Skin Folk

by Nalo Hopkinson

  She was going to change all that, though. Invite her mother to stay for a while, maybe have a dinner party for the distant neighbours. Before her pregnancy made her too lethargic to do much.

  A baby would complete their family. Samuel would be pleased, he would. She remembered him joking that no woman should have to give birth to his ugly black babies, but she would show him how beautiful their children would be, little brown bodies new as the earth after the rain. She would show him how to love himself in them.

  It was hot in the kitchen. Perhaps the heat from the stove? Beatrice went out into the living room, wandered through the guest bedroom, the master bedroom, both bathrooms. The whole house was warmer than she’d ever felt it. Then she realised she could hear sounds coming from the outside, the cicadas singing loudly for rain. There was no whisper of cool air through the vents in the house. The air conditioner wasn’t running.

  Beatrice began to feel worried. Samuel liked it cold. She had planned tonight to be a special night for the two of them, but he wouldn’t react well if everything wasn’t to his liking. He’d raised his voice at her a few times. Once or twice he had stopped in the middle of an argument, one hand pulled back as if to strike, to take deep breaths, battling for self-control. His dark face would flush almost blue-black as he fought his rage down. Those times she’d stayed out of his way until he was calm again.

  What could be wrong with the air conditioner? Maybe it had just come unplugged? Beatrice wasn’t even sure where the controls were. Gloria and Samuel took care of everything around the house. She made another circuit through her home, looking for the main controls. Nothing. Puzzled, she went back into the living room. It was becoming thick and close as a womb inside their closed-up home.

  There was only one room left to search. The locked third bedroom. Samuel had told her that both his wives had died in there, first one, then the other. He had given her the keys to every room in the house, but requested that she never open that particular door.

  “I feel like it’s bad luck, love. I know I’m just being superstitious, but I hope I can trust you to honour my wishes in this.” She had, not wanting to cause him any anguish. But where else could the control panel be? It was getting so hot!

  As she reached into her pocket for the keys she always carried with her, she realised she was still holding a raw egg in her hand. She’d forgotten to put it into the pot when the heat in the house had made her curious. She managed a little smile. The hormones flushing her body were making her so absent-minded! Samuel would tease her, until she told him why. Everything would be all right.

  Beatrice put the egg into her other hand, got the keys out of her pocket, opened the door.

  A wall of icy, dead air hit her body. It was freezing cold in the room. Her exhaled breath floated away from her in a long, misty curl. Frowning, she took a step inside and her eyes saw before her brain could understand, and when it did, the egg fell from her hands to smash open on the floor at her feet. Two women’s bodies lay side by side on the double bed. Frozen mouths gaped open; frozen, gutted bellies, too. A fine sheen of ice crystals glazed their skin, which like hers was barely brown, but laved in gelid, rime-covered blood that had solidified ruby red. Beatrice whimpered.

  “But Miss,” Beatrice asked her teacher, “how the egg going to come back out the bottle again?”

  “How do you think, Beatrice? There’s only one way; you have to break the bottle.”

  This was how Samuel punished the ones who had tried to bring his babies into the world, his beautiful black babies. For each woman had had the muscled sac of her womb removed and placed on her belly, hacked open to reveal the purplish mass of her placenta. Beatrice knew that if she were to dissect the thawing tissue, she’d find a tiny foetus in each one. The dead women had been pregnant too.

  A movement at her feet caught her eyes. She tore her gaze away from the bodies long enough to glance down. Writhing in the fast congealing yolk was a pin-feathered embryo. A rooster must have been at Mister Herbert’s hens. She put her hands on her belly to still the sympathetic twitching of her womb. Her eyes were drawn back to the horror on the beds. Another whimper escaped her lips.

  A sound like a sigh whispered in through the door she’d left open. A current of hot air seared past her cheek, making a plume of fog as it entered the room. The fog split into two, settled over the heads of each woman, began to take on definition. Each misty column had a face, contorted in rage. The faces were those of the bodies on the bed. One of the duppy women leaned over her own corpse. She lapped like a cat at the blood thawing on its breast. She became a little more solid for having drunk of her own life blood. The other duppy stooped to do the same. The two duppy women each had a belly slightly swollen with the pregnancies for which Samuel had killed them. Beatrice had broken the bottles that had confined the duppy wives, their bodies held in stasis because their spirits were trapped. She’d freed them. She’d let them into the house. Now there was nothing to cool their fury. The heat of it was warming the room up quickly.

  The duppy wives held their bellies and glared at her, anger flaring hot behind their eyes. Beatrice backed away from the beds. “I didn’t know,” she said to the wives. “Don’t vex with me. I didn’t know what it is Samuel do to you.”

  Wasthat understanding on their faces, or were they beyond compassion?

  “I making baby for him too. Have mercy on the baby, at least?”

  Beatrice heard the snik of the front door opening. Samuel was home. He would have seen the broken bottles, would feel the warmth of the house. Beatrice felt that initial calm of the prey that realises it has no choice but to turn and face the beast that is pursuing it. She wondered if Samuel would be able to read the truth hidden in her body, like the egg in the bottle.

  “Is not me you should be vex with,” she pleaded with the duppy wives. She took a deep breath and spoke the words that broke her heart. “Is… is Samuel who do this.”

  She could hear Samuel moving around in the house, the angry rumbling of his voice like the thunder before the storm. The words were muffled, but she could hear the anger in his tone. She called out, “What you saying, Samuel?”

  She stepped out of the meat locker and quietly pulled the door in, but left it open slightly so the duppy wives could come out when they were ready. Then with a welcoming smile, she went to greet her husband. She would stall him as long as she could from entering the third bedroom. Most of the blood in the wives’ bodies would be clotted, but maybe it was only important that it be warm. She hoped that enough of it would thaw soon for the duppies to drink until they were fully real.

  When they had fed, would they come and save her, or would they take revenge on her, their usurper, as well as on Samuel?

  Eggie-Law, what a pretty basket.

  The radio arm of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was once looking for emerging writers from whom to commission new fiction. Writer Olive Senior recommended me to them. CBC Radio asked me for a story, but cautioned me that I’d have to “watch the sex and the violence,” since it was public radio (in fact, they said that they were actually more worried about the sex, since they got way more angry phone calls about sexual content in their programmes than about violence). But after that warning, it seemed that all I could see was the sex and the violence. “Slow Cold Chick” is the result of my effort to restrain those twin energies.

  SLOW COLD CHICK

  They’d cut off the phone. Blaise slammed the receiver back into its cradle. “Oonuh couldn’t wait just a little more?” she asked resentfully of the silent instrument. “I get paid Friday, you know.” Now she couldn’t ask her mother to put milk or water in the cornbread. Chuh. Blaise flounced into the kitchen and scowled at the mixing bowl on the counter.

  Mummy used milk, she was almost sure of it. Blaise poured milk and oil, remembering her mother’s homemade cornbread, yellow-warm smelling, hot from the oven, with butter melting more yellow into it. Yes, Mummy used milk.

  And eggs. And Blaise d
idn’t have any. “Damn.” It was almost a week until payday. She made a sucking sound of irritation. Frustration burned deep in her chest.

  A movement through her kitchen window caught her eye. From her main-floor apartment, Blaise could easily see the Venus-built lady in the next-door garden. The Venus-built lady’s cottage always gave the appearance of having just popped into existence, unexpected and anachronistic as Doctor Who’s call box.

  Chocolate-dark limbs peeking out of her plush white dressing gown, the Venus-built lady waded indolently through rioting ivy, swollen red roses, nasturtiums that pursed into succulent lips. Blaise had often thought to ask the beautiful woman what her name was. But to meet the eyes of someone so self-possessed, much less speak to her…

  Branches laden, an otaheite tree bobbed tumescent maroon fruit, so low that the lady could have plucked them with her mouth. Blaise’s mother sometimes sent her otaheite apples from Jamaica, but how did the tropical tree flourish in this northern climate?

  As ever, the Venus-built lady’s gingered brown hair flung itself in crinkled dreadknots down her back, tangled as lovers’ fingers. Blaise had chemically straightened all the kinks out of her own hair.

  The Venus-built lady was laying a circle of conch shells around a bed of bleeding hearts. She reached out to caress the plants’ pink flowers. At her touch, they shivered delicately. Blaise looked down at her own dull brown hands. The Venus-built lady’s skin had the glow of full-fat chocolate.

  The woman bent and straightened, bent and straightened, leaving a pouting conch shell behind her each time, until pink echoed pink in a circle around the bleeding hearts. Blaise thought of the shells singing as the wind blew past their lips.

  The lady turned away from the flower bed and swayed amply up her garden path. As her foot touched the first step of the cottage, a fat, velvet-petaled rose leaned beseechingly towards her. She tugged the rose from its stem and ate it. Then she opened her gingerbread door and sashayed inside.

  Weird. Blaise imagined a spineless green grub squirming voluptuously in the heart of the overblown rose. And an avid mouth descending towards it. She shuddered. I don’t want to eat the worm.

  It had gotten hot in the apartment. The fridge burped. Distractedly, Blaise went to it and opened it.

  There was an egg huddling in one of the little cups inside the fridge door. Where had that come from? Exactly what she needed. She was reaching eagerly for it when a stench from deep inside the fridge slid into her nostrils, a poisonous, vinegary tang. The Scotch Bonnet pepper sauce she’d made, last year sometime? was rotting in its glass jar. The pepper crusting the jar’s lid had begun to corrode the metal. A vile greenness bloomed on the surface of the red liquid. Blaise kissed her teeth in disgust and dumped the mouldering sauce into the sink.

  Cornbread now.

  The egg was a little too big for its cradle, a little rounder than eggs usually were. Blaise picked it up. Its cold, mercurial weight shifted in her palm, sucking warmth from her hand. She cracked it into the bowl. With a hollow clomp! a mass disappeared below the surface of the liquid. A sulphur-rot stench filled the kitchen.

  “Backside!” Blaise swallowed a wave of anger. A bubble of foetid air popped from the depths of the bowl. Blaise grimaced and began to pour the swampy goop down the drain. The tainted milk and oil mingled with the pepper sauce.

  Something rubbery thumped into the mouth of the drain and lay there. It was small and grey and jointed. A naked, fully formed chicken foetus. Blaise’s gorge rose. When the thing moved, wallowing in the pepper sauce remaining in the sink, she nearly spewed the coffee she’d drunk that morning.

  “Urrrr…” rattled the cold-grown chick. Slowly, slowly, it extended a peeled head on a wobbly neck. Its tiny beak was thin as nail parings. Its eyes creaked open, stretching a red film of pepper sauce from lid to lid. It shrieked tinnily as the pepper made contact with its eyes. Frantically it shook its head. Its pimply grey body contorted in agony. It shrieked again. Fighting revulsion, Blaise grabbed a cooking spoon and scooped it up.

  “Shh, shh.” She wadded a tea towel in her free hand and deposited the bird into it. It wailed and stropped its own head against the tea towel. Through the fabric Blaise could feel the bird’s cartilaginous body writhing against her palm. Her skin crawled.

  “Arr…” the chick complained. Blaise filled the cooking spoon with water and trickled it over the grey, bald head. The bird fought and spluttered. Reddened eyes glared accusingly at Blaise.

  “Make up your mind,” she flared. “You want fire in your eyes, or cool water?” The chick tried to peck. Blaise hissed angrily, “Well here, then, take that!”

  She scooped some drops of pepper sauce from the sink with her fingers and flicked it at the bird’s head. It yowped in indignation. Then, worm-blind, a tiny grey tongue snaked out of its mouth and licked some of the pepper sauce off its beak. “Urrrr…” This time it didn’t seem to mind the taste of the pepper. It licked it off, then blinked its burned eyes clear.

  Its body a blur, it shook the water off. It sat up straight in her palm, staring alertly at her. It seemed a little bigger. It did have a few feathers after all. Blaise must have just not noticed them before.

  Her anger cooled. She’d let loose the heat of her temper on such a little thing.

  The chick opened its mouth wide; Blaise nearly dropped it in alarm. Its hungry red maw looked bigger than its head.

  Well, it had seemed to like the pepper, after all. Blaise scraped a stringy mass of it out of the sink and dangled it in front of the cold chick’s beak. The chick gaped even wider, begging to be fed. Blaise let slimy tendrils fall. Red threads wriggled down the bird’s throat. Ugh.

  The chick swallowed, withdrew its pinny head into its ugly neck, and closed its eyes.

  “That do you for now?” Blaise asked it.

  The chick purred, a low, rattling sound. It radiated heat into her hand. It wasn’t so ugly, really. She tucked its warmth close to her breast.

  Someone knocked at the door. Blaise gasped, jolted out of her peaceful moment. She dumped the chick into a soup bowl. It squawked and toppled, legs kicking at the air. “Stay there,” she hissed, and went to answer the knock.

  It was the guy next door, lanky and pimply in a frowsty leather jacket. “Hi there, Blaise,” he leered. “Whatcha up to?”

  The red tongues of his construction boots hung loose and floppy. He was gnawing on the gooey tag end of a cheap chocolate bar, curled wrapper ends wilting from his fist.

  “Nothing much,” Blaise replied.

  Tethered by a leash through its studded leather collar, the guy’s ferret humped around and around in sad circles at his feet. Something about its furtive slinkiness brought to mind a furry penis with teeth.

  The guy took a hopeful step closer. “Want some company?”

  Not this again. “Um, maybe another time.” She remained blocking the doorway, hoping he’d get the point. The ferret sneezed and rubbed fretfully at its snout. Oh, goody: The guy next door’s ferret had a head cold. Gooseflesh rose on Blaise’s arms.

  “What, like this evening, maybe?” asked the guy. His eyes roamed eagerly over her face and body. The familiar steam of stifled anger bubbled through Blaise. Why couldn’t he ever take a hint? She wished he’d just dry up and fly away.

  There was a thump from the kitchen. The ferret arched sinuously up onto its hind legs, its fur bristling. Blaise turned; her blood froze cold. A creature something between a chicken and an eagle was stalking menacingly out of her kitchen. It was the cold chick, grown to the size of a spaniel. Its down-feathered neck wove its raptor’s head in a serpentine dance. Its feet had become cruel, ringed claws. It stared at her with a fierce intelligence.

  The guy goggled. “What the…?”

  At the sound, the chick’s fiery-red comb went erect. Nictitating membranes slid clear of its eyes, which glowed red. Blaise felt a peppery warmth flood her body briefly. Frightened, she stepped aside. The chick turned its gaze full on the guy. It hissed,
a sound like steam escaping. The guy next door looked down at it, and seemed immediately held by its stare. He whimpered softly. Heat danced between the chick and the guy next door, then he just, well, vaporized. In a second, all that was left of him was a grey smear of ash on the hallway carpet, and a faint whiff of cheap chocolate.

  “Oh my God,” Blaise said, feeling frantically for the open doorway.

  The ferret growled. The chick pounced. Blaise leapt out of the way. Jesus, now they were between her and the way out.

  The ferret wound itself around the creature. The chick’s beak slashed. The ferret yipped, sneezed. Drops of ferret blood and mucus flew. The cold chick flexed a meaty thigh to slice a talon through the ferret’s middle. The ferret arched and writhed in extremis. Knots of bloody intestine trailed from its belly. The cold chick twisted the ferret’s head between the cruel tines of its beak. Blaise heard the ferret’s neck snap. Holding it down with its claws, the cold chick began to devour the ferret with a wet crunching sound. Blaise could hear her own panicked sobbing.

  The chick sucked up looped coils of gut with little chirps of pleasure. Then it blurred. When Blaise could see it clearly again, it was the size of a rottweiler. Its feathers had sprouted into rich burgundy and green plumes. It snapped up the rest of the ferret, then crouched in the doorway. It looked at her, and Blaise knew it would burn her to death. A keening sound came from her mouth. Heat washed over her, but then the membranes slid down over the chick’s open eyes. Blaise could still see its piercing stare, slightly opaqued.