Skin Folk

by Nalo Hopkinson

  “Mmrraow?” it enquired fondly. It had a satisfied look on its beaky face.

  It wasn’t going to eat her. It had done this to please her, and now the guy next door was really dried up and gone. “That isn’t what I meant,” Blaise wailed. The chick cocked its head adoringly at the sound of her voice.

  Blaise sat down heavily in her tattered armchair, trying to figure out what to do next. The chick groomed, rattling its beak through its jewel-coloured feathers. Its meal was still altering its body. It blurred again, it morphed. Four clawed, furred front legs sprouted to replace its chicken feet. The chick—cockatrice—looked down at its own body, stomped around experimentally on its new limbs. It made a chuckling noise. Would it have stayed a slow, cold chick if it hadn’t eaten the ferret? Or the burning pepper sauce?

  It belched, spat up a slimy black thread; the ferret’s leash. It pounced on the leash and started worrying at it. Sunlight danced motes of colour through its plumage. It was very beautiful. And it would probably need to feed again soon.

  I not going to be second course, Blaise thought. She moved to the door. Happily torturing the leash, the cockatrice ignored her. She grabbed her jacket from its peg and locked her door behind her. She left the apartment.

  The clean fall air cleared her mind a little. The animal shelter, yeah, they’d come and take the beast away.

  She had to pass the Venus-built lady’s garden on the way. There was a man in the yard with his back to her: a slim, bald man with a wiry strength to his build. Shirtless, he was digging beside the otaheite tree. His tanned shoulders made a V with the narrowness of his waist. With each thrust of the shovel, corded muscles flexed like cables in his arms and back. Blaise slowed to admire him. He pumped the shovel smoothly into the earth with one bare, sturdy foot, but something stopped it from sinking any farther. He went down on one knee and began tenderly pulling up clods of dirt, crumbling them between his fingers. Blaise crept closer to the gate and craned her neck to see better. The man sniffed at the dark soil in his hands and poured a handful of it down his throat. His Adam’s apple jumped when he swallowed.

  Was everybody eating something strange today? All Blaise had wanted was cornbread.

  The man looked round, saw her, and grinned. It was a friendly expression; there were well-worn smile lines pared into his cheeks. She grinned back. His lean face had the rough texture of chipped rock. Not handsome, but striking.

  He reached into the womb of soil again and tugged out the rock that had stopped his shovel. His fingers flexed. He crushed the rock between them like a sugar cube and reverently licked up the powdery bits.

  The cottage door opened, letting the Venus-built lady out. She had changed into a sweater and closefitting jeans that made her hips heart-shaped. She had a basket slung over one shoulder.

  A smile broke onto the man’s face the way the stone had cracked between his fingers. He offered a stone-powdered palm. “It’s sweet,” he said in a voice like gravel being ground underfoot. “The fruit will be sweet too.”

  The Venus-built lady smiled back. Then she looked at Blaise. “So come and help us then, nuh?” she asked in a warm alto that sang of the tropics. “Instead of standing there staring?”

  Blaise felt heat warming her face.

  But what about the cockatrice?

  The problem was too big for her to deal with for the moment. With an “Um, okay,” she chose denial. She let herself into the garden, trying shyly to avoid eye contact with either of them. “What you doing?”

  “Getting the otaheite tree ready for winter,” the man replied. “It won’t last out in the open like this.”

  “I bury it in the soil every winter,” the Venus-built lady told her. “Then I dig it up in summer, and it blooms for me by the fall.”

  “And that works?”

  “It works, yes,” the Venus-built lady replied. “It bears, and it feeds my soul. Is a flavour of home. You going to help me pick, or you want to help Johnny dig?”

  Standing this close to her neighbour, Blaise could taste the warm rose spice of her breath. Even her skin had the scent of the roses she ate. Blaise looked at Johnny. He was resting comfortably on the shovel, watching both of them. He grinned, jade eyes bright.

  Who to help? Who to work close beside? “I will help you pick for now,” she told the Venus-built lady. “But when Johnny get tired, I could help him dig.”

  Johnny nodded. “The more, the merrier.” He returned to his task.

  The otaheite apples seemed to leap joyfully from their stems into the Venus-built lady’s hands. She and Blaise picked all the fruit, ate their fill of maroon-skinned sweetness and melting white flesh, fed some to sweaty Johnny as he dug. The woman owned a flower shop over in Cabbagetown. “Is called Rose of Sharon,” she laughed. “Sharon is my name.” Blaise inhaled her flower-breathed words.

  Johnny was a metalworker. He pointed proudly at Sharon’s wrought-iron railings. “Made those.”

  The ruddiness of this white man came from facing down fire every day. Blaise imagined him shirtless at the forge, forming the molten iron into beautiful shapes.

  “I need help at the shop,” Sharon told her. “You don’t like the job you have now, and you have a gentle hand with that fruit you’re picking. You want to come by Monday and talk to me about it?”

  Blaise thought she might like to work amongst flowers, coaxing blooms to fullness. “Okay. Monday evening,” she replied.

  She and Johnny dug out most of the soil from around the tree’s roots while Sharon steadied its trunk. Then all three of them laid the tree in its winter bed, clipped its branches, and covered it with soil.

  “Good night, my darling,” whispered Sharon. “See you soon.” The bleeding hearts quivered daintily. The roses dipped their weighty heads.

  The sun was lowering by the time they were done. The shelter would be closed, but probably the cockatrice was asleep by now. Blaise stood with Sharon and Johnny beside the giant’s grave that held the otaheite tree. She ached from all the picking and digging; a good hurt. Johnny put a hand lightly on her shoulder. She felt the heat of it through the fabric. He smelt of sweat and fire and earth. On Johnny’s other side, Sharon took his free hand. She and Johnny kissed, slowly. They looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. Sharon slid an arm around Blaise’s waist. Blaise relaxed into the touch, then caught herself. Ears burning, she eased away, stood apart from the warmth of the two.

  “I should go now,” she said.

  Sharon replied, “Johnny likes to take earth into himself. Soil and rock and iron.”

  “What?”

  “It’s what I crave,” Johnny told her helpfully. “And plants nourish Sharon. What do you eat?”

  “How you mean? I don’t understand.”

  Sharon said, “You must know the things that nourish you. Sometimes you have to reach out for them.”

  No, that couldn’t be right. The bird birthed of the heat of Blaise’s anger had eaten as it pleased, and it had turned into a monster.

  “Um, I really have to go now. Things to take care of.”

  “Something we can do?” Johnny asked. Both his face and Sharon’s held concern.

  Blaise looked at this man who ingested the ore he forged, and the woman to whom flowers gave themselves to be supped. She took a deep breath and told them the story of the cockatrice.

  Blaise’s hallway still had the oily smell of cheap chocolate, burnt. She stepped guiltily around the ash smear on the carpet. “This is my place.”

  “Careful as you go in,” Sharon warned.

  The apartment was close and hot. It reeked of sulphur. Blaise flicked on the light.

  The TV had been gutted. It lay crumpled on its side, a stove-in, smoking box.

  “Holy,” Johnny growled. The couch was in shreds, the plants steamed and wilting. The casing of the telephone was melted, adding its own acrid smell to the reek.

  Blaise could feel the tears filling her eyes. Sharon put an arm around her shoulders. Blaise leaned into the c
omfort of Sharon’s petal-soft body and sobbed, a part of her still aware of Sharon’s rosiness and duskiness.

  A bereft screech; a flurry of feathers and fur and heat; a stinking hiss of pepper and rotten eggs. The cockatrice rammed full weight into Blaise and Sharon, bearing them to the floor. Sharon rolled out, but the cockatrice sat on Blaise’s chest. Its wordless howl carried all the anguish of Mummy gone and leave me, and the rage of Oh, so she come back now? Well, I going show her.

  Blaise cringed. The cockatrice spat a thick red gobbet at her face. It burned her cheek. The drool smelled like rotting pepper sauce. Blaise went cold with horror.

  Suddenly the creature’s weight was lifted off her. Johnny was holding the cockatrice aloft by its thick, writhing neck. Blaise scrabbled along the floor, putting Johnny between herself and the monster. Johnny’s biceps bulged; the rock-crushing fingers flexed; the cockatrice’s furred hindquarters kicked and clawed. It spat. Johnny didn’t budge. Fire had met stone.

  “Kill it for me, Johnny, do!” Blaise shoved herself to her feet.

  “Oh God, Johnny; you all right?” Sharon asked.

  “Yes,” he muttered, all his concentration on the struggle. But his voice rang flat, a hammer on flawed steel.

  The cockatrice thrashed. Blaise’s belly squirmed in response. The animal made a choking sound. It was dying. Blaise felt warmth begin to drain from her body. Her heat, her fire was dying.

  “You have to go,” Blaise whispered at it. “You can’t do as you want, lash out at anything you don’t like.”

  Sharon gripped Blaise’s shoulder. Where was the softness? Sharon’s hand was knotted and tough as ironwood. “You want to kill your every desire dead?” she asked.

  The cockatrice sobbed. It turned a hooded look of sorrow and rage on Blaise. Then it glowered at Johnny. Blaise saw the membranes slide back from its eyes. She lunged at it.

  Too late. The heat of its glare was full on. The air sizzled, and Johnny was caught. Sharon screamed. Johnny glowed, red as the iron in his forge fires.

  But he didn’t melt or burn. Yet. Blaise could see him straining to break the pull of the cockatrice’s glare, see him weakening. Her beast would kill this man.

  “Bloodfire!” Furious, she charged the cockatrice, dragged it out of Johnny’s grasp. She heard Johnny crash to the floor.

  The cockatrice broke away, fluttered to the carpet. It glared at her. Hot, hot. She was burning up with heat, with the bellyfires of anger, of wanting, of hunger.

  “Talk to it,” Sharon told her. “Tell it what you want.”

  Blaise took a step towards the cockatrice. Birdlike, it cocked its head. It mewed a question.

  “I want,” she said, her voice quaking out the unfamiliar word, “to be able to talk what I feel.” God, fever-hot. “I want to be able to say, You hurt me.” The cockatrice hissed. “Or, I’m not interested.” The cockatrice chortled wickedly. “Or,” Blaise hesitated, took in a burning breath, “I like you.”

  The cockatrice sighed. It leapt into her arms, its dog-heavy weight nearly buckling her knees. Its claws scratched her and its breath was rank, but somehow she hung on, feeling its strength flex against her. She held the heat of its needing body tight.

  Suddenly, it shoved its beak between her lips. Blaise choked, tried to drop the beast, but its flexed claws grasped her tightly. Impossibly, it crammed its whole head into her mouth. Blaise gagged. She could feel its beak sliding down her throat. It would sear her, like a hot poker. She fought, looking imploringly at Sharon and Johnny, but they just sat on the floor, watching.

  Blaise tried to vomit the beast out, but it kept pushing more of itself inside her. How, how? It was unbelievable. Her mouth was stretched open so wide, she thought it would tear. Heat filled her, her ribs would crack apart. The beast’s head and neck snaked down towards her belly. Its wings beat against her teeth, her tongue. Her throat, it was in her throat, stopping her air! Terrified, she pulled at the cockatrice’s legs. It clawed her hands away. With a great heave, its whole bulk slid into her stomach. She could feel its muscly writhing, its fire that now came from her core. She could breathe, and she was angry enough to spit fire.

  “What oonuh were thinking!” she raged at them. “Why you didn’t help me!”

  Johnny only said, “I bet you feel good now.”

  Oh. She did. Strong, sure of herself. Oh.

  Sharon leaned over Johnny and blew cool, aloe-scented breath on his blisters. Blaise admired the way that the position emphasized the fullness of her body. Johnny’s burns healed as Blaise watched. “I enjoyed your company this afternoon,” she said to them both. Simple, risky words to say with this new-found warmth in her voice.

  Sharon smiled. “You must come and visit again soon, then.”

  Blaise giggled. She reached a hand to either of them, feeling the blood heat of her palms flexing against theirs.

  The mutant fish that K.C. mentions is the only thing remotely fantastical about this next story. It felt like a tale that needed to be grounded in the potential for reality.

  FISHERMAN

  You work as what, a fisherman?”

  I nearly jump clean out my skin at the sound of she voice, tough like sugarcane when you done chew the fibres dry. “Fisherm…?” I stutter.

  She sweet like cane, too? Shame make me fling the thought ’way from me. Lord Jesus, is what make me come here any atall? I turn away from the window, from the pure wonder of watching through one big piece of clear glass at the hibiscus bush outside. Only Boysie house in the village have a glass window, and it have a crack running crossways through it. The rest of we have wooden jalousie shutters. I look back at she proud, round face with the plucked brows and the lipstick red on she plump lips. The words fall out from my mouth: “I… I stink of fish, don’t it?”

  A smile spread on she beautiful brown face, like when you draw your finger through molasses on a plate. “Sit down nuh, doux-doux, you in your nice clean pressed white shirt? I glad you dress up to come and see me.”

  “All right.” I siddown right to the edge of the chair with my hands in my lap, not holding the chair arms. I frighten for leave even a sniff of fish on the expensive tapestry. Everything in this cathouse worth more than me. I frighten for touch anything, least of all the glory of the woman standing in front of me now, bubbies and hips pushing out of she dress, forcing the cloth to shape like the roundness of she. The women where I living all look like what them does do: market woman, shave ice seller, baby mother. But she look like a picture in a magazine. Is silk that she wearing? How I to know, I who only make for wear crocus bag shirt and Daddy old dungarees?

  She move little closer, till she nearly touching my knees. From outside in the parlour I hearing two-three of the boys and them laughing over shots of red rum and talking with some of the whores that ain’t working for the moment. I hear Lennie voice, and Two-Tone, though I can’t really make out what them saying. Them done already? I draw back little more on the fancy chair.

  The woman frown at me as if to say, Who you is any atall? The look on she face put me in mind of how you does look when you pull up your line out of the water sometimes to find a ugly fish gasping on the end of it, and instead of a fin, it have a small hand with three boneless fingers where no hand supposed to grow. She say, “You have a fainty smell of the sea hanging round you, is all, like this seashell here.”

  She lean over and pick up a big conch shell from she windowsill. It clean and pink on the inside with pointy brown parts jooking out on the outside.

  She wearing a perfume I can’t even describe, my head too full up with confusion. Something like how Granny did smell that time when I was small and Daddy take me to visit she in town. Granny did smell all baby powder and coconut grater-cake. Something like the Ladies-of-the-Night flowers too, that does bloom in my garden.

  I slide back little more again in the chair, but she only move closer. “Here,” she say, putting the shell to my nose. “Smell.”

  I sniff. Is the smell I smell every l
iving day Papa God bring, when I baking my behind out on the boat in the sun hot and callousing up my hands pulling in the net next to the rest of the fishermen and them. I ain’t know what to say to she, so I make a noise like, “Mm…?”

  “Don’t that nice?” She laugh a little bit, siddown in my lap, all warm, covering both my legs, the solid, sure weight and the perfume of she.

  My heart start to fire budupbudup in my chest.

  She say, “Don’t that just get all up inside your nose and make you think of the blue waves dancing, and the little red crabs running sideways and waving they big gundy claw at you, and that green green frilly seaweed that look like it would taste fresh like lettuce in your mouth? Don’t that smell make your mind run on the sea?”

  “It make my mind run on work,” I tell she.

  She smile little bit. She put the shell back. “Work done for tonight,” she tell me. “Now is time to play.” She smoky laugh come in cracked and full up of holes. She voice put me in mind of the big rusty bell down by the beach what we does ring when we pull in the catch to let the women and them know them could come and buy fish. Through them holes in the bell you could hear the sea waves crashing on the beach. Sometimes I does feel to ring the bell just for so, just to hear the tongue of the clapper shout “fish, fish!” in it bright, break-up voice, but I have more sense than to make the village women mad at me.

  She chest brush my arm as she lean over. She start to undo my shirt buttons. No, not the shirt. I take she hands and hold them in my own, hold her soft hands in my two hard own that smell like dead fish and fish scale and fish entrails.