Mabel found herself without an umbrella as the rain came down, so she ducked into a basement bookseller’s on Bleecker Street and shook the rain from her arms just as someone else barreled through the front door, hitting her in the back with the doorknob.
“Gee, I’m awfully sorry if I… why, if it isn’t Mabel Rose!” The man removed his cap and stuck out his hand, pumping hers in a firm handshake. “Remember me? Arthur Brown? Golly, but you’re soaked. Heya, Mr. Jenkins!” Arthur called to a small, portly man in a vest reading a book behind the cash register. “Any chance of a towel for my friend?”
Mr. Jenkins offered Mabel a thin dishtowel and she blotted it against her face and hair, trying to preserve what was left of the wash-and-set she’d gotten at the beauty parlor the day before. It was a lost cause, but she had been trained to take on lost causes.
“The others are upstairs, Arthur,” Mr. Jenkins said, taking back the towel. “I let them in.” Mr. Jenkins suddenly looked nervous. “I hope that was all right.”
Arthur nodded. “It’s jake. I’m late.”
“Late for what?” Mabel asked.
Arthur seemed to be weighing his response, and Mabel was afraid she’d been rude. Arthur glanced toward the drapes at the rear of the shop and back to Mabel. He offered his arm. “Would you like to find out?”
As Memphis rounded the corner of Lenox and 135th Street, the crow found him, keeping pace as it fluttered from newel post to street lamp. Memphis sighed. “Good to see you again, Berenice.”
“That bird’s got something to say to you.” Madame Seraphina, the second-most powerful banker in Harlem and the most powerful mambo, stood in the doorway of her Obeah shop, tucked under the stoop of a brownstone. “Birds are messengers from the land of the dead.”
“That’s what my mother used to say.”
Seraphina pointed a long, graceful finger. “There’s a weight on you. I can see it. Come. Let me help you.”
“No weight on me, ma’am. I don’t wear worry,” Memphis said, tipping his hat and turning away.
“Stay your feet!” Seraphina commanded. “Kijan ou rele?”
“Pardon?”
“What is your name?” she said slowly.
Unease twisted in Memphis’s gut. He’d heard mambos could fashion a curse using any bit of personal information, even something as innocent as a name.
“It’s Memphis,” he answered after a pause. “Memphis Campbell.”
“Yes. I already know who you are, Mr. Campbell.” Madame Seraphina raised her chin, appraising him. “The Harlem Healer. The Boy Wonder. Not a boy anymore. You Haitian?”
“On my mother’s side.”
“But you don’t speak Creole?”
“Not much.”
“It’s important to know where you come from, Young Oungan,” she clucked. “Come. Let me talk to the lwas for you.”
“I’m late to meet Papa Charles,” Memphis lied.
Madame Seraphina’s lips curled into an easy smile that didn’t match the flintiness of her eyes. “Papa Charles is sleepy. If he doesn’t wake soon, the white man will come in and take all that he has built. Rabbits in the garden,” she said, and Memphis didn’t know what she meant.
“I just run the numbers.”
“You just run the numbers,” she mocked and took a sucking breath in through her teeth. “You grew up handsome, I see,” she said, laughing at Memphis’s embarrassment. Then: “I bet you miss your manman. She came to see me once before she passed.”
Memphis’s head shot up. He’d have to be crazy to take on a real Haitian mambo, but he’d had enough taunting. “Don’t talk about my mother. You didn’t know her.”
Madame Seraphina’s shoulders moved just slightly, as if she could barely be bothered to shrug. “There is a weight on your soul. I know. I can see.” Her smile was gone. “Come and let me help you while I can.”
But Memphis was already backing away.
“You’ll come to me one day,” Madame Seraphina called after Memphis as the crow squawked and squawked.