by Paula Jolin
Was that even possible? If only she’d paid attention that night, a few weeks after her father left, when her mother snuck out of the house at midnight, hair covered, face bare of makeup, a box of blue—yes, blue, the stuff you use to whiten clothes—in her hand. Her mother had woken her up with kisses, an I’m doing this for you, chunkalunks, but Gillian had just buried her face in the pillow and gone back to sleep.
The end of the hallway, finally. The obeah man opened the very last door and they entered a room with a high ceiling, its only luxury. The wooden floor was bare, and there was no furniture. A makeshift clothesline hung in one corner, pieces of bright cloth dangling from it. No sconces here: Dim light filtered through the black velvet curtains that covered the windows. Stone face masks with slanted eyes and big noses stared down at her from the walls. And on the floor over there—was that a chicken? Scratch, scratch. It was. Two chickens off in a corner. Good thing she liked animals. Another thought: maybe the garlic and lard had nothing to do with obeah but were all about overwhelming the smell of chicken shit.
But then, why keep chickens in the house at all?
The obeah man eased himself down onto the floor, sitting cross-legged. Gillian followed suit. Stupid floor, all hard planks and poking nail heads—what, did he tear up the carpet himself?
“So, Daughter,” said the obeah man. “What’s this malevolent force that brought you to see me?”
The faint sound of drums filled the silence that followed—or was that her heart? No, drums, upstairs somewhere. She took a deep breath. “Malevolent force?” Hopefully he’d pass right on by the shakiness in her voice.
“I can feel him hovering over you. Some kind of boy, lined with silver, smelling of soy sauce—” She flashbacked to Trevor, chowing down on sweet-and-sour chicken as he swerved his Mitsubishi around the sharpest corner. “Something black, crowing in his ear,” added the obeah man. Black crow, powerful symbol of death. The obeah man frowned. “So sorry,” he said. “There was more, but it’s faded, I’ve lost it.”
Not-quite-silence settled over them. Malevolent, the obeah man had said. What did Trevor have to be mad about? Unless he was angry that she was alive and kicking it up, while he clanked around in chains somewhere. “It’s this friend of mine, this boy who crashed up his car. He and I were working a business together, and when he died, he took all my money with him.” Maybe he had, for all she knew. Maybe it was in the glove compartment of that thirdhand Mitsubishi he was so damned proud of. How could she have been that stupid, letting him keep the money?
“Has all this fury brought him back?” asked the obeah man.
“Huh?” Gillian scratched her arm. Across the room, the chickens scratched the floor. “I’m not angry. I want my money—I’m going back to Trinidad, you can understand that, right? I left my mums there. Opportunities, that’s what everyone said about up here, that’s what my big-man father always claimed.” She snorted. “What opportunities? The math I’m doing in AP, my cousin did two years ago in form three. Up here, white people want to put everyone in a category— they line me up with four black girls and sing, ‘One of these things is not like the other.’ And the weather—”
But the obeah man wouldn’t let her go on about the cold. “Your father, what category is he in?”
“Jumping hoops for the man, that’s the game he’s playing. Suit and tie to work every day.”
“You think he should go to work dressed up like he playing mas for Carnival?”
Enough. She hadn’t come here to talk about her father. She wouldn’t stay in her own room to talk about her father, not even when Mums called. Is he there? Is he seeing anyone? Not that it means anything to me, but if he’s going to be taking care of my baby, he better be taking care of her, not out every night with some bumsey lambe. Gillian’s response: I’m outta here, Mums. Library, you know, project on South America.
“This isn’t about my father. It’s to do with my, uh, my friend. She got an e-mail, and she thinks Trevor sent it to her after he died. It’s completely mad, she’s not even a Trini, just messing around.” She leaned to one side and pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pocket. She hadn’t wanted to leave it in her backpack. Mad herself, but still, what if the backpack got stolen? No one was going to steal something out of the pocket of her jeans. “Here it is. It could have been sent before he died. It was, I’m sure, but if not . . . well, then, he’s trying to get in touch with me. And I’m figuring it must be about the money, because we weren’t like that, together you know. So he must be feeling guilty—I know you said malevolent, but it could just be guilt—that he hid my money and died and now he’s trying to tell me where it is. Don’t you think?”
She held out the sheet of paper, but the obeah man didn’t take it, didn’t even look at it. “You sure you want to do this, Daughter? Obeah’s not for taking lightly.”
She wasn’t sure at all.
“I thought this force was hovering over you—but now I see the truth. It’s you, isn’t it, trying to reach out and overturn things.”
Gillian felt her heart go a little cold.
“You can still walk away, you know . . .” He frowned. At her? At the sounds of the chicken across the room, pecking at the bottom of the wooden clothesline? “This boy, what was he to you? Nothing, you say, this is all about the money—but money can be replaced. Go to McDonald’s, put on a paper hat, and you go get money. This money you’re talking about was not honestly come by, I think. Then let it go, honestly.” He half closed his eyes. “There’s no place for obeah in this. Obeah is to ease hurt, emptiness, longing—for someone whose emotions have taken control. Not for money. You’re talking greed, girl, and obeah, obeah’s not about greed.”
No superpowers here. He was so wrong about her. This was all about hurting, about the emptiness she felt every morning when she woke up and heard the cold rain battering the roof above her head, the longing for her island, for the bacchanal and pounding soca of Carnival. Money wasn’t for color to outline her eyes, it wasn’t for a nice car or good-time pills; it was to go home. But the obeah man was still talking: “Obeah is not some kind of game, Daughter. You play the fool with obeah, you change the world. You start small, and you end up with snowstorms in the tropics, or sweltering heat in the middle of January.”
She wished. “Anyone who changed the weather up here would be doing the Americans a favor.” Ah, the balmy weather of Trinidad. Fresh skies, cool breezes, sea like bathwater. Storm-free, safely located outside the hurricane belt. God is a Trini, after all.
Gillian looked up to find a storm brewing across the obeah man’s face. “You playing me mamaguy, girl,” he said. “Go your way.”
A chicken pressed her beak hard against the wall, as though looking for a way out. Gillian didn’t move.
“You didn’t hear me? You need a Q-tip or something?” The obeah man’s shoulders went back. “I won’t be caught up in the schemes of an ignorant girl.”
But Gillian wasn’t scheming. All she wanted was the way things used to be. The reason she listened to Trevor was because he’d promised her that. If only things had stayed on course. She grit her teeth, made her own promise to the obeah man. “No schemes,” she said. “But they told me, my cousin said, well, I thought you could tell me whether my letter is from the dead boy or just an e-mail glitch or even that raghead—I mean, Arab girl—playing me.”
“Chupidees, the two of you.” But the obeah man leaned forward, fast, and snatched the paper from Gillian’s hand. He shuffled out of the room and was back before she’d had time to think going where? Back with a small incense burner in one hand and in the other, the paper. The burner was lit, glowing in the room, though you could hardly smell the scent of lavender through the garlic, the chickens.
The obeah man was so tall Gillian had to scramble to her feet to see what he was doing. He held the paper over the burner and waited. One long moment, two, three—scratch scratch chicken, breathe breathe Gillian. “No secret writing,” he said and handed i
t back to her. “No MapQuest directions to your money. I can’t help you. Go please.”
He was already holding the door for her. She didn’t have to walk through. She could jump him, pound his head on the floor, hold him up with the gun she didn’t have, and make him work his magic. Or she could accept that the whole thing was dotish. What had he done, after all, except keep some chickens in the house and predict wild swings in climate? Hell, Al Gore could’ve told you heat wave in Alaska was coming.
Obeah man was just trying to drive her basodee. She walked down the hall and showed herself out. The fact that he knew her name? More dotish. Man probably kept an eye on all the Trinis in town. Those revelations about Trevor? All in her head. If he said he’d smelled barbecue she would have remembered the time Trevor came by with sticky fingers, waving a sheet of paper with his new business plan in her face.
SHE CLOSED THE DOOR behind her. Even the cold walk to her car wouldn’t wring the garlic out of her clothes. If she were back with Mums, they’d make curry, drown the smell of garlic in all the spice. They’d do fresh roti too, fold their hands into the dough, kneading it together. Finish off the best pieces before the men even got to the table.
Down the walkway, back to the sidewalk, move your feet, Gillian. An ominous feeling hung over the sunny suburb. Not the scene she expected when she’d wrung the obeah man’s address out of Kevin. Trinidad-style row houses, that would’ve been more like it, crammed close together, lining a street impossibly narrow and impossibly steep; soca music blasting, lil boys playing cricket in the road. She turned her head, took one last glance over her shoulder. Had the obeah man’s villa looked this creepy when she drove up? Did the curtainless windows really grow darker while she was inside, did the chimney tilt more precariously?
What was so disconcerting? The fact that the obeah man had never denied the letter was ghostly? Or was it—
“Eons.” The thin trickle of a word warbled in the air behind her. What the hell? No, wait, not eons—“Gillian.” Someone was calling her name. Had the obeah man raised a jumbie from the grave and sent it to follow her?
Don’t be ridiculous. But it was a heartbeat, then two, another “Gillian!” before she finally forced herself to turn around and face whomever—whatever—was behind her.
FIVE
NO OBEAH-RAISED JUMBIE shimmered in the afternoon light—a skinny girl stood there, alone, black hair whipping around her face like a mask, lips full and pouty. Spygirl. “What, you were just going to ignore me?” she asked.
Gillian stared at her. “What is this?” What was the girl thinking, following her all the way out here? Gillian couldn’t believe it. Horror thought: What if the Trevor-wrote-me-from-the-dead dilemma was all a cover and Spygirl was really mad for Gillian? Maybe she should have asked the obeah man for a Make-Me-Ugly spell. “You can’t just say ‘hello’? ‘Excuse me’? Why the hell you stalking me?”
“Me? Stalking you?” Aliya brushed her hair back; two angry black eyes stared out of her face. “I’m not the one breaking into people’s e-mail accounts and reading their private letters.”
“What are you ranting on about?”
Aliya came so close up in her face that Gillian had to step back. “Yesterday, I came back upstairs to ask you if you knew, beforehand, that Trevor was going to be at that party. You were so absorbed in printing out my e-mail, you didn’t even hear me at the door.”
Had to say something. “Why didn’t you come crashing through the door, challenge me then?”
“I’m not you,” said Aliya. Gillian expected her to look away, but her gaze never shifted. “Besides, I wanted to know what you were going to do with it—didn’t figure you’d tell me if I asked.”
Gillian shoved cold hands into her pocket. Girl wasn’t the piece of fluff she looked like at first glance. Still, time to put her in her place. “It’s not that I believe in your afterlife e-mail, don’t swell your face up so. But the house I just went to, there’s an obeah man living there—you know what obeah is?”
“Like voodoo, isn’t it?”
“Something like. I wanted his take on your wild imagination. That’s all.” Gillian turned her back on Aliya and headed down the street. What had possessed her to park so far away? What was she thinking, the old man was going to do obeah on her license plate?
Aliya scrambled to catch up. “Well? What’d he say?”
Gillian could let it go. Chupidees, the two of you. Run with that, why not? Then again, the last time she’d checked, a oneway ticket from Boston to Port of Spain cost $699.
Aliya’s sad eyes, her hangdog face, those had nothing to do with it.
“He said Trevor’s a ‘malevolent force’ hanging over me.” Gillian stepped down off the curb, swerved past the puddle spreading in the street. Aliya swerved alongside her, and they jostled elbows in the middle of Kelly Boulevard. “But if I just leave the whole thing alone, he says, it’ll probably sort itself out. Still, I think he saw something, he just doesn’t trust me—” Aliya’s lower lip had jutted out, her face screwed up. “What? You’re the one who followed me here, now you don’t want to hear what I have to say?”
“‘Malevolent’ is not a word I’d use to describe Trevor.”
Ow. Gillian’s feet crashed into the opposite curb. “By the time I left, obeah man seemed pretty sure the malevolent one is me,” she said. Four steps down the sidewalk and her car finally came into view. Malevolent. Aliya was right, the word didn’t suit—wouldn’t have suited—Trevor. “Willful,” “whiny,” “white”—all were a better fit. Obeah man didn’t get Trevor, just the way he didn’t get her; all she wanted to do was set things right. And all Trevor wanted was to lime, party, have a good time. Nothing malevolent about that.
Almost there. Gillian clicked the unlock symbol on her key ring.
“Well? What are you going to do?”
Gillian took in the car parked right behind hers, up against the bumper. Aliya’s car, had to be. Stupid Gillian. Couldn’t you have looked in the rearview mirror just once?
“Do? What do you mean, what am I going to do? Go home and take a hot shower.” The getaway car at last. The door opened, but it wasn’t Gillian who’d opened it. Aliya. Climbing into the passenger seat.
“What are you doing?”
She didn’t answer. Gillian found herself inside, repeating the question.
“You haven’t told me anything, not even what your ‘none of your business’ with Trevor was.” Aliya ran her finger across the top of the door, found the lock and pressed it down. Click. “You think I’m going to just give up and fade away?”
Not anymore. Anyway, what difference did it make? “A prom business,” said Gillian. “Boys like Mac Stevens or Al Winthrop, guys who could never get a date, pay us to fix them up with someone really hot from another school. And now, hot girls from Fillmore, we’re fixing them up with boys from other schools. It’s been very . . .” She paused for the right word. “Lucrative.” She wanted to finish up by ordering Aliya out—but it hadn’t worked before, so why would it now? Sure enough, the chupidee was asking for details. Gillian slid the key into the ignition and pressed Play on the CD player. “Jumbie,” Road March winner at Carnival 2007, pounded against the doors and roof of the car. Jumbie. Too much coincidence for Gillian’s taste. She started the car. Music blaring, car ready to move—surely the fool girl would jump out? But of course she didn’t. Gillian drove smoothly down the tree-lined street, hit the corner, and only went faster. By the time she took a hard right onto Route 1, she knew exactly where she was going.
Aliya asked something else, but Gillian couldn’t make out more than a moving mouth with the music so loud. And then they were there, pulling up alongside a green house with an open front door and so many leaves in the driveway you could barely see the pavement.
Aliya’s mouth was still moving; she covered her eyes with her hands. Gillian turned the music down. “I can’t” exploded into the car. “His mother doesn’t even know me, and if she did, I mean, I just
can’t.”
“I’m not saying we should go in,” Gillian began. Then someone came out the front door, someone taller than Trevor, with glasses, but the same pointed chin and the same swinging, almost-an-athlete walk. “There’s Luke,” she said. “Have you talked to him?”
“I haven’t talked to anyone,” said Aliya. But she dropped her hands and leaned forward, watching him. Something moved across her face: quiet tears.
Luke wore a black cap pulled down on his forehead and a black backpack slung over his shoulder. Slung low, like it was heavy. Could he be carrying her money?
Gillian flushed in some kind of shame. Trevor was dead— 35 couldn’t she spend half a minute in front of his own house, mourning him?
Then Aliya was grabbing her arm—“Duck!” A car rumbled to life up the driveway as both girls pushed their heads down. Thwack. Gillian’s hit the steering wheel. Stupid wheel, stupid head, stupid, stupid, stupid Spygirl. The car roared past.
“Jeezan ages—”
“Well, what if he saw us?” said Aliya, sitting back up.
Gillian sat up too, checked her forehead in the mirror. Big red spot growing there already, damn it all. School counselors would be slipping her thin pamphlets with “Abuse: you can make it stop” on the cover for the next six weeks.
“Don’t just sit there,” said Aliya. “Follow him.”
“Follow him?”
Aliya leaned over and turned the key. Down the road, Luke’s car stopped at the stop sign. “Hurry up.”
“Are you crazy, or stupid?” But Gillian pressed her foot on the gas. “What, you think he’s headed out to a council with the jumbies?” She paused. “Ghosts, you know.” She was kidding—kidding—but she noticed Aliya didn’t tell her no. After a minute, the girl said, “Who knows, maybe Trevor contacted him, too.”
