“Not sure I want to know.”
“He wished for Mumma to forgive him and come back. He said even if not for him, that you had suffered enough.”
Then she hugged me and went back inside. She still wasn’t wearing a bra.
So now Granny decide to get rid of the devil baby. She yank it off her shoulders and she throw it hard as she could. She pitch that devil baby into the sea. And the minute it land up in the water, the devil baby start to laugh, and to swell: big as a pumpkin; big as a grouper fish; big as a whale, and then bigger. That devil baby turn into the devil woman of the sea with her blue skin, and her sharp teeth, and her long, long arms for dragging ships down. “THANK YOU, GRANNY, DO,” the devil woman say. “FOR YOU JUST GIVE ME EXACTLY WHAT I WANT.” Her voice make Granny’s ears ache.
Then the devil woman fling a handful of gold pieces at Granny. One land on her face; till her dying day, you could still see the mark. “FOR YOUR TROUBLE,” the devil woman say. And she dive down to go and wait for a ship for her dinner. Granny hear her laughing all the way down to the bottom.
I crashed gratefully down onto the lounge chair out on the porch. “I’m so glad everybody gone home, I can’t tell you!”
“Sound like it wasn’t fun.” Gene gestured at the plate in his lap. “What is this I eating?”
“Ackee and saltfish. Some Jamaican thing Hector make.”
“It’s strange. Like if scrambled eggs was a vegetable.”
“He still vexed with me. Hector.”
“Yeah, I could see that. I wouldn’t brook nobody speaking to me like that neither.”
“Duly noted, Mr. Meeks.”
He put the half-finished plate of food down on the floor. “I have to run. Working tonight.”
“You want a lift down to the dock?”
“Sure.”
I got an idea. “All right. Just hang on a second.”
Dumpy was still on the floor in Dadda’s room. I fished it out of the broken glass.
In the night air, the rankness of the cashews was less. But you could still hear the gentle plop of fruit after fruit throwing itself from the branch. The sickle moon looked fresh and clean, wearing one coy wisp of cloud.
I let Gene into the car. We headed for the dock.
“Mrs. Winter gave me bereavement leave.”
“Ouch.”
“Who knew she had a heart?” I pulled up at the dock. “You have a few minutes? You could take me out a little way in your boat and then back?”
“You mean I get to spend a few more minutes with you?”
“Sweet-talker.”
“My middle name. Come.” He opened the car door, but before he got out, he took a shaky breath and said, “You know that night, when I found you?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
Gene had gotten my half-hysterical phone message about Agway’s mother being alive. He came rushing over right after work to find us both gone, and me not answering my phone. He dashed back to the dock, thinking he’d go out on the water and search for us. He’d found me lying on the dock in the rain, half-dead from hypothermia.
“As I laid eyes on you on the dock the other night, I hear a big splash, like something went into the water.”
“I know. I told you what happened. And if you tell me I was hallucinating, I swear—”
He shook his head. “I think I saw shapes swimming away under the water.”
“Fuck me! A part of me been wondering if I didn’t just make it all up. So I wouldn’t feel guilty about letting Agway fall over the side.”
“But I saw them too. Never seen them alive before.” His smile was soft and wondering. “What a miraculous world, nuh true?”
We went out in his launch. When we were out of sight of Dolorosse, I yelled, “Right here!” over the sound of the engine. Gene cut the power and we rocked in silence on the sea. I held Dumpy in my hands one final time. Then I dropped it over the side. Drop your scarf in the water. I blew a kiss after it.
She couldn’t say how she did it; for her safety, she’d never tried to describe it to anyone. She liked to think it was a bit like how it might feel when a baby pulled at your breast with its hungry mouth to make the milk come. But she didn’t know that sensation. To her, it was like letting go finally when you’d long been wanting to piss, and feeling the hot wetness splash out of you and keep coming like it would never stop. It was like that, and yet it was nothing at all like that. Bring us home, she begged, of Uhamiri, of her gift; as she tried to keep her balance it was all getting confused in her mind. She was a sluice, and power surged through her. She tried to guide it as it flowed. It was like holding back the seas with a winnowing basket, but the dada-hair lady shaped her power as best she might.
It was the strongest flow she’d ever felt, frightening in its force.
The boss man was yelling orders in the shouting and the screaming and the running about, but few were listening. His two desperate eyes made four with the dada-hair lady’s own. If she were a Momi Wata, he’d be foolish to stare at her like that. She stood tall and looked right back at him.
The first thing that happened was that any of her people still standing fell to the decks. Not her; she remained upright. She nodded and smiled. “We are leaving now!” she shouted in Igbo, for those who could understand. Some of those raised up a cheer, which became a high piping. The people were changing! That startled her. But the ocean strength of blood would not be held back. The dada-hair lady accepted it. That is how it would be. Then let it be.
The people’s arms flattened out into flexible flippers. The shackles slipped off their wrists. The two women who had been chained to her flopped away, free, but the dada-hair lady remained unchanged and shackled. The little boy in her arms was transforming, though. He lifted one hand and spread his fingers to investigate the webbing that now extended between them. Some of the people who had been forced back into the holds were making their way out, now that their shackles had slid off. The ship was so far tilted that they didn’t have to climb; just clamber up the shallow incline that led to the hatch.
The people’s bodies grew thick and fat. Legs melted together. The little boy chuckled, a sound she’d not heard from him before this. The chuckle became a high-pitched call.
The people’s faces swelled and transformed: round heads with snouts. Big, liquid eyes. Would she not change, too? Was this Uhamiri’s price?
The sailors had been dodging them, too terrified to pay attention to what was happening. Many sailors had already leapt over the side. A mast snapped and crashed down, killing sailors and destroying more of the ship. The weight of the mast pulled the ship over even further on its side. The captain rushed to the cracked stump and yelled, likely for an axe to cut the mast free. He was ignored. The ship began to go down. The captain glared at the dada-hair lady as though she were responsible. He braced himself against the stump of the mast, pulled out his pistol, and shot at her. The jerking of the ship threw his shot wide. He started picking off her people, one by one, even as they grew thick, protective coatings of fat and fur sprouted on their bodies. “Over the side!” the dada-hair lady yelled at them. “Go into the water!” The sound became a deep, urgent bubbling noise. The dada-hair lady was changing too. Uhamiri would not abandon her!
The gift roared through her. She threw the boy from her, into the sea, just before her arms became flippers. She swelled large as an ox. She flopped to the deck, landing heavily beside one of the white sailors. He went even whiter as he saw her alter. He backed away, pulling at his pistol as he tried to get it free of his belt.
The dada-hair lady started working her body clumsily to the ship’s railing. Others of the people were already there, levering themselves up and over, into the sea. The splashing, the shouting, the strange animal calls; all was confusion, and the gift was burning through her so hard she could barely see.
The captain roared at her and took aim again. The dada-hair lady lumped her heavy body against the ship’s side. She reared up against the
railing, which creaked with her weight. The changed people who had made it into the water were swimming clumsily away from the ship, learning the use of their new limbs as they worked them.
A shot winged by her ear. The dada-hair lady looked back. A few of the people lay broken on the deck, shot midway through the change. The dada-hair lady’s heart broke to see that Belite was one of the dead, but she had no time to stop; the captain was taking aim again. She tumbled herself over the side. As she fell towards the welcoming sea, a bright pain exploded in her foot. With a belching roar, she splashed into the water, and down. She looked. A thread of blood followed her down, trailing from her flipper. The captain had shot a hole clean through it. The frightening wound and the salty sting of the sea searing it made the dada-hair lady gasp. She took in water, coughed it out again, flailed with her new front limbs. Blood. She had to be giving blood to the earth in order to find a thing lost. But now she gave her blood to the sea. She had asked Uhamiri to bring them home. The gods almost never gave you exactly what you’d asked for.
Where was her boy? There! He must be that one, that little one, who swam so vigorously towards her, pushing his way through the other sleek, fat bodies. He came. She nuzzled him, urged him with her flipper to swim on ahead of her. Driven by the sound of the ship cracking apart and the danger of falling debris, she followed, learning her limbs as she went, trying not to faint away from the pain of the injured one. The sea was blue and held them on its breast. They were no longer lost.
And with that, the dada-hair lady felt the gift leave her. Not stop, as it had every time before; leave. She had used all her blood power to bring the people home. They were bahari now. The sea was where they would live.
By the time I pulled the car up to the house, fingers of fog were stretching through the air. Jumbie weather. Mischief weather, swirling all around me. I couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead. I got out of the car, locked the door.
From out in the fog over by the road, someone called, “Calamity? It’s you that?”
“Mrs. Soledad?”
“You all right, child?” She sounded suspicious. I could see her a little more clearly now. She had someone with her. As they came closer, I saw who it was. Mr. Mckinley.
“I’m fine,” I said to them. Began to say, “Never better,” but with Agway gone only a few days ago, that would sound wrong. I bit it back.
Mrs. Soledad was wearing a pretty flowered dress. Her greying hair hung down in front in two long, girlish braids that went nearly to her waist. On her head, she was sporting a leather peaked cap; purple to match the flowers on her dress. She had it turned backwards. And was that lipstick on her lips?
Mr. Mckinley’s khaki pants were pressed. He had one button open at the neck of his plaid shirt, to show just a little bit of chest hair.
“How come allyou out on a night like this?” I asked them.
“Little bit of fog not going to hurt us,” replied Mr. Mckinley.
Mrs. Soledad reached out and pinched my arm.
“Ow!” I yelped, pulling it away from her.
“You’re real,” she said.
“Yes! What you do that for?”
Mr. Mckinley chuckled. “Jumbie weather. She not taking any chances.”
“Too right,” said Mrs. Soledad. “Thaddeus and I just taking the night air.” She reached for Mr. Mckinley’s hand. He took hers gently, like a gift, and shot her a shy glance.
My brain was looping, on input overload. Mrs. Soledad and Mr. Mckinley were having a hot affair. And on top of all that, Mr. Mckinley’s first name was Thaddeus. Who got named Thaddeus nowadays?
Under his arm, Mr. Mckinley had his battered yellow tackle box. How could the two of them be seeing each other? He was probably a good fifteen years younger than she. And how he could take his fishing hooks out on a date?
“Heavy rain this afternoon,” I said, making small talk.
Mr. Mckinley nodded. “True that. Glad I wasn’t out in the boat.”
“Good thing, too,” said Mrs. Soledad. “Otherwise, who woulda bring me another blanket to wrap my feet in?”
He smiled at her. “Best way to spend a rainy afternoon. Warm in bed, with one blanket sharing between the two of we, and the rain going prangalang on your tinning roof.”
“Was like young married days all over again,” she said softly.
Mr. Mckinley coughed. They both looked at the ground, but that didn’t hide the big grins on their faces. They had been in bed together, in her house, listening to the rain. I didn’t know them at all.
“You coming to the protest tomorrow?” asked Mrs. Soledad. “Going to be a lime and a half.”
“I going to try,” I said guiltily. I intended to sleep in tomorrow.
I shooed them off to continue their walk. Even when the fog started to make them difficult to see, I could still hear the companionable rise and fall of their conversation and their laughter. Seem like everybody had somebody for company. I thought about calling Gene, but I stopped myself. Never went good when I tried to force-ripe a relationship. Same thing with Evelyn. I sat on the warm hood of the car and breathed in the milky night. When the fog had me wreathed in cloud, I went inside to bed.
ALEXANDER LET HIMSELF INTO THE SEAL PEN, just to be sure. He looked in the water, in the caves. He picked up the sodden piece of paper he found in one of the caves and inspected it. Then, calmly, he let himself back out, locked the high gate—not that it seemed to make any difference—and walked the grounds of the Zooquarium until he found Dennis. “Come and see something with me, nuh?”
Dennis looked baffled, but he followed Alexander back to the seal pen.
“How many seals?” said Alexander.
“No seals in there, sir.”
“Not a one?”
“No.”
“It’s not just me imagining it?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s what I thought.”
He handed Dennis the yellow foolscap sheet. It was one of the flyers that had been pinned up everywhere for a few days now. The workers’ co-op people were staging a protest at the new Gilmor plant this morning.
Dennis flattened out the soggy sheet as best as he could. “What this is?” he asked, pointing to some marks on the paper. You might get marks like that if you dampened a nugget of seal chow and scraped it on the paper. “Look like writing,” said Dennis.
“You think so?” Alexander replied in a weary tone.
“Yeah, but half of it wash out.”
“True that.” They both stared at the flyer. If you used your imagination, the smudged marks could look like “BACK SOON.”
“I considering becoming a drinking man,” said Alexander.
IT WAS THE SCENT that woke me up next morning. Right in my bedroom with me, the strong smell of the sea.
I sat up and looked around. Something on the floor. My eyes were still blurry with sleep. I reached for my specs and put them on. Between me and the bedroom door was a pile of bladderwrack as high as my shin, and so fresh it was still wet. On top of that was a slit, L-shaped tube of white plaster, half-dissolved, but recognizable as Agway’s cast. Lying on sea grape leaves beside that was a pile of fresh raw shrimp, a good five pounds of it. The heads were still on.
I picked up my cell phone and went to check the rest of the house. Out in the hallway, I nearly tripped on Dadda’s old duffel bag. I’d put it in my closet until I could get around to burning the sealskin inside it.
But the bag was empty. I combed the whole house looking for the skin. I ended up in Dadda’s room. There was the window Stanley had broken when he threw Dumpy. I’d swept all the broken glass out of it, taped plastic over it.
The plastic was torn.
The empty pane was plenty big enough to let a person through.
I let out a whoop. “You see why I live in Cayaba?” I asked myself. “Never a dull moment.”
Ife was in charge of arranging Sookdeo-Grant’s appearance at the protest with a group of opposition party supporters.
She had been fretting about all the details for days now.
I double dog dare you, Mummy.
I called Ifeoma’s house. “Hector, it’s you that? Awoah.” I let that sink in, then said, “Put Ife on the phone for me, please?”
Ife came on the line. “Mummy? Something wrong?”
“Not a thing. I’m as right as rain. So, where exactly this protest is? Yes, I know it’s on Dolorosse, but where? You have enough water for everybody you looking after? Bottled water? Good. You have ice? No, don’t worry. You doing good. I will stop off at Mr. Robinson’s on the way and get some bags of ice. How you mean, how come? I can’t come and show my daughter some support? You could use a extra cooler? And you have food? Only patties? That not enough. I going to make a big pot of curry shrimp. See you at ten, then? Okay.”
I hung up the phone and went to the kitchen for a bowl big enough to hold five pounds of shrimp. “If allyou ever find any snapper,” I announced to the empty house, “I would be very grateful.”
NALO HOPKINSON was born in Jamaica and has also lived in Guyana, Trinidad, and Canada. The daughter of a poet/playwright and a library technician, she has won numerous awards including the Ontario Arts Council Foundation Award for Emerging Writers, and her award-winning short fiction collection Skin Folk was selected for the 2002 New York Times Summer Reading List and was one of the New York Times Best Books of the Year. Hopkinson is also the author of The Salt Roads, Midnight Robber, and Brown Girl in the Ring and the editor of Mojo: Conjure Stories. She lives in Toronto.
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