![]() Three cryp- tic letters that taunted me whenever I closed my eyes: N O P. ![]() Though she lost in the end, their fights on the matter were a thing of legend.Īnd now the only thing I had left of her was a fragment of a text message that I had saved on a phone long since inoperable. My father’s singular focus was that his daughter continue the unbroken line of Vodou priests and priestesses dating back to Benin. He’d always sat wedged between us like a parapet in a grisly, decades-long conflict. Papa had once again been the stubborn root of what I hadn’t known at the time would be our final conflict. In the end, the hurricane swallowed the apology I’d held off delivering until the next day and took a sizable chunk of the city with it. But God wasn’t always available to answer a servant’s whims. Had Bondye been merciful, the back- ground noise of bustling shoppers would have spared her, my vitriol quieted to a few sharp words uttered under my breath. That place was for her what my backyard peristil was to me: a sanctuary. In my favored delusion, my mother and I were chatting it up while she window-shopped at Oakwood Center over in Terrytown. ![]() “Henry gives us a captivating mystery full of fantasy and African traditional religion, as well as a bewitching investigator, rooted in her faith, dedicated to her community, and dogged in her pursuit of the truth.” ― Eden Royce, author of Root Magic The mind could conjure all kinds of fanciful scenarios to assuage the guilt of a poor choice of last words. ![]()
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