NESSA

 Nobody born ah vagrant, she heard an old woman say years ago. She didn't so much say it as announce it to the audience around her as she lifted her skirt and spread her legs by a stand pipe in the People's Square. Most of the lunchtime crowd kept moving but some stayed to laugh and point and to remind Nessa of shame.

Nobody born ah vagrant. This vagrant life gave her so much time to think, to think and to remember. She remembered the time before. When she walked the road, men would call out to her. Oh Gawd, dahlin' or a Come, lemme suck yuh like ah mango. She even caught a couple women staring at her, seeing sorrow in the eyes of some and others had the same hunger that was in the eyes of men. It was different for her, now. Man and woman alike pretended they couldn't see her. Walking past as if she is not there, whether she was begging or not. Yet they all managed to walk far enough away that they never touched her, as if her scent kept the world at arm's length. Not an accidental bump, not a touch, nothing to know that she is real.

She remembered it was different before. They all wanted to touch and she denied them, most of them. There was the one, the government man, the minister man. She had won a pageant. Nothing large, nothing fancy, a regional thing for teenage girls. And he promised her a house. And they wrote about her in the newspaper for the first time. A nice story about how she did her own makeup and how her mother made the dress. When she came off the plane, they had a couple cameras and she saw herself on the news, too. She was a queen. That is what they said. How could she not listen?

That was when she met the minister man. The minister man promised her a house, more than a house. Fuh my princess? Ah castle, he said.
Princess? She asked herself in her head. The people love me. I am a queen.
Every time they were together he asked her about something to do with the house and touched her a little more.
How yuh want the windows, with his hand on her knee.
And the doors, how yuh want the doors and dem, rolling her nipples in between his fingers.
I know how to open doors, and he pressed two fingers on the front of her panties and she could feel the fabric getting wet and sticking to the folds of her, thighs loosening, knees relaxing. He damn well know the last thing she could think about then is doors!

Yes, she was a woman now. She was getting a house. She had a man that sending car for her to take her shopping. She had a man that really knew how to open doors. He said when some big-shot friend of his heard about the plan for the house, he wanted to sponsor her designer clothes and shoes and makeup.

Yes, I is woman now!

She started to do the thing with him that woman do with man. In the after, when they were quiet and she had her head on his chest listening to his heart, she would answer him. She would tell him about the windows and doors she liked. And the oven she wanted in the kitchen for her mother. He said yes to everything, his heart only sounding confused when she started to talk about a garden and he told her, well, no, there is no yard. Another time she told him what she wanted, what she really wanted, was a full length mirror. Again his heart made that strange skip in beat that told her no when she asked about a yard but then it steadied and he say yes, we will do that as a separate thing.

She dreamt about it.
She saw herself coming down a curved staircase with a thick, wooden spiral of a bannister. She saw herself in a bigger room, and in her own wing of the house, far from her mother so she could do what she wanted with who she wanted when she wanted.

She boasted about it.
Anytime she saw anybody she knew, she found some way to slip it into the conversation.
Yes girl, he say house yuh know? Me and mammy set!
When the neighbours from the other apartments came around with their smiles she saw the jealousy in their eyes and she knew their wonderings.
Buh why she?
She nice eh... buh she eh so nice, and she was glad.
Now she was getting a house and they will see her and her mother in the papers.

She waited on it. It was delayed, he said, because the kind of roof she wanted meant they had to take the first one off and get one hand made and she felt like a queen. It was delayed again because of a shortage of paint to fix the spots where the new roof had scuffed the walls and she still felt royal. When the day of the handing over was finally there, he sent a car for her and her mother. She was surprised when they were taken to his office. Why not to where the house was? She figured he probably needed to have some sort of official picture taken with them for the papers. She was a woman now, she knew how these things worked. When she walked in the office and saw the four foot high dollyhouse she didn't feel like she knew so much. Her mother let out a sound that came from her mouth, her nose and belly at the same time, and she felt the same thing too. Like all the air in her just wanted to rush out from anywhere there was a hole.
The man give me ah dollyhouse? All the talk about windows and doors and house for a queen? This was the castle?

And it really was nice. It was the exact colour she imagined. When you pushed your finger, you could open the front doors easy, easy and see inside. Here was her staircase and glorious bannister. There were little windows and doors to match the ones she asked for and miniaturized pieces of furniture. The exact six-burner oven, just smaller. The roof was glorious, spires and gables and spines. It really was nice, but not something you gifted a big woman when you were telling her you are building a house, no. Not even a little bit.

She walked around the whole thing. Inside she wanted to fold up like the first time she was on the Tobago Ferry, before she found out about Gravol. Sea sick? She see sick. Shame started to grow in her belly and weakened her knees making them want to buckle. She kept her expression plain and looked straight ahead because she can't bear to watch her mother. She walked around the whole thing and saw a little plaque with something official about the Government gift to its 'Queen'. And next to it, larger than the house itself, a full-length mirror.
It have to be a fuckin' joke, ent? In the mirror she finally sees the look on her mother's face.
How he could...all de talk 'bout house and castle... and is dis?

How yuh could do dis tuh me! She hissed.
Still seeing her mother's face in the mirror, seeing the face looking incredulously at her little girl, now big woman, as she shouted and jumped on the minister man. She scraped at his eyes telling him don't look at me. She clawed at his hands because dem things is not to touch me again. She picked up a pair of scissors from his desk and went after his manhood because man like you is never to touch no woman. And she jumped, ready to swoop down for his neck with the same scissors so she could cut the head from the snake.
YOU IS AH SNAAAKE!

It was a proper feast. The exact kind of bacchanal Trini people loved to sweeten their mouths with. The. Shame. Is not that her mother didn't know what her daughter was really doing when the government car dropped her home late at night. It's a next thing, though, when everybody knows. Nessa's mother got a lawyer which made the minister man nervous so, he paid her mother some money. The prime minister quietly re-shuffled his cabinet and minister man was gone. In a week it was out of the newspaper and some other scandal was the focus but you couldn't tell that to Nessa or her mother. The. Shame. From the neighbour on the corner to the heart of town. The. Shame. She trying to do things as simple as buy bread and man asking when was she having the party to bless her new house. Old friends from school asking her when they could come and sleep over. All of them mocking, half smiling and asking if she had a butler in her castle. The look on her neighbours' faces...The. Shame. The same newspaper that wrote about how she did her own makeup and called her 'Queen', that same newspaper, was first to break the story. The. Shame. All around her, all she saw was shame and pain, even from her mother. The last time she looked her in the eye was when she caught it in the mirror, since then she can't meet neither gaze nor glance.

Shame. It shuffled and slithered from person to person. Shape-shifting, changing, sweetening her sins with each re-telling. Some had her in orgies with powerful men, some said she was pregnant and the minister forced her to get an abortion. It crawled to everywhere she went, so she tried staying home to hide from it, until, one night, it silently and confidently came in through her window, set down its bags and began to live with her. At first it was a small thing that she could hear scuttling about in the corners. It grew quickly, though, so that it could no longer just be contained in her room. It moved restlessly through the house at night. They would find it in the kitchen at breakfast every morning, the room heavy with it as it slept. Even the sunlight on clear mornings would be dimmer, as if bending around a huge tree. They ate separately and in silence, for fear of waking it.

Shame followed her, lapping at her heels. She hated being indoors with it. It made her feel as if the room she was in was gradually getting smaller, as if she was being swallowed by a growing chorus of whispers. She learned that whispers are not just soft things, that whispers can be sharp things that cut deeply and scar. At night, she could only sleep if her windows were open so she can hear the sound of sirens, traffic and night creatures to hush the voices crammed into her head and give her a sense of a bigger, wider space.

Shame nested itself into strands of her hair. It clawed its way into her throat and seized her voice. At night she slept outside especially on full moons in the dry season. She craved the vastness of the sky on her skin, its touch as soft as a lullaby. Where her face was once smooth there were lines now. The corners of her eyes and lips made her look older than she was. She liked this new face, it made her feel anonymous, like it would be easier to lose herself in the dark of the city. She stopped washing herself because it would mean washing away the soil and dirt that she has carefully built around herself. Each patch, splash and splotch a new piece of armour.

The shame had gotten so big that it stayed with both her and her mother even when they no longer slept in the same place. On the mornings when they were reunited, their eyes still barely met. Her mother worried. She saw the space opening between them and was afraid. Shame pushing them away, two boats heading to different shores. She was afraid too, because she does not know where her Nessa is sleeping. Or so she chose to know. Outside clung about Nessa, a scent of open sky and filth and the sourness of spilt milk. Nessa's scent reminds her of the dump and clouds of vultures circling. She begged her, she cried, she raged. She used the money from the minister man to pay for counselling. She searched for her some nights and begged her to come home. None of it worked. Nessa was only coming home for the odd meal, still not speaking and smelling worse and worse. In her desperation her mother set up a little altar in the house and got candles that she kept lit in front of tiny statues of Jesus and Mary when her daughter leaves, and keeps lit until she returns. She hopes for her to not roll into a crack in the pavement while she sleeps under the open sky and be lost forever. The day comes when she does not light them anymore just like she does not see Nessa anymore.

~~~

At first Nessa would sleep under the bandstand in the People's Square. She was a novice and didn't understand that so public a place, even though the square was closed at night, was only short term lodging. Besides there were others there too, like the old woman who liked to wash her vagina in public. This was where she got her first, proper sick. There would be more but you always remember your first. What she ate was cold channa and aloo and some wet crackers that she found in a box behind a roti shop. Mango season had just finished and for two nights she walked around town looking for something to eat. The first night she scorned piles of garbage, she was still fresh, green as they say. She slept through the next day and woke up the next evening feeling like her whole body was just eyes, mouth and belly. Oh, God! Her belly! Like a cavern, maybe if she opened her mouth bats fly out, her belly. She didn't even have a brain. Arms and legs moving, belly telling everybody what to do and directing the eyes to lock on to anything that looked like food. The first thing she saw was the aloo on the ground. Calling her, with its solidness, its non-fruitness. You try eating only mango for a whole mango season. Not two hours after, her same belly that told the eye and mouth to eat the aloo, was now ready to throw it all back out. It came out her mouth, her nose and her arsehole. She cramped so bad she couldn't do anything but roll out of her mess, or try to.

When the municipal men came the next morning, with their anger and shaming she was surprised at her own shock. What else was she expecting? That they would gently wake her and ask if she wouldn't mind moving to somewhere else? One of the three of them doused her with a bucket of cold water. By the time she recovered from getting woken up like that and opened her eyes, the bucket was rolling between their feet and they were beating broomsticks on the ground and each shouting over the other.
Come allyuh.
Get up! Get up!
Ah set ah pee and shit all over de place. Allyuh livin like dawg inside ah here.
Out! Out! Out!
Doh make we call de police!
Out!

They all ran off in different directions, like when you scatter chickens. It was rainy season and finding somewhere dry to sleep was hard, and for nothing was she going back home. Not in a cage with Shame as a master. She preferred out here, even if to fly meant to starve, to die.

She thought she found something, when she came across a nice corner underneath a bank. The bank itself was massive, taking up half the block, and the security post was on the other side of the building. Most importantly, it was dry. She fell asleep, and it was sweet. Until one in the morning. At one in the morning a security guard making rounds found her and woke her up by 'tickling' her ribs with his baton.
Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye!
Yuh cyah sleep here gyal!
Move! Move! Move! Move!

The next night, she found a dry spot in a park next to the library. She thinks about what her life was like before, when the library was important because of its books but now it was because it blocked most of the wind and rain. She settled in. Within thirty minutes she heard someone approaching, not knowing if it's friend or foe her guard went up.
Ah'm Dexter. But everyone calls me D, he said, in the too-sour, too-sweet, washed in fresh water, tamarind ball twang of a deportee.
D dipped into his pants and pulled out a box of day old chicken wings.
I'll share em, he said.

Nessa still new to the streets and still not knowing nothing is for free. He tells her why he was deported. He was framed, of course. He was innocent, of course.
But, you know, sugar, I prefer being a bum here.
And he actually made her feel good about it, because she never thought about having to do what she was doing now, in winter. Or that there were places she could go and get armloads of mango and eat her belly full. Not all year of course, but he was right. Imagine being homeless in America, or London? After seeing her guard go down amid him telling her lies about his dreams and plans for the future, D positions himself between her and open space and pulls his cock out. She stares at it and it stares back at her angrily with one glinty eye. He is hard. She screams, without commitment at first but it is rising in her. By the time she has broken an old beer bottle on the ground it is a full scream.

Bad-lucky. Nessa was bad-lucky. The thing with bad-lucky people is when you least want to see police is exactly when you see police. As Nessa came out of the shadowy park, she and her scream came face to face with a police jeep and its occupants who were just sitting there, staring at her. One by one they filed out, two headed into the park and the driver stayed with Nessa. When they found D he has a gash across his palm.
She was gonna cut my shit man, I'm telling you. Crazy island bitch!
So is wha? She try to cut you up, jus so? Wha yuh do? Eh? Said the driver, and then, to Nessa.
And you? You eh have ah house? Niiicce lookin' gyal like you? Wha you doing out here?

Neither of them responded. One might be bad-lucky, both might be homeless, but they both not stupid. When you live on the street, you don't answer back police. So the driver sucks his teeth.

Look...up de road with you! Both D and Nessa make to shuffle off.
No, no. Not you, Darkie. And like the bank guard from before and so many others she would meet after, he used his baton to poke at her, prod at her, smiling with it, not hiding his enjoyment.
You going in the back dey, and with the same baton he points to the back of the jeep.
As they drive through Port-of-Spain, his is the only voice in the van.
So why you on the road, Darkie? You don't know how dangerous it is out here for a nice lookin lil ting like you?
Dem fellas mus be vex with me how I bring you in the van. Even with you in the back dey you have the whole inside smelling stink. But dem is two young boy. When you reach my age, fellas, yuh will see. One good bathe and scrub down, and this one? This one could be a princess.
They did not see her wince.

The drive was shorter than she expected not that she knew where they were going. It turned out to be a short trip from one side of town to the other. Everything was running through her head, the way the driver was talking. The way the two younger officers would steal glances at her over their shoulders. Appraising her, almost. What were they planning to do? Take her to his house, or maybe to the station, to bathe her down in front all the police and show her off?
Come, Darkie. Again, with the baton, touching the inside of her thigh and when she gets out he sinks it into her buttock and uses it to push her forward.
God girl! It nice and fleshy! He says this to her with his eyes firmly on the point of his baton as he prods her flesh. When he addresses the man coming toward them, his gaze is still fixed.
Ah bring one fuh yuh boy, ah real princess. Call mih when yuh bathe she!
He leaves her with an attendant and throws this over his shoulder with a laugh that the attendant returns. And it begins again.

So how you end up on de road girl? You eh have no house to go to?
Look. Yuh see here? Dem officers coulda leave you on de road, but dey bring you here. You could get help here. This is the Center fuh allyuh, right? And yuh could get ah lil assistance from the government but you have to give me some information...
What name? No answer.
Date of birth? Address? Still, no answer from Nessa.
He shrugs at her silence and motions for her to enter the doors behind him.
Well, enjoy, Princess. Morning shift go deal with you.

She walked through the doors and the first thing she noticed was the shit on the ceiling and she wanted to tear her skin off. The ceiling was closing in on her and she was in this box of a room with other people. She walked along the edges of the box, found a door, pushed it and ended up in a stairwell. The emptiness of the echo of her steps in the stairwell welcomed her. The air smelled like copper, rain and burning molasses in blackness. She relaxed and eased into the feeling of being alone until she heard two voices. She leaned over the railing, looked up and saw in the darkness a couple floors above, the glow of a cherry being passed and realised this was the source of what she was smelling. She thinks she knows what it was and she thinks she knows not to smoke it. And still, she found herself going up toward the voices when they called down to her.

The two faces looked the same in the dark so 'Nessa thought they were sisters. But then one was calling the other Mama, so she thought mother and daughter until Mama started calling the other one Papa. When they asked her name and she said 'Nessa, they laughed for almost a full minute because it rhymed, and offered her a hit as a reward for the joke. She took it. As she sinks-floats she thinks, Crack in a stairwell, Ma.

~~~

Time heals all wounds but sometimes it opens them up before closing. Sometimes you roll yourself up into a ball, hide from the world and cry it out. Sometimes pain seeps into forgotten places and parts to raise the memory of a thing, like how the first rains after the dry season raise the scent of wet in the place again. Other times, you find something that helps you forget. Even if you only forget for a little bit, that bit is enough. Time. Time and pain and shame. Things a person could go through, like iron through a forge.

~~~

It is night, she is coming back. The streets are ink-black. Tires hiss on the wet pitch. She's still a little high and she drifts. She thinks while she walks, walking like she is thinking, moving quickly, nervously, from one thing to the next.

Headlight reflections, off the wet road. She still gets high now, is high now. Never stopped, not since that first day. In the stairwell with Mama and Papa. The pain has been softer since she's been a piper. The pain has been softer and her body has gotten harder. Her back and forearms and legs are knots of muscle. Her grip is like iron.

She must eat, now. She thinks, before she has to hunt, again. She is a night scavenger, shadow moving through shadows. Eating of the shadows, getting high in the shadows. In the shadows she is reborn, she transcends.

She knows the iron grip, she must always think about her hunt, about how she'll get high. When the breaks come, her mind goes to her mother. To life, to love, to how there was a time she herself thought she would be a parent. She doesn't know if her mother has been burnt or buried so sometimes she walks through the villages of the dead and reads the gravestones looking for messages. When she is like this, lost in thought sometimes crying and drifting as she does, she does not even see. Stepping out of the cemetery, she did not see.
I eh see she! Is what the driver said, too.
If you see the saga boy sitting on the pavement. Head in his hands, worrying about his insurance.

PASSION FRUIT

by

Adam Andrews

When Jasper planted passion fruit was when things started to go bad. All the time before, everything went just as he wanted it, like he was dreaming his life out. The first thing he tried to plant was hot peppers and in two months, not the usual three, he had more peppers than he could count. He met her then, she herself had some fire and he liked that. Her mouth too, the way her lips puckered and the way she was never afraid to say what was on her mind even if it stung, so he started calling her Pepper. It was good, just like he dreamed it, cause he always said he never wanted a woman after he made his money.
How he go trust somebody then?

He put plantain suckers in between the hot peppers and cut down the grass. In the area next to it, he planted sorrel and pigeon peas. By the time that Christmas came they had plenty work with picking things. Pepper, sorrel and peas are things that have to be picked one by one and he anticipated his plantain bearing, so that he could move out whole bunches. Jasper and Pepper, for two months, picked and sold a thousand pounds each of sorrel, peas and hot peppers. Those were long days, but good days. They would listen to music and shell peas back at home on the couch at night. Sometimes singing and dancing, sometimes making love They made little jokes with each other and he would feel a warmth growing between them that he wanted to water and feed like one of his plants.

Years before he knew he would be a farmer he made a joke with some friends about having two dogs and naming them Dasheen and Dashout. Now he had them, this woman and his land, like he dreamt them into his reality. Everything he planted was good and made money. Jasper was smart, too. He saw that planting hot peppers was a young boy thing, not that he was old, but he wasn't young. You had to make sure to plant enough to make a profit for it to make sense. Then too, peppers don't grow tall, so, when harvest time came, you needed that young boy energy to keep going up and down, back and forth. Those kinds of crops needed you around all the time and it was plenty that he was trying to manage by himself. Pepper needs your care and attention all the time. Things like sorrel and pigeon peas though, you could plant and forget for a month and come back and cut back some grass and forget about it for two months and come back and cut and forget and when you come back the third time, you see flowers and things ready for picking. Hot peppers wanted you there all the time, maybe not every day, but every other day, we could say. So Jasper planted sorrel, and cassava, and took his profit and paid a man with a tractor to come and clear more land. There he planted more sorrel and more cassava and varieties of avocado and citrus and mango. Everything was growing and the plan he had working out smooth, like he was in control. Until the year he planted passion fruit.

Since he started planting he learned, not to put anything in the ground in December. December is deceptive with rain. It could start off wet and end up bone dry, or do the opposite. Either way, it was a poor time for something fresh and new to go into the ground. When planting in December you had to be there for it every day. So that if the sun's too hot, you could wet it, and if too much rain falls you could cut a drain and ease it up. But if he was doing all that and behind his crops every day, that would mean Pepper having to run the stall they set up and sell the produce by herself. The Christmas rush was just that for them now, full rush. Some days as she opens the awning for the stall, the steady flow of customers goes until she is pushing people back, when pulling it down at night. Now, you see Jasper loves Pepper. He wants her to know that he is supporting her, as much as she is supporting him. So December, he never plants, until the year he got the passion fruit.

He would wonder, later, if the friend who gave it to him was trying to work obeah on him. He dismissed that, not that he wouldn't put anything past anybody but she just didn't seem the type. More to the point, she didn't just give seedlings to him and plus, he shared with others from what she gave him and as far as he knew, nobody life get turned around like his. No, if it was obeah, it didn't come from there. So he gave away six and was left with two and he planted those two in December. The next day as he was driving down to check on them, he heard talk on the radio about a thing called the coronavirus. March rolled it's hips slowly around in the post-Jouvert hot sun and he had to keep going to check on the passion fruit. The passion fruit by now, started to vine and coronavirus reached Trinidad and things locked down. He was still lucky as a farmer because he could work just as he always had been. Pepper there to run his vegetable stall, too. All of his crops were still growing and producing. The country was going through various stages of lockdown and re-opening and locking back down to control the spread, but for him nothing really changed. He loved driving to the farm now because the roads were clear and he could think about his work and plan for it, while he drove. All his neighbours had their children home and were sour and fighting but his house was quiet. Him and his woman and his dogs were still happy.

Passion fruit is not a quick thing. The vines ran and thickened as March turned into July bringing the rains, but no flowers. Not that he was worried. He had plenty cassava to dig up and new plantains to cut to sell. He was busy all the time now, with his mangoes putting out their first flowers and trees needing pruning and fertilizing. He didn't even realize that he was going down on the land every day until Pepper pointed it out to him. It shocked him and he rushed to hug her up and whisper sorry in her ear with his cheek close to hers so he could feel the rising heat of her blush.

He had to change his flow. He was working hard on the land, pouring out all his love but Pepper was not there to see it, to feel it. Since they were running the stall, somebody had to stay and that was always Pepper. She hadn't seen the farm since before the passion fruit was planted, even before coronavirus and lockdown. The day he is driving to the farm and thinking on the clear road and deciding that yes, he would spend a little less time on the farm, he sees the passion fruit flowering and throwing fruit and he forgot all about his decision. September now and some flowers have closed up and there is now fruit. He has his eye on the first two. They are small, smooth and green, with white speckles. Their hardness, too, surprises him and makes him think of calabash and maybe planting a few calabash trees come next year. His dreams have always come through so now he dreams of sharing these first two with her and of how that will make him feel prouder than when he made his first money with his peppers.

That December he was in real trouble. He had so much land to manage now and to manage alone that he still had to go down every day. Pepper was selling sorrel from sun up to sun down, by herself and you know what they say about Trinidad between Christmas and Carnival. With everybody masked the young boy didn't really look any different. He skipped the line and that was a little off, but people only reacted when he pulled his gun.
Money, Bitch!
His eyes were cold and black, the way watermelon seeds are black. He didn't say anything else. When he found she was taking too long, he sucked his teeth and hit her flush across the mouth with the barrel. She filled a bag as quickly as she could. She was still blinded by the pain of it when she realized he was already gone. The one or two customers too shocked to run off, now helping her up. Somebody had called the police. By the time Jasper got home, he had to thank the neighbour for taking care of his wife and swallow his shame.

Jasper parents died just before he met Pepper and they left him a big house in a fancy neighbourhood. Some people thought he was lucky but Jasper knew it mean he needed to make money to maintain a big house. He was driven by money and making money. He loved his woman, she felt it in his eyes but she felt, in his absence, his need to prove himself to the world. He was living or trying to live as a simple farmer in between lawyers, doctors and engineers.
Jasper, why yuh don't hire some workers, they say.
He paid them no mind.
Fuh true, baby, why yuh don't hire some help? Pepper would ask.
Help me? Yuh mean help thief me out? Yuh know how much farmer that happen to? As you ready to pick yuh crop it get thief out and when yuh do check, is because the man you hire come when you not there. And he bring he cousin and he pardnah and ah van.

They don't understand, he would say to her at nights, when they were alone.
All these men, paying somebody to wash their car or cut their grass or cook their food. Is like they don't take pride in doing these things themselves.
Pepper tries to reason with him because, how much people making ah honest living from that, Jasper? How much people staying off the street or able to feed a child?
What, like the young boy who rob you? How you eh know he must be was working in the car wash when it was running?
And as he said it he knew he had gone too far. He had never seen her eyes look like that, with so much sad. The next morning, she woke up and reached for him across the space their awkwardness had made in the night and he was not there.

Months passed and for Jasper the bandit incident was a thing that sometimes crossed his mind. For Pepper it was still fresh, still the first thing she saw every morning when she stretched across an empty bed to find Jasper not there. It still lived in the corner of her eyes when she was working at the stall. When she opens the awning she sees him. When she closes it on evenings, her heart is in her throat because she knows, waiting for her is a Gunman!

He had everything in control on the farm now. He cut grass and heaped it for mulch and composting. He collected coffee grounds from one friend who brewed and wood shavings from another friend who did woodwork, all to be added to his compost. When he first started he used fertilizers and chemicals and now he was understanding permaculture and letting the land work with itself. He started to fantasize about his soil and imagined seeing the microscopic organisms reaching out and branching everywhere, forming relationships. He would sometimes take off his boots and socks and stand barefoot in his fields, imagining they were talking with him, too, bonding. All this time he was watching the first two passion fruit. He saw how they gradually started to turn yellow and the skin went from smooth to not so smooth. As they started to ripe, the skin got softer and it showed the marks of every time a gust of wind roughed it up or Jasper himself maybe squeezed somewhere a little too much.

The last of Jasper's luck ran out the morning he picked the two passion fruit. Normally, when you stalked fruit the way he did, monitored it for as long as he did, you don't get lucky enough to pick it. Usually a bird will beat you to it or a man, just when you tell yourself,
Yes, tomorrow I picking you.
But Jasper told himself 'Yes' Tuesday and Wednesday morning, they were still there, un-pecked, un-stolen. He picked them. He picked them and turned right around to head back to the van and go home. It was almost six months now he was waiting on this. Six months since Pepper got robbed and even longer since she pointed out to him that he was coming down on the farm every day. He want to take these passion fruit for her, to show her that this is why. He wanted to show her that it was because he loved her that he could not stay home. That as man, this was why his back was broad and his arms and legs strong. This was why he could say his neighbours on shit, why he could feel better than them, because he was really working. He knew blood, sweat and tears because he out here sweating, bleeding and tearsing. He turned right around and started his van and drove home to share the passion fruit with Pepper and to show her how he loved her.

The last thing a man wants to see is someone fucking the woman he loves and the last, last thing is someone fucking the woman he loves in a way that he never has. This is what Jasper saw. When he came around the corner on his street, he could see his house and he could see the police jeep in front of it. His throat tightened and squeezed panic into his mind.
I so bad lucky?
Pepper get rob again right as I bring the passion fruit?
Right as I coming to tell her everything she want to hear to make we good again?

The police jeep was parked in front his gate so he parked on the road. He jumped out the van and ignored his dogs as they greeted him, quickly walking through his doorway, passion fruit in hand. On the couch was Pepper and on top of her, a police man with his shirt open so Jasper could see his wife beaters and his sweat and Pepper's feet flat on his chest and Jasper could see his cock too, and his hand around Pepper's neck choking her, fucking her on the couch that he watched football on, that he used to sing to her on, that they used to make love on. On this couch she is being fucked in a way that he never even knew she would like and her head is arched over the arm of the couch and her eyes are wide open looking at him, through him. Not caring, not a mask, not a condom. The two passion fruit fell from his hand and he just standing there looking right back at her.

The next morning it was Jasper's turn to wake up and reach across the space to find an empty bed. He went downstairs to the kitchen and fingered a knife. He saw the two passion fruit and picked them up from the floor. He tried to not see that his fingers squeeze their skin like how the police man squeezed Pepper's neck. He sat at the table and cut into them. The sun coming through the window was warm on his hands but he did not feel it. The tiles were cold under his bare feet but he didn't feel that either. It was when he cut the passion fruit that his eyes welled with tears not from sadness but hysterics, as he saw they were both full of worms.

Five Sisters - Part 3

Obeah is like a scissors, a hammer or a knife. All it is is a tool. It different from the hammer and the knife and the scissors because obeah is not a tangible tool, it is a tool of the mind. If you want to shape wants and desires, to control energy, you use obeah. Just like you wouldn't use a hammer to cut cloth, or a knife to ram a nail into a piece of ply, there are things to not use obeah for. Like with all tools, what obeah do, is somewhat up to the wielder of the tool. It have things obeah good for and things it not good for. 

Obeah, as a tool, is really meant to be a bridge. A thing that connects this world of being to other worlds of being and not being. It connects the tangible to the intangible. It could help you to see pathways, the places jumbie go and the people that jumbie like. What obeah not good for, like most tools is self-interest. But then that never stop them from using the hammer or scissors or knife for self gain either. When Papa see the piece of sky, when he see the piece of sky it was almost like he had no choice.

Papa don't deal with the white man religion. His science was a deeper thing, an older thing with more gods, each god with its own secrets and mysteries. Papa know about energy and power. He know about things of the flesh and things of a different nature, things lacking form, supernatural things. 

He know that when his people first start crossing the sea, it was on their own. It wasn't plenty of them, no exodus out of Egypt, it was the few. The lonely ones, the driven ones, the banished ones. The restless ones and sometimes even godless ones. Restless or godless and everything in between, they still all crossed with jumbies. Each had their jumbies inside them, some had the jumbies of others but they all crossed with the moko jumbie. 

Moko is good jumbie, protectors and guardians. When they paddling across, going further and further into sky, suddenly moko appear in front, his long long legs dropping down through the sea water, finding sea floor. Moko walk them straight into the new lands. Same thing happen when they crossed again, thoussands of years later, as white man 'property'. When they did not leave their homes but were taken. Before their eyes, moko in the water, leading the way, visible only to some of them. Not everybody had the sight, Moko don't show himself each and every where. Papa know these things.

He know, too, that moko stay with the people. After the water cross, there was no crossing back, nowhere else for moko to go. Moko don't have the same power on land like over water. Over water they tall, tall. Touching sky and star, pointing the way, steering ships through storms. On land moko shrink down to the size of man. They sing songs and see the dream world clearer than man. Still, moko now come like man, he feel man things. He still want to guard and protect but not all the time again. Sometimes moko feel lust and love, even rage. All this, Papa know.

Papa was tired. He tired longer than he could remember not being tired. All the pray for this one, help this one get back she man, this next one want to make a woman stay, and a next one want blessing for his crops and another for his hogs. Papa wondered if he this tired as man, what going on in the ears of gods. How the gods does deal with all these needy, ungrateful, black people? How they does find peace? The white man say his god does be everywhere, at all times, hearing and seeing everything, all the time. Yet these people worship once a week then live in shame and beg for forgiveness the rest of the time. What kind of god is that? Better to have gods where you could stand up for yourself and stop take the white man shit. They want saving, they need it, but they don't come to him. 

He tired and he feel it in his bones, not just the tiredness, but the feeling, the gnawing of knowing, premonition. Of all his brothers, he had it the most. The gift in him was the strongest. Better to be strongest than weakest. With him he get sight. He know things before they happen, and he understand the science of the ancients too. He know what roots and herbs to mix to get rid of maljo, or to keep a lover, or turn a womb. His brother who get the gift the weakest get it like a curse. With him it was fits. Epilepsy. He seem to always know when it was coming. He would stop whatever he was doing and start to smell the air, like if recognizing something familiar. He never said what it was he smelt, never asked anyone else if they smelt it too. But when he start sticking his nose up in the air like that, you could bet money that he was going to be on the floor convulsing in seconds. So it go with his bloodline. All of them get the mark, but not in the same way. He take his mark and make a living with it. But this too have a curse. As much as he know, he don't know that what he know is a little. So little, it could be a nothing.

Is a very long time now that he doing the science. He know too, just by the smell of them, other people who strong in the science. He never smell anything like Pearl, but even before she come, he feel her in his bones, the gnawing of knowing. Is only when she in front him he realize that is not her but the piece of sky that she had. The thing was wet with magic, pure moko magic. He know, then, what he dealing with. He understand too, that if he help the old man Jack get revenge on a real life jumbie and people hear about it, about his power...

Papa love obeah, he good at it and from all corners of the island, upstairs and downstairs, people come to see Papa. Everybody else don't understand obeah like Papa, they don't see the potential, the power. So with their simple requests they reduce him to nothing more than a herbalist. Nobody came to him for guidance with energy, he gave no divination regarding the universe. He gave away no Shango secrets. All these things he had but no one sought them. 

What he found himself doing was mixing the most common of potions. Things to help women keep men, things for other women to attract a man. Things for men to keep themselves excited when they with women, things for men to get more women. Simple potions for aching joints or to soothe the blood after a hard fall or kick from a mule. These people only came to him with vice or pain. Either they hiding themselves in the corner of his shop from Jesus or have no money for pills from the doctor and bush tea stop working. They taking all the big problems to Jesus and leave him here like an errand boy. You feel he can't take care of souls too? Ensure a child get what the mother want it to get? Education? Love? Property? But no! They don't want potions for that. What they want is 'ting fuh de back' and potion to keep man at home. It became what he was known for. 

As much as Papa love obeah, he love himself more. He don't want to help people to help people. He want them to know how great he is. He want them to know that he could talk to hurricane and steer it away from the island, that he convince the volcano to throw up only mud but not lava here. He want the leader of the country to come hold his ear in counsel. He want the most beautiful women to beg him to sire their children, just so they could have a piece. All this he want and he never see a way. Energy don't care about wants and desires, neither hopes and dreams. All energy know is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. He want to have a hand in everything and for years he never see a way. So when Pearl and her father come with the piece of sky it was almost like he had no choice.  

Five Sisters - Part 2

In one of the company villages a tall fella show up, he come to work on an estate. He come from Grenada with his jumbie and his dreams. In this same village was a young woman, that they call Black Pearl. Pearl was really a sight to behold. Skin smoother than midnight , eyes the shape of wild almonds. This fella was coal black, too, almost as black as shadow and secrets. When the two of them sight up each other, the whole village know what was going to happen. The Grenadian was nice, real nice. As much as it was a time of courting, is not every man step correct like the Grenadian, and with Pearl, plenty try but she had never pay them no mind. Not until the Grenadian tell her his dreams and show her his magic. He tell her about the songs that his jumbie bring to him in dreams that predict his future. He hum the melody that he say was hers and she feel her skin bump and pucker so fiercely she thought it was an earthquake.

Is the way he was. Not just with her, but her whole family. He never show any fear to her brothers or her father, always respectful at the same time. Her people was big boned people, Jackson people. Her brothers and father and uncles known for the strength in their arms. Hog farmers, all of them, who could kill a full grown sow with one blow from the hammer, but him? He so have no fear of man, his jumbie protect him, he tell her. He charm them like how he charm her, with the magic in his words. He tell them stories of Grenada. Of making bush rum and hunting on Crown land without permits, and running from the constables. He show them how to make bush rum the Grenadian way, with the right amount of nutmeg, thing to give you more head and they like him even more.

The other men working with him on the estate bring back stories. Some say is obeah. Black magic that he working. Others say he is a healer. They talk about how he speak with  plants and how they  respond to him. He would make little jokes with the plants that were drooping or not bearing fruit like the others, and they would stop their sagging and start fruit-bearing. He charmed away blights and diseases. They say, too, he sing a song in the evening to bring fireflies so that he could work at night. It was a sight, him humming away and all these fireflies around, lighting the night for him and only him. Some people didn't like it. It wasn't natural. It didn't sound like good, Christian, god-fearing behaviour. They warn Mr. Jack. They find he should be more concerned about a man like that hanging around his daughter. They find he 'over friendly'.Others say he was blessed, touched even. That if the plants flourish with his touch and his words, he have to be coming from some place good. Obeah or no obeah, it wasn't doing any harm.

Conmen, scamps and the like, usually steer clear of hog farmers. Samuel John, the Grenadian, have a bit of trickster in him, a bit of Anansi, a lil jumbie, so maybe that was why he couldn't resist the mischief and the jumbie in him want the rush. This Jackson family was proud. The whole village fear the father and his twin sons and in turn the Jackson men don't trust none of the villagers who pee could froth. They say old man Jack had the same son twice to guard the sweetness that was Pearl. Nobody bothered to call the boys anything other than the Jacksons, a thing made easier by the fact that they were never apart. The call the old man Mr. Jack, they call Pearl, Pearl. The two boys were born with names but by the time Pearl start talking, she was calling them Jackson too. Names never used, forgotten.

As much as the family proud, it wasn't their fault. Nobody intend for Pearl to be as beautiful as she was. Samuel John, though, had an intent. So he full up the Jacksons head with his exploits in Grenada and her father too. He friend them, and they start to trust him. When Pearl see that, how this fella come with his funny accent and magic and mystery in his dreams, she decide that she want to know more. Some things easier to do with a stranger than with those you know.

He based in Fyzabad he tell them, and when crop time done he going back to another job. He come Trinidad after the war for a better life, and a job in the oil. And when he settle house, he will send for her. The jumbie give him the power of words and he could make them sing. This is the time of courting, the time of fireflies and stars in the night sky, before streetlights and phone screens. When all a man have is to make a woman shiver, like inside the folds of herself, by holding her hand and telling her what she want to hear. He whispered to her on evening walks, words leaving his mouth and reaching her ears, delivering shivers and promises.

Before I meet you, I dream you, he say.

My mother is the sea, my father is the land. I born where they meet, he tell her, eyes twinkling. My brothers and sisters is the crab and the sea turtle, the fish and the bird is my family.

One time he gave her a tear of black fabric..
I rip piece of the night sky, he say. When you want to find me, find the corner of the sky that I take it from and I will be right there, where the land meet the water.
And a next time he tell her,

When I was in Grenada, I ask the moon and the stars to send you to me. But you never come. So I ask the sun to send me to you instead,

and she giggle at that.

She believe him because she believe in dreams. He chat her up, give her piece of sky and sing for her the song she hear in her dreams. She believe that a man with all that beauty and power was saving it all to use up in one place, on one person. Young gyal believe it, mother never send she but she gone anyway.

As easy as he come, he gone, when crop time done, just like he say. 

The last night they went for a walk, like usual. Her people trust him plenty now and they out well past evening under the tree where they carved initials and made promises. He was different then. No words, no gifts, no singing. Just guiding her hands and when he see that she letting him move them, he take off his pants and put her hands back. And she now fascinated, is her first time finding out that man could feel hard, and soft and smooth and hot at the same time, and she rub him and squeeze him, enjoying the sound of his breath coming shorter in her ear. His hands start moving slowly across her. She don't stop them, she let them do what they want, how they want and she never thought everyday things like hands, things that everybody happy to leave out in the open, unassuming like that, could feel so good. It have more fireflies around than she ever see, so that the air around them is a glowing, seductive thing. She aware of his breath now, she could see it. Above the scent of blossoms and the sweetness of slightly rotted fruit, his breath. It looked a magic thing, a smoky thing, as it came out his mouth and slowly, lovingly traced its way across her belly and down her sides into the ground. And she see, or think she see the blades of grass around them moving in time with their inhale and exhale. The evening cool and is just them and the bats and the fireflies under the pommerac tree and the things she believe she see swimming in her head and she hearing her dream melody and pulling him into her, both of them awash, wave after wave and not even feeling a little bit guilty when it done. After, she nestling her head in the crook of his chest and armpit and not sorry about leaving the girl she used to be behind.

Her people trust the Grenadian. So that after a month pass and he didn't send word they didn't take it on but the village was already whispering, We tell yuh so. 

Three months pass and just before her belly really start to show, they start to take it on. Five months and her two brothers make a trip to Fyzabad with their brows furrowed in anger and their forearms glistening with sweat and intent but their hands never had the satisfaction of finding him. It have plenty Grenadian in Fyzo and not one Samuel John. Six months pass and is the whole family filling up her ears. 

Man no good! Wha people go say? You gone and give up de ting! Giving Grenadian free milk? What you expect!? 

And the whole village saying, We tell yuh so.

Night time. She in her yard, the grass wet between her toes. She is standing where Samuel John gave her the piece of cloth and told her where to find him in the sky. She is searching with her eyes and her heart. She cradles her belly, now a huge thing. She never know her own belly could get so big. The air was cool, still, anticipating. She feel like the trees looming over her, watching down on her, waiting. The ground underneath her feels moist and apprehensive. The spirits of the land itself seem to know something is about to happen. She could hear crickets, and frogs but she was so lost in her thoughts that she did not hear her father approach until he was right up on her, by then it was too late.
What you doing girl?

Nuh nuh Nothing, Pa.

What that in you hand dey?

Nothing, Pa.

Nothing. Pa? Is always nothing. You and the Grenadian eh do nothing. Nothing growing in yuh belly too? What that in you hand Pearl? Is obeah you wukkin this dark night?

No, Pa, and she struggling now. She feeling her father eyes on her, searching her. Ever since this thing, his eyes always searching her for more secrets. He see her with the little piece of night sky that Samuel give her, she know. So she tell him about Samuel and his magic.

Pearl...but is obeah. Come, is obeah you want do? We go by Papa tomorrow and finish this foolishness. You and me and you piece of sky.

Five Sisters - Part 1

A star, caught in the thundercloud's edge, tripped and fell. 

John Wickham, Theresa.

We do not know why but we live, die and are born again in dreams. We take flight, scale mountains, descend to unknown depths in dreams. Yet even though dreams affect us, stay with us, we often forget that dreams matter. That they can warn us of coming storms or offer a window into our souls. In dreams anxieties manifest, triumphs and failures are relived, reshaped, reformed. A cycle of 'The king is crowned, the king is dead, long live the king', again and again.

We do not usually control dreams and this perhaps is why we either love or fear them. A dream can cut. It can expose hidden away pleasures and pains. We are programmed to avoid monsters at all costs, more so when the monster is ourselves and yet we seek to understand both the dream and the nightmare. To play with the monster but not embody it. To know it but not be of it. To look at how things flow to bring the monster forth, and to see how they ebb after it has gone. A game of seeking out hidden wants and desires. The monster is not just the tiger stalking over the shoulder, it is not only the approach of the unseen gunman. It is the other. It is the self. It is all of these. It is faceless, shapeless, formless. It is a spirit, a ghost, a jumbie. 

So how to catch a jumbie? How to stop it? Jumbies live in the corner of the eye, right where you could see but not perceive. Sometimes you catch the flicker of movement and turn your head only to find, oh, it was just your hair, or, it was a shadow. No, is jumbie. Jumbie is the shadow of the shadow. A shadow need light to live, to exist, but a jumbie live in light or dark and strongest in the dark. And a jumbie have wants and desires, like we have wants and desires. They want to experience pleasure just like us, this is why they possess. By entering a human they can experience sensation and satisfaction, the food, the drink, the sex. But pleasure is only one side of the coin, jumbies can also experience pain. They know heart break, seek revenge, and react to self-preserve. 

We sometimes forget that there is more to life than what we touch, than what we see, hear, taste and smell. We use light to chase away the dark but no longer do we play with shadows. We sleep simply to sleep, but there was a time not too long ago, when we slept to dream. The time of the oracle, griot, sage and shaman. It was a time when life and the afterlife were one. We tried to understand life and afterlife almost exclusively through dreams. If you dream water, it could mean life and death, rebirth and renewal. If you dream you were buried alive, it could mean somewhere in your life you felt trapped. The understanding was that knowing the dream will lead to knowledge of the self, even if the self is a monster, even if the self 'have a jumbie'. The hope was that interpreting the dream would lead you back to the source, to it's causation. And in thinking about the causation of dreams, we wonder too, about the causation of jumbies.

So it have this youthman, Taffy is his name and he don't know it, but Taffy have a jumbie. Before he born Taffy have this jumbie, so before we get into Taffy, let me tell you how he get this jumbie, let me tell you this jumbie's causation.

Taffy people come here free, not as slaves, not as labourers, but free. Free to own land and work it, and to sleep when they want and to dream and have dreams, how they want. They fight for the white man (English), against the white man (American and French), in the War of 1812. The white man (English) lost and left America taking with them 574 free black people. They left places like Chesapeake and Chatanooga for the company villages in Trinidad. They come to these village after backing the wrong white man in the white man war. They had to leave America so the governor here at the time, concerned with populating the entire island, sought to have some of them brought here. Governor Woodford promised full support to these settlers and sixteen acre plots on which they were free to grow anything they liked. So they came. They came with hopes and dreams, broad backs and a Baptist faith.

They bring with them their blackness and their families. This time was to be for better. This time they come off the ship as 'free' men, like if freedom was a thing to be withheld, denied and then granted as reward. They fought to the death for the white man and came with his names and his religion but kept their blackness. Christian last names like Foreman and Jackson and first names too, Nathaniels and Marys. They come here with the white man religion, and their own ancestors surging through their blood and breath. With their children in front of and beside them, to a new land, with new spirits that lived in the soil and fell with the rain. People who died long ago, names they didn't know, but whose essence they felt in the forests and paths, so they pay homage as best they could. They gave libation to blood spilled and yet to be spilled, and to blood spilling on the land before them. 

They came in waves. A first company, fourth and a second, and a fifth and a third and a sixth. They come off the boats and spread over the land, soaking into it, foaming, forming settlement after settlement, clearing away the jungle one tree at a time. They get land, work hard and build houses, build churches and sleep and dream and transform the forest and plant crops, raise ghosts and devils and find salvation. They cut their own roads, too, as best they could, realizing that the governor had no interest in allowing a group of free blacks get easy access to mingle with slaves. Not with Savana Grande and its productive estates so nearby.

A hundred years passed like this.