Anatomy of Fear

8

The odor hit me in the face the minute I entered the apartment and I froze, worried, until I realized it wasn’t that kind of smell. I knew that smell, had had the misfortune my very first week on the beat to find two bodies in the final stage, the putrefaction stage, in an abandoned crack house where they had obviously OD’d. I’ll never forget it.

I called out, “¡Uela!” and followed the odor’s trail down the dim hallway. It revealed itself in the kitchen, a large pot bubbling away on the stove, steam rising from it. I leaned over it holding my breath. Weeds. My abuela had been wasting her social security check at the local botánica, nothing unusual about that. She’s a true believer, a practicing santera, a sort of neighborhood priestess. People flock to her for answers and guidance. I think it’s because she’s kind and understanding and has a gift for making people feel good about themselves, but she sees it as her calling, and she’s devoted.

I went into the living room, which was decorated with bright purple curtains; a pink afghan throw on the couch; a mix of bold prints on the pillow covers; walls covered with drawings I’d made over the years, a few pictures of saints mixed in, and the eight-by-ten glossy of my father, a graduation photo from the police academy just above a white-clothed table tucked into a corner, the bóveda, a shrine to the dead. I’d seen it hundreds of times in various forms. Right now it held a dozen glasses and goblets filled with water, and I knew what it meant: My grandmother was asking something of her ancestors.

I took a step into the hall and heard voices from behind the closed door of the cuarto de los santos, the room of the saints, where my abuela held her consultations.

I knew better than to disturb her, though I thought it was nonsense; and occasionally dangerous, when someone should have been in a doctor’s office rather than the back room of a railroad tenement in Spanish Harlem, but it was impossible to convince my grandmother of that.

The door opened, the woman beside my grandmother looked up, startled when she saw me, gasped and crossed herself. Not a surprise. Many of the followers of Santeria remained Catholics. It didn’t seem to matter they were practicing a religion that bastardized the faith by renaming the saints, the orishas, after African gods to whom they prayed for guidance, forgiveness, even wrath and punishment for others, or that Santeria had been condemned by the church.

I had tried to explain the contradiction to my grandmother, as well as the origin-that Santeria was a consequence of forcing Roman Catholicism on Africans brought to the Caribbean by slave traders-but she would never listen. She went to church regularly and did not see any conflict. As a kid she had me memorize the names and powers of the individual orishas even while she was dragging me to church every Sunday. Between my maternal Jewish grandmother telling me about the deadly Passover plagues while stuffing me with latkes, and my abuela’s heavy-duty mix of Christianity and Santeria, it pretty much explained my becoming an agnostic. But my abuela loved Jesus as passionately as she loved Olodumare, the supreme being, and I’d long ago given up trying to convince her otherwise because I loved her.

“Nato, pensé que te había oido.”

Of course she’d heard me come in, she always did.

She turned to her customer, whispered something in Spanish, handed over candles with garish images of saints, and explained when to light them.

“Did you charge her for those candles?” I asked after the woman had left.

My grandmother planted her hands on her hips and narrowed her dark eyes. “I do not steal from ones in need and pain.”

“I know that, uela. But you can’t spend all your money on other people.”

“Cálmate,” she said, a nice way of telling me to shut up, then got a tender grip on my face with both hands. At five feet tall, the top of my grandmother’s head just cleared my shoulders. “Ven, estoy cocinando.”

“Yeah, I know you’re cooking, but what, the cat?”

“Ay, qué chistoso.” She shook a finger at me, but smiled. “Why you never shave, Nato?”

Nato, her favorite among several nicknames for me; neno, nenito, the others. Nathan was impossible for her to say with its th sound, plus she’d never liked the name. She brought this up to my mother at least once a month, and I gave her credit for never quitting. Lately, she’d been lobbying for Anthony or Manuel. At my thirty-third birthday this past January she’d presented me with a wallet with the letter A stamped on it. “What’s with the A?” I’d asked. “In case you decide on Anthony,” she’d said. You had to give it to her. My mother almost plotzed, which was my Jewish grandmother’s favorite word or saying: I could plotz, she’d say, or I’m plotzing. My two grandmothers adored each other, though I don’t know if they ever understood what the other one was saying, which is maybe why they adored each other. Occasionally my abuela used the word plotz, and it always made me laugh.

We headed into the kitchen and she asked me again why I didn’t shave and I said it was because I didn’t like to look at my face. She called me a mentiroso, a liar, and waved a hand at me, the bangle and beaded bracelets at her wrist clanging out a tune.

I glanced at the pot on the stove. “Cooking up one of your potions for a client, a riego, right?”

“You think you know everything, chacho.” Another nickname, this one generic, boy, to put me in my place.

“And of course you’re paying for it.”

“¿Qué importa?” she said.

“It matters because I don’t like to see you wasting your money.”

“It would be better if you worried a little about yourself, Nato. The way you stay in your apartment, alone, or at work, making pictures of those diablos. It’s time you found a girl, una mujer, to start making babies.”

“Oh, brother.”

“Do not oh brother with me, chacho. Find a nice girl, it’s time.” She took my face in her hands again. “Oye, guapo.” She was playing at being exasperated, but still called me handsome. My grandmother thinks I look like Fernando Lamas and every other good-looking Spanish actor that ever existed. Last week she added Ricky Martin to the list. I do not look like any of them.

For a moment her face clouded, and I saw something behind the good-natured scolding. I glanced back at the boiling pot, the riego, knew that it was used to sprinkle around an apartment to chase away evil spirits.

“¿Qué pasa, uela? ¿Pasa algo?”

“I had a dream,” she said.

“One of your visions?”

She nodded.

“A bad one?”

Another shrug and wave of the bangle-bracelet hand.

“You want me to draw it?”

I’d been drawing her visions for half my life-mostly Chagall-like fantasies with clouds, wild plants, Latin crosses, and the occasional dancing animal. But there had been bad visions too, dark and brooding ones filled with omens that even as a boy had chilled me. My grandmother hadn’t kept those. I suspected she had burned them, offered them up to one of the orishas as some form of sacrifice.

“It is not clear,” she said.

“Maybe if you describe it, it will get clearer.”

“Later,” she said. “First, eat. Yesterday I cooked bacalaitos, just for you.”

I could practically taste the fried, doughy cod fritters. “Good. For a minute there I was afraid you were going to feed me that foul-smelling ebo.”

“Chacho, do not make fun of the ebo-of the sacrifice. It is not good to offend the orishas.” My grandmother got serious, wheeled around and plucked a small blue bottle from a shelf crowded with dozens of others. She whisked off the top, mumbled something under her breath, tapped some liquid onto her fingers, and flicked it at me. “Muy bien. Un poco de agua santa.”

I just stood there, accepting the sprinkling of holy water. There was no point in fighting her.

“Sit.” My grandmother turned the flame off the riego, got the cod fritters from the fridge, heated up a portion that was way too big, and presented the platter. I ate most of it while she nattered on about this poor soul and that one, and how people should be happier and kinder and why the man at the fish counter was a sneaky one trying to sell old fish, then asked again why I had no new girl in my life, and I had a brief flash of Terri Russo running her fingers through her hair. I told my grandmother I just wasn’t lucky with women and she suggested I make an offering to Oshun, the orisha of love, to which I sighed and she sighed too.

I refused a second portion, and my grandmother cleared the plate. She had stopped making small talk and I could see she was ready. She beckoned me to follow. “Ven p’aca.” She started singing an old song, a favorite of hers, but without the usual lilt.

“Ten Cuidado con el Corazón…”

I knew the song well. Please be careful, it began, a warning that things can always change or go wrong.

In the living room I retrieved the pad and pencils I kept at her apartment, took a seat on the couch, and opened to a clean sheet of paper.

“A room,” she said, crowding beside me on the couch to watch and direct.

“Just a room?”

“Oye, nene, pon atención.” The usual playfulness was gone from her voice. She rested one of her jeweled hands on her heart and closed her eyes. “A room,” she repeated, and began to fill in the details, the picture in her head transferring to mine, then onto paper.

My grandmother was always my best witness, her descriptions perfect. Or maybe it was just that we were in tune after so many years of practice. She gave my drawing a glance, and said, “Muy bien.” She enjoyed the process of seeing her vision take shape and come to life.

She turned her attention to another detail.

“Y una ventana,” she said, and went on to describe it.

She leaned over the pad. “Bien hecho,” she said, and though she was still not smiling I could see that something was being lifted from her. Maybe that’s what it had always been about-her telling, me drawing-the transference easing some of her anxiety. What I had been trying to describe to Terri Russo.

My grandmother took a deep breath. “Otra cosa,” she said. “You will have to change something. Aqui.” She pointed to the paper and explained what it was she wanted me to add.

I’d gotten into it, I always did, adding details, blending with my fingertips.

“Bueno,” she said, then sat back and crossed herself. “But…está mal.”

“What’s bad? My drawing?”

“No, neno. The room.”

“It doesn’t seem so bad, uela.”

She raised a jeweled hand to stop me from talking. “There is a man in the room-or the spirit of a man. Chango has sent a warning. I cannot see him, but…maybe you can.”

“You want me to draw a man you haven’t seen?”

My grandmother looked at me as if believing I could, but lifted a finger to my lips. “Escucha,” she said.

I stopped talking and did as she asked, listened.

“Hay más,” she said, and explained it.

I went back to the drawing and tried to capture what she described.

“It looks like hell,” I said. “Your vision. Not my drawing.” I laughed, but my grandmother did not. She crossed herself. “There is something else in that room. ¿Cómo se dice? Un diseño. In front of the window, a circle…And inside the circle,” she went on, “un diseño, another one…I had it in my head, but…it is gone.”

“Close your eyes and let it come, uela.”

After a moment she said, “¡Lo veo!” and told me what to draw.

When I was finished she smiled because I had done a good job, but her smile faded fast.

“The ashe in that room, no es bueno.”

Ashe: the basic building block of everything according to Santeria.

She reached for my hand. “Nato,” she said. “Tengo más que decir.”

“What is it, uela?”

“You, neno,” she said. “You are in that room. Not now, but…sometime. It is hard to explain.” She let go of my hand, crossed the room, and gathered up seashells scattered between the goblets of water on the bóveda. “I will read the shells and figure out exactly what sort of ebo will keep you safe. No te preocupes.”

“I’m not worried, uela.”

“Nato…” She tried to smile. “Make your abuela happy.” She plucked a large purple candle off the table and handed it to me. “Take this and burn it in your apartment. For me, for your abuela.”

“It doesn’t work if you don’t believe, does it?”

“There are forces stronger than you, Nato. Por favor, toma la uela.”

She handed the candle to me, and I took it.