Hope in New Orleans
God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of. — Bruce Springsteen, Brilliant Disguise
Her name was Hope and that was just what I needed her to be.
As I drew back the faded chintz curtain to the back room of Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo, I expected to see a crystal ball, a black cat, and Hope sitting on a throne, donning a dark purple gothic robe covered with stars and moons. Instead, she was wearing a dowdy, flower print dress — the kind my grandma used to call a housedress. She looked up and saw me, slipping her Styrofoam plate of Chinese food under the plasticized cardboard table and putting away her Harlequin romance. With her beer belly and unkempt gray hair, she would have looked more at home sitting at a battered kitchen table in a trailer, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes with the soaps blaring and a grandchild howling in a dirty playpen in the corner. If there were spirits from the netherworld here it seemed more likely they were of the trailer park trash variety than the supremely divine. It seemed more likely they might kick my city-girl butt just for fun than offer an aura of spiritual protection.
“Come in, my dear,” she said, motioning me to join her.
Her eyes were soft and her voice was soothing, and my wounded soul needed soft and…
