Skin Folk (23 page)

Sunlight is fatal to the soucouyant. She must be back in her skin before daylight. In fact, the tales say that the best way
to discover a soucouyant is to find her skin, rub the raw side with hot pepper, and replace it in its hiding place.When she
tries to put it back on, the pain of the burning pepper will cause the demon to cry out and reveal herself.

Me fire belly full, oui. When a new breath fueling the fire, I does feel good, like I could never die. And then I does fly
and fly, high like the moon. Time to go back home now, though.

Eh-eh! Why she leave the back door cotch open? Never mind; she does be preoccupied sometimes. Maybe she just forget to close
the door. Just fly in the bedroom window. I go close the door after I put on my skin again.

Ai! What itching me so? Is what happen to me skin? Ai! Lord, Lord, it burning, it burning too bad. It scratching me all over,
like it have fire ants inside there. I can’t stand it!

Hissing with pain, the soucouyant threw off her burning skin and stood flayed, dripping.

Calmly, Granny entered Jacky’s room. Before Jacky could react Granny picked up the Jacky-skin. She held it close to her body,
threatening the skin with the sharp, wicked kitchen knife she held in her other hand. Her look was sorrowful.

“I know it was you, doux-doux. When I see the Lagahoo, I know what I have to do.”

Jacky cursed and flared to fireball form. She rushed at Granny, but backed off as Granny made a feint at the skin with her
knife.

“You stay right there and listen to me, Jacky. The soucouyant blood in all of we, all the women in we family.”

You, too?

“Even me. We blood hot: hot for life, hot for youth. Loving does cool we down. Making life does cool we down.”

Jacky raged. The ceiling blackened, began to smoke.

“I know how it go, doux-doux. When we lives empty, the hunger does turn to blood hunger. But it have plenty other kinds of
loving, Jacky. Ain’t I been telling you so? Love your work. Love people close to you. Love your life.”

The fireball surged towards Granny. “No. Stay right there, you hear? Or I go chop this skin for you.”

Granny backed out through the living room. The hissing ball of fire followed close, drawn by the precious skin in the old
woman’s hands.

“You never had no patience. Doux-doux, you is my life, but you can’t kill so. That little child you drink, you don’t hear
it spirit when night come, bawling for Carmen and Michael? I does weep to hear it. I try to tell you, like I try to tell you
mother: Don’t be greedy.”

Granny had reached the back door. The open back door. The soucouyant made a desperate feint at Granny’s knife arm, searing
her right side from elbow to scalp. The smell of burnt flesh and hair filled the little kitchen, but though the old lady cried
out, she wouldn’t drop the knife. The pain in her voice was more than physical.

“You devil!” She backed out the door into the cobalt light of early morning. Gritting her teeth, she slashed the Jacky-skin
into two ragged halves and flung it into the pigeon peas patch. Jacky shrieked and turned back into her flayed self. Numbly,
she picked up her skin, tried with oozing fingers to put the torn edges back together.

“You and me is the last two,” Granny said. “Your mami woulda make three, but I had to kill she too, send my own flesh and
blood into the sun. Is time, douxdoux. The Lagahoo calling you.”

My skin! Granny, how you could do me so? Oh God, morning coming already? Yes, I could feel it, the sun calling to the fire
in me.

Jacky threw the skin down again, leapt as a fireball into the brightening air.
I going, I going, where I could burn clean, burn bright, and allyou could go to the Devil, oui!

Fireball flying high to the sun, and oh God, it burning, it burning, it burning!

Granny hobbled to the pigeon peas patch, wincing as she cradled her burnt right side. Tears trickled down her wrinkled face.
She sobbed, “Why allyou must break my heart so?”

Painfully, she got down to her knees beside the ruined pieces of skin and placed one hand on them. She made her hand glow
red hot, igniting her granddaughter’s skin. It began to burn, crinkling and curling back on itself like bacon in a pan. Granny
wrinkled her nose against the smell, but kept her hand on the smoking mass until there was nothing but ashes. Her hand faded
back to its normal cocoa brown. Clambering to her feet again, she looked about her in the pigeon peas patch.

“I live to see the Lagahoo two time. Next time, God horse, you better be coming for me.”

T
hese are the latitudes of ex-colonised,
of degradation still unmollified,
imported managers, styles in art,
second-hand subsistence of the spirit,
the habit of waste,
mayhem committed on the personality,
and everywhere the wrecked or scuttled mind.
Scholars, more brilliant than I could hope to be,
advised that if I valued poetry,
I should eschew all sociology.

Slade Hopkinson, from
“The Madwoman of Papine: Two Cartoons with Captions”

I
was nodding off on the streetcar home from work when I saw the woman getting on. She was wearing the body I used to have!
The shock woke me right up: It was my original, the body I had replaced two years before, same full, tarty-looking lips; same
fat thighs, rubbing together with every step; same outsize ass; same narrow torso that seemed grafted onto a lower body a
good three sizes bigger, as though God had glued leftover parts together.

On my pay, I’d had to save for five years before I could afford the switch. When I ordered the catalogue from MediPerfiction,
I pored over it for a month, drooling at the different options: Arrow-slim “Cindies” had long, long legs (
“supermodel quality”
). “Indiras” came with creamy brown skin, falls of straight, dark hair, and curvaceous bodies (
“exotic grace”
). I finally chose one of the “Dianas,” with their lithe muscles and small, firm breasts (
“boyish beauty”
). They downloaded me into her as soon as I could get the time off work. I was back on the job in four days, although my fine
muscle control was still a little shaky.

And now, here was someone wearing my old castoff. She must have been in a bad accident: too bad for the body to be salvaged.
If she couldn’t afford cloning, the doctors would have just downloaded her brain into any donated discard. Mine, for instance.
Poor thing, I thought. I wonder how she’s handling that chafing problem. It used to drive me mad in the summer.

I watched her put her ticket in the box. The driver gave her a melting smile. What did he see to grin at?

I studied my former body carefully as it made its way down the centre of the streetcar. I hated what she’d done to the hair—let
it go natural, for Christ’s sake, sectioned it off, and coiled black thread tightly around each section, with a puff of hair
on the end of every stalk. Man, I hated that back-to-Africa nostalgia shit. She looked like a Doctor Seuss character. There’s
no excuse for that nappy-headed nonsense. She had a lot of nerve, too, wrapping that behind in a flower-print sarong miniskirt.
Sort of like making your ass into a billboard. When it was my body, I always covered its butt in long skirts or loose pants.
Her skirt was so short that I could see the edges of the bike shorts peeking out below it. Well, it’s one way to deal with
the chafing.

Strange, though; on her, the little peek of black shorts looked stylish and sexy all at once. Far from looking graceless,
her high, round bottom twitched confidently with each step, giving her a proud sexiness that I had never had. Her upper body
was sheathed in a white sleeveless T-shirt. White! Such a plain colour. To tell the truth, though, the clingy material emphasized
her tiny waist, and the white looked really good against her dark skin. Had my old skin always had that glow to it? Such firm,
strong arms…

All the seats on the streetcar were taken. Good. Let the bitch stand. I hoped my fallen arches were giving her hell.

Home at last, I stripped off and headed straight for the mirror. The boyish body was still slim, thighs still thin, tiny-perfect
apple breasts still perky. I presented my behind to the mirror. A little flabby, perhaps? I wasn’t sure. I turned around again,
got up close to the mirror so that I could inspect my face. Did my skin have that glow that my old body’s had? And weren’t
those the beginning of crow’s-feet around my eyes? Shit. White people aged so quickly. I spent the evening sprawled on the
sofa, watching reruns and eating pork and beans straight from the can.

That Friday afternoon at work, Old Man Morris came in for the usual. I stacked his order on the counter between us and keyed
the contents into the computer. It bleeped at me: “This selection does not meet the customer’s dietary requirements.” As if
I didn’t know that. I tried to talk him into beefing up the carbs and betacarotene. “All right, then,” I said heartily, “what
else will you have today? Some of that creamed corn? We just got a big batch of tins in. I bet you’d like some of that, eh?”
I always sounded so artificial, but I couldn’t help it. The food bank customers made me uncomfortable. Eleanor didn’t react
that way, though. She was so at ease in the job, cheerful, dispensing cans of tuna with an easy goodwill. She always chattered
away to the clients, knew them all by name.

“No thanks, dear,” Mr. Morris replied with his polite smile. “I never could stomach the tinned vegetables. When I can, I eat
them fresh, you know?”

“Yeah, Cynthia,” Eleanor teased, “you know that Mr. Morris hates canned veggies. Too much like baby food, eh, Mr. Morris?”

Always the same cute banter between those two. He’d flattened out his Caribbean accent for the benefit of us two white girls.
I couldn’t place which island he was from. I sighed and overrode the computer’s objections. Eleanor and old man Morris grinned
at each other while I packed up his weekend ration. Fresh, right. When could a poor old man ever afford the fresh stuff? I
couldn’t imagine what his diet was like. He always asked us for the same things: soup mix, powdered milk, and cans of beans.
We tried to give him his nutritional quota, but he politely refused offers of creamed corn or canned tuna. I was sure he was
always constipated. His problem, though.