The Duppy
Part Two
Mrs. Beaton came into the kitchen. “I thought I heard you, Simon,” she said to her husband, and kissed him on the cheek. “Why are you home so early?”
Mr. Beaton frowned. “For God’s sake, Emily, I told you last night that I’m going to the economic symposium in Jackson Hole. The Lear leaves in three hours.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Mrs. Beaton. “Are you hungry? It’s Rose’s day off, but I could fix you something.”
“Don’t bother. I had lunch at the office.” He paused. “I have to pack. I’ll be gone for three days. When I get back, we’re going to talk about your problem.” He stalked out of the room. Mrs. Beaton’s “problem” was obvious to Melda. Even from six feet away, her breath smelled of alcohol.
“Well, I’m hungry, and you must be, too,” she said to Melda, slurring a little, “I can make us sandwiches.”
“That’s my job, Missus. Wanda had peanut butter and jelly, but I imagine you’d like something more grown-up, nah?”
“That’s an interesting way of putting it, Melda,” Mrs. Beaton said a little shakily. “There are times when I don’t feel very grown-up at all. Wanda’s a lot more sophisticated than I am.” Suddenly her eyes were shiny with tears.
“Oh, come, now, things can’t be that bad. Just sit down, and I’ll see what’s in the fridge.”
Mrs. Beaton sat at the table and wiped her eyes with a hankie she took from her pocket. “Thank you, Melda. You’re very kind. I think there’s some ham and cheese, cucumbers, and a couple of tomatoes.”
“How about a salad?” Melda suggested. “Unless Rose is saving the vegetables for supper…”
“No, no, she left a casserole that just has to be heated. A salad would be wonderful.”
She showed Melda where the salad bowl was, and pointed out the knife-rack on the wall to one side of the gas stove. There was olive oil and wine vinegar on the counter across from the stove. Melda cut everything up, tossed it in the bowl with three dashes of oil and one of vinegar, and found a head of lettuce in the crisper. There were elegant china plates with floral patterns in the cupboard, and silverware that, judging by its heaviness, was made of real silver. She set the kitchen table, used tongs to fill the plates, and sat down across from Mrs. Beaton. Despite having said that she was hungry, the lady just picked at her food. After a moment, she got up, fetched a bottle of white wine from the fridge, got a glass from the cabinet, and poured it full.
“Would you care to join me, Melda?” she asked.
“No, missus. I don’t drink.”
“Ah. Good for you. It’s a habit that sneaks up on you, I’m afraid. I’m trying to break it, but today’s been hard, what with Simon shaming me in front of you and… everything else.”
“No need to explain, missus,” Melda said. “Not my place to say, but he should not have turned his tongue against you in that manner. Man and wife have trouble, they should talk it out like sensible people, nah?”
“Not this man. And not this wife,” Mrs. Beaton said. “We don’t talk at all.”
As if on cue, Simon appeared with a suitcase and a garment bag. He walked out to the foyer without a word.
Mrs. Beaton buried her face in her napkin and began to cry, sobbing like a child. Melda instinctively moved around the table and put her arm around Mrs. Beaton’s narrow shoulders. “There, there, now, be easy,” she murmured gently. “The man’s gone now, he can’t hurt you.”
“But he’ll be back!” Mrs. Beaton wailed. “And he’ll go on duh… doing things to me. And to Wanda.”
“Then you should leave him,” said Melda.
“I have nowhere to go.
“No family?”
“My parents are dead, and my older brother – my only brother – lives in San Francisco. He’s very left-wing, and he disapproves of me because I married Simon for his money.”
“Did you?”
Mrs. Beaton shook her head. “He swept me off my feet, like a knight in shining armor,” she said. Her sobbing had stopped, and her voice was steadier. Melda released her and sat back down on the other side of the table. She dabbed at her eyes with the napkin and continued. “You must have seen that thing in the foyer. Simon is very proud of it. His grandfather bought it at an antiques store in Berlin, just as Hitler was coming into power. The Nazis thought of themselves as chivalrous knights, like Siegfried and Parsifal in Wagnerian opera. All very romantic, in a sick way.” She barked a laugh. “The bad things didn’t start until after Wanda was born, and by then I needed his money.” She drank her glass of wine as if it were water, and poured herself another.
“But don’t you have any other relatives? Cousins? Or friends who could take you in?”
“Simon has cousins who are almost as rich as he is, and they think I’m a gold-digger. I tried to keep in touch with my high school and college friends, but we drifted apart after I married Simon.”
“So you’re stuck, nah?”
“Stuck like a fly in a spiderweb,” Mrs. Beaton said, and her eyes went wet again.
Melda took it as a good omen that she had mentioned Anansi’s web. It suggested that on some deep level, Mrs. Beaton understood the powers at work in her life. And if that were true, there was hope of saving both her and her daughter. As for Simon Beaton, Melda had other plans for him. But first things first.
“Missus, I know what’s wrong with your daughter,” she said, “and I can help her. But you have to trust me.”
Mrs. Beaton stared at her. “This is strange,” she said. “I sensed the moment I met you that you were different from the other maids we’ve had.”
“What happened to them?”
Another mirthless laugh. “The first one, Ella, was a thief. I caught her slipping one of my necklaces into the pocket of her skirt, and when I confronted her, she confessed that she’d taken other things – a silver cup, a pair of my husband’s gold cufflinks, an ivory brooch that had belonged to my mother. She wasn’t a very clever thief. How could she have thought that I wouldn’t notice the disappearance of such valuable items? She cried great big crocodile tears and begged me not to call the police. I let her carry on for awhile and finally told her just to give everything back and get out. But she had the last laugh: the day after she left, my husband asked me what had happened to the silver letter-opener in his study. I knew calling the police would be useless. She was gone, and Ella probably wasn’t her real first name. I told Simon everything. He got angry – not at the maid, but at me, for not walking Ella to the door to make sure she couldn’t steal anything else.”
“I am not a thief, missus, ” Melda said.
“Oh, I know you’re not, Miss Melda. I think you came here to… how can I put it? Restore things, not steal them.”
“Certain sure, missus. What about the other maids?”
“There was a slutty little thing named Kathy who didn’t have much experience. But Simon insisted on hiring her. Of course it was because he was attracted to her. I caught the two of them in bed together one afternoon when I came home early from my book club. Not in our bed – that would have been too much even for Simon. The door to the spiral staircase that leads to Wanda’s bedroom was open, and I heard someone cry out. I went up and saw Kathy bent over Wanda’s desk with her skirt up, and Simon with his pants down, d… doing it to her from behind.
Melda took a moment to reply. Finally she said, “Mistah Simon Beaton is no better than a dog. And when a dog does something bad, he gets punished, so he’ll never do it again. I will see to that, Missus. Now finish your glass and go lie down. You need your rest more than you need any more of that stuff.”
Without objecting, Mrs. Beaton drank the last of her wine, stood up, and walked toward the master bedroom. She stumbled once, but managed to regain her balance. Melda waited until she heard the bedroom door close, and went up the winding stairs.
Wanda’s room had tall windows on three sides, and probably would have had the best view in the duplex, if the heavy red velvet curtains hadn’t been drawn. The only light came from a small lamp on a table next to the bed where the girl lay, barefoot, but still in her blouse and short skirt. She was on her left side with her arms wrapped around her knees, and she was moaning.
“What troubles you, dearie?” Melda asked, although she was already pretty sure of the answer.
“Oh, Melda, my stomach hurts! It hurts so bad! And I feel sick!”
“Don’t worry, that’s a good sign. I know what’s inside you, and it wants to come out. Roll over onto your hands and knees – here, I’ll help you.”
Wanda groaned, but managed to get into position. Melda placed both hands on the small of the girl’s back and closed her eyes, taking herself to the council chamber beyond this world, where the spirits assembled. She first called on Onyeuwa, the Messenger Spirit of the Igbo people, and when she sensed a presence, she spoke the names of the benevolent powers. “Egbunu! Oseburuwa! Agujieybe!” she went on, naming other good spirits. “Alumalu! Ijango-ijango! Agbatta-Alumalu! Help me now, and help this child! Drive away the Ajuanmuo demons! Cast out the duppy! This I ask you, in the name of Chukwa, Creator of All Things!”
The bedside lamp went out, but a lambent golden light filled the room, and the air thickened, as if a crowd of vast presences had gathered around Wanda’s bed. There was a murmur of deep voices that resolved itself into a wordless chant and grew louder and louder, until Melda felt her skull vibrate. Her hands took on the golden hue, and grew warmer and warmer, to the point that they felt painful, as if they were burning from within. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, and held them in place on Wanda’s back. The girl screamed and convulsed, vomiting out an object about the same size as the dried black frog between Melda’s breasts, but round and hard. As if it had a life of its own, it bounced up and started to roll off the bed, but Melda trapped it between her burning hands and squeezed it hard. She heard a thin shriek, and a wisp of smoke curled up between her fingers and disappeared. The fire went out of her hands, and she opened them carefully. Cupped between them was the duppy, still warm, proof that it was alive, but no longer actively dangerous. It was made of bits of teeth and fragments of bone, tangled in a small knot of calcified black hair. The bedside lamp winked back on, and Wanda rolled onto her back.
“There, now, all done, sweet child,” Melda crooned. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” Wanda said sleepily. “Kind of dizzy. But my stomach doesn’t hurt any more.”
“That’s because I got this out of you,” Melda said. She showed the girl the duppy.
“What is it?”
“It’s a duppy – the bad thing you had in your stomach.”
Wanda sat up. “How did you get it out?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“Not really. Everything was dark, and I heard voices whispering, like there were other people in the room. Big people. But I couldn’t see them.”
“Just as well,” said Melda. “They were good people, but they don’t like being stared at. So bless up – everything is all good now.”
“May I see the bad thing?” Wanda asked. Melda hesitated, but the duppy had gone cool and quiet. It wasn’t dead, by any means, just sleeping, building up its energy and biding its time until it had another chance to do harm. She handed it to Wanda. “Do you know what it is?” she asked.
Wanda looked at it closely, turning it over and over between her fingers. The sharkish grin reappeared. “It’s what I took,” she hissed. “Because it was mine!”
“You didn’t just take it, Missy. You ate it, nah?”
“She was crowding me. I wanted the warm place all to myself.”
“So you put her in your warm place – or at least next to it.”
Wanda’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my God! I remember that! But how can I? I wasn’t even born!”
“But your spirit – what we call your chi, eh? The part that never dies? – she’s the one who remembers.”
“You mean like reincarnation?”
“Eh, in a way. You see the tiny nubs of teeth? The bits of bone? The hair? That’s all there is left of your twin sister. She didn’t like being eaten. So she became a duppy, a bad ghost. She can’t hurt you any more, but she’s still powerful. Best give her back to me. I need her for a little while longer.”
“For what?” the girl asked.
“Your father is cruel to your mother, and he needs to be punished.”
“But I love my father!” Wanda protested. “And he loves me!”
“He doesn’t love you in the proper way, dearie. I’ve seen it. He touches your body in a manner that is wrong.”
“He just pats me! What’s wrong with that?”
“He pats you on your behind, Wanda. That’s not right. Does he touch you anywhere else?”
The girl hesitated, and said, “Well, sometimes when he comes into my bedroom to kiss me goodnight, he… “ She stopped, and her face twisted into an expression that mingled disgust and anger. “He puts his hand between my legs and sticks his finger in my private place. He says it’s a secret game we’re playing. But I hate it. It makes me feel dirty.”
“Of course it does!” said Melda. “So I’ll see to it that he quits all that nasty business.”
“How can you? I told my mother about it, and she asked him to stop, and he hit her. He said it was a father’s right to love his daughter any way he wanted to.”
So that’s what caused the bruise on her cheek, Melda thought to herself. Oh, Mistah Simon Beaton, you don’t deserve to go on breathing air! “Wanda,”she said, “Give me back the duppy. I need it. I am going to make your father go away.”
“Are you going to kill him?”
“Maybe, maybe not. That will be up to the duppy. So let me have it. Now, please.”
Wanda handed it over, and Melda put it in the pocket of her apron.
“Not to worry, dearie,” she said. “Your father will never trouble you or your mother again. Now try to sleep a little. May Chukwu send you sweet dreams.”
The girl lay down and closed her eyes. Melda waited until her breathing became deep and regular, and then stood up. She walked silently out of the room and down the stairs. It was getting on for evening, and she went into the kitchen to make sure Rose hadn’t come back early from her day off. The kitchen was empty, and Melda started searching through the drawers and cabinets, opening them as quietly as possible, until she found a mortar and pestle for grinding seeds and spices. It was dusty: obviously Rose only used spices and seasonings that came in little cans and bottles. Melda wondered briefly where the mortar and pestle had come from. Perhaps a previous cook had left it there. Melda suspected the Beatons changed cooks as frequently as they changed maids, because Simon Beaton was such a monster.
She put the mortar on the kitchen counter and began to grind the duppy into a powder, working slowly and whispering a prayer to Chukwa. At first the powder gave off a bad smell, like rotting flesh, but the finer she ground it, the weaker the smell became, until it disappeared altogether. She wound up with about two tablespoons. She got a coffee cup from the pantry and filled it about a third of the way up with water. The she fetched a spoon and stirred a tiny pinch of powder into the water to make sure it dissolved completely. Satisfied, she checked the spice rack over the stove and found a nearly empty bottle of ground nutmeg. She emptied the nutmeg into the sink and blew into the bottle until the last grains were gone. Using a small funnel she found in a kitchen drawer, she transferred the powder from the mortar to the bottle, screwed the bottle’s cap shut, and put it in her apron pocket. She washed and dried the cup, the spoon, the funnel, and the mortar and pestle, and put everything back where it belonged. Judging by the immaculate condition of the kitchen and pantry, Rose was a very orderly cook. Melda wondered if she was aware of the disorder in the lives of her employers.