C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

“Here comes that Voodoo Lady,” said Trish, peeking over her cubicle wall. She glanced up from a mirror she held in her hand as she picked at the gap between her front teeth with a magenta fingernail.

“Here comes who?” asked Sondra, her world-weary tone deliberate. She had seen the article. Everyone had seen the article. A Voodoo Lady was coming to the office, to visit her specifically. She had to admit that was something.

“The Voodoo Lady,” Trish said, “the Katrina survivor. I showed you the photo.” She sucked her teeth and put away the pocket mirror. “I think it’s friggin’ scary.”

Sondra had skimmed the article, but had misplaced it by the time The Voodoo Lady was assigned to her. Before the headaches, she never used to lose things.

“I wonder if she’s going to be wearing her magical necklace,” Trish said. “You know, the one she wore in the photo?”
Sondra pretended to look for the article in a pile of papers under her desk but what she was really doing was hugging her thighs and bending her neck into an arch as a surge of pain hit. Some chiropractor had made a show of giving her the exercise “for free” after a series of useless spinal adjustments that her HMO wouldn’t begin to take seriously.

“How can someone with a necklace like that be asking for handouts?” Trish said.

Trish inhabited the cubicle across the aisle as far back as Sondra cared to remember. Despite her pasty white face, Trish would be mildly attractive in a poorly lit country western bar that wouldn’t challenge the legitimacy of her retro Sixties helmet hair and lipstick close to the color of catsup left too long on a diner table. Solid as a prairie farmer, Trish offset that impression with bright scarves and an endless series of humorous, seasonal, or possibly ironic broaches designed to distract the eye. Her acidic sense of humor and challengingly hard-nosed attitude toward their clients kept Sondra alert and reminded her of the reason she was still worked in social services. Sondra assumed Trish, like most of the others in the office, saw her as a Patty Hearst hiding out in their bureaucracy, a case waiting to break into the national news when they discovered that she ran with bombers. Something like it had happened not that long ago in St. Paul.

“Sondra?” Trish said.

Sondra craned to look up but only managed to see her own padded cubicle wall plastered with photos and articles skewered on pushpins. She saw a picture of Sebastian graduating from high school wearing some sort of South American beaded necklace and a Che T-shirt. There was also a memo from her boss warning his flock to be watchful of fraud.
As she often did, Sondra used Seb’s voice to criticize Trish: How could someone call social work ‘handouts’ after working in the field for over twenty-five goddam years? Her son’s voice made Sondra feel less full of repressed rage, hence less neurotic. She switched to criticizing herself, in her own voice: How could you ever have seen this job as a path to changing the system from within? How foolish you are.

“That article is probably why they’re giving her to you,” Trish said, her voice closer, probably standing over her. “They probably need someone brave like you to means test her. Everyone else is afraid of the evil eye or finding their photo stuck with pins under their desks. What are you doing down there anyway?”

“I’m clearing the space,” Sondra said miscalculating her position and hitting the back of her head on the underside of her desk as she tried to get out. “Damn,” she said. “It’s a technique I learned in Tibet to counter black magic.” She was always saying deliberate exotic lies to Trish. She couldn’t stop herself, and added to the enjoyment by telling Seb what she said to her coworkers. She had never been to Tibet, but at one time it did not seem like the impossible idea it would be today. Though it was wisecracks like this that solidified her official status as the aging hippie lady of the office, but she no longer cared.

“You’re so weird,” Trish said. After the usual two beat delay, she added, “But I love you anyway.”
Sondra didn’t mind entertaining her coworkers if it kept them from inviting her to Tupperware parties or whatever the current equivalent might be. She fostered a reputation for handling troublemakers, which she did partly out of boredom, but also as a form of therapeutic punishment, low voltage electroshock meant to keep alive her sense of purpose.
As she raised her head her blood rushed downwards away from her pain, giving her temporary relief and a tentative hope that the two fast-acting Advil, one cup of strong black tea, and an old homeopathic remedy hadn’t canceled each other out. She stood up slowly.

“Headache again?” Trish said. Her expression was interesting—half sympathy, half news reporter eager for a story.

“Not really. Just have to do my wake up exercises.” She couldn’t trust the office gossip around health issues. They could use anything to question her decisions, even her competency, not to mention issues with health insurance. If a condition were psychosomatic (and what wasn’t?) they wouldn’t pay squat.

Sondra looked down the aisle at a figure walking slowly. Other workers peered over their cubicle walls, following the same figure. Some of them looked back at Sondra. Anticipating bureaucratic combat was a gladiatorial sport.

“What I hear,” Trish said, “is the Voodoo Lady is having problems with her housing placement. Probably those rituals are scaring those ladies.” She giggled in delight at her own wit. Her intonation implied a wink, as any more derogatory term for two women living together were strictly policed.

“Goat slaughterin’ in the kitchen,” Sondra drawled in faux southern. “Says right here in the manual—verboten.”

Trish looked confused, then laughed. Sondra wondered if she knew the word verboten. Despite allowing herself to think of her coworker as bigoted trailer trash, she still liked to make her laugh, though she eagerly awaited the day when she would tell her she’d be happier bossing around clerks at Walmart than helping the unfortunate.

“I think she’s wearing the necklace.”

“I’ll make her pawn it, if that would make you happy,” Sondra said.

Trish stared open mouthed at the person making her way down the aisle toward. Sondra saw a middle-aged African-American woman with the minimal exotic accoutrements one would expect from a woman who according to the article made her living reading cards for tourists in the once great entertainment city of New Orleans. The woman tapped a carved cane on the floor as she walked. A bit much, Sondra thought, unless she can’t see well.
The cane was carved in an ornate style Sondra would call African if she saw it in a case at the Minneapolis Art Institute. She imagined how she’d describe to Seb the twin serpents intertwining as they climbed upward toward the handle, a bulbous grinning skull with jeweled eyes that glinted red even in the dull fluorescent office lights. The woman’s dark hand covered the top of the skull like a huge spider, an Egyptian scarab ring ubiquitous on the third finger of her right hand. Sondra wondered if she had lapsed into a minor hallucination as she saw an enchanted moth dancing near the woman’s hand like an animated Disney creature. She squinted until she forced it to be what it was: a downy white feather tethered to the cane with transparent fishing line.

She could imagine Sebastian speculating that tapping her cane was part of a spiritual system meant as a warning to possible evildoers, human or spirit. Ever the anthropologist, he might point out that it could also double as a weapon on the streets of New Orleans, possibly even having a blade hidden somewhere within it. She felt a thrill of having something to share with Sebastian about her day. It had been hard lately to find the line between being his loving audience and the voice of caution against believing everything the professors told him. His agenda had something to do with making anthropology pay for the abuses it had heaped on the tribal peoples of the world. Was that the proper expression of the moment, she couldn’t quite remember—was it indigenous or native, or perhaps something newer? It made her feel old that she couldn’t remember.

Lately Seb was more enthusiastic about the possibilities of what he called her social justice job than she had ever been. He’d probe her for interesting encounters with the out of place ethnics who were finding their way to the frozen north via to some dated missionary connection to the Lutheran social services. They were mostly Hmong and Somalis now, both peoples from warm climates that were baffled by Minnesota in January. Can you say twenty-five below zero in your language? Not likely. Sebastian was always defended her coworkers when Sondra tried to elicit sympathy with unexaggerated tales of their small-mindedness. He forgave everyone except his chosen enemy—The Anthropologists—who he said “leached magic” out of cultures, a phrase Sondra had heard when she was in college. Sebastian saw his field not as science, but as reparations to a broken world. He had not, as a friend suggested, fallen far from her tree.

The old woman stalled on her way toward Sondra’s desk. She talked and laughed as if she knew people. Since the paperwork Sondra read last night indicated this was only the woman’s second visit to the housing office, she wondered how the woman could know people already. Then again, she was a carnie of sorts, used to cajoling crowds. Maybe she was doing it now. Sondra felt her face tighten and shut her eyes to relax. What if the woman was just another cheat? Perhaps she had been here before under another alias.

Sondra didn’t like cheats no matter how deserving they appeared. She glanced at the interoffice memo precariously clinging to her wall with a piece of duct tape. The “Fraud Alert” memo had come from her boss, a somnambulant wanker they called Stained Shirt. His “Fraud Alerts” were oddly random but this came with a bitter aftertaste, quoting an article in the local paper that implied that their very own office might be responsible for some of the welfare fraud hampering “the country’s efforts to recover from Katrina.” The fact that the editorial came from the arch-villan right wing harpie Katie Holmes hadn’t stopped old Stained Shirt from sending it out. But neither had it stopped Sondra from taking it somewhat seriously. She hated liars and cheats nearly as much as she hated racists and warmongers, maybe more, as her experience with them had been confirmed in more relationships than she’d care to remember: family, friends and even lovers when there had been hope for that particular activity. Still she would treat this woman fairly like all the others who wanted something from her agency. The strangeness of her appearance and Trish’s fascination, made Sondra more resolved to treat her like she’d treat anyone else.