the mojo bag (part 2)

Deborah closes her eyes and nods. She rises and glides to a shelf, where she begins selecting from an assortment of crystals, stones, and trinkets. Peter takes her seat and looks at me, a little blearily but earnest.

“I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was a teenager. And when I got my first motorcycle after Deborah and I started dating, she made me a mojo bag — like a good-luck charm, to keep me safe. So I carried it in my motorcycle jacket.”  

Deborah, satisfied with her selections, comes back to the table. She lays out a cloth.

“And then, one day, I got rear-ended, by a car. I was stopped in traffic, felt the impact. I had enough time in my head to say ‘Oh fuck’ before the lights went out.”

“Oh my god!”

He looked at me intently. “And I got up and walked away.”

“You physically got up and walked away?”

He nods. “After I regained consciousness, the EMTs untangled me from my motorcycle and we walked to the ambulance. I had no injuries.”

On the cloth, Deborah has laid out a small figurine, a folded piece of paper, and three stones: cloudy purple, brown striped, inky black. She’s gripping a crystal the size of a bar of soap and the color of glass, and uses it to draw fast, tight circles around the cloth. Every so often, she flicks whatever she’s gathering off to the side with a grimace of distaste.  

“Peter, that’s incredible!”

“At the emergency room, the doctor goes, ‘You’re really lucky.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I get that.’ He goes, ‘No. 1% of the people that get rear-ended on a motorcycle walk away.”

I am silent.

“It was a miracle.”

Deborah squints, searching overhead. She’s has changed her grasp on the crystal, and now she’s tracing an ellipse, skimming the air for some nameless, invisible particles, and splashing them down onto the assortment of stones. When she is satisfied, she places them one by one into a small black velvet bag and hands it to me.

“Can I look inside?”

“Yes, of course. The purple is amethyst. It moderates your energy, and repels things that are negative. But it transmutes that energy, and sends it back into the universe in a positive way… And that’s black tourmaline. It creates a forcefield of protection. It’s my go-to, because for me it’s the strongest of the protection stones. The brown one is a tiger eye, for focus and balance. But it also has protective properties as well. And that’s—”

“— Ganesh!”

“Yes, the road opener. He clears away the obstacles.”

I unfold the paper. On one side is an illustration of a monk with a ring of curly blonde hair cradling a child in one arm and holding a lily in his free hand. On the other side, a prayer addressed to St. Anthony, Saint of Miracles.

“Anthony of Padua,” Deborah says. “He helps you find lost objects, but you lose your way, he’ll guide you.”

“Assure me that I am not alone,” I read. “And teach me to be humbly thankful as you were for all the bountiful blessings I am to receive.” I replace the charms into the bag and say, simply, “Wow.”

“Keep it on your person at all times, and it will protect you from harm.”

“That’s right,” Peter declares.

“Oh, and you can recharge it in the light of the full moon.” Deborah says this in the same by-the-way tone as when she told me where I could find the bath towels.

In moments like this, “thank you” is a meaningless utterance. Just two empty, oafish syllables. But they will have to do.

“You’re welcome,” Peter says, and then adds with emphasis. “Be safe. You’ve got people who love you looking out for you…” He gestures above.

 From up on a cloud, Uncle Rich tips his pipe with a smile, and Uncle Dean raises his root beer and says, “Be safe, baby!” Gummi, perhaps wielding a turkey leg, adds, “Gawddamn right you better be safe… or I’ll give you the business end of this drumstick!”