’d never actually put in her name and the money stashed in accounts he’d never told her about.
Auntie Ayo hadn’t done too badly out of it either, but Winnie didn’t come around so much after that, not after she’d brought the envelope of money—a gift of thanks—not asked for but definitely expected. Winnie sold the house and moved north somewhere, and she dutifully sent cards, but she never visited again. Maybe Winnie had still loved Frank a little at the end. Or maybe she’d never realized the depths of Auntie Ayo’s power before. What kind of woman Auntie Ayo was. Maybe Winnie had gotten a little scared that what she’d wished for in a moment of bitter heartache could come true so easily.
And now there was another conjure ball.
She’d been in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, calling out for William. There was an army of cleaners in the house scrubbing and polishing every already spotless surface to be decorated for the party that weekend, and she’d been sitting out by the pool for an hour to escape the hum and noise while her Valium took hold. She’d also secretly finished off half a bottle of wine to help settle her nerves before being able to face her husband. Husband. The word was like the clank of chains on her ankle. It was better in a haze. Nothing mattered in a haze. When she was stoned, the world lost the sharp edges so determined to slice her up whichever way she turned.
Once the mellow began flooding her veins, warming her in places the sun couldn’t reach, she’d felt bad for hiding from William. For leaving him inside to run and sweat and shower and eat breakfast alone, and no doubt get more annoyed at her, his less-than-perfect wife. Maybe they should go to the club and get an early brunch. She’d flatter him and laugh at his jokes and he’d be her sweet William from London once again, the ghost who had never been real.
She’d gone inside, giggling as the cool air-conditioning tickled her tingling sensitive skin, and leaned against the banister calling his name, singsongy like a child. Everything would be okay. The Valium would brush away the darkness, sending the dust into sunshine. She was not cursed KeKe with the damaged mind but Mrs. William Radford IV, beautiful, young, perfect, and with the world in the palm of her hand.
William hadn’t answered her, but instead, amid the distant sounds of vacuuming and activity filling the house, there had been a jarring, heavy thump from overhead. The tread of the dead, clumsy and with too much weight. Thud. Thud. Thud. Keisha had stared, her foggy brain trying to make sense of the fear tightening her gut, as the beat sped up, the heavy ball gaining momentum, just as Keisha’s heartbeat pounded faster when she finally realized what was rolling down the wide polished stairs.
No, no, no, no . . . She’d thought the words were silent in her head as she flew up the stairs to get away from it before it landed, missing one completely as if the ball might defy the laws of gravity and leap at her, that ball with her blackened soul’s desires tied up inside with string, until William came running along the corridor in his robe, fat body still wet from the shower, slick footsteps on the marble, and she wondered if he’d fall right there and then, tumble down, echoing the conjure ball, and smash his head open like a watermelon all over the freshly buffed hallway, just like she wished he would.
“What the hell is the matter?” He didn’t fall, but grabbed her arms as she reached the top banister, pulling her toward him. His face was concerned but his grip was hurting her arm.
“Down there,” she muttered, looking back. “It came down the stairs. I can’t . . . I can’t . . .” What couldn’t she do? She couldn’t look at it. She couldn’t touch it. She could barely breathe. She wished she could stop breathing. Cursed girl, cursed girl.
“What?” William peered down as Zelda and Elizabeth and various cleaning staff trickled out of rooms to see what the fuss was about. Zelda. Her dark eyes were dancing, amused. Keisha pressed her head into William’s shoulder, but he didn’t hug her or hold her or tell her it was okay. His spine was stiff. He wasn’t going to reassure his wife as one would a child. He wanted her elegant and possessed. She wanted to laugh, a hysterical condemned laugh, Anne Boleyn in the Tower of London practicing on the block. Possessed. Maybe she was.
“Here, take her. She smells like she’s been drinking.” The words were muttered as he passed her into softer hands, and then Elizabeth wrapped her arm around one shoulder.
“Let’s go and sit down.”
“Mrs. Radford’s room is empty,” Zelda said, shooing the cleaners back to their tasks. “You can go in there, Miss Elizabeth.”