I wiped my cheeks finally, the tears warm against the back of my hand. "But what if he wanted—" She cut me off with a lift of her hand. "What if he wanted you. Exactly as you are. Ever think of that?" I swallowed. My stomach tightened. Truth is, I never did. I always thought love came with conditions. That if I didn't meet every one of them, I could be left the same way Mama was, forgotten when the morning came.
Madame exhaled, long and heavy, a sound weighted with generations. Then her voice rose not loud, but strong enough to make the candles flicker. "Pitit mwen pèdi," she muttered in Creole, shaking her head.My child is lost."Li pa konnen kiyès mwen te leve li pou l' ye."She don't know who I raised herto be.Her voice cracked, just a little. "Gen pitye pou mwen."Have mercy on me.The way she said it made my stomach twist. Like she wasn't talking to me anymore but to the spirits listening through the walls.She pushed her chair back and stood with purpose, her bangles clinking. Without another word, she walked down the narrow hallway toward the back room. It was her workroom, where her altar lived, where the air always felt twice as heavy and twice as holy.She didn't look back when she said, "Vini."Come.It wasn't a request. I didn't have a choice.
I rose slowly, wiping my palms on my thighs before following her. My heartbeat drummed in my ears as I crossed the threshold into that room. Nothing in there had ever been meant for comfort. It was a room built for truth that was a raw and uncut. As soon as I stepped inside, the smell hit me: sage, whiskey, smoke, and something older that had no name but carried weight. The veil of it wrapped around me just as Madame pressed an actual veil into my hands. "Put it on," she said. I did. My fingers trembled as I drew the black mesh over my head, letting it fall across my shoulders. The world dimmed behind it. Sound shifted. My breath sounded louder.
Madame moved around the altar with the kind of grace only age and power could give. She lit candles one by one, each flame rising tall. Shadows danced across the walls in long fingers. She poured whiskey into two glasses. One for the ancestors, one for the spirit she was calling to the door. Then she took a small bowl of rose petals and let them fall across the floor, scattering them like soft punctuation marks. Oil followed, drops glistening on the wood, catching the candlelight like tiny suns. I felt the room lean toward us.
My knees gave before I even meant to kneel. I sank at the foot of the altar, lowering my head as the veil brushedmy cheeks. My palms pressed to the floor. My heart raced so hard I felt it in my teeth. Madame knelt beside me, her beads clattering between her fingers as she wrapped them twice around her wrist. She whispered something only the spirits would understand, then louder, sharp enough to slice through the heavy air, she said: "Sa se tout sa m'ap fè pou yon St. Jean."This is all I'll ever do for a St. Jean. Ever.
Her voice shook something loose inside me, loyalty, fear, devotion, guilt. All of it tangled together. Then she began chanting. Her voice rose from somewhere ancient, from a place older than language. She called for protection, over my spirit first, naming me like a mother calling a child out of danger. Then over Noles, her tone shifting, harder, as if she had to fight the dark to speak his name. She called the dead, the guardians, and the women in our bloodline who had fought and lost and fought again.
I felt the altar warm under my hands. Felt something shift behind me, like a presence stepping closer. The veil over my head grew lighter, as if something breathed under it with me. Madame leaned forward, whispering so close I could feel the heat of her breath against my ear. "M'ap gide lespri li tounen kote li soti," she murmured.I'm guiding his spirit back toward its home.My chest stuttered. "And I'm guiding yours to meet his," she continued. "Two souls tied at the waist but you fighting two worlds, Cher. And tonight," Her voice dropped into something grave, certain. "tonight we pull them together.” I tried to breathe steady, but the energy in the room thickened like syrup. My vision pulsed behind the mesh. My fingers tingled where they touched the floor. The candles leaned toward us, their flames stretching like hands.
Madame's chant rose again, louder now, her voice shaking the walls: "Pwoteje pitit mwen. Pwoteje non marye li. Mande lespri yo kenbe l' vivan nan limyè a. Mande yo fè sa ki dwat, pa sa ki fasil."Protect my child. Protect her husband's name. Tell the spirits keep him alive in the light. Tell them do what is right, not what is easy.
My throat tightened. I whispered his name into my veil. "Noles." The moment I spoke it, the room changed. The candles flickered hard. Something brushed the back of my neck cool as shadow, warm as memory. The whiskey glass on the altar trembled, the surface rippling like something unseen walked by. Madame didn't stop chanting. Her voice grew stronger, calling, commanding, coaxing.
She guided his spirit toward me like she was leading a man out of a burning house, refusing to look back, refusing to let him fall. I felt the pull in my chest. A tug like a string tied to my heart, drawn tight, then tighter. Just for a split second, just long enough to steal the breath from my lungs. I felt him. His spirit was Sliding back toward mine like a tide returning home after months of trying to find its way.
Madame's voice cracked as she delivered the last line of her prayer: "Fè yo youn nan limyè e pa nan fènwa."Make them one in light, not in darkness.The room exhaled all at once. The candles settled. The floor warmed and air stilled. Madame lowered her head, beads clacking softly as her hands relaxed.
Noles
My eyes snapped open like somebody cut the lights on in my head. White ceiling. Buzzin' fluorescent light. The sharp hiss of a ventilator. That hospital smell hit the back of my throat. My chest felt tight, ribs wrapped in pressure and tape. My tongue was thick, my mouth dry as cotton. For a second, I didn't know if I was alive, dead, or still somewhere between on hold. Then shit came into focus. Juste was off in the corner with Jules, both of them talking low like the walls had ears. Pierre sat in the window, half on the sill, half off, scrolling his phone. Sunlight slid in behind him, turning his silhouette into a dark cutout.
My eyes kept moving, scanning the room. Where the door was. Where the machines were. Where the IV hit my arm. Every wire, every tube, every shadow. My brain tried to catch up and then everything hit at once, that first bullet opening me up like a door. Panic rushed me, hot and mean. I jerked, hands going straight to the needles in my arm, reaching for the tube down my throat. I wasn't staying hooked up to nothin. "Yo, chill, nigga." Pierre was up in two strides, phone gone, hands on my wrists, slammin my arms back to the mattress. "One of you niggas get the nurse," he barked over his shoulder. I frowned up at him, throat burnin, trying to rip loose. My muscles felt like wet paper, but my mind was ready to fight the whole buildin’. "Nigga, calm ya ass down before I punch ya ass in the nose," Pierre snapped, tightening his grip.
The door flew open. A nurse slid in, voice soft, hands too quick to be gentle. "Okay, okay, Mr. St. Jean, you're okay, you're okay," she kept saying, like repetition was gon' fix what happened. She started removing tubes. first the one down mythroat, pullin it up in one long, slick motion that made my stomach flip. I gagged, coughed, tasted plastic and something bitter. She adjusted the IV, checked the monitors, and talked about the doctor coming late afternoon. I didn't give a fuck about no doctor. I didn't want no white coat tellin me about "healin" like a bullet didn't change everything it touched.
Soon as the door closed behind her, the room thinned out. Juste stepped up to the end of the bed, Jules beside him, Pierre standing at my side. I locked eyes with each of them one by one, my frown stuck to my face like it'd been sewn there. "You niggas find out who set that up yet?" My voice came out rough, gravel scraping, but the question was clear. Juste's jaw flexed. "Damn, nigga, we glad you alive, we missed you. Salutations the fuck?" he said, frownin down at me. I knew this shit ate at him. I could see it in his eyes, simmerin under the sarcasm. But I was awake now, and I had other shit on my mind besides feelins.
"Nah, not yet. Shit been quiet since it happened," Pierre said, finally answering. I watched Juste and Jules side-eye him, then look back at me. That "quiet" didn't sit right in my chest. Quiet after a hit was never peace. It was schemin. "Nigga, you woke up three seconds ago and you on bullshit," Juste said, head shaking. "Your wife, you thought about her?"
That's when my reality shifted. Like the floor tilted half an inch. Thoughts of Ayida ran through my head. Her name moved through my head before anybody said it out loud. My heart stuttered, and the machines tattled on me with a sharper beep. Last thing I remembered full was her voice calling me through the dark, her touch pulling at me like rope. "How long I been out?" I asked.
"Three months," Juste said. No sugar on it. The number punched a hole in my gut. Three months in the dark. Three months stuck behind my own eyes, listenin and not movin . Three months of her sittin beside a body I couldn't drive. My hands clenched, shaking with a rage I couldn't place. My chest burned, my head felt tight. Something inside me started pacin like it was trapped. I had to get the fuck outta here.
I sat up hard, swingin my legs off the side of the bed so fast the machine beeped like it caught an attitude. The IV line yanked tight against my arm. "Whoa, nigga. Where you goin'?" Jules said, trying to push me back down. "Home, nigga." I stared him dead in the face. No blink. No hesitation and no room for negotiation. Pierre stepped in like he had sense. "Man, you ain't even seen the doctor yet. Just chill, brudda."
I didn't even look at him long. My eyes went straight to Juste. He was the one that made shit happen. Always had been. "Y'all niggas betta get me the fuck up outta here," I said, voice heavy enough to crack the floor. Juste stared at me. I stared right back. My frown wasn't movin; my patience wasn't existin. I watched his eyes shift to Pierre with that "here we go " look. "Aight, P, go flirt with the nurse until we can get him downstairs," Juste said. Pierre damn near choked. "Pshh, fuck no. That ain't no mission for a married man."
"Nigga, this for your brother," Juste snapped. "Well you do it then, since it's for our brother," Pierre shot back, crossin his arms like a hoe with a point to prove. Juste dragged his hand down his face slow, lettin out a frustrated growl that rattled the bed rails. "Exactly, nigga!"
These niggas was playin. I stood all the way up, grabbing the IV line and rippin it out my arm in one clean pull. Blood dotted the floor. The machines went wild. I didn't give a fuck.The hospital gown slid with me, loose and useless. "Damn, lil brudda," Jules said, turning his head halfway. "Why yo ass aint got no damn drawls on?"
"Man, you niggas bullshittin'." I stepped toward the door, gown swinging open in the back like I was fresh out a damn cult ritual. "I said I'm out this bitch." The cold air hit my nuts quick, but I didn't break stride. "Nigga at least tie your gown up in the back!" Juste lunged forward, grabbing the flappin gown behind me. "You can't just go out this hoe dick and balls every-fuckin'-where." I jerked away from him, teeth clenched. I didn't give a damn. I just wanted out that building before the walls ate me alive. They managed to wrangle me long enough to tie the hospital gown up from behind, and next thing I knew we were walking fast down that hallway like a jailbreak on hush mode. somehow, we made it out.
The second the hospital doors slid open, the air hit my face different. It was too bright and full of shit I couldn't control. We got in Juste's truck, and the door slammed shut with a heavy thud that echoed in my skull. We rode in silence. Thick, tight, suffocating silence. My head was fucked up in ways I didn't even have the words for. Thoughts kept loopin, fast and sharp, faces, gunshots, shadows, Ayida's voice, somethin dark breathin within me.
I needed her. I needed to see her with my own eyes. Make sure she was whole, and I still lived somewhere inside her and not just in her grief. My mind spun so hard I didn't even realize we'd slowed down until Juste cut the engine. I blinked and We was parked in front of my house.
The yard looked half-alivc. The grass had been cut recently, but Ayida's little flower and herb garden, the one she talked to like they had ears. It was dry, brown, and dead. Thathit me in the chest. I can imagine She hadn't had the time, energy, Or hope. "Lay low," Juste said, hand gripping the wheel like he didn't want to let me out. "Love on your wife and wait for my call." That last part wasn't a suggestion. It was a command dressed up as brotherly concern.
I pushed the truck door open and stepped out without answerin him. Inside the house, everything felt too still. Quiet like the walls didn't breathe no more. My feet hit the floor slow, steady, but my pulse was sprintin'. The house looked the same but felt different, like something heavy had settled in all the corners while I was gone. Pictures on the walls. A candle burned down to the bone on the coffee table. A glass half-full of water on the counter.
I walked down the hall, pushing the bedroom door open with my shoulder. Clothes on the floor. Hers. Mine. Some folded. Some not. A life paused in the middle of a breath. The bathroom door was cracked open, warm yellow spilling across the tile. I moved toward it slow, quiet, my hand brushin the doorframe. Through the crack, I saw her. Ayida stood in front of the mirror in nothing but a towel, both hands pressed flat against the counter like she needed it to hold her up. Her head was hangin low, the ends of her coily black hair touchin her collarbone. She looked small from behind. Too small. Like she'd shrunk under the weight of somethin no woman should have to carry.
When she finally lifted her head, she stared at her own reflection. Red eyes. Wet lashes. Face dull, hollow, empty in places I'd always known to be lit. That light in her, my light, was gone. My chest tightened. My throat burned. I felt something inside me twist and snap. I growled. Low and Uncontrolled. Like an animal waking up inside a cage.
