“Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here,” Angela said. “I really wanted to see your shop.”

Mama Matisse did not let her hand go. She held it, studying Angela’s eyes. “You are a special friend. I feel your energy,” she told Angela.

“Thank you very much,” Angela said.

She quickly understood the power of the woman and of the place. The shop was beautiful and fascinating. The place was filled with exquisite artwork, books and posters, and more. It was all laid out in a fashion to draw the eye. There was a table filled with gris-gris and gris-gris bags, another held potions and oils, another had wellness spa packages. There were the usual voodoo dolls, but she noted that many of these were different; they offered pins, but the dolls were marked in different areas on their bodies. The area of the heart said, For Matters Involving Love.” The area of the head and neck were labeled, “For Help with Troubling Questions.”

“So, what can I do for you, little one?” she asked, still looking at Angela, but obviously addressing Whitney. “I already answered questions for your group.”

“We’re trying to understand more,” Angela said. “And, frankly, you have greater insight than anyone else we’ve met. I was hoping you could tell us a bit more about your own opinions, and about the people who are involved.”

“Like I told you, I was glad to perform a banishing spell—a dangerous thing, if it was not done correctly,” Mama Matisse said. “But that was my only time at the house.”

“Regina had many red candles, and I think she might have been performing other spells at sometime.”

Mama Matisse shook her head. “I knew nothing about red candles. But I’m not surprised if Regina did play at magic. She wasn’t a happy woman. But then, I am one of those who isn’t madly in love with Senator Holloway, so perhaps she wouldn’t have told me about all her unhappiness.”

“Mama Matisse,” Angela said, “you’re the first person I’ve met who doesn’t like the senator—other than a few fanatical groups.”

Mama Matisse shrugged. “When there is a storm, I want to see a man in the ghetto—in the midst of the crack houses and the poor, picking up. I mean, really, digging in, picking up—not posing. Yes, in ghettos, you will find the crack houses. You will also find the poor, who have no chance. I believe in a man who picks up the pieces, who works with his hands, and doesn’t pay others to do so. And when there is an oil spill, I want to see that man walk among the fishermen. I want to see him with volunteers, cleaning the birds with his own two hands.”

“Perhaps he was terribly busy, trying to deal with those who must find the massive machinery needed to stop a spill,” Angela said.

Mama Matisse shrugged again; she wasn’t going to argue. “You have come to me for my feelings—I am giving you my feelings, that is all. But I haven’t cared for those, either, who only clean the shoreline and the birds when the television cameras are rolling. I give you my opinions on this, nothing more.” She smiled. “Come. We can talk in my office. Sandra is here, and she can manage the customers. Sandra?”

She raised her voice slightly, and a young woman disengaged herself from the couple she had been helping. She smiled at Mama Matisse and waved at Whitney.

“We will be in the back,” Mama Matisse told her young clerk.

The girl nodded, and walked around to the counter and the cash register. Not even a voodoo shop was immune to thieves, but, then again, thieves plagued many churches, and every different kind of house of worship that existed.

They passed through the main body of the shop to an area that was apparently a little place of worship for the true believers. There were floor mats in the room, and against the one wall, a voodoo altar. There were several statues there—many of them of saints—along with a skull mask, African tribal pieces and an arrangement of coins and small wrapped candies.

“Loa,” Whitney whispered to her, referring to the little statues and those in other forms she didn’t recognize as well.

“You wish to understand our religion and our ritual,” Mama Matisse said when they reached her office. It had all the right equipment for an office, handsome filing cabinets, computer, printer, a state-of-the-art calculator and a beautiful, hand-crafted desk along with cushioned chairs to sit before it. It was also a personal place. Mama Matisse had a wealth of pictures of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren on the bookshelves near the desk, along with an assortment of her own reading material. She had a number of books on spiritualism, a Bible, and then a host of mysteries and thrillers. Clearly, Mama Matisse liked to be entertained.

“I would love to know more,” Angela said.

“All right, I’ll give you a quick course,” Mama Matisse said, her voice all business. “Are we different from our roots in Africa? Yes, definitely. The religion came from Africa, mainly to Haiti, and there it began to combine with the white man’s religion. But, in voodoo, we don’t see a devil the way that the Catholic religion sees a devil. We have a spirit, Kalfu, who controls the malevolent spirits of the night. It’s not a black-and-white world where there is evil and good. Voodoo is a path that teaches us what we need to know, and when one worships correctly, it’s a beautiful path that leads us to be better in life.”

“I understand,” Angela told her. “From what I’ve learned about the world, most religions teach us to be decent to our fellow man. But people have and do practice black magic.”

Mama Matisse waved a hand in the air. “Like all religions, voodoo can be and has been used by men and women of tremendous evil purpose. Papa Doc, the Haitian dictator who ruled with an iron hand, and his Tonton Macoutes or ‘bogeymen,’ was a cruel voodooist twisting the religion to keep his absolute control of the country. Under Papa Doc, every man with him became a zombie. The toxin of the puffer fish is used when those who practice black magic wish to ‘kill’ a man and bring him back to life. This is not voodoo. Voodoo is filled with the great God and spirits like saints who come to us and help us through all problems in life and society, and those who practice the voodoo we teach and are looking for what is positive in life and nature. But, remember, like a cult arisen from a Christian religion, people twist what they believe for their own ends, and they will try to use black magic. You have the Bokor, and they are those who take voodoo, tempt evil and twist others. Remember, too, voodoo in Hollywood has brought about ragged creatures that burst forth and rise from the dead, rotten and decaying, and voodoo in Hollywood gave rise to the little dolls that we prick with pins to cause affliction. Yes, I sell voodoo dolls, but you’ll note that mine are to find answers and peace, not to rip at a man’s leg and cause him to break it or lose it in an industrial accident or the like. If someone uses black magic with a ten-or twenty-or even hundred-dollar voodoo doll and it does something to someone, it’s because that person has managed to slip into the mind of the enemy.”

“We’ve thought about that. A prophecy can be self-fulfilling?” Angela asked her.

Mama Matisse nodded gravely.

“So Regina Holloway had a banishing spell done at the house, by you, and yet she was buying voodoo paraphernalia elsewhere as well, that’s odd, don’t you think?”

Mama Matisse hesitated, and then said slowly, “I don’t know. Regina Holloway didn’t come to me for any kind of potions, spells or purifications.” She was quiet again, but Angela didn’t speak, certain that there was more she had to say. And finally, Mama Matisse added, “She did come to me at the shop once.”

“She came to you?” Angela asked softly.

Mama Matisse seemed to be looking into the distance, and envisioning the time she spoke about. “She was bereft, the poor woman. She loved her son so much. Everyone knew that a piece of her died with that boy. So…so she came here one day. She was heartsick. She had been everywhere. She had been to her priest, but she was willing to try anything. She wanted me to intercede for her, to speak to a saint or a loa, and beg to know that her boy rested with the angels.”

“And you spoke to her, and said something that disturbed her?” Angela asked.

Mama Matisse nodded without looking at her. She was seeing the past. “Regina sat before me, here in the office, and I told her that certainly, everyone knew, whatever they believed, that the goodly on earth rested in the Heaven of their choice. She was upset, and she said that if she just knew, she could be a wife again. She believed herself to be a very bad wife. I said that she was just a hurt wife, and she said that she was pushing her husband away, and she wasn’t giving him comfort—he, too, had lost a son.”

“She was suffering so badly,” Angela murmured.

Mama Matisse seemed to be hesitating again. Angela fell silent, letting Whitney speak.

“Gran-Mama, please, if there is anything you can say that will help us, you must tell us what you know,” Whitney said. “I know nothing,” Mama Matisse said. Once again, Angela held her breath, waiting.

This time, Whitney wasn’t subtle or delicate. She sat back, laughing. “Gran-Mama, spit it out, please, will you? We won’t repeat anything you say, if you don’t want us to—not even to our colleagues. God knows, we’re careful enough about what we do. Please, tell us what you think, or what you believe, or what your intuition told you.”

Mama Matisse said, “Well, perhaps I am biased. I just didn’t feel that the marriage was as wonderful as everyone said. You see, Senator Holloway came here to get her—with his trio of bulldogs. The chauffeur, that fellow named Grable, he was pleasant, looking at all our books and talking with Sandra. The bodyguard, he just stood with his arms over his chest. The third fellow, Martin DuPre, he was anxious. The senator was on a phone call, and Martin kept watching him, and me—this is when Regina Holloway and I came out of the office and back to the front. I think that DuPre thought that the senator was talking to someone he shouldn’t have been talking to while waiting for his wife. And I think that DuPre is more suspicious or superstitious than he’d like to be. He seemed to be afraid that I had told Regina Holloway something that she shouldn’t have known.”