I suffered through these visitations in earnest, though. My mother grew more concerned, and my grandmother grew more distant. I longed to tell them that no, I wouldn’t go mad, like Aunt Zora, or follow swamp-voices, like Ondine. But I couldn’t give them that assurance. I was unsure myself.
- - -
On Easter Sunday, I was forced into a stifling suit. Mom wore a bright floral print and a wide, black hat with a veil. Granny wore a royal blue dress, and a hat festering with plastic flowers. We walked down the main street. Granny and Mom complimented the other grownups. I just noticed the other kids, uncomfortable, squirming. When we got to Divine Annunciation, we all forgot our glamour and our discomfort. It was beautifully decorated. Large Easter lilies framed each pew. Candles writhed and flickered on the stage, even though it was daylight. Fresh cut tea roses surrounded the statue of Jesus, and votive candles encircled the image of Mary. I was impressed, for about two minutes. Then I sat down on the hard pew with my legs dangling.
Father Anthony began his sermon, droning about this or the other. I drifted.
At first, I thought there were some children whispering somewhere in the audience. I scanned around for them. Mom popped me on the thigh. “Sit still,” she hissed. I still heard the whispering; she didn’t. I knew it was the spirits. Maybe I can ignore them this time, I thought. But then everything flared; people’s auras were like the neon signs I saw when I visited the mainland. Everyone’s head glowed. The voices became more sibilant, and harsher. I put my hands over my ears, to drown them out. It was no use. I heard them in my head. “Stop that!” Mom slapped my thigh again. The white stone beams of the church began to move with vines. Like snakes, jungle vines began to creep up the sides of the church. Did no one else see this?
Suddenly, the wavering spirits began to crowd into the church, a singing throng of black and red folk, festooned with the jewelry of death. They drowned out the priest’s droning lecture. The statue of Mary moved, surging with energy. She stood up from her cage of votive candles. She shed her white lady form, and changed into something fluid and ancient. Dark, flat head, and canary yellow skirt, topless, her breasts drooping. Jesus did that same thing. He broke away from his cross, and his skin turned red. His hair was lusterless black and hanging down his back. He didn’t smile. He wore war paint. Both of these figures advanced on me slowly, as the church drowned in vines, and took on the color of seawater, swamp water. I made to stand up. At either end of the pews, stood Zora and Ondine. I could not escape. I screamed.
- - -
I remember waking up in Father Anthony’s office, on his sofa. Both my mother and he were talking. Granny was stroking my forehead.
Granny was saying, “He has the Sight. We have to save him, before he goes mad.”
Mom was shaking, and crying. Father Anthony was consoling her.
I sat up, tentatively. They all looked in my direction.
I said, “I can’t see anymore. Your sermon cured me. The church saved me.”
Both Mom and Granny looked at each other. Their faces told a story.
- - -
“Granny, tell me what happened to Ondine,” I said. It was summer dusk, muggy, and the cicadas were sizzling outside.
Granny put down her knitting. She was silent for a time, before she began. “She was seventeen, when she went to the swamp. I tried to stop her, many times before.
“‘But they’re singing to me, telling me to join them,’ she told me. I never knew who they were.”
Granny said nothing more than that. She went back to her knitting.
I could have told her who they were. But I didn’t think that she would really appreciate it. Knowing myself was enough. Every now and then, I could hear their drums, their songs of sorrow, and joy. I could catch the rustle of their forms. I knew that I would join them, eventually. Not yet.
I watched as my grandmother’s mist turned pearly-blue.
Sea Swallow Me
The island hated him.
Jed could feel it as he walked down the empty street. A ghost town spread out before him. Houses with rickety, water-eaten planks and warped shingles, with broken glass or torn plastic where windows were. The street was covered with sand, jeweled with glass. The metal of a derelict car glinted in the heat. Was there electricity in these houses? Running water?
A Doberman lunged against an unstable fence, the barks of rage as sudden and relentless as machine gun fire. Jed jumped back, startled. He saw the tan underside of the dog, lewd with dangling genitalia. He laughed, out of fear or embarrassment.
The guidebooks had specifically warned tourists to avoid this section of town of La Mer Vert, unofficially called La Merde, a shantytown, with houses in ill repair, patched with corrugated tin. He felt sullen eyes on him. They hid in the shade of the silent houses. Jed shivered, in spite of the heat. Was the search for local color worth this feeling? This morning, he’d woken up in his hotel room. A gentle zephyr stirred the filmy curtains. The walls of the room were nautilus pink and touched with painterly strokes of morning sunlight. The generic painting above his bed showed a riotous marketplace scene. He heard gulls, children, and steel drums. It was horrible. The resort feel was starting to grate on him. Jed liked his vacation with a little bit of bite. One more fruit-filled, alcoholic drink, and he’d puke. But now that he was here, in La Merde, and having second thoughts. If he were killed here, who would find him? The killers would probably just throw him in the sea, to be nibbled by fish and covered by algae.
The street ended abruptly, quashing his morbid thoughts. There was a cul de sac, and then the beach. The scene took his breath away. Hidden behind this raggedy, dangerous street was one of the most beautiful beaches he’d ever seen. The sand was white and soft as powdered sugar. Off to the left, dunes undulated, with thin fingers of grass poking out of them. The ocean water was like a liquid geode. Smashed sapphire was shot through with veins of emerald and milky opal. The horizon was empty, no cirrus, no birds, just endless blue. Jed kicked off his sandals, and stepped onto the sand, entranced. The glimmering water beckoned. Salt air tickled his nose. Why does it glow like that? he thought. As if there was a sun under the water. When he reached the wet lip of land where the tide kissed it, he looked down. The water was clear and colored simultaneously. Something burned under his breastbone. It was joy, bright as the phantom sun under the water. He’d made the right decision coming here.
Jed stepped in the water, which was mercifully warm. He waded out, until the tide licked his knees. He saw shells and sand dollars in the silt floor. The wet sand oozed between his toes, holding him there. He closed his eyes. I am the only imperfect thing here. But that didn’t matter. He wanted to forget the keloid’s raised continent on his face, and his ashy skin and too-thin body. If he could only be like this forever.
He stood there for a while, and lost track of time. He wasn’t really sure when he first heard the singing. It seemed to evolve out of the breeze and the sighing surf. Voices, soft and vaporous as sea mist, rose near him, and moved away. He turned away from the horizon, blue upon green-blue, and faced the shore. White and blue and black moved further away from him, a singing congregation of men and women. They wore linen suits and dresses, all of them blindingly white. The women looked clean, their brown skins gleaming. They had navy blue headscarves. The crowd moved in nimble, ghost-like steps down the beach. They ignored him; he was irrelevant. He might have been a rock in the sea, or a discarded buoy. Dark children wove in and out of the group of sixty, with orderly, mannered chaos. At the back, men dragged wagons filled with all sorts of things: white flowers, bottles with sheets of paper stuffed inside, perfect shells, and food. The chorus was steady, with the men’s voices keening, and the women’s voices reedy. Jed couldn’t understand the language they were singing in. St. Sebastian had a notoriously difficult pidgin, archaic English mixed with colonial French and seasoned with an accent that had no precedent. He followed their subdued yet joyful progress down the white beach.
Back ho
me in D.C., he’d witnessed an Easter parade held by the Ethiopian congregation that worshipped in the church behind his basement apartment. They marched down the alley like this group, led by priests that looked like life-sized black chess pieces. He recalled the decorated umbrellas, palm leaves and vibrant clothing—it was very much like this current group. But there was different feeling, here. The Ethiopians had shared a communal happiness; it was very much a celebration. These people in blue and white were becalmed, as if they were under a spell. They marched and sang toward the inevitable, rather than towards salvation and reward. It was eerie.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this. He moved out of the water, and followed them, at a discreet distance. Curiosity got the better of him. No one looked around; they all faced forward, even the children. The one baby, facing backwards and resting on his mother’s shoulder, was sound asleep. They walked adjacent to the shoreline, and scarcely seemed to notice it. Every now and then, Jed would look to the Atlantic, and notice a change. Silver water became blue, then brown then green. Once, he saw the grey-silver flash of a pod of porpoises, arcing in the water. Another time, a bird of prey hovered. Every time he paused to look seaward, he found that the group had moved further ahead than he thought possible. Oddly enough, he could hear their voices all the same—their sound did not diminish. After the fourth time distracted by the activity on the water, he resolved to follow them, and ignore the periphery.
Jed settled into their gait. He focused on their linen-covered backs, and their dark necks. The women’s hips swiveled and bopped. They were rounded, and breasts were full. They were totemic, living sculptures, Black Madonnas. A few of the men were shirtless, with firmly muscled backs and buttocks that slid underneath pants with ease and grace. Stomp, sway, sing—Jed found himself singing their song, even though he didn’t understand the words. The melody just got into his blood, like an infection.
Finally, they stopped. Jed stopped as well, wishing that there was a dune or something that he could hide behind. They seemed intent on what they were doing; maybe they wouldn’t notice him blatantly looking at them. Still, he felt like he was invading their privacy. Even so, he felt no strong urge to move. Presently, the group formed a semi-circle, a crescent of blue, white and brown at the lip of the ocean. Their voices rose, and were accompanied by percussive instruments and handclaps. One by one, they reached into the laden wagon to their left, and dropped trinkets into the water. Bottles, beads, feathers, coins, and other things were laid out on the shoreline, and devoured by the incoming breakers. From where he stood, it looked like the offerings disappeared. He saw a wreath of flowers drift on the wrinkled surface of the water. They gleamed against the kaleidoscopic water as they floated slowly towards the horizon. Jed imagined one of the porpoises leaping through the hoop of white blossoms. After the last offering, the music stopped abruptly.
He heard the distant screech of seagulls. Then silence.
A figure in a long robe of blue stepped out of the crescent of gathered people, and stood facing them, its back to the water. The being was long limbed with hair cut close to its skull. It was male, but so old that the masculine features had eroded like stone. A priest beyond gender. It glanced over his flock, and saw Jed lurking. The ageless gaze captured him, held him momentarily, and released him. Jed’s keloid itched and burned, perhaps irritated by the salt air.
The priest spoke to its congregation. The words flowed out like the tide. Its voice was musical and slightly feminine. The patois of St. Sebastian rippled over Jed’s ears. He supposed it was a sermon of some kind. But who were these people worshipping? He remembered vague rumors of cults in the island, where people followed African rituals—the guidebook had mentioned obeah and Voudun. But this worship was swathed in mystery. The priest seemed little bothered by his presence. It stretched out its arms. In response, the audience began to chant and sing. They stood still—even the formerly restless children—and sang a simple song that increased in tempo and velocity slowly. Jed couldn’t make out the whether it was in French or Spanish—or some older, pre-colonial tongue. The priest conducted them, as if they were instruments in an orchestra. One word was repeated, over and over. It rose and separated from the flow of voices: Olo Kun.
There was a magic about all words that began with the letter O. It was something that Jed had felt as a child when he was first learning to read. It was a silly thing, but the feeling never left him. Owl and opal and Orion were beautiful words. O was the letter that was an endless circle, that surrounded a hole. It was geometric and mysterious, mystical and mathematical, the cousin to 0, the number that signified nothing. He found himself saying the word with the group of worshippers.
The voices and their rhythms had insinuated themselves into him, into his blood:
Syllable, sibilance, Olokun…
Beat, beat, Olokun…
Sigh, bird’s cry, Olokun…
Serpent words, serpent sun, Olokun…
Olokun… Olokun… Olokun.
The spaces between the magic word got smaller and smaller. Soon there was no word but Olokun. A word that meant everything. A word that meant sea and sky and sand. A word that was also a name, a name that meant endless and terrifying blue.
The name came faster and faster, darker and darker, cresting waves of human voices, voices of the congregation, of the bizarre priest(ess). Indeed, his voice mimicked the tug and pull of the surf and the darker currents. They stood on the lip of the ocean, calling for the he, or she, or it.
And It, or She, or He came.
O, or Zero, is magic, because it holds emptiness. It defines space, and captures it. What lives in the center of Zero, or O?
A woman broke free of the crescent of people (half an O). She was an explosion, given human form. She screamed, and her eyes rolled back into head. She staggered in paroxysm for a few steps, before she fell to the ground. She could have been something spit up by the sea. The semicircle dispersed.
It was second nature, really, him running down to where she had fallen. Last summer’s stint as an EMT had prepared him for all sudden medical episodes. It was essential that he act, and soon. The first few moments of an accident were crucial. The audience had parted and let him through. He dropped to his knees, and reached for her slack arm that poked out of her robes’ sleeve.
“Non,” said a strange, high-pitched voice. Jed looked up, into the eyes of the priest. It towered over him. The priest’s neck was impossibly long, and Jed noticed thick, yellow nails on its ancient, veiny hands. Its gaze was stern, and reminded Jed of a vulture, of the strange, feminine bird creatures from the movie The Dark Crystal.
“I am an EMT—a doctor,” he said, even though it wasn’t quite true. He wasn’t a doctor yet. Med school started in the fall. “I can help.”
The priest shook its head. “Non. You mustn’t touch her. She not sick.”
The woman’s mouth was open. A pool of drool had formed in the corner of her lip. Her eyelids fluttered.
Jed repeated himself: “I can help her,” and took her thin, brittle wrist in his hand.
He burned. His keloid flared and throbbed—an island of pain on the side of his face. He saw endless blue, cut through with emerald, the bottom of a boat, shoals of fish. He jumped back as if shocked. The inert woman jerked back to life. 10,000 volts thrummed through her invisibly. Her jaws quivered, and her eyes flew open. Jed was on the sand, rubbing his keloid. He saw for the briefest moment the woman’s eyes.
They were blue, a rich, impossible color. She had no whites in her eyes—just twin ovals of blue. He saw movement in them—tiny daggers of sunlight. Or fish?
Before he could look further, she stood up. But stood implied a control of her body, the obeying of anatomy and physical reality. No, she did not stand. She sprung up with such exuberant fluidity, it was as if her bones were malleable as clay. She was a short woman, perhaps 5’4, and yet now she loomed over him. And it wasn’t just that he was on the ground. Maybe the rest of the world shrank, in response
to her.
The first spasm of her body had Jed scrambling off his ass. He moved back to join the circle that had formed around the woman. She began to shudder, as if she‘d caught a sudden chill. And then, she started dancing, if such chaotic movement could be called dancing. It was simultaneously robotic and graceful.
The throng started chanting the name of the god again and again: Olokun! Olokun! Olokun! As before, he joined in with them. He felt the massed sound in his body, in his blood. The woman’s wild dance sped up. Jed remembered seeing some program or another about krumping, a spastic, high-energy dance that was in the ghetto underground back home. Young men and women would hurl themselves into hiphop rhythms with abandon. Muscle and bone became water. It was similar to what he saw now. It was terrifying. She would hurt herself, if she didn’t stop—
The vulture-priest emerged from the circle with slow, steady steps. The krumping dervish ignored it, entranced by the chanting crowd and her own hummingbird beats. The priest stood in front of her, and was spattered by her profuse sweat and droplets of spit.
It raised a hand. A sapphire ring glittered on one finger. The hand swooped down like a diving bird of prey. It smacked the center of her forehead.
She stopped moving at once.
The crowd stopped chanting.
The sigh of the sea filled in the sonic void.
“Speak!” commanded the priest.
The sea just sighed. And the woman began to reek. A smell came off her, of salt and stagnation, fish, seaweed and chemicals. She was a statue in white and blue. She suddenly moved. It was a lurch into motion. She jerked, as if she were flotsam and the sand was the sea. She shook her head vigorously, and beads of sweat flowed off her body. Her blue scarf came undone and undulated to the ground. A grove of black coral—her braided hair—fell around her shoulders. She opened her eyes:
Sea Swallow Me and Other Stories Page 10