Three Times, by Anna Kovatcheva
The cemetery is not what he expects, made of concrete walkways and straight lines. He expected cluttered headstones stained with age, set along twisting paths in no semblance of order. He expected oaks dipping low overhead, expected Spanish moss blocking his view, expected weeds and nettles barely held back by rusting coils of wrought iron circling the plots. He expected a ghost's graveyard, spirits clouding him even in the daytime, expected to feel the Queen's raw power just standing before her tomb. He expected to see gnarled branches guarding her, a circle of dead weeds bordering the foot of her grave. From what the sloe-eyed girl told him in the shadow-dark alley far off Bourbon Street proper, he expected something else.
He looks over the St. Louis one, and it is too clean, too ordered for these purposes, running in clear-cut aisles. The exposed bricks do not crumble enough, and the tombstones do not lean enough. The stone angels do not mourn as they should, and though the rows rise and fall with the heights of the vaults, there is no rolling landscape leading to the horizon. There is no horizon at all, only a broken line of skyscrapers, a wall of cold glass.
The air is too open, here, too clean, even with flowers rotting in the afternoon heat. He swears he can still smell mildew and bleach, can still sense the cloying sweetness of waterlogged bodies, two months after Katrina made her way out. In the smooth lines of the cemetery, uninhibited by twists and trees, the smell follows him, will not let him beg in peace.
He finds it: a peaked, white pediment tomb, built to hold at least three, tall and narrow and like a dozen others. A small, dark plaque proclaims this the resting place of Marie Laveau, the greatest of the bayou's voodoo queens, but the names of the tomb's others have been worn away with age, smooth bumps of fading letters gentle to the touch. This is unlike the graves he is used to; his wife's name, his children's, could cut flesh. Here, the words seem gentle, grief mellowed with age, and new letters dip over the old, curve with the shape of the wall in the marks of felt-tipped pens and broken crayons, in the scratches of keys and bloodied fingers.
Mark an X. You mark a red X, three times. She showed him on the dirty wall of the alleyway. He watched her gold-banded finger draw an invisible X, X, X, coming away smeared with dirt and ash.
On the tomb's white walls, the marks vary in size. Some small, and he wonders if they are shameful wishes, if their owners whispered when they spoke. He wonders if size means anything to her, if the large, shaky strings belong to the most desperate, if the widest strokes are reserved for the most determined.
Mark a red X, three times.
He bends low to examine the offerings left to her by devotees. He cannot tell where the line is drawn between tribute and trash: the ground is stained with candle wax and littered with the emptied contents of a child's treasure chest. There are strings of beads, their plastic shine starting to fade. There are glass marbles, sea shells, woven bracelets, and carved figurines. There are flowers, limp roses and a bouquet of sunflowers, which he did not know grew here. Wishing women have left her tubes of lipstick. There are packets of cigarettes, letters weighted down with rocks, small animal bones and tea lights, matchbooks, and an orange Kodak camera. A grieving wife has left a string of dog tags.
He wants to believe that these trinkets can hold her interest, draw out her power. He wants to believe that there something real to reach, that magic can be tapped with a bent playing card or a wax-sealed jar of honey. He picks up a blue string of beads and the links slither up over his arm, snakelike, winding through his fingers and squeezing stiffly until the dull bite of plastic leaves pea-sized marks in his palm, until his fingers are purple and tingling with stoppered blood.
His own pockets are empty, a thin wallet and thirty-seven jingling cents in mixed change. He has nothing to offer, and he knows instinctively that afternoons are not times for these wishes or deals. He shakes the beads back to the ground and gets to his feet too quickly; he sways, vision darkening in the dripping heat. When he comes back to himself, one hand is braced on the old plaster of the tomb, pressed flat to the wall.
He tells himself he feels something from this touch—a dusty surge of energy, a burning spark, a cool, dark weight slipping slickly into the pit of his stomach. For a moment, he stands, waiting to feel it again. Nothing comes. He goes.
The cemetery is closed at night, which should not be a surprise, but he is unprepared. The wall is not impossible, but he skins his palms on the path when he lands, hits the ground with the loud huff of air leaving lungs.
He finds her easily this time, even in the dark. Everything is easier in the dark, or at least, the important things are. A faceless someone has lit the candles, and in their bronze glow and the pressing night, he finds it easier to believe. He steps close, and the warm breeze of Indian summer grows softly dangerous, sneaking under his jacket, peeling his sweaty shirt up from his back. The cold grazes sharp fingernails down his spine.
Somewhere nearby, someone is playing blues guitar, a piece he recognizes from long ago, from his father's record albums, but missing the crackle of a canned recording. Something without words, something about cold nights and hard ground. His pulse trips over the chords, quickening painfully at his throat. He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and when looks again, everything is different. In the candlelight, the triplets of desperate wishes swim before his eyes.
Mark a red X, three times. Someone has used lipstick, someone marker, someone else a pen. Someone has used red candle wax, perhaps taken from an offering long-since burned away.
He is unsure whether to kneel, and so he does, gravel biting through the tear in his jeans. He bows his head and blinks down at the pocket knife in his hand. The point digs solidly into the tip of one finger, and he bites his tongue when the blood slips free. He raises his shaky hand, his breath coming quickly, and he draws it just under the plaque: X, X, X. Three times.
And then what? he'd asked, feigning disinterest. The girl showed her teeth in a narrow grin, and they were too thin, too sharp, making him recoil though he'd meant to show no unease.
You just want to know, Mister, or you want to know? And he did not bother to lie.
I mark a red X, he'd prompted, and she'd agreed, Three times, and turned back to the wall.
You knock, she said. You knock three times. Her bony fist made a dull, thick noise against the bricks, barely a sound at all. Somewhere nearby, someone had been playing music, and here, too, kneeling in the dark by the mausoleum, the lull of the guitar finds him.
He raises his fist. He shuts his eyes and knocks, three times, and the noise comes back to him dull and thick. The wind whistles, and the guitar fades again. The candles flicker brushstrokes across the field of his vision, painting and repainting the white walls, the strings of Xs marking the whole of the tomb like a poor student's assignment or a deal with the devil. He wonders who offers this, and he thinks of the portrait-postcard the alley girl showed him, a painting of a strong woman wrapped in shawls of a dozen colors, staring ahead with danger in the solid line of her jaw. He wonders if she is really here, in one of these boxes, skeletal and impossible to recognize but for her soul. He wonders what is asked in return for a wish like this.
She'd grinned at him, leering cat-grin full of spindly teeth, too bright in the dark of the alley. Then you ask for what you want. You tell her out loud. He'd thought wishes were meant to be secrets, that is what birthdays have taught him, but the candles are different here. The girl just shook her head. Out loud, so she can hear. Say it out loud because if you don't, if you can't, you don't want it enough.
Gravel digging into his knees, candles blurring his vision, he sets the knife down on the ground, an offering. He shuts his eyes and presses his palm to the wall. The plaster is icy. He says aloud, Please.
The beads snake around his hand again. The discarded coins click together like beetles when he shifts his weight, as though her collection of offerings is scrambling over itself to claim him and his bloodied knife.
You knock three times, and say your wish out loud.
He says, Please. Please, mistress, I want my family back. He sees the ruined house in the candlelight paintings, falling in on itself when the waterlines fell back, sees the spray-painted marks he'd found on the siding when he'd finally been allowed back into the city with his briefcase hanging from one limp arm, the guard's markings by the front door meaning, four know residents, three bodies found, and his voice rises over the wind. Please, mistress, I want my home.
The beetle coins click. The beads are wrapped around his fingers so he can no longer feel his hand. His voice rises over the wind. Please, mistress, he says, Give my family. Please.
The wind dies, leaves him with only the panting of his breath. Beyond the oven vaults of the cemetery walls, he hears late-night traffic as though he is underwater. The blues guitar is long gone, and the trinkets at his knees are silent.
He sighs, slumps over, his sweaty forehead against the cool plaster of the tomb.
Nothing. For a long moment, there is nothing. Then, all at once, the candles blow out.
