Getting ready for the Gede (no, it's not the movies)
In about a week our sosyete in Brooklyn celebrates Fèt Gede, and the prep has officially taken over my life. Purple and black fabric on every chair. A shopping list with coffee, peanuts, cassava bread, a frankly irresponsible number of hot peppers, and sunglasses. The Gede like them with one lens popped out. Don't ask me to explain fashion to the dead.
Because it's October and everyone is watching horror movies, a gentle bit of myth-busting: Vodou is not pins in dolls. That image comes mostly from Hollywood and tourist shops, not from our temples. The Gede are the spirits of the dead, with Baron and Manman Brigitte at their head, and they are honestly the funniest, most irreverent guests you will ever host. They tease the proud, they comfort the grieving, and they remind everyone that death does not end a family.
What I can share of the day itself: a lot of singing, a lot of food, everyone in purple and black, and time set aside to honor the dead of our own families too. My grandmother in Jacmel used to say the Gede make you laugh so you remember you're still alive. That's most of the teaching, really.
The rest stays in the peristil, as it should. But if you've only ever met Vodou through a movie screen, I hope this gives you a truer picture. Bon fèt Gede a little early, everyone.
In our house, dreams are mail
Hollywood taught a lot of people that anything involving Vodou and dreams must be frightening. In my family it's the opposite. Dreams are mail. Grann would ask us at breakfast, 'Who visited?' the way other grandmothers ask whether you slept well.
Last week I dreamt of her lakou in Jacmel: the yard swept so clean you could see the broom lines, the mango tree, her voice calling my name from the kitchen in the tone that meant food was ready and I was late.
I told my manbo, because that's what you do. What she said back stays between us. But I wanted to share the swept yard and the mango tree, because that's what Vodou looks like most days. Family, memory, and somebody calling you in to eat.
Before the drums, the prayers
People are always surprised when I tell them a ceremony in our house starts with almost an hour of prayer. Catholic prayers first, then the Priyè Ginen in Kreyòl, French and langaj, the long litany that calls the saints, the lwa and the ancestors, everyone in their proper order. My knees know exactly how long it is.
Nobody is sticking pins in anything. Mostly we are praying, singing, feeding people, and asking Papa Legba to open the gate so the conversation can begin.
Last Saturday my goddaughter led part of the Priyè for the first time. Her voice shook on the first line, and then it didn't. In the corner an old manbo closed her eyes and nodded. That nod is worth more than every movie version of us put together.
My grandmother's lakou, rebuilt on the fourth floor
Growing up, summers meant my grandmother's lakou outside Jacmel. A lakou is a family compound, a yard shared by generations: houses around the edge, a big tree in the middle, and the spirits of the family woven into all of it. My grann knew which corner the old ones liked, which tree you didn't lean on, which songs went with which work.
She passed when I was twenty-two, and I thought the lakou died with her. My mother sold the land. I was in Brooklyn, in a fourth-floor walk-up with radiators that clank like a drum line.
It took me years to understand the lakou was never only the land. It's the people, the remembering, the feeding of each other.
Now, every few weeks, my aunties climb those four flights with foil trays of diri ak djon djon and pikliz strong enough to wake the dead (respectfully). My cousin's kids run up and down the hallway. Somebody starts a song my grann used to sing at the washbasin and we all join in, off key. There's a small table by the window with her photo, a glass of water, and a white candle in a hurricane glass, up where little hands can't reach.
With Fèt Gede coming at the start of November, I've been thinking about her more. The Gede are lwa of the dead, and they love a good laugh. So did she. When the aunties are loud and the pikliz is too spicy and somebody is crying from laughing, I feel her in the room.
The lakou survived. It just moved up four flights.