MIDNIGHT VOODOO: GUMBO Z'HERBS

I love how deep longings possess people. I love the poetry and pathology of their manifestations the vulnerabilities they cause to erupt from deep within. Darcy is a person with longings. What she longed for most of all was a home in The Crossing.

An amazingly strong and agile athlete, competitive, solitary, dog-loving, and intelligent, Darcy came to The Crossing weekly, but not as a tourist--more like a ghost wanting in. With her dogs, Pepper and Mango, she would run along the river trails, or sit quietly on rocks daydreaming. She became one of the people maintaining a holding pattern just outside the perimeters of the community.

Waiting. Waiting to get in. Waiting for someone to die or move away. Waiting to have her own little place on this shelf of land above the river. When people weren’t home, she would peek in their windows and imagine her things in place of theirs.

Her presence became so substantial that she became a frequent guest of our potlucks, a close friend who was up on all the gossip. But more than anything else, she was waiting.

We tend to hermit ourselves away more in the wintertime. We miss each other in the winter, locked away as we are. One winter, to try to maintain a social connection through these dark months, we decided to form a book club. Oh yes, and we’ll make it also a potluck so we can eat too. Read books together and then create dishes that thematically relate to the book. It was pure genius. Of course, the books became a mute offering. The gatherings became opportunities to eat, laugh and drink. And that was okay too.

Darcy became part of this club. I think that night we were supposed to be reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Something about heat and intrigue so we could escape the cold in our imaginations, at least. On the table at the gathering sat a bottle of wine or two. And a nice pot of Gumbo Z'Herbs, the succulent vegetarian version of the more commonly known, traditional Gumbo. If you haven't tried it, I recommend you do.

Lynne, the woman living in Joe’s place, never melded with the matriarchy of the neighborhood. One of the first things she declared upon moving here was that she really didn’t like women. We invited her once, and only once, to a potluck. She spent the time insulting many of us and declaring that the only person down here she was comfortable with was Ralph—the old hermit at the end of the road. The political stance of the ruling matriarchy was that Lynne didn’t belong and that Darcy did. Like most of the other women of the Crossing, Darcy was fiercely independent, opinionated, and mildly neurotic. Also like the rest of us, she was a fantastic cook.

Join me as I reconstruct that night.

“I just want to live here sooo bad.” Darcy has finished her first glass wine and is pouring a second. Darcy becomes quite a different element of woman when combined with wine. The more wine she consumes, the more porous becomes the filter between her emotions and her mouth.

“If only Lynne would leave. She doesn’t belong here,” Darcy declares, her eyebrows coming together in two calculating slopes. "She muzzles her dog." Her voice eases into the whisper of a conspirator. "She listens to opera."

“Maybe she'll fall into the river,” Darcy adds, with a mildly evil twinkle in her eye.

“We can’t wish bad things on her” Concetta says. “But maybe we can send her on her way in a good way. Maybe she can find something better somewhere else.”

“Then I can move into her house,” Darcy mumbles. Her head is sagging a bit from the wine.

Concetta brings forth a voodoo doll. Not the old-fashioned kind whittled from wood that has the enemy’s hair attached to its head, but a silly looking novelty-shop voodoo doll. It comes with pins topped with bright red pinheads that can be strategically placed on the doll’s body.

“We’ll send her away with good thoughts and intentions.” We laugh, pouring more wine, and sway about Concetta’s wooden kitchen table. Candles burn down. We try to mop up the excess of alcohol in our bellies by picking about the remains of the meal. It is nearing midnight. The perfect hour for spell-making! We’re feeling especially bewitching in this sisterhood of overindulgence.

Darcy holds the voodoo doll in her hand. “Lynne, it isn’t that we don’t like you, although we don’t. We don’t want bad things to happen to you; we just want you to go away so that I can live in your house,” she says, looking down with great sincerity at the voodoo doll. Darcy is childlike and charming as she converses with the little doll. The doll reaches out to her with its rigid stuffed arms. Black-ink eyes beckon. Its “O” shaped mouth seems sympathetic.

Darcy takes a pin and shoves it deeply into the doll’s head. “You will remember a long-lost lover and move into his house. It’s a nice house with a fenced yard. Your dog no longer has to be muzzled.”

She sticks another pin into the ear. “You are invited to New York to run a small opera house. You are surrounded by people who love opera just like you do.”

Another pin pierces the doll’s eye. “You’ll see that this place isn’t very nice for you. After all, look at how we are sitting here wishing you would leave.”

Darcy sticks a pin into the doll’s heart. “Oh, but Lynne, that handsome man loves you so much. It’s okay for you to go with him and find love and happiness.”

“We give you permission to leave,” we all chant together. “Go away, Lynne.” The candles flicker. The wine pools in the bottoms of glasses. We are suddenly aware of a mysterious breeze rattling the windows of Concetta's small house.

Darcy, like a mystic exhausted from collaborating with the spirits of another world, collapses across the table, her arms spread and her hair draping into a bowl of half-eaten gumbo. The voodoo doll has fallen from her hand.

Concetta picks it up and props it against a half-empty wine glass.

“It will be interesting to see if she’s still here when we wake up,” we say, as if we really believe we have the power to manipulate the forces of the universe.

Darcy is gathered into our arms and brought to my house, where she sleeps off the wine on my sofa.

In the morning there is no sign that Lynne is packing her bags. We all have mild headaches from the wine. We nurture them with more leftovers.

Spring comes and when the plants pop free of the frozen earth and the flowers bloom, we seem to bloom too, emerging from our dark homes, rubbing our eyes in the sun. The voodoo night has long passed, and still Lynne is down there at the end of the street.

She doesn’t belong here--or does she? How can there be any outsiders in this place of outsiders? Aren't all of us outsiders some place? Maybe she is part of some mysterious feng-shui neighborhood balance. I’ve never asked her how she found her way down the hill to The Crossing and why she remains. Whatever the case, she’s still here with her muzzled dog and opera music. We accept her, maybe not in a loving embrace, but with what we hope is a dignified maturity, and a promise to keep the voodoo doll tucked away where she belongs.

Darcy has given up on The Crossing and moved to Colorado. She calls every few months to say she misses us, and I tell her that we miss her too. At potlucks we light a candle in her honor--our little ghost resident of the Crossing.

Gumbo Z'Herbs

· 3/4 cup vegetable oil

· 3/4 cup flour

· 1 bell pepper chopped

· 2 serrano peppers chopped

· 1 onion chopped

· 2 celery stalks chopped

· 4 cloves garlic chopped

· 2 bay leaves

· 3 tablespoons Cajun seasoning

· 1 tablespoon cayenne powder

· 6 cups vegetable stock or chicken stock for non-vegetarian

. 1 cup chopped okra (fresh or frozen)

· 2 pounds mixed greens – collards, cabbage, mustard, turnip, chard, dandelion, etc.

· 1 tablespoon file powder or to taste

· Cooked white or brown rice for serving if desired

The magic of Cajun cooking comes from when the ingredients are mixed with the same passion as the ingredients of our hearts. In this alchemy, our deepest desires simmer patiently to perfection.

The roux is the base, that smoky flavor that grounds the whole recipe.

Start with the roux - ¼ cup of oil and ¼ cup flour, whisked with a wooden spoon in a deep cast iron skillet or other heavy pan, keeping the heat low and it will slowly darken, and with your patience and enthusiasm, it will deepen to a sultry mahogany color. This will take about 15 minutes. Don't let it burn. If it does, start over.

The substance of Gumbo Z'Herbs

Sauté chopped onions, garlic and celery into the rue: the holy trinity of soups. After the onions become translucent, add the peppers, two bay leaves and the vegetable broth. Let this concoction simmer about 20 minutes. Bravely toss in the okra, the greens, and your seasonings. A note on the greens. The Louisiana tradition is that the more greens you use in this dish, the more friends you will have in the coming year.

Serve in bowls over white or brown rice, sprinkle file’ powder, parsley and hot sauce to taste. Oh, a few raised eye brows, wondering what in the world is file’ and where in the world can I find it? Sassafras is its other name. That’s the source of file’. Basically a dried weed used in southern cooking. It can be hard to find. If you can’t, well, you’ll miss out not experiencing it’s pungent little kick, but the gumbo will still be gumbo and you will deeply satisfied with your tourist venture into the land of the Voodoo kings and queen