Divina & the Syphoner's Mark: Ch.1

It all started when I woke up naked in a tree. Forty feet up from the snowy ground in the dead of winter. That's how my 18th birthday started.

Okay, wait, I'm totally getting ahead of myself. That's not really where it all started.

***

Tiny particles of ash drifted down, featherlight, hiding among the snowflakes. They fluttered down together, dancing around us in unison until they died at the ground.

Sounds blended together –sirens, coughs, hysterical wailing –all muffled under the blanket of white and gray. Our home was gone. I could not control my eyes that drifted up, up, up to gaze at the swollen cloud of black smoke. Beneath it burned the LeBeau Estate.

Every few moments, a beam would collapse, or a piece of flooring would fall in, snatching everyone's attention again. Not mine. My attention was stolen, on loop, by the puff of foggy tar hanging overhead. Faces blurred in and out from it. Faces of the dead. My Aunt Amelia, who had passed five years ago. My Uncle Bertrand who died thirteen years before that. The face that rested in our family's freshest grave, my grandmother Judith.

And last, a face I didn't recognize. The visage of a woman, elegant bordering on snooty, with a grin as vile and haunting as a fiend in the shadows. The flashing of cameras and sting of the smoke tore my eyes away from it all.

This was big news in Louisiana. The LeBeau family was notorious around these parts. Rumors ranged anywhere from mafia-ties to wicked curses. Only one part of the narrative was the same: each tragedy we faced was somehow our own fault. There was a funny thing about those rumors, though. The "curse" was something nearly every LeBeau had tried to discredit and failed miserably. I refused to believe it –I mean, a curse? Really? Until the day my Grandmother Judith died.

The day after we buried her, everything we touched turned to ash.

Through the wails of my grieving mother –who, in less than three years had lost her only sister, brother-in-law, and now her own mother –another sapling of the curse had taken root.

One branch –insurance fraud. My grandmother, the smartest woman I'd ever known, had somehow been defrauded, so when our family's precious estate burned to the ground, our silver lining burned along with it.

Overnight, my mother had become a lone, single mother of two; my cousin Belinda had just graduated a semester early from high school. I still had one more year to go.

Money from Grandmother Judith's life insurance policy evaporated like a drop of water to a wall of flames and every object we sank money into, be it homes or vehicles, turned to lemons nearly as quickly as we'd purchased them.

By March, just eight months after the matriarch of our family was put to rest, our fall from grace finally seemed to end.

At rock bottom was a 600 square-foot studio apartment. For 6 months, we held our breath. But despite all the name changing, black market social security numbers and sheer exhaustion from trying to hold on, the first of September delivered life's final blow. An eviction notice, the third one in less than a year, greeted us at the door. At least this one had a reason: the studio loft had a two-person maximum and we were over the limit.

Of course, the curse delivered our gifts in bundles, so over the weekend, my mother lost her sixth job and her last shred of patience and the Monday following, Belinda and I received word that the deli where we had worked part time for four months was closed.

Not closed like, "be back in fifteen," or "we changed our hours." Closed down. Indefinitely. For health code violations. The note left on the door from the owner said final checks would be mailed out in thirty days.

We had twenty-seven days to be out of the apartment.

***

The next morning arrived, and like the consistent drip of our coffee pot, dread slowly poured over us. I shuffled to the kitchen's back wall of cabinets and brought out three mugs.

Belinda's forehead creased as she glared at the tiny makeshift bar on the other side of the kitchen wall in front of me. She leaned gloomily against her palm, squishing her face a bit, reminding me of how she looked in grade school.

She had always been beautiful. Her skin looked like toasted honey with a golden glow that spread to her wavy, shoulder-length butterscotch strands. Tall and thin, she towered over me by about six inches. Her button-nose was a little wider than mine and her lips were perfectly lined and pouty. Paired with almond gray-blue eyes, she was a perfect blend of Black, French and Choctaw.

I pushed a steaming mug towards her.

"Creamer?" she asked, still glaring at the bar.

"We're out. I added sugar, though," I said.

She sighed and shook her head but accepted the mug anyway. She took a sip and turned her studious gaze to me. "What's the plan, Divina?" she asked, pointedly.

I stared into my own cup, lifting it to my mouth. I didn't trust my words, but when I looked back up, she was still waiting for a response. "Honestly Be," I took another sip, "I'm not sure..." Is there even a point in planning? I added, silently.

"We'll be fine," my mother's groggy voice called from the bathroom. She ambled over to the breakfast bar. "We always are," she added as she dragged her mug over and took a seat beside Belinda. Her words were confident, but her conviction was weak. Especially for her. Red fatigue streaked her charcoal-gray eyes and they lacked their usual electricity. Wisps of frizz draped over the tight spirals in her midnight black hair. Her cinnamon complexion had paled.

Will we? The question threatened to spill from my lips, so I took another sip. The liquid scalded my tongue as it went down, like punishment for the thought.

"We will be fine, Divina," my mother muttered. Then, she sipped at her coffee and watched me in silence.

"What's with you?" Belinda tore into the quiet. "You're never like this."

I shrugged. "Hormones?"

"Finally going through puberty?" she snorted and rolled her eyes.

"Now's as good a time as any," I retorted. I finished up my cup and stepped over to refill it. As I turned back, Belinda stood right in my path. The coffee dripped over the cup's rim. "Crap!" I fanned my hand in the air and wiped it on my shirt. "Belinda!"

"What's wrong with you?" she asked, leaning down until her eyes were level with mine. She grabbed my stinging hand and looked it over, then let it fall. She stood straight and tilted her head with furrowed eyebrows before pressing her palm to my forehead. "Are you getting sick?"

Sick of this endless nightmare we're living. "I'm fine." I pushed her hand away. I opened my mouth to say more, but the clang of an unfamiliar bell rang through the apartment.

We all traded glances of furrowed brows and widened eyes. In the whole six months of our stay here, we had never heard that sound before.

"Was that...the doorbell?" my mother asked.

Belinda shrugged.

"I'll get it," I said and rushed to the door as the bell rang a second and third time. I twisted the handle and pushed it open. "Can I help you..." my voice trailed off at as I realized there was nothing but a shiny, reddish wooden box with an envelope taped to the top. The box was small, the size of a small music box, but it was heavier than it looked. It looked old, but expensive; maybe cherry oak –not like I knew. I carried it back in the apartment and shut the door. "There was no one there. Just this box," I called through to the kitchen.

I sat the box in the middle of the floor and pulled the tape off, ripping open the envelope with "LeBeau" scrawled in script across the middle. A two-page letter, written in cursive and signed, "Satrina Loukas" at the bottom was inside. I stared at the elegant typography when the paper was snatched from my fingers. "Who's 'Satrina Loukas?'" I asked my mother, who now held the letter.

She ignored my question and moved her lips as she silently skimmed over the letter. "She's Momma's...sister..." her eyebrows furrowed deeper as she continued reading. "I've never heard about her, though." Her gaze shifted down. "What's that?" She tossed the letter back to me and stooped in front of the box.

"I don't know. The letter was taped to the top," I said.

I studied the letter.

"My Dearest Niece,

I was brokenhearted to hear of my dear sister Judith's passing. The curse separated us forty years ago and I've been searching through the LeBeau bloodline ever since. I've discovered the cure to our family's curse! And I'd hoped I would have the chance to share it with dear Judy before our time ran out, but sadly, I did not. I apologize for being unable to attend the funeral, but I hope you'll accept my meager offerings to make up for it. After the death of my husband, I have no one but my stepsons and have long since yearned for a true family bond. If you do oblige me, even for nothing more than this cure, I'd be eternally grateful. In the chest you will find flight tickets to Charlotte, North Carolina in two days and a little something to help ease the burden I'm sure you're dealing with. A moving crew will arrive shortly after this package to further assist in your relocation. I do hope you will consider my invitation. Nothing is more powerful than family.

All My Love,

Satrina Loukas"

I skimmed over the letter a second time and glanced back down at the box. My stomach knotted up. Flashes of the past year passed through my mind. All the pain, the loss. Nothing about this letter comforted me. "Grams had a secret sister?" I mumbled, shaking my head. A LeBeau family member that no one had ever heard of? Unlikely.

Belinda snatched the letter from my hand and studied it. "I knew it! There had to be an end to all this bad luck!" Belinda's face lit up. "There's a cure!"

"Cure? Let me see that again," my mother yanked the letter from Belinda. Her eyes roamed over the script several times before she looked back up. "A cure? This is..." she looked back to the letter, "this is a blessing!" she gleamed. "I knew this couldn't go on forever!"

"Could you at least knock on wood or something when you say things like that? What's next? A hurricane shatters this place? Another fire? And Satrina will probably turn out to be nothing more than a fraud," I blurted. I snapped my hands over my mouth. Why did I say all that out loud! I reached for the closest wall and hoped they were made out of wood as I knocked several times. The pattern of chaos that chased our lives made each one of those thoughts highly likely possibilities. I was no longer above superstitions.

"Have a little faith, Divina." My mother's face lit up as she lifted the lid of the box. Belinda and I leaned over either side of her and peered inside. Three stuffed envelopes labeled "Farrah," "Belinda," and "Divina," respectively, waited at the bottom with a note taped to the one with my name on it that read: "a little something," and a pre-paid receipt from "Lou Moves U."

My mother passed our envelopes to us before tearing her own open. "Would a fraud send free plane tickets and loads of money?" She waived the stack of crisp bills around.

"Mom, do you realize how much information she would have to know about us to buy tickets in our names?" I shivered. "And how do we know this isn't counterfeit?"

"Sweetheart, are you so comfortable under that black cloud that you can't even see an opportunity here?" my mother asked as she dropped her phone and the banded bills. She turned to me and cradled my face in her hands. "So what if the money's fake? So what if Satrina's a liar? We can finally leave Louisiana, maybe for good this time," she said. I couldn't see her face in the darkness, but I could feel the desperation in her voice. "Now, no more negative talk," she said, pinching my cheeks and turning her attention back to the box.

Just as my mother lifted the receipt out, the doorbell clanged again. Belinda ran to answer this time. Light spilled into the apartment as she opened the door. "Lou Movers?" she asked sheepishly.

Belinda stepped back as two dust-covered men stepped through the threshold. A taller, younger one held a metal clipboard in a gloved hand and held it out to Belinda. "Sign please," he said, his voice gravelly and deep.

He gave a forced half-smile and glanced around the house with a lifted brow. He grabbed the clipboard back just as Belinda finished signing. "Shouldn't take more than four hours. Our packing crew is on the way. About how long before we can get started?" he asked.

"Give us ten minutes and we'll be out of your way," I quickly stepped forward and ushered the man and his partner back out into the hallway of the complex. I closed the door as soon as his foot cleared the doorway and pressed my back against the door. I shook my head and looked down at myself. Pastel pink and gray covered my knee-length night shirt.

"Ten minutes?" Belinda scoffed, pointing to the smeared mascara painted under her eyes.

"We'll just throw something on for now. We have more than enough to get a nice hotel room for a couple of nights," my mother said as she stood to her feet. "Let's get moving then."

***

Weighing the plausibility of this so-called "good fortune" kept me from enjoying anything about the hotel, the new clothes, the new cell phones. None of it added up. I shook my head. No, I needed to stay positive. Maybe Mom was right. I had just grown accustomed to a life of misery and I was afraid to hope.

When I really looked at it, the curse had been much harsher to the rest of my family than to me, directly. I had just assumed it had already done its damage where I was regarded. One look at our trio –and our family before it dwindled down to it –and it was obvious that I was different.

Clearly, I had taken after my father –a dead man by the name of Lucien Black, one my mother refused to speak more than a few words about –and I didn't get any of his good genes either.

This wasn't self-deprecation. It didn't stem from a lack of self-confidence either. Beauty was like natural intellect –or any innate talents we came to recognize throughout our lives –it wasn't chosen or controllable. I wasn't pretty, and I was fine with that. I had other talents, ones that didn't result in gross, drunk men leering at me or unwanted attention in school when I was happier learning.

My hair was a constant mess of thin, ash-black spirals that hung loosely down my back. Pale grey eyes with black rings around the irises stood out eerily against my darker caramel complexion. In elementary school, my fifth-grade science teacher announced that the color was some sort of defect or mutation. After that, I kept them hidden behind round, thick-rimmed glasses and a mess of curly bangs.

I was also the shortest in our family and about as curvy as a sturdy plank. Belinda still joked about how I was the only seventeen-year-old she'd ever seen skip puberty. It used to bother me, but it wasn't like she was lying. I still wore training bras. It was what it was.

"I'm so psyched!" my mother gushed as we waited by the curb while our cabbie tossed our new luggage in the truck.

Belinda flashed a half-smile, surfacing from her new cyber-world for only a moment. She hadn't looked away from her cell phone since she bought it the day before.

"You finally get to have a real life! You'll make so many new friends! I've already looked up your high school," my mother continued. "I even added some people that go there to your friend's list!" She handed me a rose-pink cell phone with an apple logo on it. I hadn't asked for a phone. "Go on, take a look. Belinda and I set up your profile last night," she said as her smile widened.

I swiped the lock screen and glared from the screen to her and back again. "Are you serious, Mom? Who even is that?" I asked, pointing to the phone as I held it up for her to see. "That doesn't look anything like me."

"Oh, relax, it's just a little photoshop," she shrugged. "And it's not that different. Now that you finally got your eyebrows threaded, it's practically the same! If you'd just let me get you some contact lenses and show off those beautiful eyes of yours—"

"Non-negotiable, Mom."

"Honey, just think about it—"

"I'm not getting contacts, Mom. We've talked about this."

My mother's eyebrows crinkled as she pressed her lips together. "I know, I just think it's time you tried—"

"Mom, why can't I just be me? When did I stop being good enough for you?"

"Divina, that's not fair," she frowned.

"And how is it fair to make me change everything?"

"I'm not saying to change everything. You hide behind those glasses, Divina. You're more than good enough for me, but when will you finally be good enough for yourself? You're scared to even show who you are!" Her face flushed as she flared her nostrils, taking a deep breath. "Honey, I just wish you'd give yourself a chance. You're such a beautiful girl—"

"Mom, c'mon. Don't start that right now, please."

"She's not wrong," Belinda stepped closer. "It's fine that you don't care what people think of you, but you have such a bad image of yourself...it's not healthy." She pulled my hands in hers. "Div, you've been like a baby sister to me our whole lives. I know you, and this isn't who you are. You used to be so...free. Now you lock yourself inside this box and just—"

"I'm not like you, Belinda. Or you, Mom. Why should I even bother trying?" I flung my hands from Belinda's and turned back to the taxi. "Our flight leaves in a few hours. We should leave now if we want to say goodbye to Grandma Judith and Aunt Amelia."

The ride to the cemetery was short and tense. I kept my face directed at the window on my side and ignored Belinda and my mother each time they attempted small talk. Once we arrived, I rushed from the back of the taxi and quickly found the LeBeau tomb.

"It's crazy, right?" I leaned back against the tomb. I tilted my head and stared up at the angel statue standing guard over it. "I mean, come on, Grams. You have a secret sister and just, what? Forgot to mention it? There's no way!" I scoffed.

"Is there?" I asked, and sighed, looking down at the ground beneath me.

"I wish you could give us an answer somehow. I want to believe it's over –I really do...but you know our family's track record more than I do," I shrugged.

I turned around and pressed my forehead against the stone, oddly cold for September. I gritted my teeth and swallowed as a single tear streamed down my face. "Goodbye, Grandmother." I sniffled and wiped the wetness from my face as I reached the edge of the cemetery.

I leaned against the waiting cab and watched as Belinda said her goodbyes to her parents both buried in the DuPont tomb. My heart felt heavy and I looked away in shame. I almost felt guilty for still having a living, breathing parent.

Belinda's father died when she was still an infant. I used to come to visit his family's tomb with her and my aunt over the years. But after Amelia died five years ago. I couldn't bring myself to watch my cousin mourn over her parents. The sight of her, red-faced and bleary-eyed, stung and I never knew how to comfort her. Watching her now, my heart broke all over again for everything she had lost.

***

I stayed silent through the twenty-minute ride to the airport, the fifteen-minute wait at check-in and even through the security line, but when the taxi didn't crash, our tickets didn't turn out to be fraudulent and no one got arrested in the TSA line, even I had to admit something was different now. I stuffed the dark cloud of anxiety I felt down as deep as it would go and reminded myself of the so far consistent stream of silver lining that followed.

Before I knew it, we had reached the airport in Charlotte safely and without incident, and the dread tugged at the back of my mind was all but forgotten. Satrina had even sent a chauffeur; he held up a sign that read "LeBeau," just as we retrieved our luggage from baggage claim. He walked us to a large, black SUV waiting by the curb and went back to load our suitcases.

I stayed awake long enough for the driver to mumble something about the Loukas Manor before the smooth rhythm of a luxury car on the interstate lulled me to sleep.