Hoodoo Voodoo

The clock in the children's bedroom chimed the hour eight, the hour

for the bedtime fantasy story that will be told by our Auntie Riba. My sister and I were in suspense when we hurried into our jamies. Our auntie waited patiently in a hard backed chair as we tidied our play clothes, said our prayers, and quickly scrambled into our beds under the warmth of our blankets. Then two pairs of little eyes focused on Aunt Riba as she turned the pages to the story for night.

"Perk up your ears my little chillun' and your auntie will spell out the story about Rastus Anase the wise old hoodoo-voodo man. I will tell how he tricked a greedy python, a nasty character that was a heap of trouble for a village near a mighty river," our Aunt Riba told us through her husky yet soft voice. Slowly the slang of her sweet sounding words set the stage for the nightly bedtime story.

Aunt Riba was not really our close kin but an elder Afro-American lady that my dad employed to take charge of us kids when our Mumsy caught the black sickness and never returned from the hospital. Dad was a construction engineer, always travelling about in building jobs, so Aunt Riba was hired to care of me and my sister. I was at that time a freckled faced boy of seven years, a little chappie barely out of my short pants; all the fellers called me Mike. My sister Betty was a cute little tyke of four with a innocent look about her; but always sniffling for her Mumsy when she be hurt of simply in a lonely mood.

Dear Aunt Riba I can still rembember her as she made a deep impression upon me in my early years. She was always in a happy and contented mood, always smiling. But only in the later years I learned upon her demise, that under the veneer of her contentment she was an unhappy woman full of bitterness. It seems that she lost her man and children in a senseless racial criminal act; and only in her privacy of her room she shed her tears.