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.

Griot's Corner

I love stories. I love words and the rhythm of words and the feel of them in yuh mouth.
I love the things stories give, the places they take us. Everyting.
Beginning. Middle. End.

This space is a story space. Mostly fictional, sometimes personal, always honest.
Some of them will be short, and some will be long.

I starting with something long so I gonna have to post it in parts. I eh finish writing it yet. I have the beginning and I have the end...ish. Every week or two I'll post more so feel free to come back and check for updates.

In a way, reader, we going on this journey together.
To see what the story reveals...

https://midnightgriot.blogspot.com/2020/06/five-sisters-part-1.html

Line of Fire

no justice
no peace

From George Floyd to Breonna Taylor to Sandra Bland to Tamir Rice to Trayvon Martin to Emmett Till.
To more named and even more un-named. Countless the number of strange fruit, seemingly endless the harvest.
The breaking point reach, the strangeness of the fruit means, unlike apples, oranges and that kind of thing, this fruit fights back.

To be black in Amerikkka means to be hunted. Bad boys, good boys, young boys, old boys, it doh matter. Hot gyal, skinny gyal, fat gyal, tall gyal, it doh matter. It doh matter what yuh do. Whatever yuh might be dreaming of, who yuh in love with, who or what yuh sacrificing for, it doh matter. If yuh black you are a threat, and yuh going to be treated as such.

To be black in Amerikkka means to be hunted, today, like it did yesterday, like it will be tomorrow. Is not just Trayvon, not just Emmett. Everytime it happens, again, is never a first time, just a new reminder. Because this happened to your father, and his mother, and her sister and their aunt. Because this is what happens when yuh black. Is always a pressure to either 'áwww shucks, Massa' or 'Fuck you Cracker!'

From the overseer to the patty-roller to the klans men to law men. Generations of black men and women, boys and girls, people, family, murdered in streets and fields and their own homes over and over. One law for the white man and another for the niggers. I hate that word, but how else to put it? That is the treatment we get. We are not treated like people, we are treated like niggers. Like expendable shit. This from a country was built on our backs for free and nothing close to compensation given in return.
Shut the fuck up nigger.
Fuck you nigger.

The time come to stop pussy-footing around this thing. If people can't start treating each other as people this will continue. The institutions in the place built around racism. Inequality, plain and simple. Is not just justice for blood-spilled, but for children starved, and opportunities denied. Every black American problem is not the fault of the system, but the way the system is doh really help yuh get out of yuh problems.
Kapernick could become a multi-milion dollar earning professional athlete and when he try to say something about the reality of being black in Amerikkka the institution rope him in and set his ass aside.
Shut the fuck up nigger.
Fuck you nigger.

I have no idea what the statistics are but I wonder how many out of every ten black men have had 'run-ins' with the police. I wonder what that number is like. Not how many end up in murders or arrests, just how many in general. How many get stopped just going about their daily shit, not doing nothing to nobody, just trying to live. Out of every ten, how many feel hunted?
I live in New York and Miami and felt it both places, more so Miami. Even had my own run in with them, because I 'matched the description of a suspect'. So five of them, while I'm minding my own business, holding bags of my own groceries, four of them pile on top of me and take me down. They drag my head toward the doorway of a food place where my roommate was, I was outside waiting on him after we had make a grocery run. My head right by the door, so he can't push it open to come out, he just have to stay in there and watch, cyah do nothing.
I get a knee on my neck, hands yanked groceries gone all over. A next one on my legs. I can't see what the other two doing. The fifth one is talking to the dispatcher, confirming the description of the suspect, which other than black male, is nothing like me.
Absolutely, fucking nothing.
So they let mih up and mih mouth open. Mih roommate who was in the store I was in front of come outside and he mouth open. It didn't matter that of the two that I couldn't see, one had a gun drawn and the other a taser. Nice.
Shut the fuck up nigger.
They threaten us. Shut the fuck up. This could go a lot worse. Pick up yuh shit, shut the fuck up and go home.
Fuck you nigger.

And so the place will burn.
It will have good people, honest hard-working people who fight hard against the system to build something who will feel the pain of this. That not fair. It not fair that it doh have one face or place to direct the anger and frustration toward. It never ever gets resolved, just simmers up and is either crushed or it simmers down, but never resolved. So the place will burn. I can't judge that. It will sound fucked up, but, Eric Gordon, George Floyd, George Jackson, all the black men and women, feel it. The fear of being hunted.
The police, so many times after a murder of this sort, talk of needing to resort to violence because they were in fear for their lives. In March of this year, Breonna Taylor was shot eight times in her home by officers executing a no-knock warrant. A local investigation resulted in no criminal proceedings against the officers. It is currently being investigated by the FBI.
Philando Castile was shot fives times during a 'routine' traffic stop with his girlfriend and her four year old daughter in the car. That officer was acquitted of all charges.
Who really in the line of fire?
So the place will burn.

know justice
know peace