doctor john is like her second father.
marie’s biological father was always kind to her — he taught her to read and to write, and never treated her differently even if the shades of their skin didn’t match. a golden brown versus alabaster. but he couldn’t teach her everything. some parts of herself she even had to hide from him ( her magic — her gifts — that her mother told her he wouldn’t understand, that most wouldn’t understand ).
she meets doctor john when she is already a woman, a married woman and a hairdresser in the french quarter. she’s drawn to the bayou one night — to the light of the fire and the sounds of the drums and to something else that she couldn’t quite interpret right then ( but now she knows it was magic — that rush of warmth through her veins and air in her lungs was unmistakably magic ).
and when doctor john sees her, he seems to already know who she is, and he smiles. marie remembers his blinding smile and the firm grip of his hand and his touch on her shoulder to steady her when the current of his magic dizzies her.
( she had always gotten visions — flashes of images right before her eyes in her dreams and when she took someone’s hand or brushed their shoulder against hers. when she touches doctor john, the voodoo king, she sees that he will be someone precious to her ).
he takes her by her hand and tells her that he can teach her all that she needs to know. he tells her that he’s seen that she will be someone important — powerful, respected, and feared. and she accepts, because she thinks about the magic she’s had to keep hidden all this time and a culture she doesn’t know and visions and magic that she’s never quite understood.
marie smiles, almost as grand as his own, and lets him tell her everything.
he tells her about voodoo — that it’s not what people will say it is. it ain’t dark magic, he says, and she believes him. but still, he shows her, proves it to her. he shows her how he collects ingredients and makes a gris-gris bag — for luck and love and health and protection ( you can make them for anything, even to do harm, but i’mma healer ). he shows her how to cultivate her gift; he tells her how to bring on her visions, how to see what she needs to see ( your konesans’ important, marie. the strongest seers are the leaders ). he shows her how to summon the loa, how to talk to them and petition them and praise them as they deserve ( some are pretty temperamental. you gotta know how to please them ). and he teaches her how to heal with her own hands — from small wounds to deadly illness ravaging new orleans.
doctor john also teaches her how to be a leader — how to be the queen. so when he tells her after years of watching over her that he’s taught her all she needs to know, and it sounds awfully close to a goodbye, she’s not at all surprised. she’s saddened, but she knew it was coming.
he leaves her with a gift — a gris-gris bag he made specifically for her, to keep her safe once he left. marie sets it on her nightstand and prays to it before she sleeps.
