If it was known that she supported a candidate, the judge felt, his enemies would think twice before intimidating his supporters.
Madame Trésor lived in a stucco house about a mile out of town, not accessible by road, and the judge and Terry walked there after the rally. By the time they reached Madame Tresor’s little cabin, the judge’s face was swampy with sweat. Only after sitting down for five minutes on a mossy rock, breathing hard, and rubbing his forehead with a handkerchief was he able to concentrate on the business at hand.
Madame Trésor had been expecting Johel and she greeted him with the exaggerated, flirtatious warmth of beautiful fat women. She invited him to sit beside her on the couch and insisted that he drink a glass of grapefruit juice, made from the fruit of her own tree.
People told many stories about Madame Trésor, and some of them might even have been true: She could transform herself into a bat and fly through the night on gossamer wings. She was said to know the recipe for the poud’ that turned men into zombies and for the poud’ that made a man’s heart swell up until it exploded from his chest. People came to her to complain of their enemies or to avenge themselves on unfaithful husbands or to find relief from tormented dreams.
She was a large woman, with a nearly square head attached to an oval body. Her small dark eyes fastened on Johel and did not blink or move away. He wondered how she navigated her way up and down these hills. She didn’t look much like the feared empress of a secret society that ruled the Night — but then again, Johel figured, it was a secret society. She had a habit of saying “My Lord! My Lord!” but otherwise she listened patiently as Johel explained the reasons for his visit.
By now, he had become an excellent pitchman for himself. He had been trying to convince one important personage of the Grand’Anse after another to support his candidacy — and had been successful more often than not. Some wanted a school refurbished, others a new well, and still others just wanted cash. Johel thought seriously about each request and promised what he could. So he told Madame Trésor about the Canadians and the road and, having heard of her problems with the Sénateur, made sure to mention the Sénateur’s arrogance. He thought what she wanted chiefly was respect — and possibly vengeance — and her brother’s freedom. That was something, he suggested, that he could provide.
“My Lord! My Lord!” said Madame Trésor.
The little room was uncomfortably hot, and Johel felt himself sweating heavily as he spoke. Finally he finished talking, and a grave silence filled the room.
“I had a revelation about you,” Madame Trésor said. “A heavy revelation.”
Johel didn’t know if this was a good thing or a bad thing.
“I want you to see my babies,” she said.
She rose to her feet and shuffled out of the room. She came back a minute later with a Mason jar in which some strange thing floated in a tea-colored liquid. It was certainly a biological thing — maybe a squid? Not identifiably mammalian.
“That’s my femininity,” Madame Trésor said.
Johel was not sure if he was expected to compliment it, but the lady explained. When she was in her early twenties, the doctors had removed her uterus and ovaries. That was the thing floating in the jar. She had been until then without mystical powers. She had come home from the hospital in Jérémie unsexed but gifted with Sight.
“Take my children,” she said, and handed the jar to Johel. He didn’t want to, but he didn’t know how to say no. Despite the warmth of the room, he felt a chill of fear pass up his spine. The jar was heavy in his hands and sticky, and the thing inside seemed to vibrate and buzz. Johel suddenly was seized by a wave of nausea. He worried that he was going to vomit the juice on the floor. He saw children playing on the floor, a schoolgirl with yellow ribbons in her hair, a boy climbing a palm tree and flinging down coconuts …
Johel, frightened that he was going to drop the jar on the unfinished cement floor, handed it back to Madame Trésor, who accepted it gravely and kissed it, as a mother kisses her babies before sleep. Then she buried the jar between her immense breasts.
“My Lord! My Lord!” she murmured, her eyes closed, rocking back and forth on her heavy haunches. “Come to me, my Lord!”
She must have rocked like that, moaning and crying, for ten minutes or more before she finally sat up straight, her eyes so wide they seemed as if they might burst from her head. She stood up, saying not a word, and walked with the jar into the back room.
When Madame Trésor came back, she said, “My children like you.”
“I’m glad,” Johel said, not sure if that was the correct word at all.
“They tell me I need to help you.”
Johel found it hard to calm his racing heart. His mouth tasted sour, and it was difficult to understand just what Madame Trésor was saying. She was going to support his candidacy. But she looked him in the eye. Her children had warned her—“You have a traitor, a traitor in your camp. Your victory is in unity. You need to look left, look right, look high, look low. Look!”
* * *
That was two days ago, Johel told me, and he hadn’t slept since. Madame Trésor’s warning was dominating him. It was as if she were telling him something he already knew. He had never known a pain like this. Not a minute of sleep in two nights, just lying next to her, watching her breathe, thinking of Terry, each breath like a knife in his belly …
“Seriously?” I said. “You get me up in the dead of night seriously because some lady talked to her uterus, and so now you think — I don’t even want to know what you think.”
“I have to know the truth,” Johel said.
“The truth is that this lady is a professional mind-fuck. That’s what she does. People go to her to get their minds fucked and she fucks their minds. Congratulations, you got mind-fucked. It’s happened to better men than you.”
“It’s killing me,” he said.
“I think you need to get some sleep.”
“I can’t. I just lie there thinking.”
“Thinking about this lady’s uterus.”
“Just tell me what you think, and I’ll go home,” he said.
“Maybe I’d buy it if this lady had some dead kids that were talking to her. Dead kids can channel like fuck. But that’s not the way this situation is. You were talking to a flappy old uterus. That’s different.”
Johel could endure anything but mockery.
“The whole thing just got me thinking,” he said.
“It can happen,” I said. “We’ve all been there. You don’t get enough sleep and your brain gets on top of you and before you know it…”
“I just wish I was sleeping better.”
“Maybe I’ve got something for you.”
I went upstairs and found an old bottle of Ambien. “Take two of these and a big shot of rum. If that doesn’t work, double the recipe. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“You think?”