camerhogne
“Grenada”
Late 19th Century
We climb wearily up a hill from the beach, following the sounds, breaking through beautiful foliage as lush and natural as Ke Choreto.
“But we should be continuing on.” Skelele and I are now mostly a mix of “Arawak” and “Carib.” “Our naniki know best,” he says, but he doesn’t have to. We know that part of our journey is to see where “not knowing” leads to.
The sounds are awful. Bloodthirsty. Loud in my ears, and my ears are leading us as if they have wings.
“Beat him!”
We scramble up through a track to an estate dirt road and the racket is coming from a small crowd of sugar workers screaming at something, someone, in its centre. A big Catholic church is watching silently over the scene, from higher up on the hill.
“Buss he head!” Sticks raised, stones in fists ready to pelt.
Squeezing our heads in between bodies, we catch a glimpse. A man is bruised, naked, perched on a boulder, trying to protect himself from the blows. Eyes red and wild, his mouth busted and bleeding, his fear is high-pitched and frozen above him, above the shrieks.
“Is a Ligarou! Beat him!”
Suddenly, strong hands wrench us out of the throng. A wiry mama grasps us.
“Come here! I ketch yuh. What allyou doing, have me looking all about fuh you, eh?”
She pushes us along the road away from the rabble. Her breathing is loudest, commanding and comforting at the same time.
We dare not question as she marches us down a side path to a small wooden house.
“You don’ see what trouble here? De Ligarou reach quite inside Miss Ethel bedroom and bite she foot! And why y’all never tell me you was going by Tantie, eh? Look how you make me see worries, Lawd!”
A big-bellied father welcomes us into the kitchen shed that’s attached to the side of the house. Mama still fuming, fanning herself.
“Heh. Look yuh wayward chi’ren. Out minding people business de whole time.”
Papa passes us each a plate of steamed cassava and fish stew, as we sit on a box. He rests a hand on Skelele’s shoulder.
“Eat, son. Allyuh should know better than to hurt yuh mudda head so.”
The food is so good, and we never knew we were so hungry. I savour a piece of seasoning pepper, waiting to feel the slight burn in the sweetness, listening to Mama’s huffy breaths still.
Papa pours steaming tea from a pan boiling on the coal pot, and hands me a cup.
“Drink some cocoa-tea, me anani. You okay?”
I nod. He’s calling me his “water flower”?
Mama still fanning herself, but her fierce love’s strong as Papa’s cocoa-tea. Thick and sweet with coconut milk, nutmeg, bay leaf, and cinnamon.
Something else is making a racket in the distance. Not a racket, singing. Skelele doesn’t notice.
“Come, youall make me late for church again. Make haste, let’s go,” Mama announces.
“Church?” we both ask at the same time.
“Prayer meeting anyway, come!” She disappears into the house quickly and reappears with her Bible and head tie.
Papa ducks his head, meaning we better follow her, but not him. And we do. Mama moving quick and strong ahead in a shortcut through cocoa trees. Now all of us can hear the clapping, singing, shak-shaks, and tambourine. Skelele says it sounds similar to the bloodthirsty crowd, but it doesn’t. My ears are flying faster toward it.
“Yes, Lord!” greets us as we burst out from the trees. A clearing around a small wooden shack of a church. “Save us!” rings out as we enter behind Mama, and instantly the women make room for us on a bench up front. Oh Lord, we’ll be stuck here.
Three women leaders are herding the singing, shaking themselves all out, and the priest is in deliverance.
A familiar strumming starts up in me as Mama joins in the singing, the moaning and groaning. I check to see if Skelele is feeling it too, but it doesn’t seem so. He’s just looking like a normal son, fed up being here, dutiful.
“Banish the Devil in our midst, Lord, every Ligarou that is preying on the weak and faithless! Help us to save them, O’ Lord. Send out the evil, out!” Stamping. The congregation is stamping and dancing in praise and purging, Hallelujah. And this kind of heat and deep-body rhythm is racking me — something to do with this place, this eye-land. To do with somebody who is really Mama’s child?
Mama looks at me and takes my hand. She puts a hand on my chest and at the same time a young man starts thumping, uttering, uttering … my throat snakes and spits out voices that are not mine, tongues in words that I hear but can’t understand. And can’t stop! A racking. Shaking spirit talk out of me.
Skelele hears me. I mean he understands the tongues and holds my other hand. Ayiiee! Mama wipes my face with a kerchief and the priest is flicking water onto us, me, and the young man on the floor. The women leaders are around us now, whipping up their shak-shaks louder than my shrieks, raising their voices in thundering song. Holy water, red flowers, and white cloth. Black skin, blue skirt, and sweat. Wet hair and coconut oil. Holy, holy, holy! Yes! Who is this type of me? Who?
“Take it out, Lord, out!”
Suddenly my racking and voices stop. They release me and I slump against Mama and Skelele, reeling myself back into me. This Ke Ara me. Or is it generations of me? The deep-body strumming rolls all around me, like deep-water waves.
After the spirit subsides and after the singing, the lesson from the Bible, the blessings for approaching night and wandering souls, prayers for every afflicted aunty, uncle, elderly, and child — we are released. Out from the stifling room back into soft late afternoon. Hahom. Thank you. But Mama is marching back through the shortcut to “home.” A little slower, knowing I’m weaker, waiting for us to follow.
We reach back with Papa in the tiny, neat living room. Awkward, with no escape. Skelele is as tired as me, as if he has seen the spirits of the tongues he heard. Are they from Africa? Sounds like that. I want to ask him but Mama’s breathing quiets, and she’s watching me closely. Papa questions a look at her and she nods.
“She still need deliverance,” Mama sighs.
He looks disappointed, shakes his head. “Allyuh need to ress,” he says. “Ress before we go on de land a’daybreak. Watch how yuh skin rample.”
We are, clothes dishevelled. Extremely tired and aching.
Papa is pouring again as Mama sits, still watching me. This time, he’s pouring something from a big glass bottle filled with herbs and spices, into two small enamel cups.
“This spice-rum go wo’k like a medicine to make yuh sleep good.”
“Sleep hard and get up strong!” Mama says, nodding us toward our bedroom. “And look, take this.” She holds out six whole shelled nutmegs. “Hold one in each hand, and one under yuh tongue. Keep it there before you sleep, it will ease all the pain in yuh body.”
Dusk isn’t here yet, but we are dutiful, lying on the bedding and straw mats, squeezing nutmeg strength into our palms and sucking on its spice-oil healing. Painless … sleep comes before we could fight it.
this is my soul, my soul
my soul to keep
hymnal breeze
polishing
extracts the deepest
moisture
this is my soul
my soul to keep
afloat
in the ocean’s palm
violet licked
to pink
my soul please keep
in the rain-gathering
cloud
and sleeping
rainbow
in the softest drizzle
make dew
of me
your soul to keep
I drift off and let go of your hand, wake up and can’t see you. What magic in what languid land or sea of history holds you now or me, invisibly?
Is the breeze your breath
warmer than ever
laden with salt and sorrow?
Is that your heart in patches
sargassum weed rust
floating?
Can you taste my fears
dried up
in the lonely riverbed
or hear
my naked valley scream?
Will you hold my hand again
and make the seasons timely.
Can we land this love again
to sleep and wake forever.
Can we love this land again
to sleep and wake together?
Sleep goes before night could fall, but refreshed awake — a purring coo greets us. My ears feel like they’re uncurling, and we can feel the coo strum through us as we lie next each other. Soft light streams through the cracks of the closed shutters. No tremors, no voices inside me. Grey calmness. The stuttering coo calls us to the window, to touch the warm wood, smell the late afternoon heat through it. Opening it, a huge innocent eye of a dove fills the whole window. The head jerks, nodding in time with its coo, urging us, Come. Vini vite, make haste.
We can hear our parents in the flower and herb garden at the front of the house and again their cocoa-tea love sweetness fills us, reddish milky brown as the oversize Grenada dove, warm and soft as the feathers under his wings that we tuck into as he raises them.
The golden flowers we left on the bed for them will find a place in Mama’s and Papa’s hearts. Hearts that gave to us so generously. And the nutmegs we carry will continue healing, sealed in our skin and under tongues.
As we lift off, a rooster crows even though it is not sunrise. We can hear Mama shooshing it and Papa chuckling, as we swoop away over the treetops.
If only this bliss could last, could last with this eye-land. But from the air we see the iridescent onslaught again, slicking, spreading, and swarming the Caribbean Sea. And our hearts drop.
As we drop.
Down.
Down toward the shadow of a manta ray
and ahead there is no peace either.
We are bombs dropping into approaching night and a darker water. Our ray naniki sweeps us forward without slowing down. Has our land love made us heavy? Skelele’s thoughts are lighter than mine, but part of mine. I give up trying to separate them and he smiles.
What is water, light, and air without Atabey? Without land particles? We are particles. Pulled together.
Together through the night with the undulating lull of our manta’s wings. Blessed to be borne and guided, so far. We rest our hearts and bodies together and Skelele’s voiceless words beat a reassuring rhythm on my skin. Through this I hear his vision of safety, of a place where his love and mine are possible, like we are together now. He knows I want that too. That all I want could be a moment without responsibilities. Together. Closest.
But instead we are bearing southeast toward islands closest to the mainland. We are also closer to mayhem. In bright daylight.
A swarm of rays gathers like a ball of flags, swirling, rallying. They breach and flap-splat back into the water, knocking warning alarms through us.
Bombs are a shower of cannonballs shooting through the water and exploding a boat close by. We dodge past splinters and more boat hulls — and are flung toward a shore.