Dad: Let me call you.
Me: I don’t want to talk now. Text.
The dots play across the cell phone’s screen.
Dad: I should’ve said something.
You damn Skippy.
Me: Like what?
Dot. Dot. Dot.
Dad: Before she got sick, your mother and I were helping curate a museum project on the Jazz Age. One afternoon she wanted to check the box in your grandmother’s attic. There were some things we could use inside that box, she said.
Lorraine didn’t want to ask Maggie straight out. They didn’t get along, either. So, she “borrowed” what she wanted. Lol.
That gave me a chuckle, too. Mom and I had used the same technique with Maggie.
Dad: We had intended to return the papers during our next visit, but then your mother was diagnosed.
A few months after she passed, I decided to finish the last project we started together. I couldn’t locate the papers Lorraine had borrowed. Still, I remembered the name Honoree Dalcour and the Bronzeville facility, and while on a trip to Chicago, I called the facility and ended up on the phone with Honoree.
I couldn’t believe she was still alive. I told her about Maggie’s documents and Lorraine, and she insisted I stop by and visit her.
She told me Maggie had stolen those things from her when she put Honoree in the facility in 1985.
Then she gave me some bullshit about a curse.
Until this last text, I am starting to believe Dad had a heart-driven reason for visiting Honoree, at least the first time. Then he talks about a curse, and I’ve had enough.
I switch screens, key in his number, and he picks up before the first ring ends.
“Sawyer. Yeah. I’m sorry, I should’ve said something when you called.”
“A fucking curse?”
A pause. Perhaps he’s alarmed by my language, but damn, what does he expect?
“Dad!”
A sigh. “She said the women in our family were cursed.” His voice is audible but steady. “They came from a line of bad women, starting with Maggie. Cursed to suffer pain-filled lives, dark and tragic, because of their roots.”
He pauses again. The silence goes uninterrupted. I want him to keep talking while I process this insanity.
“I thought she was just an old woman struggling with her decline,” he says. “Then she began ranting. Half of what she said, I took as the ravings of a lunatic and walked out. Your mother was dead, and I didn’t need an elderly woman to tell me her ridiculous fantasies about my wife. I had wanted to finish this last project for Lorraine, but Honoree’s nonsense about curses did something to me, and I couldn’t.”
His voice hitches, and I almost stop him. Tell him I don’t want to force him to relive the pain of Mom’s death, but I can’t. I don’t. I need to hear it all.
“Twelve years later,” he begins again. “Azizi died. I couldn’t get Honoree’s words out of my head. I had to see her again and make sure. She was not some hoodoo priestess, not a soothsayer. But that time was worse. She kept shouting, ‘I told you. The women are cursed.’ She’s not senile. Just cruel.”
“It’s not a hoodoo anything. She is capable of cruelty and hate when it comes to Maggie.”
“But why? Maggie’s money has helped her live a reasonable existence for more years than anyone has any right to hope for.”
“It has something to do with a house in Baton Rouge.”
“Oh my. Baton Rouge. One of the documents your mother took from Maggie was about Baton Rouge. I can’t recall specifics, though.”
