The Green Children

Those Green children, people in the neighborhood used to say, were bewitched by magic. Their momma was so cantankerous, there was a rumor that when she was pregnant with them she pissed off the wrong woman. Folks say that wrong woman came from New Orleans and was into hoodoo.

She won’t no ugly old crone like you wanna believe.

If you seen her and you were a man you’d think: ’God damn!” If you was a woman, well you’d probably roll your eyes and mumble something like, “She ain’t. All that.” Yeah, this was the witch woman you’d never suspect. And she never denied it right out. She even had a shop in town. So everybody and they mama, including the Green’s mama, thought they knew that Nixon from New Orleans practiced Hoodoo. Hoodoo had no business in the town of Milpond.

Ms. Everarda Green, or Evie is what they called her, fancied herself a God-fearing woman—the kind that went to the Grace Pentecostal Holiness Church every Sunday wearing a big fancy white hat with them large, outlandish flowers. When she attended church, she dressed like every day was Easter Sunday. Pastel this and white that with clunky and noisy patent leather shoes. She and other members of the church mingled after service to display their plumage like peacocks. They could be overheard saying things outside the church grounds like: “‘Look at God?’ Won’t he do it?’” To which some other righteous patron would reply, “He sure will, God is such a showoff.” She even went to church on them days when she didn’t have to go. So the idea of a ‘trollop’—which was the name she spoke to her husband when she talked about the hoodoo woman, Nixon—in her wholesome suburb, did not set well with her.

In private she’d say to her husband, “Where she come from? Why’d she have to pick our town? Ain’t no good coming from a woman named after one of our worst presidents. And she practicing the demonic arts.”

“Yes, baby. You right,” he’d spit out the default response right before turning his back and rolling his eyes at his wife. Mr. Levi Green could not have cared any less what Nixon did with her life. As a matter of fact, the only ones that seemed to care more were the women that had stores situated close by Nixon’s shop.

Ms. Naomi Foster, who ran a delicatessen for the last sixteen years, was situated right across from the newcomer. Ms. Foster complained that Nixon’s business caused her customers to stay away… for fear of being cursed. Ms. Chevy Brookdale, located to the right of Nixon’s shop and had run a yoga studio for just five years, whined about how the shop bought negative energy to her clients and herself. Finally, Mrs. Evie Green—whose husband worked as a clerk while she mostly ran a failing bakery for the last three years, an establishment, by the way, that was bequeathed to her after the former owners, her parents, passed away—claimed her pound cakes stopped rising for no apparent reason. “When the women met, she’d tell them, “They just keep going flat.” And the other women would secretly chuckle and whisper amongst themselves because they knew the secret of Evie’s flat cakes was that she didn’t inherit none of her momma and daddy’s baking skills.

She’d continue, “She ain’t nothing but trouble. Showin’ up every day acting like she run this block.” And with more than a tinge of jealousy questioned, “How her business doing better than mine and she just got here?”

“Girl?” they’d say and egg her on. “Speak the truth.”

“We need to get her out of our town,” Evie would say.

And then their mouths froze.

And the women, though they hated Nixon, in part ’cause she was so beautiful, were reluctant to agree. Because in all honesty, they sure didn’t have time to act like angry villagers chasing people out of town. They had lives to live and successful businesses to prosper. But the fun and the devil was in the gossip. When the gossip got too hot, they left poor Evie to stew in her own anger.

Evie and her husband also knew the truth. Taking over the family bakery had caused financial hardship, just like the funeral of her daddy, and then her momma had caused. The bakery wasn’t thriving like before, when her parents owned and cared for it. The profits had almost dried up.

So on the day that Evie decided to pick a fight with Nixon, she had all but convinced herself that it was Nixon’s shop that took away the rest of her business. Evie worked herself up and marched toward the shop. Melodic sounds grew louder until she reached a giant neon sign gazed back at her. Each word lit up. One at a time. First orange, then blue: Nix’s Euphoria. The sign blinking resembled winks. A right out teasing. It was brazen in daring her to come through the door. The sweet melody continued.

With force, she pushed the front door open. The bells jingled in unison with the sound of the shop door banging against the wall. There was a crowd which Evie barged her way through until she, at last, confronted Nixon the originator of the melody.

“This bitch sings too?” she thought to herself. Evie stood out in the crowd of men that surrounded Nixon. All enthralled by her siren voice.

Poor Nixon was so startled by Evie, she stopped her singing.

At first glance, Nixon thought hard to recognize Evie’s face as a fellow merchant on the strip. Yet, she couldn’t get her mind to reckon the woman merchant’s name.

All she could manage was a half-cocked smile and a cheery, “Hey Lady. Can I help you?”

“Yes,” Evie said in a way that pronounced her aggression. “I need to speak to you in private, please.”

“Yeah. Sure. You own Hmm, This Cake is Good. right?”

“Yep.”

Nixon stepped away from her audience and they dispersed going back to whatever it was they were doing before.

“Yeah. Yeah. Come on back.” Nixon waved for Evie to follow a route which led through a secret section of the store. A section Evie had never laid eyes on before—even at the end of all her prior nosy peeping. She started to recognize some of the erotic material that her husband would bring home from time to time as “something new” he wanted to try.

“You got all this back here?” Evie gasped. “Good God Almighty!”

“Yeah,” Nixon chuckled with pride.

“Well, it ain’t nothing to be proud of…No wonder the men like you so much.”

Nixon made a quick about-face after feeling the vibe coming from Evie wasn’t all that amicable. She said:

“I sell new age items, oils, candles, erotic materials, do massage. I fill many needs. And get paid very well for it. I have all my licenses. So if you’re coming in her to tell me some bullshit and criticize me. Please save it! The important people in this town already gave me the ok. Or I wouldn’t be here. And I am doing God’s work. I heal people.”

“God’s work? Evie questioned. “You just a dirty ol’ hoe.” Evie summoned all the rancor she could, feeling as if she was being led by spirit to set this woman straight.

Nixon felt peevish after the insult but then relaxed. She picked up a white candle, one of many that stood on a mantle in her office. She walked to her desk, a huge mahogany monstrosity and opened a drawer to pull out a lighter. She lit the white candle and said, “I light this white candle for you. I pray mother Gaea will purify your mind, body, and soul. Purificent!” Nixon moved closer to her and gave multiple utterances of the last word, which petrified Evie. She thought for sure that Nixon was putting a spell on her. Evie’s rage swelled inside her. “Begone she-devil! Witch!” Without thinking, Evie flailed her arms, knocking the candle out of Nixon’s hand. That candle rolled across the floor like a Christian catching the Holy Ghost and after meeting with clean white paper, it tag-teamed the bottoms of cheap mesh curtains. That tiny candle flame grew to match the rage inside Evie. Within moments the murderous fire threatened to engulf the entire shop. Once the fire stopped its crawling and began to walk forward, it blocked every exit possible except for the front door. Several people funneled out of the front door, screaming and scattering. Evie and Nixon were able to escape to safety. Someone or two called 911 who said a fire truck was on its way. But the firemen arriving as quickly as they could, meant a crowd got to watch Nixon’s shop burn to the ground as M.F.D. doused a charcoaled building. It would be reasonable to assume that Evie and her husband’s bakery burned down too considering its location. It would have been justice to some. But no. It was Chevy Brookdale’s studio that got damaged in the fire. Word is, she cried a little ’till she got that insurance check for twice what the studio was worth. She was able to repair the damages and then some. Evie narrowly avoided prison time for that fire. The magistrate called her ‘grossly negligent’ and slapped her with a two-thousand dollar fine, which Mr. Green did not appreciate. Evie got a little something else too. A few weeks later, when all the noise had died down about the fire, Nixon pulled up in front of the bakery. She stepped out of her car, walked toward the bakery and pushed the bakery door open with so much force it jangled the bells attached to it. She pulled out a black candle and lit it just like before. When Evie saw this, she was sure Nixon was there to burn her bakery down-which she wouldn’t have minded considering all her money woes. So Evie didn’t try to stop her. But instead, she got a curse put on her by the New Orleans gal right before she exited town with her well deserved insurance money. It went a little something like this:

Your poverty will ever increase/

Until your angry ways you cease/

Your three boys will bring you no joy…

Then in the middle of the curse, she said, “Ah fuck it! Humpbacks. You’re going to have a brood of humpback children. Gibbosi! Gibbosi! Gibbosi! Enjoy.” Then she blew out her lit candle causing a drop of melted wax to fall on the bakery floor, walked out smiling, got in her car, drove off and was never seen or heard from again.