“I am a bird and what flows in my bones is swamp water. And my Mama and Papa, no longer are they dead. No, they are voices that rise out of the swamp mud, mist floating between the palmetto leaves, spirits whispering in the fog during twilight hours. They fill me.
I don’t have no mirrors to look at myself so that I know the truth. I don’t have no dollars clinging to my pockets to tell me what is and what isn’t. I just have these voices, and these fields, and my loa. So for now, that is why I stay. Not because I am dumb. Not because I can’t be nothing else but a field flea, as Uncle calls us.
Hear me now. I know things even other mambos do not know. My Haitian mama, she too was a mambo, she married a Seminole, Papa. He taught her all the Indian ways. And they taught me. So, I know it all.”