AN: Something I wrote a year or two ago and forgot about. Kind of a little back story on Facilier. Probably flubbed on the proper voodoo terms but this was just something i wrote for fun. Hope you like it!
Amos' voice is slick and sugary, like the thick chocolate her mama used to mix into her hot milk when she was sick to mask the bitter taste of medicine. Pauline tries to remember what it used to sound like. She tries to imagine the squeaky, earnest, unsure boy she remembered. Nothing about him is the same. He left their little community a self-conscious teen fearful of the world he was about to enter and now, in a few years, here he was, a slick-talking, silky-voiced salesman. One who moved with all the quiet ease of a snake.
The hair she remembers as coarse and curly is slicked back and shellacked to his head in waves. His suit isn't the brown linen of the men in their part of town, but black, trimmed with the rich purple of the elite. The silence as they sit across from each other at the old wooden table is heavy and stifling like wet summer heat.
He had walked through his old neighborhood with pep in his step. He either didn't notice the wide berth people gave him or he didn't care. His shiny car parked in the middle of the square for all to admire, he walked straight to Pauline's door and vaulted up the steps on his long legs. Pauline wishes she would have gotten a warning, some sort of signal that maybe she should straighten up her home and put on a nicer dress. As it was, she stumbled and fumbled her greeting, smoothing her palms across her dress to dry the sudden beads of sweat.
He makes her nervous. Everything about this new man is sinister and unnatural and she is afraid. She can only guess what he's been up to, why he was gone for so long from this poor part of town with its shotgun houses in varying states of shambles.
Her fingers dance the Black Bottom across the rim of her cup of lukewarm coffee and chicory. She can't find it within her to just put him out, but she doesn't know what to say to him.
They don't have much to talk about.
She can remember her mother's disapproval and her father's worry at their friendship, if one could call a handful stilted conversations a friendship, and the gossip that plagued him and his mother. Cicely's ramshackle home on the edge of town was frequented by men; rich and poor, black and white. Amos would shine shoes in town for money, but even with their joint efforts, they often went hungry. Her grandmother would sometimes send her to school with extra food to feed the boy, set in her belief that he shouldn't starve because his mother wasn't doing proper work. The older women in town tutted and whispered about the woman's activities, even as they looked the other way when their husbands left their beds at night.
Cicely was a desperate woman, as they found out when the old gravedigger Poe caught her doing rootwork in the cemetery late at night. At the time, Pauline was still a child and she had no clue what rootwork meant. It was months before she knew for sure. After Amos came to school in nice clothes and the people in town paid her visits for another reason. Some of the younger kids said she was a genie who granted wishes but Pauline knew better. Her older brother, frustrated with her constant questions explained it all. Cicely was a conjure woman. She practiced hoodoo and people came from all over to see her. There were many wealthy young wives, hoping for something to help them conceive; there was the odd businessman set on destroying the empire of the competition and sometimes people in town, seeking revenge for some offense or betting the last of their meager wages on a miracle.
As her clientele grew, so did Cicely's ego. She moved into a nicer house midway between town and their little niche and paraded through the streets in the jewels and clothing lavished on her by the rich people who sought her help. She bragged about how she had been imbued with royal blood and expected others to bow in respect when she passed. Amos seemed embarrassed by all the attention his newfound wealth received and a young Pauline made it a point not to fawn over the boy, or bully him in jealousy. She was nice enough to him, and she made sure that he didn't notice her admiring how shiny his shoes were, or how much she wished her mama would sew her a shirt made of silk like his. They would often sit together in silence during breaks, each too shy to make conversation, but understanding the other well enough to know that it didn't matter much anyway.
She couldn't understand him now. The way he talks, that sly grin, more of a smirk, as he watches her, all of it was a new Amos. He had even changed his name. He tells her he is called Armand Facilier. Amos is no more.
She remembers once, for her birthday, Amos brought her a pair of earrings. They were just some little diamonds she assumed that he took from his mother's inventory. He just sat like usual in their spot and handed them to her as she passed on the cornbread her grandma had sent for him. Pauline thanked him profusely, spewing more words than they had spoken to each other in days, and though she didn't push for a response, she noticed the quick smile he flashed when her eyes lit up. Her mother tutted and told her to give them back, but she hid them. In fact, she still had them put up safely in her bedroom. She used to wait until her parents were out and put them on, dancing around the house like she imagined a socialite would, bossing around imaginary maids and butlers like the rich women she saw sometimes in town. After a particularly hard day, she would come home and just look at them, dreaming up some extravagant dress to pair them with. She would never sell those earrings. They were the only truly valuable thing she hadn't yet sold off to pay bills. They were the nicest gift she had ever been given. She didn't get him anything for his birthday. She didn't even know when it was.
She wonders why this stranger is here, staring at the gouges in her sad little table with thinly veiled disdain as he gingerly cups his chipped mug of coffee. He hasn't taken a sip. She nastily thinks of how the dust in her home would surely ruin his little suit. It isn't an unwelcome thought. She feels inferior in his presence. Her cheeks burn from the face he makes as he takes in her worn dress and raw hands. Pauline had been scrubbing floors and washing clothes for the better part of eight hours today, putting a gleaming polish on the homes of the rich while her own home fell by the wayside. She is tired and grimy and can't help but look with longing at his crisp suit and shining shoes.
When he begins to speak, it is the voice of a man speaking down to her. In his words she can hear his distaste for her humble home and lowly status here on the edge of the bayou. This is a man too good for where he came from. He starts to brag of his adventures outside their tight-knit community. How he was apprenticed to the great Madame Mozelle, a woman whose name was both feared and respected throughout all of New Orleans. He boasts of the people he had met, name-dropping so heavily that the girl stops keeping track.
"So why are you back?" she snaps, "Why did you come back here if your life was so great in the city?"
His eyes darken, looking blacker than she thought possible.
"I have things to take care of." is all he says, before he smirks and her heart clenches in dread.
"Like you." he continues with a sweet smile. "You can't possibly like living in this…tin box. Don't you want a better life? More money? Nicer dresses? I know you do. Everybody does. It's human nature. I can help you get it all. All you have to do is say the word." He holds out a hand, waiting for her to take it. It was like those cheesy serials she read in the weekly paper. Some creature of the night whisks a naïve girl off to have scandalous adventures in the dark.
She knows she should immediately say no, throw him out and lock her door. Call her brother over for good measure, but she doesn't, not yet.
She has gleaned enough from her elders to know that by taking his hand, she would be making an unbreakable deal. She knows that making a deal like this is as good as selling your soul, and it was bound to bite her in the ass as sure as it was to pay off, but she still can't help the tiny inkling in the bottom of her stomach and the back of her mind that urges her to take Amos'-no, Armand's-hand.
She remembers when Cicely's luck ran dry. Her gifts to others turned sour and the wealthy stopped courting her favor. The money went, and took Cicely's sanity with it. The night the woman died, Pauline remembers the charge in the air, how the elders in the community snapped in anxious whispers for everyone to get inside and shut their doors. Cicely's insane wails carried over the air and breached the homes shut tight, infecting the dreams of the sleeping children. Pauline's parents stayed up all night praying through the screams. In the morning, Cicely was dead and Amos had left town in rags, muttering fearfully about "paying off her debts."
Pauline knows what the sensible thing to do is. Be content with being alive. Decline Amos' offer. Her daddy's saying, "You got what you wanted, but you lost what you had," rings in her head like the church bell. But she is so tired of cleaning tables and scrubbing floors to glossy finishes for an unappreciative housewife. Her hands are raw from scrubbing stains from unmentionables and her soul is worn from the constant berating she receives from her demanding, particular boss. She shouldn't be this tired at nineteen.
If wealth and riches appealed to her, well that was fine, they appealed to just about everyone. She is tired of being tired and feels that just a little leg up, just a little help so she could save up some money, well, she wouldn't turn her nose up at it. Except she knew it would be more than just a leg up. If he turned out to be the real deal like his mother, then the riches would flow like water and she would lap it up. Then once she got comfortable, when she felt like she had what she "deserved", it would be ripped out from beneath her in grand fashion. That's just how these things worked. The powers that be wanted payment and would take it any way they could. She could just imagine herself settling down; thinking all was well while she bossed her white maids around the same way she was. If she took his hand, along with the wealth, came insanity, loss, and death. She knows all of this, but still says nothing.
If she had the chance for just a taste of happiness for a short while, should she take it? Would it be better than she was now? Just barely getting by?
He sits knowingly across from her, hand still extended across the table. He wants an answer now. Before she comes to her senses and his sale slips away. She can tell. That easy smile now seems forced and there is a bead of sweat balancing precariously on the tip of an overly-coiffed lock of hair. There is desperation in the air on both ends. She can taste it on her tongue.
She can't look at him now, feeling ashamed that she could be so enticed by something she knows will end badly. The room becomes a blur as she makes her decision.
Amos' pupils thin to slits and his smile turns up with devious glee, his outstretched fingers twitch in her face.
"Well, Pauline?"