Skin Folk Page 15

  “Right here.” Sighing with the effort of bending over, Carmen reached under the desk and pulled out a stack of slim bound volumes of Huracan, a Caribbean literary journal that was now out of print. A smell of wormwood and age rose from them. In the 1940s, Huracan had published a series of issues on folktales. Jacky hoped that these would provide her with more research material.

  “Thanks, Carmen.” She picked up the volumes and looked around for somewhere to sit. There was an empty private carrel, but there was also a free space at one of the large study tables. Terry was sitting there, head bent over a fat textbook. The navy blue of his shirt suited his skin, made it glow like a newly unwrapped chocolate. Jacky smiled. She went over to the desk, tapped Terry on the shoulder. “I could sit beside you, Terry?”

  Startled, he looked up to see who had interrupted him. His handsome face brightened with welcome. “Uh, sure, no problem. Let me get…” He leapt to pull out the chair for her, overturning his own in the process. At the crash, everyone in the library looked up. “Shit.” He bent over to pick up the chair. His glasses fell from his face. Pens and pencils rained from his shirt pocket.

  Jacky giggled. She put her books down, retrieved Terry’s glasses just before he would have stepped on them. “Here.” She put the spectacles onto his face, let the warmth of her fingertips linger briefly at his temples.

  Terry stepped back, sat quickly in the chair, even though it was still at an odd angle from the table. He crossed one leg over the other. “Sorry,” he muttered bashfully. He bent over, reaching awkwardly for the scattered pens and pencils.

  “Don’t fret, Terry. You just collect yourself and come and sit back down next to me.” Jacky glowed with the feeling of triumph. Half an hour of studying beside him, and she knew she’d have a date for lunch. She sat, opened a copy of Huracan, and read:

  SOUCOUYANT/OL’ HIGUE

  (Trinidad/Guyana)

  Caribbean equivalent of the vampire myth. See also “Azeman.” “Soucouyant,” or “blood-sucker,” derives from the French verb “sucer,” to suck.“Ol’ Higue” is the Guyanese creole expression for an old hag, or witch woman. The soucouyant is usually an old, evil-tempered woman who removes her skin at night, hides it, and then changes into a ball of fire. She flies through the air, searching for homes in which there are babies. She then enters the house through an open window or a keyhole, goes into the child’s room, and sucks the life from its body. She may visit one child’s bedside a number of times, draining a little more life each time, as the frantic parents search for a cure, and the child gets progressively weaker and finally dies. Or she may kill all at once.

  The smell of the soup Granny was cooking made Jacky’s mouth water. She sat at Granny’s wobbly old kitchen table, tracing her fingers along a familiar burn, the one shaped like a handprint. The wooden table had been Granny’s as long as Jacky could remember. Grandpa had made the table for Granny long before Jacky was born. Diabetes had finally been the death of him. Granny had brought only the kitchen table and her clothing with her when she moved in with Jacky and her mother.

  Granny looked up from the cornmeal and flour dough she was kneading. “Like you idle, doux-doux,” she said. She slid the bowl of dough over to Jacky. “Make the dumplings then, nuh?”

  Jacky took the bowl over to the stove, started pulling off pieces of dough and forming it into little cakes.

  “Andrew make this table for me with he own two hand,” Granny said.

  “I know. You tell me already.”

  Granny ignored her. “Forty-two years we married, and every Sunday, I chop up the cabbage for the salt-fish on this same table. Forty-two years we eat Sunday morning breakfast right here so. Saltfish and cabbage with a little small-leaf thyme from the back garden, and fry dumpling and cocoa-tea. I miss he too bad. You grandaddy did full up me life, make me feel young.”

  Jacky kept forming the dumplings for the soup. Granny came over to the stove and stirred the large pot with her wooden spoon. She blew on the spoon, cautiously tasted some of the liquid in it, and carefully floated a whole, ripe Scotch Bonnet pepper on top of the bubbling mixture. “Jacky, when you put the dumpling-them in, don’t break the pepper, all right? Otherwise this soup going to make we bawl tonight for pepper.”

  “Mm. Ain’t Mummy used to help you make soup like this on a Saturday?”

  “Yes, doux-doux. Just like this.” Granny hobbled back to sit at the kitchen table. Tiny, graying braids were escaping the confinement of her stiff black wig. Her knobby legs looked frail in their too-beige stockings. Like so many of the old women that Jacky knew, Granny always wore stockings rolled down below the hems of her worn flower print shifts. “I thought you was going out tonight,” Granny said. “With Terry.”

  “We break up,” Jacky replied bitterly. “He say he not ready to settle down.” She dipped the spoon into the soup, raised it to her mouth, spat it out when it burned her mouth. “Backside!”

  Granny watched, frowning. “Greedy puppy does choke. You mother did always taste straight from the hot stove, too. I was forever telling she to take time. You come in just like she, always in a hurry. Your eyes bigger than your stomach.”

  Jacky sucked in an irritable breath. “Granny, Carmen have a baby boy last night. Eight pounds, four ounces. Carmen make she first baby already. I past thirty years old, and I ain’t find nobody yet.”

  “You will find, Jacky. But you can’t hurry people so. Is how long you and Terry did stepping out?”

  Jacky didn’t respond.

  “Eh, Jacky? How long?”

  “Almost a month.”

  “Is scarcely two weeks, Jacky, don’t lie to me. The boy barely learn where to find your house, and you was pestering he to settle down already. Me and your grandfather court for two years before we went to Parson to marry we.”

  When Granny started like this, she could go on for hours. Sullenly, Jacky began to drop the raw dumplings one by one into the fragrant, boiling soup.

  “Child, you pretty, you have flirty ways, boys always coming and looking for you. You could pick and choose until you find the right one. Love will come. But take time. Love your studies, look out for your friends-them. Love your old Granny,” she ended softly.

  Hot tears rolled down Jacky’s cheeks. She watched the dumplings bobbing back to the surface as they cooked; little warm, yellow suns.

  “A new baby,” Granny mused. “I must go and visit Carmen, take she some crab and callaloo to strengthen she blood. Hospital food does make you weak, oui.”

  I need more time, more life. I need a baby breath. Must wait till people sleeping, though. Nobody awake to see a fireball flying up from the bedroom window.

  The skin only confining me. I could feel it getting old, binding me up inside it. Sometimes I does just feel to take it off and never put it back on again, oui?

  Three A.M. ’Fore day morning. Only me and the duppies going to be out this late. Up from out of the narrow bed, slip off the nightie, slip off the skin.

  Oh, God, I does be so free like this! Hide the skin under the bed, and fly out the jalousie window. The night air cool, and I flying so high. I know how many people it have in each house, and who sleeping. I could feel them, skin-bag people, breathing out their life, one-one breath. I know where it have a new one, too: down on Vanderpool Lane. Yes, over here. Feel it, the new one, the baby. So much life in that little body.

  Fly down low now, right against the ground. Every door have a crack, no matter how small.

  Right here. Slip into the house. Turn back into a woman. Is a nasty feeling, walking around with no skin, wet flesh dripping onto the floor, but I get used to it after so many years.

  Here. The baby bedroom. Hear the young breath heating up in he lungs, blowing out, wasting away. He ain’t know how to use it; I go take it.

  Nice baby boy, so fat. Drink, soucouyant. Suck in he warm, warm life. God, it sweet. It sweet can’t done. It sweet.

  No more? I drink all already? But what a way this baby dead fast!
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  Childbirth was once a risky thing for both mother and child. Even when they both survived the birth process, there were many unknown infectious diseases to which newborns were susceptible. Oliphant theorizes that the soucouyant lore was created in an attempt to explain infant deaths that would have seemed mysterious in more primitive times. Grieving parents could blame their loss on people who wished them ill.Women tend to have longer life spans than men, but in an even more superstitious age where life was hard and brief, old women in a community could seem sinister. It must have been easy to believe that the women were using sorcerous means to prolong their lives, and how better to do that than to steal the lifeblood of those who were very young?

  Dozing, Jacky leaned against Granny’s knees. Outside, the leaves of the julie mango tree rustled and sighed in the evening breeze. Granny tapped on Jacky’s shoulder, passed her a folded section of newspaper with a column circled. Births/Deaths. Granny took a bitter pleasure in keeping track of whom she’d outlived each week. Sleepily, Jacky focused on the words on the page:

  Deceased: Raymond George Lewis, 5 days old, of natural causes. Son of Michael and Carmen, Diego Martin, Port of Spain. Funeral service 5:00 p.m., November 14, Church of the Holy Redeemer.

  “Jesus, Granny. Carmen’s baby! But he was healthy, don’t it?”

  “I don’t know, doux-doux. They say he just stop breathing in the night. Just so. What a sad thing. We must go to the funeral, pay we respects.”

  Sunlight is fatal to the soucouyant. She must be back in her skin before daylight. In fact, the tales say that the best way to discover a soucouyant is to find her skin, rub the raw side with hot pepper, and replace it in its hiding place.When she tries to put it back on, the pain of the burning pepper will cause the demon to cry out and reveal herself.

  Me fire belly full, oui. When a new breath fueling the fire, I does feel good, like I could never die. And then I does fly and fly, high like the moon. Time to go back home now, though.

  Eh-eh! Why she leave the back door cotch open? Never mind; she does be preoccupied sometimes. Maybe she just forget to close the door. Just fly in the bedroom window. I go close the door after I put on my skin again.

  Ai! What itching me so? Is what happen to me skin? Ai! Lord, Lord, it burning, it burning too bad. It scratching me all over, like it have fire ants inside there. I can’t stand it!

  Hissing with pain, the soucouyant threw off her burning skin and stood flayed, dripping.

  Calmly, Granny entered Jacky’s room. Before Jacky could react Granny picked up the Jacky-skin. She held it close to her body, threatening the skin with the sharp, wicked kitchen knife she held in her other hand. Her look was sorrowful.

  “I know it was you, doux-doux. When I see the Lagahoo, I know what I have to do.”

  Jacky cursed and flared to fireball form. She rushed at Granny, but backed off as Granny made a feint at the skin with her knife.

  “You stay right there and listen to me, Jacky. The soucouyant blood in all of we, all the women in we family.”

  You, too?

  “Even me. We blood hot: hot for life, hot for youth. Loving does cool we down. Making life does cool we down.”

  Jacky raged. The ceiling blackened, began to smoke.

  “I know how it go, doux-doux. When we lives empty, the hunger does turn to blood hunger. But it have plenty other kinds of loving, Jacky. Ain’t I been telling you so? Love your work. Love people close to you. Love your life.”

  The fireball surged towards Granny. “No. Stay right there, you hear? Or I go chop this skin for you.”

  Granny backed out through the living room. The hissing ball of fire followed close, drawn by the precious skin in the old woman’s hands.

  “You never had no patience. Doux-doux, you is my life, but you can’t kill so. That little child you drink, you don’t hear it spirit when night come, bawling for Carmen and Michael? I does weep to hear it. I try to tell you, like I try to tell you mother: Don’t be greedy.”

  Granny had reached the back door. The open back door. The soucouyant made a desperate feint at Granny’s knife arm, searing her right side from elbow to scalp. The smell of burnt flesh and hair filled the little kitchen, but though the old lady cried out, she wouldn’t drop the knife. The pain in her voice was more than physical.

  “You devil!” She backed out the door into the cobalt light of early morning. Gritting her teeth, she slashed the Jacky-skin into two ragged halves and flung it into the pigeon peas patch. Jacky shrieked and turned back into her flayed self. Numbly, she picked up her skin, tried with oozing fingers to put the torn edges back together.

  “You and me is the last two,” Granny said. “Your mami woulda make three, but I had to kill she too, send my own flesh and blood into the sun. Is time, douxdoux. The Lagahoo calling you.”

  My skin! Granny, how you could do me so? Oh God, morning coming already? Yes, I could feel it, the sun calling to the fire in me.

  Jacky threw the skin down again, leapt as a fireball into the brightening air. I going, I going, where I could burn clean, burn bright, and allyou could go to the Devil, oui!

  Fireball flying high to the sun, and oh God, it burning, it burning, it burning!

  Granny hobbled to the pigeon peas patch, wincing as she cradled her burnt right side. Tears trickled down her wrinkled face. She sobbed, “Why allyou must break my heart so?”

  Painfully, she got down to her knees beside the ruined pieces of skin and placed one hand on them. She made her hand glow red hot, igniting her granddaughter’s skin. It began to burn, crinkling and curling back on itself like bacon in a pan. Granny wrinkled her nose against the smell, but kept her hand on the smoking mass until there was nothing but ashes. Her hand faded back to its normal cocoa brown. Clambering to her feet again, she looked about her in the pigeon peas patch.

  “I live to see the Lagahoo two time. Next time, God horse, you better be coming for me.”

  These are the latitudes of ex-colonised,

  of degradation still unmollified,

  imported managers, styles in art,

  second-hand subsistence of the spirit,

  the habit of waste,

  mayhem committed on the personality,

  and everywhere the wrecked or scuttled mind.

  Scholars, more brilliant than I could hope to be,

  advised that if I valued poetry,

  I should eschew all sociology.

  Slade Hopkinson, from

  “The Madwoman of Papine: Two Cartoons with Captions”

  A HABIT OF WASTE

  I was nodding off on the streetcar home from work when I saw the woman getting on. She was wearing the body I used to have! The shock woke me right up: It was my original, the body I had replaced two years before, same full, tarty-looking lips; same fat thighs, rubbing together with every step; same outsize ass; same narrow torso that seemed grafted onto a lower body a good three sizes bigger, as though God had glued leftover parts together.

  On my pay, I’d had to save for five years before I could afford the switch. When I ordered the catalogue from MediPerfiction, I pored over it for a month, drooling at the different options: Arrow-slim “Cindies” had long, long legs (“supermodel quality”). “Indiras” came with creamy brown skin, falls of straight, dark hair, and curvaceous bodies (“exotic grace”). I finally chose one of the “Dianas,” with their lithe muscles and small, firm breasts (“boyish beauty”). They downloaded me into her as soon as I could get the time off work. I was back on the job in four days, although my fine muscle control was still a little shaky.

  And now, here was someone wearing my old castoff. She must have been in a bad accident: too bad for the body to be salvaged. If she couldn’t afford cloning, the doctors would have just downloaded her brain into any donated discard. Mine, for instance. Poor thing, I thought. I wonder how she’s handling that chafing problem. It used to drive me mad in the summer.

  I watched her put her ticket in the box. The driver gave her a melting smile. Wh
at did he see to grin at?

  I studied my former body carefully as it made its way down the centre of the streetcar. I hated what she’d done to the hair—let it go natural, for Christ’s sake, sectioned it off, and coiled black thread tightly around each section, with a puff of hair on the end of every stalk. Man, I hated that back-to-Africa nostalgia shit. She looked like a Doctor Seuss character. There’s no excuse for that nappy-headed nonsense. She had a lot of nerve, too, wrapping that behind in a flower-print sarong miniskirt. Sort of like making your ass into a billboard. When it was my body, I always covered its butt in long skirts or loose pants. Her skirt was so short that I could see the edges of the bike shorts peeking out below it. Well, it’s one way to deal with the chafing.

  Strange, though; on her, the little peek of black shorts looked stylish and sexy all at once. Far from looking graceless, her high, round bottom twitched confidently with each step, giving her a proud sexiness that I had never had. Her upper body was sheathed in a white sleeveless T-shirt. White! Such a plain colour. To tell the truth, though, the clingy material emphasized her tiny waist, and the white looked really good against her dark skin. Had my old skin always had that glow to it? Such firm, strong arms…

  All the seats on the streetcar were taken. Good. Let the bitch stand. I hoped my fallen arches were giving her hell.

  Home at last, I stripped off and headed straight for the mirror. The boyish body was still slim, thighs still thin, tiny-perfect apple breasts still perky. I presented my behind to the mirror. A little flabby, perhaps? I wasn’t sure. I turned around again, got up close to the mirror so that I could inspect my face. Did my skin have that glow that my old body’s had? And weren’t those the beginning of crow’s-feet around my eyes? Shit. White people aged so quickly. I spent the evening sprawled on the sofa, watching reruns and eating pork and beans straight from the can.