Read an Excerpt
Skin Folk
Stories
By Nalo Hopkinson OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2001 Nalo Hopkinson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0119-9
CHAPTER 1
RIDING THE RED
Throughout the Caribbean, under different names, you'll find stories about people who aren't what they seem. Skin gives these skin folk their human shape. When the skin comes off, their true selves emerge. They may be owls. They may be vampiric balls of fire. And always, whatever the burden their skins bear, once they remove them—once theygetunder their own skins—they can fly. It seemed an apt metaphor to use for these stories collectively.
She never listens to me anymore. I've told her and I've told her: daughter, you have to teach that child the facts of life before it's too late, but no, I'm an old woman, and she'll raise her daughter as she sees fit, Ma, thank you very much.
So I tried to tell her little girl myself: Listen, dearie, listen to Grandma. You're growing up, hmm; getting dreamy? Pretty soon now, you're going to be riding the red, and if you don't look smart, next stop is wolfie's house, and wolfie, doesn't he just love the smell of that blood, oh yes.
Little girl was beginning to pay attention, too, but of course, her saintly mother bustled in right then, sent her off to do her embroidery, and lit into me for filling the child's head with ghastly old wives' tales. Told me girlie's too young yet, there's plenty of time.
Daughter's forgotten how it was, she has. All growed up and responsible now, but there's more things to remember than when to do the milking, and did you sweep the dust from the corners.
Just as well they went home early that time, her and the little one. Leave me be, here alone with my cottage in the forest and my memories. That's as it should be.
But it's the old wives who best tell those tales, oh yes. It's the old wives who remember. We've been there, and we lived to tell them. And don't I remember being young once, and toothsome, and drunk on the smell of my own young blood flowing through my veins? And didn't it make me feel all shivery and nice to see wolfie's nostrils flare as he scented it? I could make wolfie slaver, I could, and beg to come close, just to feel the heat from me. And oh, the game I made of it, the dance I led him!
He caught me, of course; some say he even tricked me into it, and it may be they're right, but that's not the way this old wife remembers it. Wolfie must have his turn, after all. That's only fair. My turn was the dance, the approach and retreat, the graceful sway of my body past his nostrils, scented with my flesh. The red hood was mine, to catch his eye, and my task it was to pluck all those flowers, to gather fragrant bouquets with a delicate hand, an agile turn of a slim wrist, the blood beating at its joint like the heart of a frail bird. There is much plucking to be done in the dance of riding the red.
But wolfie has his own measure to tread too, he does. First slip past the old mother, so slick, and then, oh then, isn't wolfie a joy to see! His dance is all hot breath and leaping flank, piercing eyes to see with and strong hands to hold. And the teeth, ah yes. The biting and the tearing and the slipping down into the hot and wet. That measure we dance together, wolfie and I.
And yes, I cried then, down in the dark with my grandma, till the woodman came to save us, but it came all right again, didn't it? That's what my granddaughter has to know: It comes all right again. I grew up, met a nice man, reminded me a bit of that woodman, he did, and so we were married. And wasn't I the model goodwife then, just like my daughter is now? And didn't I bustle about and make everything just so, what with the cooking and the cleaning and the milking and the planting and the birthing, and I don't know what all?
And in the few quiet times, the nights before the fire burned down too low to see, I would mend and mend. No time for all that fancy embroidery that my mama taught me.
I forgot wolfie. I forgot that riding the red was more than a thing of soiled rags and squalling newborns and what little comfort you and your man can give each other, nights when sleep doesn't spirit you away soon as you reach your bed.
I meant to tell my little girl, the only one of all those babes who lived, and dearer to me than diamonds, but I taught her embroidery instead, not dancing, and then it was too late. I tried to tell her quick, before she set off on her own, so pretty with her little basket, but the young, they never listen, no. They're deaf from the sound of their own new blood rushing in their ears.
But it came all right; we got her back safe. We always do, and that's the mercy.
It was the fright killed my dear mam a few days later, that's what they say, she being so old and all, but mayhap it was just her time. Perhaps her work was done.
But now it's me that's done with all that, I am. My goodman's long gone, his back broke by toil, and I have time to just sit by the fire, and see it all as one thing, and know that it's right, that it must be so.
Ah, but wouldn't it be sweet to ride the red, just once more before I'm gone, just one time when I can look wolfie in the eye, and match him grin for grin, and show him that I know what he's good for?
For my mama was right about this at least: the trick is, you must always have a needle by you, and a bit of thread. Those damned embroidery lessons come in handy, they do. What's torn can be sewn up again, it can, and then we're off on the dance once more! They say it's the woodman saves us, me and my daughter's little girl, but it's wolfie gives us birth, oh yes.
And I haven't been feeling my best nowadays, haven't been too spry, so I'm sure it's time now. My daughter's a hard one, she is. Never quite forgot how it was, stuck in that hot wet dark, not knowing rescue was coming; but she's a thoughtful one too. The little one's probably on her way right now with that pretty basket, Don't stop to dawdle, dear, don't leave the path, but they never hear, and the flowers are so pretty, just begging to be plucked.
Well, it's time for one last measure; yes, one last, sweet dance.
Listen: is that a knock at the door?
CHAPTER 2
MONEY TREE
"Rio Cobre" means "copper river," perhaps because it used to be customary to throw bright, shiny coppers into the river as an offering to Oshun, the female deity of the waters.
Silky was having dreams of deluges. They'd started soon after she got the news about her brother, Morgan. The dreams frightened her: mile-high tidal waves that swallowed cities; vast masses of water shifting restlessly over drowned skyscrapers.
In one nightmare, she was living in a cottage on a mountaintop. She was cooking a meal for Morgan, barbecuing fat pink prawns on an outdoor grill while she and her brother laughed and talked. Far away on the horizon was the outline of another mountain range, a wide plateau. She heard water running. It irritated her that Morgan had left a tap on—what a way the boy was lazy!
She turned to tell him to go and turn it off, and saw the plateau in the distance. Water was spilling over the top of it, billions of gallons rushing over that mountain range miles away. That's what she'd been hearing.
Morgan shouted, "The water table! It's rising!" Before Silky could stop him, he ran down the hill, yelling that he had to go and get his wallet. She knew that the flood would drown the city below, then rise to engulf her, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Morgan would have called the dreams apocalyptic. He would have hauled some tatty paperback about "mysticism and the psychic power of dreams" off the bookshelf and launched into a speech about how she was tapping into her archetypal consciousness, or something.
In her mind's eye, Silky could just see his earnest expression as he tried to convince her, the eagerness that could usually make her smile, ever since they were children.
She made herself a cup of tea and took it to the kitchen table. She shoveled a tablespoonful of sugar from the sugar bowl into her mug. Demerara brown sugar, damp with molasses and moist as mud. The glimmering crystals swirled like chips of gold, then sank slowly to the bottom of the cup. She loved the rich taste, hoarded the Demerara sugar for herself; guests could have the white. In Jamaica it was the other way around; the costly refined sugar was for guests, and the everyday brown sugar was cheap. Mummy would have been horrified at how expensive Demerara sugar was in Toronto.
Silky was aware that her mind was wandering, skittering over mundane things to avoid thinking about Morgan. The Jamaican police hadn't found him. It was horrible not knowing whether she should be grieving or not. She stood up and walked over to the kitchen window, leaned out to look at the pear tree just outside.
The moist heat of the summer past had been good for the tree. In the crisp fall air, its branches drooped with heavy fruit. The pears looked like the bodies of plump, freckled green women. Through the leaves of the tree, the sun cast pale disks of gold onto the pears. The autumn light was muted, as though everything were underwater. If she stretched a little, Silky could touch one or two of the pears, stroke their smooth skin. Many of them were about to ripen. Soon she'd be able to pluck sustenance from the watery air. The pear tree was the main reason that Silky had persuaded Morgan that they should buy this little old house with the silverfish living in the cracks. Besides, it was what they could afford, what with Morgan only doing casual work at the car parts plant. He was angling for full time, but until then her job as research assistant for the Ministry of State just barely brought in enough to keep them both going.
Morgan had been fed up of never having enough money, and he thought he'd found a quick way to make his fortune back home. He wouldn't tell her about it, had wanted to surprise her. He'd flown to Jamaica, where Silky had had one phone call from him. His plans were going well, it looked like his hunch was going to pan out. Then he disappeared.
The cold air through the kitchen window was making her eyes water.
When they were children, Silky and Morgan used to fly with their parents to Gaspar Grande island off the coast of Trinidad to spend the summer holidays there. That was before it became a fancy resort. At the time, there were only a few rambling cottages and the small house where the caretaker lived with his old dog. Silky and her brother would dig sea cockroach barnacles out of the rocks for bait, then fish all morning for little yellow grunts, mimicking the fishes' croaking sounds as they pulled them up out of the water. They would take their catch for their mother to gut. The rest of the day, the island was theirs to roam. They would climb sweetsop trees for the green-skinned, bumpy fruit, sucking out the sweet, milky pulp and spitting the black seeds at each other. During those holidays, Silky felt that she could want no other food, need no other air to breathe.
She remembered her mother diving from the jetty into the dark water, circling down past the parrot fish and the long-snouted garfish, until Silky could barely make her out, her plump body shimmering greenish in the deep water. She seemed to stay under forever, and it scared Silky and Morgan, but Daddy would simply smile.
"Is by the riverside I first met your mother. She was in the water swimming, like some kind of manatee. Mamadjo woman, mermaid woman. Happy in the sea, happy in the river!" He laughed. "What a man your daddy must be, eh, to make a fair maid from the river consent to come and live on dry land with him?"
The children wouldn't be reassured, though, until she burst to the surface again, not even winded.
Their mother had tried to teach them both to swim, but the sight of her sinking into the black water appalled them. Morgan refused to be coaxed in any deeper than the shallows. Silky remembered him shaking his head no, how the sunlight would make diamonds of the water flying from his tight peppercorn curls. For herself, she had loved the feeling of body surfing, but wouldn't put her whole head under the water. She'd stick her face in just far enough to be able to see the grunts flit by. She never learned to dive beneath the surface the way her mother did. "Just try to go deeper, nuh, sweetheart?" Mummy would say, undulating her arms to show her how to stroke through the water. "You and Morgan can both do it; you're my children. I'm right here. I won't let anything happen to you."
But Silky hadn't wanted to be swallowed up by that dark wetness.
She had another dream that night. In it, she had survived the flood from the previous nightmare. She was swimming on the surface, above the drowned lands. Bloated corpses bumped her from time to time. The horror made her skin prickle. She put her face into the water to inspect the damage below her. She could see submerged roads, tiny fish nibbling at dissolving lumps of flesh, a sea anemone already blossoming on a disintegrated carcass that had sunk to the sea bed.
The sea gave a greenish cast to the rotting flesh of the drowned people. In the rigor of death, a man clutched at a slab of coral the size of a dinner table. The coral glowed reddish gold in the flickering water. The man's face was turned up towards her. His dying gasps for air had contorted it into a ghastly scream. Watery light glistened off his teeth, turning them to gleaming coins. Silky was terrified. Just then, a freak wave rose and slammed her down into the depths, tossing her against the drowned man. The current rearranged his features. It was Morgan. His eyes opened and he reached a beseeching hand out to his sister. She couldn't stop herself; she screamed. She expected the brine to flood her lungs, burning them, filling them like sponges, but it entered her body slowly; sweet and sustaining, like a breath of air. In disbelief, she heaved, trying to expel the liquid from her stomach.
She woke in terror, blowing hard. She was lying in bed, a few strands of her hair crushed between her face and the pillow. Some of it had worked its way into her mouth. The hair tasted brackish as the sea, as though she'd been crying in her sleep.
Silky lay shivering under the icy sheets, trying to get rid of the image of herself drowned, swollen full of salty water. She was afraid that if she hadn't woken up, the sea would have changed her, rotting the flesh of her dream hands and feet into corrupt parodies of flukes, while eels snapped at her melting flesh. Her mamadjo mother could live in the sea like a mermaid, but she could not.
The pears were ripe. Silky climbed the tree with a basket hooked over one shoulder, a long scarf inside it. She wedged the basket into a crook of the tree so that she would have her hands free to pick. Shards of golden sunlight struck her eyes. She looked down. A light breeze was rippling the grass in waves. She was sailing on a green sea.
When they were children, she and Morgan would climb the julie mango tree in the back of the house and pretend that they were old-time pirates, scaling the mast to spy out ships to plunder. Other little boys in Mona Heights had had cap guns. Morgan had a plastic sword. He used to jab Silky with it, until that time when she punched him and broke his nose. Grandpy had been so mad at her!
As she reminisced, Silky picked a fat, golden pear, but with a liquid sound it collapsed in her hand, rotted from within. "Ugh! Nasty!" She flicked the soggy mush off her fingers and wiped her hand on her jeans.
After Mummy and Daddy died, the children's grandfather came from Spanish Town to take care of them. He was the one who had told them the story about Jackson, a man who had lived just outside Spanish Town in the 1600s. People hadn't known it at the time, but Jackson had been a carpenter turned pirate. He was a greedy man. He had drugged the crew with doped rum and scuttled their ship at sea while they were still in it. He had drowned his mates so that he could retire rich with their booty.
"Guilt drove Jackson crazy," Grandpy told them. "The ghosts of the drowned pirates called from their grave in the sea and asked the river spirit for her help. They said she could have their gold if she gave them revenge.
"River Mumma loves shiny things. She agreed. She would come to Jackson at night. As he tossed and turned in his bed, he could hear the river whispering in his ear that he was a murderer and a thief. River Mumma told him she would have revenge, and she would have his gold. Jackson was afraid, but he was more greedy than scared. He wasn't going to let her have the doubloons. He used his carpenter's skills to make a huge table of heavy Jamaican mahogany, then he nailed every last gold coin onto it. Hid it in his cellar. He stopped bathing, stopped talking to his neighbours, stayed in his house all the time."
"Then what happened?" Silky had whispered, holding tight to Morgan's sleeve for reassurance. He looked just as scared as she.
"Jackson didn't even notice the heavy rains that year. It rained so hard that the Rio Cobre river that ran beside his property swelled up big. He was in his cellar admiring his gold when the Rio Cobre broke its banks and gouged a new course for itself, right through his home. The house was demolished.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson. Copyright © 2001 Nalo Hopkinson. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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