“Oh, He had a hand in it. Before my first pregnancy, I’d prayed and flat out challenged God to help me. When I got up the next morning, something told me to go see Aunt Mattie. So, God led me to her.”

“Pffft. I believe in prayer, but I don’t know about Aunt Mattie’s mumbo jumbo,” I’d protested, dismissing Clarabelle’s testimony with a wave of my hand.

“You can keep praying all you want. But you need to open your eyes and mind and realize when you getting a response to a prayer. There is a reason I ran into you today and this subject came up right off the bat. God’s trying to tell you something through me.”

“Well, I’ll keep praying because I do believe God answers all prayers. But . . . um . . . maybe I’ll try that white powder someday anyway.”

Someday came sooner than I expected, about a month after my conversation with Clarabelle. I was too skittish to approach Aunt Mattie or any of the other hoodoo folks in the area. I went out to Clarabelle’s house and gave her the fifty dollars required to get me a generous supply of that powder from Aunt Mattie. I’d made Clarabelle promise not to tell Aunt Mattie it was for me, and not to blab to anybody else.

When I got home, I put the neipee in ajar and set it on a shelf in the pantry. It looked so much like flour and baking powder, it blended right in with the rest of my condiments. That same night, I drank the first glass. I did that for the next five days and all I got was the runs. I tried it for six weeks and didn’t get any results, so I put it on hold. In October, I tried Yvonne’s suggestion. Immediately after Odell and I had finished making love one Sunday night after he’d come from visiting his daddy, I ducked into the bathroom, closed the door, and stood on my head. I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain—if it worked. But I felt like a fool propped upside down against the wall. In less than a minute, there was a crook in my neck, a charley horse in my leg, my back almost went out, and Odell walked in.

He gasped and rushed toward me. “Joyce, what in the world do you call yourself doing? Have you lost your mind?” Then he laughed. If he hadn’t done that, I would have told him the truth.

“Huh? Oh! Yvonne told me that standing on my head was a good way to get rid of a headache,” I said as I somersaulted myself into an upright position. I had never felt so nutty and embarrassed in my life.