Noir jm chronicles…. The tape continues

The tape continues ….

“…. Jamaica …. we lived at the Half Moon Resort …. her best friend’s dad owned it, Jacques Cousteau was a friend and regular drop in— among others, and provided the perfect cover for everyone ….that was the period— interlude which determined everyone’s fate …. I should have been too young to remember that time but …. there are those odd things …. you know…. those strange images that come back to haunt you ….when you can’t sleep …. in your dreams …. how could I remember where from? I remember when Mattie ran me into the wire fence that day in Montego Bay…. that image of the pattern of the fence stapled into my mental vision for hours ….  like a beehive pattern ….on my leg….the shock of so much bright blood….she screamed….we went into a voo-doo shop—there were so many around. I remember the faces—the dark masks ….but we always went to this one specific shop with the lady who told fortunes ….Mattie knew her; they were friends ….there was an old man there too with a gold front tooth. He made faces to make me forget about the blood. The voo-doo  lady washed the blood off me

The voo-doo dolls hung from strings across the hut. It had a thatched roof—the smell of the hay I still remember —and the dung from the mule outside. 

There were the dolls with the strings. Made from dried gourd husks—they had painted faces like the fortune tellers. When you pull the strings the head spins 

The fortune teller lady liked me. She seemed to believe I was ordained with special powers.

The actual truth was …. understood now in retrospect; Mattie was hired by Ethan 

and on the island he was well known. But it was also a secret who hired her. And all the way until that fateful-from-the-door of-the-closet drunken revelation, it had been under the guise “the help” —the hired at home maids— had been employed by my grandfather…. in due course, they disappeared 

I spent hours spinning that head in the stroller to stay awake as Mattie wheeled me to be sure that she would not again run me into another wire fence  ….but the medallion ….why do I remember that in connection to that time —I was too young to know what it was. It looked like those giant sun-mirror boho faces with the golden rays hung on everyone’s walls back then ….it was the heat of the sun and the gleam caught on the sand….”