AYIDA
I walked along the windowsill, touching each little glass jar like it was a rib of my own body, lighting candle after candle till the whole room held its breath with me. The black mesh veil brushed my eyelashes every time I leaned in, and the smoke curled up sweet and mean, like it recognized me. Rum and rosewater turned the air soft, but underneath it stayed the hospital smell. Like antiseptic, and death. Machines breathed like bored ghosts. The ventilator hissed and paused, hissed, and paused, holding my man when I couldn't, measuring time in plastic and air.
"I know you hear me, Lanmou mwen,"My love.I whispered, voice catching, not because I hadn't said it a thousand times these three months, but because sometimes the thousand-and-first sounded like the first time. "Noles, if you can't do nothin' else tonight, just listen."
Thunder rolled over the roof like a slow drumline. Somewhere the rain tapped the glass. Outside, the parking lot lamps threw halos on wet asphalt, all that gold smeared by streaky water. Inside, the candles took over the light, made everything flicker. His cheekbones, the slope of his nose, the way his lashes rested like little commas on his face. The machines painted him blue from their glow, but my fire warmed him up. In the glass of the window, I could see the room twice: once how it was, once how the spirits saw it, with me in my veil and black dress, feet bare, a chalk-smeared queen with her heart in her mouth.
The nurse had said, "No open flames," weeks ago. I smiled at her, knowing I would do it any way. I'd do anythingfor him, anything for his soul to return to mine. She learned to look the other way. Night shift learned quick not to make rounds when I was there. I took care of his every need. I bathed him, rubbed him down to keep his skin smooth, clipped his nails and toes. I was his night nurse.
I sat the chalk on the rolling table and slid it toward the foot of the bed, careful not to snag tubes. My hands were shaking, not from fear exactly, but from the distance between what I know and what I can save. The chalk felt like bone in my fingers, brittle and important. I stooped and started tracing. Veves sketched themselves under me. They were the curves Id been drawing since I was big enough to drag a piece of limestone across my granny's back steps. The lines came quick, certain, and then my fingers stuttered, trembled, corrected. I breathed into them: "Pa kraze. Pa kase."Don't crack. Don't break.The room tilted. Not dramatic. Not sudden. Just enough for me to notice my knees lock before they gave. I grabbed the bed rail, breath coming thin. The candles fluttered like they felt it too. Something in my chest burned cold, like a match struck backward. That’s when I knew. I wasn't just calling him back. I paid for it too.
"Lwa, koute m," I said softly.Spirits, hear me."Zansèt mwen, tande mwen."My ancestors, hear me too.I had found myself calling on my spirits and ancestors every chance I got lately. The chalk marked up that square of tile like a map of home. Sweat slid down my back in the thin cotton of my dress. The ventilator sighed again. In the bed, my husband looked like somebody paused him mid-sentence. His mouth was full with silence. His chest rose because a machine had decided it should.
Ninety nights I’d been coming, blowing breath into a man who I knew once ate the world and folded it in his pockets. Somenights I’d talk to love like it was a stubborn child, coaxing it, bribing it, and threatening it. "You hear me, lanmou mwen (my love)? You not done here." I sat the chalk down, wiped my hands on the veil. My palms smelled like dust and lemon oil. I brought his left hand into mine and laid it across my thigh so he could feel heat, even if he didn't know it. "Rete avè m, Noles," I said.Stay with me."Ou pa gen dwa kite."You don't get to leave.
The storm rumbled again, further out, belly deep. Madame Laurent's voice came with it. That voice had lived in my head since I was a girl standing in her doorway, since long before I married into the St. Jean family.
Debt always comes home, bébé. Might miss a generation, but it don't miss the house.
My grip tightened around his fingers. "Shhh," I told the remembered voice. "Ive paid dues till my knuckles bled. If debt got a key, it ain't for this door."
I moved and squeezed rum into the little enamel bowl, topped it with water and three soft petals pulled from the grocery store roses that didn’t have a scent till I told them to. I swirled it counterclockwise, connecting with my mama’s spirit, then wet my thumb and traced a wet cross on his forehead. "Bondye, si w ap gade," I murmured, "pran pye m de sa."If you looking, take my feet out this mess.I laughed under my breath, quiet and broken. "Or put 'em deeper if it mean he comingback."
The air conditioner kicked on. The candles bent, fluttered, then righted themselves like they had never felt the air. I took the little tin of molasses-brown honey from my bag and uncapped it, set it by his lips. "You remember this?" I asked him. "I told you how Madame Laurent said sweetness bring backsweetness. She always say—"Debt always comes home.Her voice echoed in my thoughts making me pause "—yeah, I heard you," I said out loud, sharper than I meant. The machine beeped its steady noise. My voice softened. "You not invited tonight, Maman Laurent. I honor you. But hush." I said pushing her out of my world for a minute. I needed everything that wasn't about Noles out of my head and space. I dipped a cotton swab in honey and let a drop sit on his bottom lip that was visible. His mouth partially covered. The honey shined there like a small sun. Something in me pulled tight. If he'd come back to me, I wanted it to be to sweetness first. Not to hurt. Not to pain. "Leve, lanmou mwen," I whispered.Wake up, my love.
The rain got loud enough to write its name on the window. My body remembered one of the last wet nights like this together. We hopped a plane to Vegas and got married in a little run-down chapel with two other couples. We stayed in Vegas one night walking the strip drunk as hell. I don't even remember sleeping at all. That night Noles hit for a hundred thousand dollars at the blackjack table. He swore I was his good luck charm and the only reason he had hit. We damn near missed our flight the next morning because he wouldn't let up off the table. I had to pry his ass out the chair. We landed in St. Martin the next morning. We stayed in a small little bungalow on the beach that I fell in love with and didn't want to leave. Many nights while we were there it would rain sending the scent of the saltwater rolling through the air. Every time it rained, we found ourselves wrapped up in one another. No phones, no work, no interruptions, just us. I'd give anything to be wrapped up in his arms right now with him caressing and rubbing me like I was soft as cotton. It hurt me and pissed me off at the same time that he couldn't. I felt like I was bearing every last emotion known to man.The thunder crack came loud enough to makethe bed rails ring like a tuning fork. I flinched, then laughed again, because it felt like somebody clapped loud to wake a sleeping class. "All right then," I said to the storm. "Help me."
I picked up the prayer beads I keep wrapped around my wrist and untwined it, let the beads rest on his chest. I traced the first prayer on his sternum then I switched languages mid-line and whispered, "Kenbe nanm li. Pa kite fènwa antre."Hold his soul. Don't let the darkness come in.I went bead by bead till the prayer felt like stepping-stones laid over water and my feet had the rhythm of them. When I finished, I pressed the beads to the center of the veve chalked on the tile. I moved to the side, sat the bowl on the nightstand, and reached for the shaker. Little bells stitched on leather sang soft when I took it up. I shook them once, twice, and the sound danced around the tubes and cords like they were vines I could coax off him. "Fanm sa yo, tande mwen," I said to the women spirits my grandma taught me to call, the ones that come when a woman begs without shame. "M'ap peye pri a, si sa nesesè."I'll pay the price if it's necessary.
The room held, thick and waiting. The floor felt like a drum. Madame's voice slid in again, quieter:Be careful what you give away to keep a man."I’m not keeping," I told the air. "I'm reaping what I planted." I looked at his face and wanted to lie, wanted to say I was focused on saving him for his brothers, for his mama, for him. But truth is a jealous thing. My voice thinned to honesty. "I'm saving him for me."
His chest rose. Green lights blinked. I kept one eye on those lights, one eye on his eyelids. His lashes didn't even tremble. "You remember when we first met?" I asked. "I refused to give you the time of day for weeks. Madame Laurent had warned me about you before I ever laid eyes on you. It was like she saw you coming into my life before I ever did. She stood andstill stands on the fact that your bloodline isn't clean and hold secrets. Even through all of that you made me love you. Love you enough to defy her and run off and marry you." A tear slid. I let it. I wasn’t soft, but I wasn’t stone neither. My hands went back to work cause that's how I knew I was alive, by doing. I lifted his head, loosened the band a little so it wouldn't cut into his hair. His hair had grown out, frizzy around the edges and softened by months of not being combed or maintenanced. I took my comb and ran it through his hair as best I could. I talked while I worked. "You not allowed to be raggedy when you meet me again. You keep letting this hair get raggedy ima have to get somebody up here to cut it." I smiled hoping it would wake him up knowing how sensitive he got about his hair.
The fluorescent light near the door buzzed, flickered, then steadied. I set the comb down and took the small brown bottle from my bag, with oil that I had gotten from Madame Laurent . It smelled like clove and cedar and a little like the back pew of a damp church. I dabbed two drops on my fingers and rubbed them warm, then brushed it over his temples, his wrist-pulse, the arch of his feet. My hands shook on the last one. I praised his feet; they'd carried so much toward me. "Se pou limyè a gide li," I breathed.Let light guide him.
The monitor made a sharp sound, then went back to baseline. My stomach fluttered. I leaned in. Nothing. My ears rang with all the unsaid. "Gade mwen," I told him.Listen to me."If you still down there, if you lost in that place you went, I want you to remember this: my name inside your chest. It's stitched there. I know because I put it there when you thought you didn’t need love. You hear? Se mwen ki rele ou tounen.I'm the one calling you back." The rain pulled back to a hush. Somewhere a phone rang at the nurses' station. Wheels squeaked faint. I swore I smelled tobacco, though no one smoked in here.
It all reminded me of the night of my mother's last breath. It came in hard as a slap. Eight years old, a chair too high for my feet to touch the floor, my legs kicking space while machines threw green lines across a dark screen. Grandma's whisper in my ear: Pa kriye devan yo. W'ap kriye lakay.Don't cry in front of them. You cry at home.The doctor saying words that felt like sugar cubes I couldn't swallow. The woman from the neighborhood who came, talking over her teeth, saying, "You know how she lived. They say somebody put roots on her." Grandma's answer a stone: "Roots ain't the devil. Ignorance is." The way the room felt turned inside out when her breath stopped, the air cold and hot, the floor moving like a boat, my body learning, right then, that life and death live in the same house. I shook it off and whispered into the room. "I'm not that little girl no more."
I pressed my forehead to the back of his hand. The veil scratched my cheek. "Noles," I said, softer than sugar, softer than prayer. "Mon chè.My husband. You open your eyes and I swear I'll—" I cut myself off, cause promises made at the edge are heavy and listening. But the words were already awake in me: I'll burn down anything that try to take you. I'll stand in the doorway and dare the dark and whatever else to step inside. The bells in my hand trembled all on their own. Just a little. Then the air conditioner kicked again, and I told myself it was that. I reached for the shaker, shook it once more. Silence settled the way a big woman sits in a chair, full and final. I let go the shaker and reached for the beads again, then stopped and took up the chalk instead. The veve at my feet glowed like it remembered being white on a dirt floor. I strengthened the line that curved toward the bed, thickened the cross that held the center, added small marks like eyes along the outer ring. “Veye pòt la," I told them.Watch the room.
I slid the rolling table aside and climbed onto the mattress slow, careful of the tubes and the IV line. I laid myself along his side, face to the slope of his shoulder, veil falling over both of us, making a little tent of black lace and breath. I took in his scent missing having it whenever I wanted. It'd gotten a bad. I slept in his shirts at home because they smelt like him. "I hate you sometimes," I whispered, voice shaking. "For being so heavy inside me. For making me responsible for both our souls cause you bold and tired and too proud to ask for help from anybody even me." The tears came more now. I let them. They traveled along the ridge of my nose and dropped on his skin. "I love you so bad it done turned ugly some nights. You hear that? Lanmou mwen ap fè m fou.My love making me crazy.I be cooking and forget what Im stirring. I be driving and end up in my old neighborhood without meaning to, just cause my heart likes the way the street call your name." I shifted my mouth to his ear. "If you don't wake up, I'm gon' learn how to live around your absence. I'm strong like that." My smile came bitter. "But I’ll hate this world for it. I’ll hate it quiet, and I’ll hate it forever. So do us both mercy. Come home to me."
The monitor ticked, dumb as a metronome. Thunder cracked again. one sharp clap like a hand at the back of a head. The door clicked; the hallway lights dimmed a little like the storm had pulled power out the walls. I didn't move. I pulled my veil back, kissed his mouth. Not the soft press of "I love you," but the claim of a woman who remembered what she split herself open for. Honey slicked my lip. It tasted like second chances and lies. "Ou pwomèt mwen," I breathed into him. You promised me. "Mwen kwè ou." I believed you. I sat up on my knees over him, my palms braced on either side of his chest. I looked down at his face, memorized it again like I do every night, cause love and fear teach you to study what you can lose. The veil made a halo whenit fell forward and caught in the IV pole. My shoulders shook, once, twice, and then I steadied myself. "Noles," I said. "It's late. Even the dead got bedtimes. Come home."
By the time sunlight crept through the blinds, it came in thin and sideways , not golden, but pale, like the sky itself didn't know how to start over. I was still sitting there on the edge of the bed, the smell of the room softening into something sweet and tired. My throat felt raw from prayer, my hands sore from clutching. I leaned forward, pressed one last kiss to his lips then stood. The world moved slow as I gathered my things. Candle stubs, the small blade, the chalk tin, the bowls. I straightened the sheets, fixed his gown, and smoothed his hair down, just tenderness with nowhere else to go. It felt wrong that sunlight touched this room. Like the world was being nosy.
Any second now, I knew Evie would come marching in. She always came at first light. She'd cuss the whole time, calling my rituals "spiritual witch bullshit," like she wasn't born with the same Louisiana blood that bent toward spirits. After Noles got shot, she found out we were married when the doctors asked who could make medical decisions. I still remember the look on her face, rage twisted up with something else, maybe betrayal. Her baby boy had gone and married me, the woman she once called "A voodoo witch and a problem." She raised so much hell I thought she'd wake the dead.
To keep the peace, the nurses arranged a schedule, so she had days and I had nights. She came with her perfume and her tears and her mouth full of orders. I came with my candles and my prayers and the kind of love that filled the room. We passed each other in the hallway sometimes like two storms pretending to be weather. I reached for his hand again before leaving. It had always swallowed mine whole. I lifted it to my mouth and kissedthe back of it. His skin was soft, still warm. "M'ap tounen,"I'll return, I promised.
I slipped out before the sun could tell on me.
____
The drive home felt like waking up inside a dream I couldn't end, one of those heavy ones that stick to your skin and didn’t fade when your eyes opened. I rolled the window down halfway, hoping the wind would take some of this weight off me, peel it away like damp clothes, but it clung tighter instead. Thick. Wet. Heavy as Louisiana humidity that didn't care how much it made you sweat, it still wrapped around you. The radio stayed off. I couldn't stand anybody else's voice right now. Didn't want music, didn't want the news, didn't want somebody singing about love like it wasn't fragile as glass. All I could tolerate was my own heartbeat, loud in my ears, steady but angry, like it was working overtime just to keep me upright. Every red light felt personal. Like the city itself was testing me. Holding me in place just long enough for my thoughts to catch up and claw at my chest. Every green one came too fast, like it was daring me to move forward when I wasn't ready.
I kept seeing him, the way he looked laid up in that hospital bed. My husband was reduced to wires and plastic, defined by breaths he didn't even get to take himself. Helpless. Powerful men didn't look right helpless. It felt unnatural, like seeing a lion caged or the river standing still. And every morning, every damn morning, I had to walk away from him like I wasn't tearing myself in half to do it. My thumb throbbed where I'd cut it earlier, the sting dull now but constant. The blood had dried into a dark crescent under my nail, a quiet reminder that I'd offered something up and didn't know yet if it had been enough. I rubbed at it absentmindedly, eyes bouncingbetween the wet road ahead and the memory of his face. "Don't you play with me, Noles," I muttered, my voice low, tight. "You don't come back to me halfway."
