A Witch Wanted Me Bound to Her Narcissistic Son

Source: Jason Mankey

In February of 2017, I typed and mailed a ten-page letter to the gay Black man I’d been friends with since August of 2009 explaining why I needed to step away from my friendship with him. We met when I was in the twelfth grade and I thought I’d been rewarded. When I came out as bisexual in the ninth grade, my best friends spewed homophobic insults at me one night over a three-way phone call and shunned me at school for several weeks. Unlike them, he never asked, “How are you going to face God?” He never told me, “You know you’re going to Hell, right?” He never said, “What are going to do for the rest of your life? Bump coochies? That’s so nasty,” while laughing. I thought I’d been rewarded with his friendship because he wanted to know everything about my girlfriend. I didn’t have to hide parts of myself from him. At the time, I thought I’d never meet anyone who’d want to be my friend in spite of my sexuality.

In him, I’d found a friend who was not only accepting of my sexuality but was also queer. He turned out to be selfish though and had a habit of making a ghost of himself right when I needed him most. I spent most of our friendship sad or confused, but he made me laugh a lot. I chose being his friend over and over again because I had no idea how or when to choose myself. Living with my family had almost always been unbearable, and I don’t think I would’ve survived being a part of my family if I didn’t have him as a friend. His ability to make me laugh and feel needed made his narcissism just bearable enough until I couldn’t bear it anymore. I needed to feel needed. I believe it kept me alive even if it was accompanied by being abandoned often.

My entire family loved him too. My mother loved him especially so.

I wrote the ten-page letter to him after we argued about my not wanting him to drive my car to a concert a few hours away from where we lived. He totaled his car months before and had been driving his father’s truck. I’d just bought a 2006 Toyota Prius with the help of his mother who cosigned because I didn’t have insurance at the time I bought it. He’d save a considerable amount on gas driving a hybrid versus a truck so I understood the request. I just didn’t want to fulfill it.

I learned his mother didn’t agree with the letter or my decision to not allow him to drive my car during Spring Break in March of 2017 after I’d traveled from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Memphis, Tennessee to spend time with my family. His mother told someone who I’m sure she knew would tell me, “I don’t know why Monterica won’t let my son drive the car I cosigned for, and I told my son not to read that letter.”

I sat with the someone who I’m sure she knew would tell me in my car at a Walgreens parking lot when she told me. I said, “She doesn’t know what being his friend was like. She won’t even give me the spare key to my car back in case I have an emergency. We don’t live in the same state so what does that shit even mean?”

The someone who I’m sure she knew would tell me said, “Diamond, some people will really pray on your downfall.”

Maybe a light bulb should’ve went off then, but it didn’t. I furrowed my eyebrows and shook my head, “She’s not like that.”

The someone who I’m sure she knew would tell me asked, “How you know that?”

Right then, my best friend’s mother texted me: I don’t think it’s safe for you to just be sitting in your car at Walgreens like that…

My eyes bulged and so did the eyes of the someone who I’m sure she knew would tell me. She looked around the parking lot wildly and said, “Girl, what the fuck?”

I turned around in my seat and searched the parking lot for my friend’s mother’s SUV. I opened my door, climbed out of my car, and searched for the SUV on the road. I figured she must’ve gone about her way already. We left Walgreens.

The concert my best friend wanted to attend was a little bit more than three hours away in Nashville, TN. Before he totaled his car, he’d been in more than a few fender benders. In his down time, he also didn’t mind driving under the influence of multiple Xanaxes coupled with multiple alcoholic beverages or either or. Aside from this, I hadn’t driven my own car yet and didn’t know how I felt about someone else adding more than 400 miles to its already 119,000.

After reading the ten-page letter in March of 2017, my best friend technically accused me of rape via text message even though we’d had consensual sex in December of 2016. In the ten-page letter, I detailed how difficult it was to say no to him and how I felt I had no agency in our friendship. The text he sent read: You can never say no to me? I didn’t want to fuck you, but YOU wouldn’t take no for an answer and fucked ME anyway.

I felt wounded. I called another friend and cried to her. She told me to print out any text messages I had where he and I had talked about having sex and to type a statement about what happened in case he decided to go to the Memphis police. I didn’t think he would take it that far, but I was still scared. The other friend had read the letter I wrote to him and said she was really sorry this happened. I was confused. I didn’t understand why he would say what he said. He knew I’d been raped and sexually assaulted multiple times.

We hadn’t spoken actual words to each other since December of 2016. We’d only communicated via text message because I was upset with him for sharing with another guy that he and I had had sex after I asked him not to. He said he told the guy anyway because he wanted to see the look on his face. We didn’t speak again until October of 2017.

In the nine months we didn’t speak, my relationship with his mother also suffered but not as much. She and I were close. I had more in common with her than I had in common with my best friend. Though generations apart, we had lived through similar childhoods in emotionally and financially impoverished homes. By the time I ended my friendship with her son, we’d both loss our best sibling to murder.

We had the sort of mother-daughter relationship I longed to have with my own drug-addicted mother who I rarely saw when I was a little girl. I helped my best friend’s mother whenever I could by writing letters to school officials on her behalf for the younger children she cared for. If she wanted to shop for groceries alone or wanted to have a date night with her husband and my best friend had plans, I watched the children. Sometimes, I helped the children with school projects. If I had dinner at their home — and I did often — I’d help clean the kitchen before we all went to bed.

All the years I was close to her, I spent a lot of time thinking of ways to end my life because I was so unhappy with so much. I never shared those thoughts with her, but we talked about my life enough for her to spend a lot of time urging me to fight for it. She seemed to want to mother me and I desperately wanted to be mothered.

Between January and September of 2017, I spoke to her more than I spoke to her son. We even had lunch in May of 2017. Throughout the semester, she would text me with messages of encouragement or to see how I was doing. Her son and I weren’t speaking, but I dreamt of him nearly every night. I would wake in the mornings confused.

I couldn’t understand why I dreamt of him so often. I knew I made the right choice when I decided to no longer be his friend, but my subconscious mind always seemed to lead right back to him. I was often angry with myself. Why was my mind playing tricks on me? If I wasn’t dreaming about him, I was thinking about him. I wondered if I should call or text him to see how he was doing. The thought to do so seemed endless. I’d begin to think of something else only to come right back to him. I was miserable.

I talked about him with other people. It seemed to be the only relief I had. They all said the same thing. “Don’t call him, Monterica.” I felt like a broken record, but I’m glad I opened up to other friends. I needed the constant reminder not to talk to him.

After the Spring 2017 semester ended in May, I had lunch with his mother on the patio of Huey’s on Madison Avenue. Before we ordered, she leaned across the table and said with force, “I know you want to talk about your friend, but let’s not talk about your friend. If something happens with my husband, I don’t call his mother to talk about it. You and I, we have a fantastic friendship. Let’s not let your friend ruin that. Okay?”

I had no desire to date or marry her son. I thought we’d only had sex to humor ourselves. I didn’t want it to lead to happily ever after. I told her I had no desire to ever be his friend again. I wanted to tell her I had no desire to be her friend either, but the words seemed to dance around my tongue as if they were running away from me. I didn’t want to, but I said, “No, he won’t come in between what we have,” and offered a close-mouthed smile.

A few months before we had lunch, I called her and asked for the spare key to my car. She said she couldn’t give it to me because I might have an emergency in Baton Rouge that she might have to tend to. I wondered what sort of emergency I might have where her possession of the spare key was necessary. If I was locked out of my car in Louisiana, I didn’t see her driving more than five hours from Tennessee just to deliver a spare key. Maybe she planned to pay to mail it overnight if she ever had to, but that didn’t make a lot of sense either. When she told me she wouldn’t be giving me the key, she was angry. There was bark and bite in every word she uttered. I felt bad for upsetting her so even though I didn’t want to, I said, “Okay, sure. That’s fine.” She told me she loved me and ended our call.

At Huey’s, before we moved on to talk about what was new in her life, she said, “You’re upset with your friend and that’s okay, but what you don’t know is you have a lot you need to realize too.” I deflated and I’m sure she noticed. I wondered why I’d even met with her for lunch. She had no idea what being friends with her son had been like. She’d only ever seen us laughing, smoking, or pouring our hearts out to each other about our pain and stress the way best friends usually do. However, that wasn’t the totality of our friendship at all.

She did know her son was selfish though. The three of us were in their kitchen one evening months before I wrote the ten-page letter and she asked him for a simple favor. I don’t remember what it was, but yes didn’t feel like it would take too much away from him and he said no and walked away. The front door opened and closed. He had left for work. She asked, “Why is my son so selfish? Did I raise him like that?”

I nodded, “Yes ma’am, you did, but I don’t think you meant to.”

***

After I had sex with her son in December of 2016, I told her about it because I knew for sure at least one of the children heard us. She worked hard to shelter them from violence, sex, drug use, and anything else children weren’t supposed to have to wrestle with as children. I didn’t want anything the child heard to come up later, so I thought I’d get out in front of any of that by telling her what happened.

To my surprise, she was only concerned about what having sex with her son felt like for me. She wanted to know how well he’d pleased me. To this very day, it’s still one of the weirdest conversations I’ve ever had.

I sat next to her on her bed as she folded laundry and she said, “Don’t worry about that child, girl. She’ll be alright.” I thought the conversation was over, but she went on, “ I just know my son got him a big ole something.”

She wanted to know just how large his penis was. I didn’t want to embarrass him. I didn’t even know why I was responding at all, but I told her the truth. In as few words as possible, I told her it wasn’t a big ole something but he knew what he was doing. I told her it was his first time with a woman, so it lasted only a few seconds.

I wasn’t ready for what came next. She thanked me.

I asked, “What did I do?”

“You’re the first woman my son has been with and you’re not trash.”

I wanted to tell her being thanked for having sex with her son made me uncomfortable. We usually thank people when they’ve done something generous or helpful for us. I understood why she felt I’d been generous or helpful by having sex with her gay son and it made me sad for a few reasons. Mostly though, it made me feel like I’d been used.

Before he and I had sex, his mother had given me an Ambien to help me sleep. It was Christmas time. It was my first Christmas without my brother alive in the world. I hadn’t slept well for days since coming home for Winter Break. After she thanked me for having sex with her son, I regretted not having gone to bed right after taking the Ambien. You should always go to bed right after taking an Ambien.

***

That conversation in December 2016 is what upset me most about our initial conversation at lunch. She wanted to know more about the few seconds her son and I were intimate than she did about the way he treated me as a friend. I think she didn’t want to know because she didn’t want to wrestle with why he was the way he was. She didn’t want to listen and maybe find fault in herself.

By the end of it all, after the uncrossing baths, after the dreams stopped coming as often as they had been, I was glad she never knew exactly what was wrong with our friendship. She might’ve used the knowledge to throw magic at her son and me to try and solve our underlying issues. I’m only kidding. Of course she did. I just thought that bit was sort of nice.

Lunch with her was incredible though. It felt like old times. When the bill came, I paid for her meal. She seemed surprised, but she thanked me. After lunch, we hugged goodbye and I turned to walk away. I only made it a few steps away from the restaurant before I turned around and watched her until I couldn’t see her anymore. I felt like I needed to keep my eye on her. Something felt off about our interaction, but I couldn’t quite put a finger on it. I stood there for a while. I didn’t know how but I knew I had just been duped. Alone in my car, I asked aloud, “What the fuck just happened?’

My best friend and I reunited in October of 2017 after he reached out to my cousin to ask how I was doing. He said he missed me. Immediately, his need for constant contact ensued. It didn’t feel good anymore though. It didn’t make me feel needed. It was annoying. When we weren’t speaking, I slept more. I wrote more. I hung out with my friends at LSU more often. I talked to my family more often. I had more time for Monterica. After we reconnected, I tried to only answer his phone calls when I actually wanted to. The calls were so constant it was hard to know when I wanted to talk to him though.

Even though he and I were talking again, I didn’t speak to his mother for a while after having lunch with her. He would mention her often, and I wouldn’t respond or ask how she was. Their was always an awkward silence over the phone while he waited for me to show some sort of interest in how she was doing when he brought her up. I wouldn’t give in. He’d laugh before changing the subject, but it never felt like laughter was supposed to feel.

I never mentioned it to him, but something told me to avoid interacting with or talking about his mother as much as possible. I didn’t answer her phone calls or respond to her text messages. The next time I saw her in December of 2017 though, I couldn’t understand why I felt compelled to hug her, but we hugged for a long time.

Our friendship survived another six months. Then, I wrote about it in March of 2018 and submitted it to workshop. It was supposed to be a journal-diary essay, but I don’t know what it actually was. I don’t even know if it was an essay. Basically, I searched my journal for every mention of my best friend’s name and transferred those entries to a Google doc. It was tilted Scorched Roots. The question my classmates wrestled with most while talking about the essay was, “Is the essay about Monterica’s fraught relationship with her best friend or is it actually about something else?”

My classmates were confused. They didn’t understand why he and I were friends.

One of them said, “It wants to be about the fraught relationship with him, but the weaker parts of the essay are the moments centered on him. She only journaled about the terrible moments in their friendship. I’m never seduced by him. The entries span a four-year time period and from what I’ve read, all I see is that this dude’s an asshole. I feel that way on the first and last page. If the essay wants to be about him, I need to know more about him.”

Another one offered, “I saw Monterica’s relationship with him being journaled about so often because it’s the most vivid example of what everyone else in her life is also doing to her. He’s doing what her family is doing or has done. He’s not being there for her.”

“I wanted him to come to life more as a character. We need to see why she loves him.”

“We don’t know a lot about him but from what we do get he seems charismatic. Seems like someone you’d want to hang out with, but you wouldn’t want to depend on him. It ends there, you know? Just a hang sitch. They’ve done more than hang though. They’ve been friends for years. It seems like Monterica doesn’t know when to leave.”

My professor said, “He comes across as a terrible person, but he seems like an interesting character. I’ve read lots of Monterica’s work and I know she’s brilliant. Based on this essay alone — because everyone here hasn’t read lots of her work — it’s clear she’s very intelligent, so the fact that this guy who isn’t worth a damn is able to keep her focused on him for so long makes me interested in him.”

***

Maybe now is a good time to mention my Cancer South Node and its tendencies: caretaking, codependency, passivity, shyness, fear of abandonment, isolation, suppressing emotions, and attachment to being mothered. If you haven’t, you should study your natal chart and your South Node. It might call you out. It might change your life.

It’s okay. Just remember your North Node isn’t calling you out. It’s calling you in.

***

What I realized after workshop: all of the flags in my friendship with him were red. Every last one. There wasn’t much about him that compelled me to continue our friendship other than how funny he was and how celebrated he seemed to be even if he was the only one celebrating. A superstar. He always put on a show. If there was no spotlight to be shone upon him, he brought forth light all on his own even if there weren’t many people in the audience. My family, except for Kerr-Dulea, often treated me exactly the same way my best friend treated me, but they weren’t as much fun to watch.

In April of 2018, I had two psychic readings in the French Quarter of New Orleans. They told me my friendship with him was completely over. I’d dreamt of him so often when we weren’t speaking that I thought they would say the opposite.

One psychic, a slender Black woman who’d already given me a reading before, said, “Girl, what’s your ex’s name? Well, wait. He doesn’t feel too much like a boyfriend, but the two of you were close. Whatever the nature of the relationship was, it has ended. It’s done. It’s dead. Really should’ve ended a long time ago too. You almost lost yourself loving him.” Before I rose from her table to leave, she said, “No, seriously. You need to move on.”

Weeks later, another psychic, a Romani woman I thought was a Latinx woman whose schemes and scams were ultimately the reason I began honoring my ancestors — but that’s a story for another time, said, “Oh, shit. Fuck. Who’s this dude I see? Ugh. He’s a goddamn vampire. What the fuck? You had sex with him? Why the fuck would you do that shit? No. Whatever the fuck you had going on with him, it’s done, mama. Get the fuck out of there. Now.”

After the workshop, after the psychic readings, he and I continued to talk but not as often as we used to and never for as long as we used to. Before the Spring 2018 semester ended, I wasn’t answering most of his calls. When I did answer, it wasn’t until after I rolled my eyes. I was annoyed, but I didn’t know how to say goodbye again.

We continued to speak sporadically until May of 2018. I was visiting my family in Memphis after the semester ended, and he called me over Facetime the second night I was home. He was with his partner and he was rolling a blunt. He said, “Damn, so this what we doing now? Since when do you come home and not tell a nigga?”

I was sitting at my grandmother’s dining room table. I stared at my phone screen but never said a word.

He said, “You know his ass don’t smoke, bitch. You gotta come smoke with me before you go back. Just call me when you wanna come through, sis.”

A few days later, we smoked a blunt at his partner’s apartment. His partner was gone for the weekend. I told him about the queer friends I’d made at LSU, and he accused me of trying to replace him. “Them folks you dealing with down there…they don’t know you.”

I said, “You didn’t even know you were hurting me. Do you know me?” I told him I wasn’t trying to replace him because I never wanted another friend like him so long as I lived. He didn’t seem surprised. He didn’t deflate at all.

We smoked more. I told him about everything that happened with the Romani woman. I told him about my days-old ancestral altar. I told him about meeting Siaara Freeman, Kiese Laymon, R.O. Kwon, Lydia Conklin, and other brilliant writers in April when LSU hosted the Delta Mouth Literary Festival. I told him about being awarded a scholarship to attend the Tin House Workshop in July. He said, “See, this is what I’m talking about, bitch. You don’t tell a nigga shit no mo.”

I said, “When I get good news, I don’t think to call you.” Again, he didn’t seem surprised. He didn’t deflate at all.

He told me he didn’t know why he reacted the way he did after reading my letter. He apologized for it. He told me he’d had suicidal thoughts since we stopped speaking in January of 2017 and that thoughts of suicide had been prevelant again since our communication had fallen off over the past few months. He told me he didn’t know why. He just said existing was vain.

I blocked him before I left Memphis. I blocked his phone number, and I blocked him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram too. A few days after I blocked him, I received a phone call from his mother. She wanted to know why I’d been in Memphis and didn’t stop by to see her. I didn’t talk much. I said okay and yes ma’am when I needed to. In fact, that’s all she seemed to want. When the phone call was over, I blocked her number too and I blocked her on Facebook.

I unblocked him on Facebook once months later because I was curious to know if he’d written anything online about me. He hadn’t. I wanted to know if he felt bad about how terrible our friendship was. I wanted to know if he realized what a good friend I had been to him. I received a message from him via Messenger almost instantly. He asked, “Did you block me?” I lied. I told him I didn’t want to live in a world where he and I weren’t best friends. Truthfully, that was the only world I wanted to live in.

I’d only had an ancestral altar for about a month before I blocked them, but I knew my ancestors were the reason I blocked him and his mother. Their, “Child, get ‘way from ‘round them folks,” was adamant. Spirit often communicates with us through our thoughts. Since I didn’t know when to trust mine, it made working with my ancestors difficult in the beginning. Just about everyone I’d known had a habit of gaslighting me and I had learned not to trust myself. This made it nearly impossible to heed the guidance of my ancestors, but blocking my best friend and his mother from being able to contact me was one of the rare occasions at the beginning of my spiritual journey where I trusted my intuition.

I still dreamt of him and his mother often after blocking them. In the first draft of what you’re reading, I tried listing all the dreams but the list was too long and too strange and this is probably already too long and too strange. Some of the dreams were dark and twisted. Others were beautiful and sentimental. In one, he’d written a letter of apology to me. In another, I calmly explained to him why he and I could no longer be friends before angrily explaining to his mother why she and I could no longer be friends. Here, again, maybe a light bulb should’ve went off. It didn’t.

Then, there were the November dreams. In November of 2018, I dreamt of him and his family for three nights in a row. In the first dream, he and one of his friends I’d been intimate with were riding in the ambulance they drove as EMTs. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I knew they were talking about me. They laughed a lot. The morning after, I started my day ashamed of myself.

In the second dream, I was walking through an empty house I’d just purchased. On my way to the kitchen, from a window, I saw him and one of his cousins walking up the driveway. I ran to the nearest corner I knew I couldn’t be seen in and stayed there. They raised their hands above their eyebrows and put their faces to the glass of sliding doors just off the kitchen. They stayed a long time.

In the third dream, I was inside the home that my grandmother was originally going to buy when we moved from a two-bedroom home to a four-bedroom home in 2006. It was a home that was almost mine, but wasn’t. My best friend’s mother was there and so were the younger children she cared for. The home belonged to them. We were all in the kitchen. We laughed a little bit, ate a little bit. When I wanted to leave though, his mother blocked my path. We did the awkward dance people do when they’re in each other’s way. Her movements weren’t awkward though. They were intentional. There was a sly, menacing expression on her face. I was scared. She had a far-away look in her eyes and they were wide open.

The morning after the third dream, I was out of breath when I woke up. I reached for my phone and blocked all of their relatives and any of their close friends I happened to be friends with on Facebook and Instagram. I had several of their relatives’ phone numbers and I blocked all of them too.

Then, I made an appointment with Daya, the psychic medium I’d gotten readings from once a month since April of 2018. Our appointment was set for December 2. When the day came, Daya called me a few minutes after our scheduled time and apologized for her slight tardiness. I don’t know why, but I went into detail about the first two dreams and not the third.

I told her I’d never had recurring dreams in my entire life. I’d dreamt of him often in the past year or so, yes, but the dreams could be days or weeks apart.

She asked me to state his full name and date of birth aloud, and she began shuffling her tarot cards. While shuffling she said, “Whew, girl. You and your friend are intensely connected. His energy is present there with you right now.”

She pulled three cards. I don’t remember what they were, but what she said about the third card sent me into full detail about the third dream right down to how my friend’s mother’s hair stood straight up on her head.

She said, “This card represents the mother. Whatever caused those dreams feels more related to his mother than to him.”

After I told her about the expression on his mother’s face in the third dream, she stopped me. “Okay. I see what’s happening. Your ancestors are showing me.”

“What’s wrong?”

“His mother is a witch.”

I wanted to laugh. “Are you sure? She goes to church faithfully.”

Daya laughed. “That don’t mean nothing. There are so many closet witches out here.”

I asked again, “Are you sure? Does she know?” I thought his mother was having an experience similar to the one I’d had.

I didn’t know I was a witch until after I’d spent twenty-eight days bound to a low vibrational shadow being (or what some would call a haint) the Romani woman attached to me the day after she’d given me the reading. I knew I was psychic. I had been all my life but didn’t have any other terms to define myself or my gifts with. The Romani woman told me I was in need of cleansing because I was a very powerful psychic but I had a lot of emotional blockages and she would help me.

The first part was true. The other part wasn’t. Really, she was borrowing my energy. I felt it like a switch being turned on and off. I was always hungry, always thirsty, always sleepy. During the reading she gave me, there was something in her eyes I wanted to run away from. I never did though. I’d learned not to trust myself. I didn’t mean to tell you here, but that’s the short bit of the story I said was for another time.

Daya said, “Yes. I’m sure. She’s a witch and she knows it. She has always known. She’s very intentional about everything she does. I see her burning candles. I see her praying for hours. I see her burying shit. A lot of shit. She’s done a lot of work on you, Monterica. She’s been throwing at you for a long time now. Probably way before you and your friend fell out too. You’re covered in it. Let me ask your ancestors what you need to do.” She asked aloud, “Will a spiritual bath help her?” She waited. “They say no.”

“No? What do you mean ‘no’? What has she done to me?”

She said, “Did she ever comb your hair? Or did you ever use her brush or something? If you slept over, she could’ve gotten your hair from a pillow, a blanket, the couch, the bathroom. I don’t know what it is, but she has something of yours.”

She paused. “What she did feels like several binding and domination workings,” and I knew. Just like that, I knew.

I knew it was the reason I couldn’t stop dreaming about him. I knew it was the reason I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I knew it was the reason lunch with her felt weird in a way I didn’t understand at the time. I was disgusted with myself for paying for her lunch after mechanically yes ma’aming and okaying my way through our meal like a robot. I knew she wanted me to realize I was “in love” with her son. I was upset about the weird thank you and the Ambien, and I wondered. I wondered if she thanked me for my compliance. I began to question the validity of every seemingly meaningless and meaningful interaction I’d ever had with her and her son. What I questioned most was whether or not she’d done work to influence her son to dominate me. He had a nearly psychopathic inability to accept no from me. He was disturbingly persistent in pursuit of what he wanted from me no matter what it was.

Daya said, “Calm down. Come back, come back. You may never get all the answers you want. She hasn’t done binding and domination work on just you. It’s on her son too. Not as heavy, but it’s there. He almost feels like he wants to let you go on about your business. He’s wounded from something you said to him. He wants to say, ‘Fuck you’ — ”

I interjected, “He has.”

She said, “ — but he often feels like he can’t live without you. He’s confused. I feel like this work started way before you and him fell out. Months or even years before. I really do. His mother wants the two of you to be together.”

“I don’t want him in that way. I never have.”

“I know. He knows. She knows too. She doesn’t care.”

“Can I confront her?”

Daya laughed, “Your ancestors say ‘hell no.’ She would never admit to throwing at you.”

I sighed. “Why does she want us together so badly?”

“For whatever reason, she feels like you’re going to go on some day to make a whole lot of money.”

“What the fuck? What the fuck?”

“Girl. She wants you to always feel generous toward her. If she was your mother-in-law, she knows you’d do as much as you possibly could to help her out.”

I wanted to scream. I thought about the Romani woman, I thought about the sexual assault I experienced on my 26th birthday that year, I thought about all the times low vibrational spirits and shadow beings tried and failed to attach to me after what happened with the Romani woman like whatever she’d done to me left some sort of door wide open. For some reason, I didn’t know how to protect myself from predators.

I asked, “Dee, why does this keep happening to me?”

“You have a lot of healing to do. Trauma has made you insecure and passive…and timid. You’re not passive or timid at all though. That’s not who you really are. When you’re as insecure as you are and have as much to offer as you do, manipulative people and spirits move in for what they want quickly. This has caused you a great deal of pain with men too. They see you as someone they can easily take advantage of. You’ve been through a lot and it’s made you feel like you’re powerless. You’re not though. Not in the least bit. Your ancestors are urging me to tell you that you will heal. It won’t always be this way for you.”

I asked, “What do they suggest I do to cleanse?”

“You need to burn three black seven-day candles with uncrossing oil. Burn them one after another. You need five consecutive uncrossing baths. Start tomorrow. They want you to use three cups of epsom salt in each bath and five drops of uncrossing oil. They say command over your candles and your baths that all unauthorized magic be dissolved and dispelled immediately.”

I thanked Daya. We’d gone over the hour I’d paid for.

She said, “One more thing. Your ancestors want you to bind the woman and her son. They want you to create poppets representative of the two of them, sew the hands and feet together with the intention that they do no more harm, and then bury them away from your home.” She laughed lightly. “They know you won’t though. You’re still afraid of your power. You’re still afraid of any magic that isn’t right-handed because of what happened with the Romani woman. They say it’s okay…for now. They say when you find the African Traditional Religion for you, you’ll know where your protection and defense comes from. We’ll talk soon, okay?”

The next morning, during meditation, I asked my ancestors to show me what it was about me that my best friend’s mother saw and wanted to be attached to so badly. It took a while to center myself, but I finally did and I had a vision.

I was behind the wheel of a car that didn’t look like much at all. My best friend and his mother stood in the street behind the hoopty waving goodbye. I could see them in the rearview mirror, but I never acknowledged them. When I sped away, a hefty trail of glitter — silver, green, pink, and purple — followed me all the way to my destination, and I felt what my best friend and his mother felt as they watched it all spew from the hoopty as if it would never end: longing.

My ancestors were right. I never did any binding work on him or his mother. It was for protection but it felt far too left-handed than I wanted to engage with.

I found the African Traditional Religion for me a few months later though. Who would’ve thought a little Black girl from North Memphis had Haitian ancestors? I wouldn’t have, but Ezili Danto has walked with me my entire life. She protects me fiercely. She protects all of her children fiercely.

***

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