Homemade Sin Read Online Free PDF Page A

back on her hips and grinned at Hussey; her eyes had sparkled with warmth and humor. “I could tell your future.”
    â€œI really should be getting home,” Hussey had said, taking another step backwards.
    â€œDon’t you want to know your future child? Don’t you want to know if you are going to grow up to be rich and famous and discover some miracle cure to heal the afflicted or wind up waiting tables in a fish house?”
    â€œWell, maybe just for a minute,” Hussey had said, calmed by Mama’s gaze and intrigued by the notion of knowing her future.
    â€œThen follow me.” Mama Wati had led the way toward the small bungalow at the edge of the cotton field. Hussey had fallen in behind her noticing the setting sun, radiant red and yellow on the tin roof of the little house. It had looked to Hussey like the roof was ablaze, yellow flames leaping from a bed of crimson coals.
    â€œWhat about the fire?” Hussey had said.
    â€œIt’ll burn out,” Mama had said over her shoulder. “Tomorrow, when the ashes get cold, Obadiah will scoop them up in a sack and scatter them all around the young cotton plants. It guarantees a good harvest, all part of St John’s Eve.”
    Mama Wati had led the way toward the little bungalow, puffing on her cigar and leaving a trail of smoke like a freight train in its wake. As she’d trudged toward the house, her large hips swaying like two pigs in a sack, Mama had continued to talk. “St. John’s Eve is older than voodoo itself. It’s been celebrated for over five thousand years from the circle of stones at Stonehenge, to the mossy hills of Ireland, to the dark forests of Russia. In Norway and Sweden and Spain and Greece, Rome and Egypt, maybe as far back as Atlantis. It’s the celebration of spring, fertility, light and rebirth. It’s also called the summer solstice It was renamed after John the Baptist, who Jesus called ‘A burning and shining light.’ So, like most pagan holidays, the bible thumpers renamed it and Christianized it. They started calling it a celebration of St. John the Baptist instead of a celebration of the real burning and shining light, the sun. It’s the best time of the year to give the voodoo skills a little spring tonic, a bonfire booster shot. Makes the juices flow again after a long cold winter, for the plants and for the people.”
    â€œIf the Saint John celebration is all about Stonehenge, the druids and all, why is your husband wearing that blackface?”
    â€œI don’t rightly know,” Mama Wati had said, “for some reason the spirit world responds better when he dresses up like this. Maybe it’s some kind of cosmic affirmative action program.”
    Mama Wati had led Hussey across a fading whitewashed porch with spongy floorboards and placed her half-smoked cigar in an ornate gilt pedestal ashtray standing beside the door. The ashtray had been decorated with little cherubic figures around the bottom. “The cigar smoke chases away the demons,” Mama had explained to Hussey, “that’s all well and good for the fields, but if you chase away the demons in your house, sometimes you chase away your angels too. And we don’t want that, so I limit my smoking to the outdoors.” The house had once been painted forest green but had faded and peeled in the Florida sun to milky-green verdigris, the color of tarnished bronze. Two large windows flanked the varnished door in the center of the porch. The varnish had aged to a dark, sticky, pebbled finish. A tarnished horseshoe hung over the door, points up to catch the luck; a small crucifix hung in the belly of the metal shoe.
    â€œYou have demons in your house?” Hussey had tried to peek through the door. She hadn’t been able to see a thing through the windows. She definitely didn’t want to come face to face with a demon. She had heard her father preach about demons many times,