could pick and choose until you find the right one. Love will come. But take time. Love your studies, look out for your friends-them. Love your old Granny,” she ended softly.
Hot tears rolled down Jacky’s cheeks. She watched the dumplings bobbing back to the surface as they cooked; little warm, yellow suns.
“A new baby,” Granny mused. “I must go and visit Carmen, take she some crab and callaloo to strengthen she blood. Hospital food does make you weak, oui.”
I need more time, more life. I need a baby breath. Must wait till people sleeping, though. Nobody awake to see a fireball flying up from the bedroom window.
The skin only confining me. I could feel it getting old, binding me up inside it. Sometimes I does just feel to take it off and never put it back on again, oui? Three a.m. ’Fore day morning. Only me and the duppies going to be out this late. Up from out of the narrow bed, slip off the nightie, slip off the skin.
Oh, God, I does be so free like this! Hide the skin under the bed, and fly out the jalousie window. The night air cool, and I flying so high. I know how many people it have in each house, and who sleeping. I could feel them, skinbag people, breathing out their life, one-one breath. I know where it have a new one, too: down on Vanderpool Lane. Yes, over here. Feel it, the new one, the baby. So much life in that little body.
Fly down low now, right against the ground. Every door have a crack, no matter how small.
Right here. Slip into the house. Turn back into a woman. Is a nasty feeling, walking around with no skin, wet flesh dripping onto the floor, but I get used to it after so many years.
Here. The baby bedroom. Hear the young breath heating up in he lungs, blowing out, wasting away. He ain’t know how to use it; I go take it.
Nice baby boy, so fat. Drink, soucouyant. Suck in he warm, warm life.
God, it sweet. It sweet can’t done. It sweet.
No more? I drink all already? But what a way this baby dead fast!
Childbirth was once a risky thing for both mother and child. Even when they both survived the birth process, there were many unknown infectious diseases to which newborns were susceptible.
Oliphant theorizes that the soucouyant lore was created in an attempt to explain infant deaths that would have seemed mysterious in more primitive times. Grieving parents could blame their loss on people who wished them ill. Women tend to have longer life spans than men, but in a superstitious age where life was hard and brief, old women in a community could seem sinister. It must have been easy to believe that the women were using sorcerous means to prolong their lives, and how better to do that than to steal the lifeblood of those who were very young?
Dozing, Jacky leaned against Granny’s knees. Outside, the leaves of the julie mango tree rustled and sighed in the evening breeze. Granny tapped on Jacky’s shoulder, passed her a folded section of newspaper with a column circled. Births/Deaths. Granny took a bitter pleasure in keeping track of who she’d outlived each week. Sleepily, Jacky focused on the words on the page:
Deceased: Raymond George Lewis, 5 days old, of natural causes. Son of Michael and Carmen, Diego Martin, Port of Spain. Funeral service 5:00 p.m. November 14, Church of the Holy Redeemer.
Sunlight is fatal to the soucouyant. She must be back in her skin before daylight. In fact, 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. 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