I am a mature Black bi woman. If you like kinky mature women I hope you will enjoy my stories and comment on what you liked and perhaps didn't like to help me improve. Be warned, I sometimes, to better frame the scene, include passages from stories I have previously published here on Literotica.
In this story my principal character, Subrina, is a direct descendent of Marie LaVeau who was widely known in the 1800s as the Voodoo High Priestess of New Orleans. Said by some to be the granddaughter of a powerful priestess in Sainte-Domingue, LaVeau reportedly had a background in African spirituality. As queen for several decades, people sought her advice for marital affairs, domestic disputes, judicial issues, childbearing, finances, health, and good luck.
Voodoo - Part 1 - Photos from the Heart
1955
Subrina Marie LaVeau and Willis Porter Johnson were best friends long before she could pronounce her name correctly and discover that it really wasn't "Bina". They met in a playground sandbox but years later when asked how they met they would both simply say they had always known each other.
It may have been old beliefs still found then in parts of New Orleans. Perhaps it was racial prejudice carried over from years gone by. Subrina's curly red/auburn, hair and green eyes made her different and she was labeled a witch when she was only a child. She was teased and called "WITCH" by many of her playmates but never of course by her best friend Will. They would call out, "BINA'S A WITCH, BINA'S A WITCH" until she ran away in tears. When Subrina was only five years old she learned that she could often scare the children away by simply pretending she actually was a witch and sending imaginary spells and curses their way.
Just as often, however, Will, who was big for his age, would come to her rescue and chase them away. Subrina never did forget the awful hurt she felt while being chased and called a witch. As she grew into her teenage years and even as an adult she would never really understand how children could have those old beliefs and be so cruel.
When Subrina was ten years old her life changed forever. Returning home from school she went to her family's bakery in the French Quarter of New Orleans and found her dad where she found him every day, out back working in the kitchen making Praline cookies. As he always did when he saw her he looked over at her, smiled his big 'I love you' smile and said "Well hello Star-shine! How is your day going so far?" He smiled again and wiped the baking flour from his hands as she approached him for her usual welcome home hug.
Suddenly his hand grasped his chest and with an awful pained look on his face he fell and the stars in Subrina's world fell all around her. They were replaced by people she did not know and the red lights of the ambulance and her mom screaming and then her, her mom and her grandmother sitting in the hospital waiting area on the floor holding each other and crying.
At some point during the funeral time Subrina would ask her mom why her dad always called her his "Star-shine." Her mom smiled as if remembering his words, the magic of his smile, and explained that sunshine is common, star-shine is rare.
A few weeks after the funeral her grandfather gave her a picture of himself with Subrina and his son, her dad. He told her that that picture was how he will always remember her dad, standing tall and strong, even now, in heaven, still beside them both. He also gave her a Brownie box camera and several rolls of film with a note in the box urging her to use it to create her own memories. With that simple gesture a life long love of photography began.
Her first projects included of course lots of pictures of family. They soon grew weary of posing but Subrina was persistent and roll after roll of film went off to be developed. For a time it seemed like pictures arrived in an envelope from every other day and family members learned that there was something more annoying than posing for Subrina's camera and that was looking at the resulting pictures.
Subrina had to earn the money for film and processing so after a while even she slowed down but as her teen age years ended she always felt the magic of what was, up to that time, only a hobby. Her granddad when he found out she was taking photography classes in high school helped her build a darkroom in one of the bedrooms in an unused apartment over the bakery. Toward the end of high school Subrina moved into that little apartment with her family's blessing. It was in that apartment that Subrina lived all through her time as a day student in college.
One day a batch of pictures arrived and at first glance she thought something was wrong and she suspected her camera was broken. A picture of her mom had a shadowy image beside her. A double exposure? She showed the picture to her mom who immediately said "Why Bina, only her mom still called her Bina, that looks like your dad, how did you do that?" They never learned how it happened or if in fact it was her dad in the image but years later Bina would find that picture among her moms treasures.
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Will was a great help to Subrina after her father died. All through high school he had the things she needed most, the ability to listen but more importantly the wisdom to let her talk about her feelings.