Thursday, January 18, 2007 by Billy
Jackie Brown's Redemption
I didn't see her for three days. They said she was all strung out in another sex starved ghetto fiend's house.
When she surfaced again in the derelict shack that she shared with her steady lover I sensed a subtle change barely perceptible. Her battered crack junkie face hadn't mutated into beautiful. Nor did her emaciated frame morphed into voluptuous excess. Nevertheless she was not the same person I encountered couple days after she came back. I caught a strange aura surrounding the usual desperation.
It all came out in time as hidden things usually does. She told me everything that night after drinking four straight shots of local rum. She had exorcised her monsters forever by summoning greater monsters.
She told me a most horrible tale about voodoo and a midnight seance in the cemetery. I kept looking over my shoulders for dambala and his minions. Nevertheless I admired her strength in finally confronting her demons. She said that she defeated the people who had cursed her with crack cocaine. She saved herself when all of us in the neighborhood had sold her to death in our thoughts and in our hearts.
Some months later she disappeared forever. Some said she returned to Guadeloupe to start fresh again. Others said she went searching for her rasta lover who had perished at sea on a small fishing boat. Another rumor spoke of abduction by the devil as payment for her cleansing.
I did not believe any of those stories. Wherever she was I hoped that crack cocaine hadn't been invented. Eventually all the crack dealers in the neighborhood were devoured by the hell they had nourished. Prison madness and death came to collect the bounty that was owed. Hell as we know is never satiated.
One rainy night I heard one screaming for death to eat his sins. The earth sighed and rambled on. In the morning the ambulance took him away to the loony hotel.
Something had to give. It always does.
Billy Jno Hope
