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skonen_bladesThe weather hammered down outside and all eyes were on me. It was silent except for the rain crashing into the windows and slapping the street outside the open doors of this forgotten subway station palace.
I was wearing my father’s ring. It was a little silver dragon wrapped around my finger. I wore it because I thought it would bring me luck at the board meeting.
I wasn’t supposed to be there but I couldn’t stop myself from arriving here. I woke up with a fire under my skin and a need to walk. I didn’t have a destination in mind but I drifted from main streets to side streets to alleys with an increasing wonder at my own actions. I didn’t stop walking, even long after my own danger meter was in the red.
First and foremost, I’m white. Very pale and this was the old-iron, alleytown, cops-don’t-come-here part of town. Now, I was one of five white people at my company and there were fifty people there so I’m not too concerned about that in most instances. We had a lot of Latino, African and Asian people. I didn’t see race for the most part.
But I’d never been the only white person in a room full of black strangers. And this was a church of some kind. A church with a lot of jewelry, very old clothes, some bones, a lot of musicians and about a thousand candles.
It was raining like a hot tub had ruptured in the sky. Warm rain had soaked my cheap suit and plastered my hair to my skull. I had even worn beige because I read that it would help combat the heat. I was like a sliver of bone drifting through coffee, caramel, chocolate, and licorice.
Conversations stopped when I walked by. I walked by a stabbing and the victim and the attacker both paused to watch me walk me pass. Kids paused in their playing. Old men stopped laughing and telling stories. Barbers stopped cutting hair. People who were reading put down their books. A cloud of silence had followed me here to this place of worship.
And here I was. The ceiling sagged, growing fat with the water. It looked decades old but I couldn’t believe it wasn’t cracking open as I stood there. Old newspapers wadded up along the molding and corners of the floor, rounding off the corners with rat havens. The walls were paneled in cracked and peeling tin squares. Even with all the candles, most of it was lost in the shadows.
And a hundred pairs of eyes were looking at me out of deep-south faces.
I don’t know anything about voodoo except what I’ve seen in the movies. I don’t think that’s what this was. I didn’t see Jesus anywhere, though. And there were bones. Lots of bones.
I walked through a rusted iron squeeze gate like the kind on elevators from the 1920s. As I walked through the doorway into the room, the heat from the candles started to dry out my suit.
I noticed one empty seat at the front of the congregation. My feet kept moving. I had gone so far beyond my limits of fear that I felt like a passenger now. With one echoing step after another, my feet touched out a damp rhythm all the way to the front row. As I walked, the heads in room tracked me while they fanned themselves calmly. There I sat down in the one empty seat and waited. I felt as if the capability for surprise had vacated my body entirely and that the very real possibility of my death had arrived.
There had been people waiting outside. The one empty seat in the front row felt like it belonged to me.
There were six people on the stage. A beautiful woman in a lace black dress with a grayish cast to her skin, an ancient man with white hair and one blind eye, two young men in new suits that looked like brothers, a veteran in a wheelchair and a child. The child sat in the middle with a small gold crown.
As soon as I took my seat, the room came alive like nothing had ever happened. Play was pressed and I watched. The musicians started playing again, people talked to each other, and there was wailing and laughing.
People with ailments were brought forward to be cured by the people on the stage. There seemed to be an order but I couldn’t parse it. I saw a boy with crutches go to be touched by the old man but then I saw another young woman with crutches go to the brothers to be touched by them. People with nothing obviously wrong with them would walk up, sway, and then walk towards one of the six.
I saw the dead body of a policeman brought in to be touched. He was not brought back to life but the woman in the lace dress touched him and her eyes rolled back in her head. She spoke in gutter creole patois and the widow of the man exploded with joyful crying.
A man brought his dog to the boy in the chair with the crown. The dog howled when it was touched but appeared unchanged even though the owner thanked the boy through blubbering tears of gratitude.
I might have sat there for a half hour. I might have sat there for two weeks. Time became elastic in the way that only happens when important things are going down.
The little girl that walked in caused a commotion. As she walked down the aisle, people pulled away from her suddenly and involuntarily. They recognized her as a human but it was almost as if a poisonous snake or man-sized spider has walked into the room. She wore a white dress with mud on the knees. She was barefoot and kept her head to the side. One bright pink barrette nestled in her hair. She walked slowly and confidently up the six. She had hazel skin and her eyes glinted in her sockets like obsidian reflecting flames.
They showed no fear but the intensity in the room amped up as she got closer to the stage. She stopped and looked at each one of them in turn.
And then she turned to me. The six people on the stage nodded sagely as if my arrival had been a mystery that was now revealed to them.
She came close to me and grabbed my hand. As if high on a drug that removed all care, I let her take it, feeling mildly curious. I felt a smile on my face and I raised my eyebrows in a greeting as she brought my hand slowly up to her lips.
My ring felt hotter.
In the winters in Minnesota, I used to breathe on my bedroom window at night. The white condensation from my breath would spider out at the edges on the glass, already turning to front.
When she breathed on my hand, it was like that except black. Like cracks in the shell of a hardboiled egg. Like an airbrush of pure panther darkness. My hand furred with velvet where she breathed. She exhaled powerfully, emptying her lungs over and over again on my hand.
I watched her eyes change colour from that startling black to a dark green.
The blackness on my hand coalesced like a sheen on a pool of gasoline. I watched it, entranced by it. Parts of the blackness scabbed over. Parts it grew black hair. It shivered across my hand, ebony goosebumps flickering across my fingers. I could feel it climbing up my shirtsleeves.
I have to maintain that I did not feel panic. She watched me and I watched her and the rest of the church watched us both.
She let go of my hand, empty of whatever she’d breathed onto me. I brought my hand up to see what would happen.
The blackness swirled, finding veins and cracks in my skin. Coal dust shook out of it, puffs of night spores wafted free. My body was fighting it. Then the blackness found my father’s ring.
It coursed forward like inky rapids, overlapping itself, concentrating itself in a stampede to get to my ring. The blackness circled and shrank as if it was going down the drain of my ring. All of the blackness found it’s way into my father’s dragon ring. The ring turned black.
I took a very deep breath. I felt very exhausted.
The little looked very startled and started crying. She didn’t know where she was.
The little boy came forward and held out a box with the skull of a bird on top and red velvet on the inside it. I held my hand over the box and he closed the box on the ring, pulling it forward and off of my hand.
As soon as it left my hand, I pissed myself and screamed. I stood up, my heart hammering and hyperventilating. The boy went back to his seat.
The woman and the brothers came forward and held my arms. I felt calmed by their touch. They guided me outside and left me there.
An ancient taxi waited for me. It took me back to my hotel free of charge. I swear we drove through a swamp for part of the journey.
All told, I was gone for four hours. I left at nine in the morning and was back for a late lunch.
I have no idea what it was about. It feels like a dream. All I know is that my father’s ring is missing.
And I feel like I barely knew him.
tags
I was wearing my father’s ring. It was a little silver dragon wrapped around my finger. I wore it because I thought it would bring me luck at the board meeting.
I wasn’t supposed to be there but I couldn’t stop myself from arriving here. I woke up with a fire under my skin and a need to walk. I didn’t have a destination in mind but I drifted from main streets to side streets to alleys with an increasing wonder at my own actions. I didn’t stop walking, even long after my own danger meter was in the red.
First and foremost, I’m white. Very pale and this was the old-iron, alleytown, cops-don’t-come-here part of town. Now, I was one of five white people at my company and there were fifty people there so I’m not too concerned about that in most instances. We had a lot of Latino, African and Asian people. I didn’t see race for the most part.
But I’d never been the only white person in a room full of black strangers. And this was a church of some kind. A church with a lot of jewelry, very old clothes, some bones, a lot of musicians and about a thousand candles.
It was raining like a hot tub had ruptured in the sky. Warm rain had soaked my cheap suit and plastered my hair to my skull. I had even worn beige because I read that it would help combat the heat. I was like a sliver of bone drifting through coffee, caramel, chocolate, and licorice.
Conversations stopped when I walked by. I walked by a stabbing and the victim and the attacker both paused to watch me walk me pass. Kids paused in their playing. Old men stopped laughing and telling stories. Barbers stopped cutting hair. People who were reading put down their books. A cloud of silence had followed me here to this place of worship.
And here I was. The ceiling sagged, growing fat with the water. It looked decades old but I couldn’t believe it wasn’t cracking open as I stood there. Old newspapers wadded up along the molding and corners of the floor, rounding off the corners with rat havens. The walls were paneled in cracked and peeling tin squares. Even with all the candles, most of it was lost in the shadows.
And a hundred pairs of eyes were looking at me out of deep-south faces.
I don’t know anything about voodoo except what I’ve seen in the movies. I don’t think that’s what this was. I didn’t see Jesus anywhere, though. And there were bones. Lots of bones.
I walked through a rusted iron squeeze gate like the kind on elevators from the 1920s. As I walked through the doorway into the room, the heat from the candles started to dry out my suit.
I noticed one empty seat at the front of the congregation. My feet kept moving. I had gone so far beyond my limits of fear that I felt like a passenger now. With one echoing step after another, my feet touched out a damp rhythm all the way to the front row. As I walked, the heads in room tracked me while they fanned themselves calmly. There I sat down in the one empty seat and waited. I felt as if the capability for surprise had vacated my body entirely and that the very real possibility of my death had arrived.
There had been people waiting outside. The one empty seat in the front row felt like it belonged to me.
There were six people on the stage. A beautiful woman in a lace black dress with a grayish cast to her skin, an ancient man with white hair and one blind eye, two young men in new suits that looked like brothers, a veteran in a wheelchair and a child. The child sat in the middle with a small gold crown.
As soon as I took my seat, the room came alive like nothing had ever happened. Play was pressed and I watched. The musicians started playing again, people talked to each other, and there was wailing and laughing.
People with ailments were brought forward to be cured by the people on the stage. There seemed to be an order but I couldn’t parse it. I saw a boy with crutches go to be touched by the old man but then I saw another young woman with crutches go to the brothers to be touched by them. People with nothing obviously wrong with them would walk up, sway, and then walk towards one of the six.
I saw the dead body of a policeman brought in to be touched. He was not brought back to life but the woman in the lace dress touched him and her eyes rolled back in her head. She spoke in gutter creole patois and the widow of the man exploded with joyful crying.
A man brought his dog to the boy in the chair with the crown. The dog howled when it was touched but appeared unchanged even though the owner thanked the boy through blubbering tears of gratitude.
I might have sat there for a half hour. I might have sat there for two weeks. Time became elastic in the way that only happens when important things are going down.
The little girl that walked in caused a commotion. As she walked down the aisle, people pulled away from her suddenly and involuntarily. They recognized her as a human but it was almost as if a poisonous snake or man-sized spider has walked into the room. She wore a white dress with mud on the knees. She was barefoot and kept her head to the side. One bright pink barrette nestled in her hair. She walked slowly and confidently up the six. She had hazel skin and her eyes glinted in her sockets like obsidian reflecting flames.
They showed no fear but the intensity in the room amped up as she got closer to the stage. She stopped and looked at each one of them in turn.
And then she turned to me. The six people on the stage nodded sagely as if my arrival had been a mystery that was now revealed to them.
She came close to me and grabbed my hand. As if high on a drug that removed all care, I let her take it, feeling mildly curious. I felt a smile on my face and I raised my eyebrows in a greeting as she brought my hand slowly up to her lips.
My ring felt hotter.
In the winters in Minnesota, I used to breathe on my bedroom window at night. The white condensation from my breath would spider out at the edges on the glass, already turning to front.
When she breathed on my hand, it was like that except black. Like cracks in the shell of a hardboiled egg. Like an airbrush of pure panther darkness. My hand furred with velvet where she breathed. She exhaled powerfully, emptying her lungs over and over again on my hand.
I watched her eyes change colour from that startling black to a dark green.
The blackness on my hand coalesced like a sheen on a pool of gasoline. I watched it, entranced by it. Parts of the blackness scabbed over. Parts it grew black hair. It shivered across my hand, ebony goosebumps flickering across my fingers. I could feel it climbing up my shirtsleeves.
I have to maintain that I did not feel panic. She watched me and I watched her and the rest of the church watched us both.
She let go of my hand, empty of whatever she’d breathed onto me. I brought my hand up to see what would happen.
The blackness swirled, finding veins and cracks in my skin. Coal dust shook out of it, puffs of night spores wafted free. My body was fighting it. Then the blackness found my father’s ring.
It coursed forward like inky rapids, overlapping itself, concentrating itself in a stampede to get to my ring. The blackness circled and shrank as if it was going down the drain of my ring. All of the blackness found it’s way into my father’s dragon ring. The ring turned black.
I took a very deep breath. I felt very exhausted.
The little looked very startled and started crying. She didn’t know where she was.
The little boy came forward and held out a box with the skull of a bird on top and red velvet on the inside it. I held my hand over the box and he closed the box on the ring, pulling it forward and off of my hand.
As soon as it left my hand, I pissed myself and screamed. I stood up, my heart hammering and hyperventilating. The boy went back to his seat.
The woman and the brothers came forward and held my arms. I felt calmed by their touch. They guided me outside and left me there.
An ancient taxi waited for me. It took me back to my hotel free of charge. I swear we drove through a swamp for part of the journey.
All told, I was gone for four hours. I left at nine in the morning and was back for a late lunch.
I have no idea what it was about. It feels like a dream. All I know is that my father’s ring is missing.
And I feel like I barely knew him.
tags