She spins and laughs, her print dress opening like a flower above her scuffed army boots. Her strong legs are revealed to midthigh.
Them send my mother from her home because of the monster she consort with. The lord with sable eyes and skin like rich earth. My daddy.
An old man sitting on a bench smiles, indulgent at her joy, but then he sees her reach for your hand again. He scowls at you, spits to one side.
My daddy. A man who went for a swim one day, down, down, down, and when he see the fair maid flowing towards him, her long hair just a-swirl like weeds in the water, her skin like milk, him never ‘fraid.
As you both pass the old man, he shakes his head, his face clenched. She doesn’t seem to notice. You hold her hand tighter, reach to pull her warmth closer to you. But eventually you’re going down, and you know it.
When my mother who wasn’t my mother yet approach the man who wasn’t my father yet, when she ask him, “Man, you eat salt, or you eat fresh?” him did know what fe say. Of course him did know. After his tutors teach him courtly ways from since he was small. After his father teach him how to woo. After his own mother teach him how to address the Wata Lady with respect. Sycorax ask him, “Man, you eat salt, or you eat fresh?”
And proper proper, him respond, “Me prefer the taste of salt, thank you please.”
That was the right answer. For them that does eat fresh, them going to be fresh with your business. But this man show her that he know how fe have respect. For that, she give him breath and take him down, she take him down even farther.
You pass another beautiful golden girl, luxuriantly blonde. She glances at you, casts her eyes down demurely, where they just happen to rest at your crotch. You feel her burgeoning gaze there, your helpless response. Quickly you lean and kiss the shoulder of the woman you’re with. The other one’s look turns to resentful longing. You hurry on.
She take him down into her own castle, and she feed him the salt foods she keep in there, the fish and oysters and clams, and him eat of them till him belly full, and him talk to her sweet, and him never get fresh with her. Not even one time. Not until she ask him to. Mama wouldn’t tell me what happen after that, but true she have two pickney, and both of we shine copper, even though she is alabaster, so me think me know is what went on.
There’s a young black woman sitting on a bench, her hair tight peppercorns against her scalp. Her feet are crossed beneath her. She’s alone, reading a book. She’s pretty, but she looks too much like your sister. Too brown to ever be a golden girl. She looks up as you go by, distracted from her reading by the chattering of the woman beside you. She looks at you. Smiles. Nods a greeting. Burning up with guilt, you make your face stone. You move on.
In my mother and father, salt meet with sweet. Milk meet with chocolate. No one could touch her while he was alive and ruler of his lands, but the minute him dead, her family and his get together and exile her to that little island to starve to death. Send her away with two sweet-and-sour, milk chocolate pickney; me in her belly and Caliban at her breast. Is nuh that turn her bitter? When you confine the sea, it don’t stagnate? You put milk to stand, and it nuh curdle?
Chuh. Watch at my brother there, making himself fool-fool. Is time. Time to end this, to take him back down. “Mama,” I whisper. I blow one puff of wind, then another. The puffs tear a balloon out from a little girl’s hand. The balloon have a fish painted on it. I like that. The little girl cry out and run after her toy. Her father dash after her. I puff and blow, make the little metallic balloon skitter just out of the child reach. As she run, she knock over a case of fancy bottled water, the expensive fizzy kind in blue glass bottles, from a display. The bottles explode when them hit the ground, the water escaping with a shout of glee. The little girl just dance out the way of broken glass and spilled water and keep running for her balloon, reaching for it. I make it bob like a bubble in the air. Her daddy jump to one side, away from the glass. He try to snatch the back of her dress, but he too big and slow. Caliban step forward and grasp her balloon by the string. He give it back to her. She look at him, her y’eye—them big. She clutch the balloon to her bosom and smile at her daddy as he sweep her up into him arms.
The storekeeper just a-wait outside her shop, to talk to the man about who going to refund her goods.
“Mother,” I call. “Him is here. I find him.”
The water from out the bottles start to flow together in a spiral.
You hear her first in the dancing breeze that’s toying with that little girl’s balloon. You fetch the balloon for the child before you deal with what’s coming. Her father mumbles a suspicious thanks at you. You step away from them. You narrow your eyes, look around. “You’re here, aren’t you?” you say to the air.
“Who’s here?” asks the woman at your side.
“My sister,” you tell her. You say “sister” like you’re spitting out spoiled milk.
“I don’t see anyone,” the woman says.
“El!” you call out.
I don’t pay him no mind. I summon up one of them hot, gusty winds. I blow over glasses of water on café tables. I grab popsicles swips! from out the hands and mouths of children. The popsicles fall down and melt, all the bright colours; melt and run like that brother of mine.
Popsicle juice, café table water, spring water that break free from bottles: them all rolling together now, crashing and splashing and calling to our mother. I sing up the whirling devils. Them twirl sand into everybody eyes. Hats and baseball caps flying off heads, dancing along with me. An umbrella galloping down the road, end over end, with an old lady chasing it. All the trendy Sunday people squealing and running everywhere.
“Ariel, stop it!” you say.
So I run up his girlfriend skirt, make it fly high in the air. “Oh!” she cry out, trying to hold the frock down. She wearing a panty with a tear in one leg and a knot in the waistband. That make me laugh out loud. “Mama!” I shout, loud so Brother can hear me this time. “You seeing this? Look him here so!” I blow one rassclaat cluster of rain clouds over the scene, them bellies black and heavy with water. “So me see that you get a new master!” I screech at Brother.
The street is empty now, but for the three of you. Everyone else has found shelter. Your girl is cowering down beside the trunk of a tree, hugging her skirt about her knees. Her hair has come loose from most of its plaits, is whipping in a tangled mess about her head. She’s shielding her face from blowing sand, but trying to look up at the sky above her, where this attack is coming from. You punch at the air, furious. You know you can’t hurt your sister, but you need to lash out anyway. “Fuck you!” you yell. “You always do this! Why can’t the two of you leave me alone!”
I chuckle. “Your face favour jackass when him sick. Why you can’t leave white woman alone? You don’t see what them do to you?”
“You are our mother’s creature,” you hiss at her. “Look at you, trying so hard to be ‘island,’ talking like you just come off the boat.” In your anger, your speech slips into the same rhythms as hers.
“At least me nah try fe chat like something out of some Englishman book.” I make the wind howl it back at him: “At least me remember is which boat me come off from!” I burst open the clouds overhead and drench the two of them in mother water. She squeals. Good.
“Ariel, Caliban; stop that squabbling, or I’ll bind you both up in a split tree forever.” The voice is a wintry runnel, fast-freezing.
You both turn. Your sister has manifested, has pushed a trembling bottom lip out. Dread runs cold along your limbs. It’s Sycorax. “Yes, Mother,” you both say, standing sheepishly shoulder to shoulder. “Sorry, Mother.”
Sycorax is sitting in a sticky puddle of water and melted popsicles, but a queen on her throne could not be more regal. She has wrapped an ocean wave about her like a shawl. Her eyes are open-water blue. Her writhing hair foams white over her shoulders and the marble swells of her vast breasts. Her belly is a mounded salt lick, rising from the weedy ta
ngle of her pubic hair, a marine jungle in and out of which flit tiny blennies. The tsunami of Sycorax’s hips overflows her watery seat. Her myriad split tails are flicking, the way they do when she’s irritated. With one of them, she scratches around her navel. You think you can see the sullen head of a moray eel, lurking in the cave those hydra tails make. You don’t want to think about it. You never have.
“Ariel,” says Sycorax, “have you been up to your tricks again?”
“But he,” splutters your sister, “he …”
“He never ceases with his tricks,” your mother pronounces. “Running home to Mama, leaving me with the mess he’s made.” She looks at you, and your watery legs weaken. “Caliban,” she says, “I’m getting too old to play surrogate mother to your spawn. That last school of your offspring all had poisonous stings.”
“I know, Mother. I’m sorry.”
“How did that happen?” she asks.
You risk a glance at the woman you’ve dragged into this, the golden girl. She’s standing now, a look of interest and curiosity on her face. “This is all your fault,” you say to her. “If you had kissed me, told me what you wanted me to be, she and Ariel couldn’t have found us.”
Your girl looks at you, measuring. “First tell me about the poison babies,” she says. She’s got more iron in her than you’d thought, this one. The last fairy tale princess who’d met your family hadn’t stopped screaming for two days.
Ariel sniggers. “That was from his last ooman,” she says. “The two of them always quarrelling. For her, Caliban had a poison tongue.”
“And spat out biting words, no doubt,” Sycorax says. “He became what she saw, and it affected the children they made. Of course she didn’t want them, of course she left; so Grannie gets to do the honours. He has brought me frog children and dog children, baby mack daddies and crack babies. Brings his offspring to me, then runs away again. And I’m getting tired of it.” Sycorax’s shawl whirls itself up into a waterspout. “And I’m more than tired of his sister’s tale tattling.”
“But Mama … !” Ariel says.
“‘But Mama’ nothing. I want you to stop pestering your brother.”
Ariel puffs up till it looks as though she might burst. Her face goes anvil-cloud dark, but she says nothing.
“And you,” says Sycorax, pointing at you with a suckered tentacle, “you need to stop bringing me the fallouts from your sorry love life.”
“I can’t help it, Mama,” you say. “That’s how women see me.”
Sycorax towers forward, her voice crashing upon your ears. “Do you want to know how I see you?” A cluster of her tentacle tails whips around your shoulders, immobilises you. That is a moray eel under there, its fanged mouth hanging hungrily open. You are frozen in Sycorax’s gaze, a hapless, irresponsible little boy. You feel the sickening metamorphosis begin. You are changing, shrinking. The last time Sycorax did this to you, it took you forever to become man enough again to escape. You try to twist in her arms, to look away from her eyes. She pulls you forward, puckering her mouth for the kiss she will give you.
“Well, yeah, I’m beginning to get a picture here,” says a voice. It’s the golden girl, shivering in her flower print dress that’s plastered to her skinny body. She steps closer. Her boots squelch. She points at Ariel. “You say he’s colour-struck. You’re his sister, you should know. And yeah, I can see that in him. You’d think I was the sun itself, the way he looks at me.”
She takes your face in her hands, turns your eyes away from your mother’s. Finally, she kisses you full on the mouth. In her eyes, you become a sunflower, helplessly turning wherever she goes. You stand rooted, waiting for her direction.
She looks at your terrible mother. “You get to clean up the messes he makes.” And now you’re a baby, soiling your diapers and waiting for Mama to come and fix it. Oh, please, end this.
She looks down at you, wriggling and helpless on the ground. “And I guess all those other women saw big, black dick.”
So familiar, the change that wreaks on you. You’re an adult again, heavy-muscled and horny with a thick, swelling erection. You reach for her. She backs away. “But,” she says, “there’s one thing I don’t see.”
You don’t care. She smells like vanilla and her skin is smooth and cool as ice cream and you want to push your tongue inside. You grab her thin, unresisting arms. She’s shaking, but she looks into your eyes. And hers are empty. You aren’t there. Shocked, you let her go. In a trembling voice, she says, “Who do you think you are?”
It could be an accusation: Who do you think you are? It might be a question: Who do you think you are? You search her face for the answer. Nothing. You look to your mother, your sib. They both look as shocked as you feel.
“Look,” says the golden girl, opening her hands wide. Her voice is getting less shaky. “Clearly, this is family business, and I know better than to mess with that.” She gathers her little picky plaits together, squeezes water out of them. “It’s been really … interesting, meeting you all.” She looks at you, and her eyes are empty, open, friendly. You don’t know what to make of them. “Um,” she says, “maybe you can give me a call sometime.” She starts walking away. Turns back. “It’s not a brush-off; I mean it. But only call when you can tell me who you really are. Or who you think you’re going to become.”
And she leaves you standing there. In the silence, there’s only a faint sound of whispering water and wind in the trees. You turn to look at your mother and sister. “I,” you say.
“CORRECTING THE BALANCE”
NALO HOPKINSON INTERVIEWED BY TERRY BISSON
Your work is often described, even by yourself, as “subverting the genre.” Isn’t that against the rules? Or at least rude?
Science fiction’s supposed to be polite? Dang, maybe I’ll take up poetry instead. To tell the truth, I kinda rue the day I ever let that quotation out into the world. I used it in a Canadian grant application fifteen years ago. In that context, when not a lot of science fiction and fantasy writers were getting grants from the arts councils because many of the jurors thought science fiction and fantasy were inherently immature, it worked. It allowed me to come out swinging and get the jury’s attention. But as something said to science fiction people, it just sounds presumptuous. I don’t remember how it got out of my confidential grant application and into the larger world. It was probably my own doing, and my own folly. Now the dang thing keeps coming back to haunt me. People quote it all over the place, and I can feel my face heating up with embarrassment. Science fiction and fantasy are already about subverting paradigms. It’s something I love about them.
And yet, if I’m being honest, there is some truth to that piece of braggadociousness. No one can make me give up the writing I love that’s by straight, white, Western male (and female) writers, but at a certain point, I began to long to see other cultures, other aesthetics, other histories, realities, and bodies represented in force as well. There was some. I wanted more. I wanted lots more. I wanted to write some of it. I think I am doing so.
Does the title of your debut novel, Brown Girl in the Ring, come from the game, the song, or a wish to connect with Tolkien?
Tolkien? Ah, I get it! One brown girl to rule them all! Well, no. The song comes from the game. (“There is a brown girl in the ring, tra-la-la-la-la/and she look like a little sugar plum”) It’s an Anglo-Caribbean ring game, mostly played by girls. I used to play it as a little girl. All the girls hold hands to form a ring, and one girl is in the middle. When the other girls sing, “Show me your motion, tra-la-la-la-la,” the girl in the centre does some kind of dance or athletic move that she figures will be difficult to copy. The rest try to copy it. She picks the one whose version she likes the best, and they switch places. And so on.
In my first novel, Ti-Jeanne the protagonist is surrounded by her life dilemmas and challenges, and things are getting worse. She’s the brown girl in the ring, and she is young and untried. She herself doesn’t know what she’s ca
pable of, but she needs to figure her skills out and employ them, quickly, before she loses everything she cares about. Tra-la-la-la-la.
Who is Derek Walcott and why is he important?
Derek is a St. Lucia—born poet, a playwright, a Nobel Prize winner, and a master wordsmith. These words are his, from his poem “The Schooner Flight”:
I’m just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation …
Doesn’t that last line just fucking give you chills, coming hard on the heels of what preceded it? Goddamn. Much respect. Derek started and for many years was the Artistic Director of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop. My father was one of the actors and playwrights in the company. He and Walcott eventually fell out and stopped speaking to each other. But in a way, that’s beside the point. Walcott and my father are two of many talented Caribbean wordsmiths whose work I was absorbing as a child.
One of Walcott’s early plays was a fantastical piece called “Ti-Jean and His Brothers.” I believe it was modelled on a St. Lucian folk tale. Ti-Jean (“young John”) is the youngest of three brothers who set out to beat the Devil, who appears in the play as that archetypical monster, the white plantation owner. The two elder brothers fail, and it’s left to Ti-Jean to save the day. At some point during the writing of my first novel, I realised that since I was writing about three generations of women who were all facing the same central evils in their lives, there were parallels with the basic framework of “Ti-Jean and His Brothers,” so I used the parallels to inform my plot. I wanted to make Walcott’s influence evident, so I gave my three characters feminised versions of the brothers’ names, and I embedded brief quotations from the play into my story. Walcott generously gave me his permission to do so.
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