Rise of the Jumbies

by Tracey Baptiste

  “It’s hot!” Corinne said. But she felt the accra turning in her stomach, threatening to come up.

  Kahiri held the snake out farther so that Corinne had no choice but to take it.

  “Owshhh!”

  “What did you say?” Corinne asked.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Kahiri said.

  “Sssqueeze sssofter, pleassse!”

  The only thing that could have been speaking to her was the snake. Corinne loosened her grip on the reptile.

  “Thanks,” it said.

  “What’s the matter?” Kahiri asked. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”

  “Spit over so,” the little snake said. “Please.”

  “Better do what it says,” said Sisi.

  “Better do what who says?” Dru asked.

  “The snake,” said Sisi. “It asked her not to throw up on it.”

  “Can you hear it talk?” Dru asked Corinne.

  Corinne could only nod. If she tried to speak, she was afraid she really would throw up. She took a deep breath and draped the snake around her neck carefully, trying not to shudder at the feel of its skin—like soft armor—against her own. She remembered the scales Mama D’Leau had put on her tongue and in her ears. Was this what they were for?

  Kahiri’s face relaxed. “Of course she can hear it,” he said. “She’s the goddess.”

  Corinne tried to set her shoulders back, to relax her muscles, but the unsettling feeling in her stomach would not go away.

  Kahiri tilted his head and squinted at Corinne. “More snakes would be better.”

  “Do you have any little friends, snake?” Corinne asked.

  “Why do you want us?” it asked.

  “Mami Wata always has snakes,” she said.

  The snake made little wriggling twists as it laughed. “You are certainly not Mami Wata!”

  Corinne squeezed the snake again and it stopped laughing.

  “I see how it is,” it said.

  Kahiri looked to where he had found the snake and uncovered a few small eggs in the sand. “Look,” he said.

  Corinne grabbed one of them. “Yours?” she asked.

  “That’s a nasty move!” The snake gave her a hard look with its green and black eyes, and Corinne felt her face flush. “It’s a snare!” it said, flicking its tongue. When Corinne didn’t put back the egg, the snake lowered its head. “How many of my friends do you need?”

  “As many as you can bring,” Corinne said.

  The snake wriggled until Corinne dropped it on the ground. It slithered off in the grass.

  “So now she can talk to snakes?” Bouki whispered. “Brother, this jumbie thing really has its benefits, doesn’t it?”

  Dru took the little egg from Corinne. “You wouldn’t have really hurt it, would you?” she asked.

  Corinne wanted to say that she would not have. But she had to get the jewel for Mama D’Leau. Her friends’ lives were at stake.

  21

  Try a Thing

  The long grass rustled and soft hissing grew louder. Corinne counted eleven snakes undulating along the bank. Her skin prickled, and despite the sun beating down, she shivered. As they got closer, the cacophony of voices hissed about a dubious rescue and enormous bullies and unseemly creatures stealing eggs. As they came out into the open, Corinne squeezed her eyes shut, wondering how so many fangs would feel sinking into her.

  “Silence, all of you!” the little snake snapped. The hissing died down. “Well, everyone’s present,” it said. “You will replace my descendants now?”

  “If you help me,” Corinne said.

  After the snake agreed, Dru and Kahiri carefully put the eggs back. Corinne put the first snake on her shoulders, then one by one she added the others. They flicked their tongues and slithered on her skin. Some got tangled in her loose hair, and others complained about how the buttons on her shirt scraped their scales.

  “I changed my mind,” Bouki whispered to Malik. “The jumbie thing maybe doesn’t have that many benefits.”

  Malik shrugged and reached out to touch one of the snakes.

  Kahiri and the mermaids talked, then he put his lips to the water as if he was getting a drink. Then the mermaids left, dragging themselves over the shallow spit to open water. “I told them it’s not safe close to the road,” he explained. “They asked me to look for their families, and they told me to put my lips to the water and call for them when I had something to say.”

  “Let’s go,” Corinne said.

  “What if this doesn’t work?” Dru whispered.

  “Sometimes you just have to try a thing,” Bouki said. He and Malik crested the little hill that separated them from the road.

  Corinne was aware of all the people staring at them the moment they were out in the open. Vendors’ mouths gaped with surprise or twisted with laughter, while some whispered behind their hands or called out to them loudly. Corinne didn’t understand most of what they said, but she didn’t need to know their words to understand what they were thinking.

  Kahiri ducked to avoid his mother and led them into the village. He walked ahead, seemingly unbothered by the attention, though most of the looks were directed at Corinne and the snakes writhing over her shoulders. As they went, a few people fell into step behind them.

  “How will you find out about their families?” Corinne asked, trying to take her mind off the small chattering parade.

  “They were taken on a slave ship,” he said. “I know that from the coin you gave me. So they lived here centuries ago. And Ababuo remembers that her family herded cattle. It’s not much to go on, but I know who to ask.”

  Corinne rubbed the spot where her own coin was, feeling the edges of it through the fabric of her pocket.

  “It would help to know how they came to be mermaids. How did you turn them?”

  “That’s not important,” Corinne said.

  “Watch her swerve from the facts!” hissed the first snake. “It was so . . . it was so . . .”

  “Obtuse?” suggested another.

  “Yes!”

  “She’s a liar.”

  “An impersonator!”

  “Such a slimy thing to do!”

  “Then where have you been all this time?” Kahiri asked.

  “I’ve been . . . I’ve been . . . there are other people who need my help, you know.”

  “Ha ha ha! No answer for that either!” a fat snake said, sliding over and under its friends.

  “Stop shifting!”

  “I’m only searching for some shade!” the snake complained. “It’s not nice to be exposed to all of this sun.”

  Corinne tried, unsuccessfully she was sure, to keep the disgust from her face.

  “Some people say no one has seen you for centuries. Some people say they see you all the time,” Kahiri continued. They turned down another road and Corinne still didn’t offer anything.

  Kahiri chewed on his bottom lip, then said, “Some people say you are only a made-up story.”

  Dru, Bouki, and Malik looked on silently, with concern growing in their eyes. Corinne felt hot and frustrated, and she wanted more than anything to fling the snakes off her neck. She stopped walking, and the little crowd behind them stopped as well. She leveled a steely look at Kahiri and blew breath from her nose like an angry bull. “If you know so much, you know that it’s improper to question me.”

  Kahiri became pale.

  “You’re lucky I’ve let you get away with it so far,” Corinne said. “But my patience is running out.”

  Kahiri gulped and moved faster. Then he asked, “Why don’t you speak Twi anymore? Your other . . . friends do.”

  “Maybe I . . . I forgot,” she managed to whisper.

  “You forgot,” Kahiri said loudly.

  Murmurs scattered through t
he crowd. Some sucked their teeth and shook their heads. Most dropped away, but a few children still skipped along.

  “Here reminds me of home,” Dru said.

  The wooden houses with galvanized metal roofs looked very much like the ones on their island, painted in bright colors, surrounded by yards filled with palm and fruit trees. Behind whitewashed open brick walls, children chattered and giggled. But here, the land was all flat. There were no undulating hills, the sweet scent of guava and sugarcane was absent from the air, and the salty smell of the sea could no longer reach them.

  “I know why you did it, I think,” Kahiri said to Corinne. “Why you turned the girls into mermaids.” He whispered the last part so only she could hear.

  “Why?” Corinne asked.

  “You were lonely,” he said. “There is no one like you. You wanted a family.”

  Corinne wondered if it was every jumbie’s habit to take family by force. But why else would Mama D’Leau have turned these four girls into mermaids, leaving others behind?

  “Kahiri!” Bouki snapped. “When are we getting there?”

  “Now,” Kahiri said. He pointed to a large white house at the end of the road.

  Corinne became nervous at the thought of convincing Ma Dessaly to give up the stone. The snakes slipped and slapped against her sweaty skin, making her shudder as they hissed complaints in her ears.

  “We are sweltering!”

  “My skin is shriveled!”

  “She is killing us on purpose!”

  “She won’t. She needs our help with this escapade. But still, watch for deception. She’s an egg-stealer, after all.”

  Kahiri opened the gate to a yard cooled by large fruit trees. He let only Corinne and her friends in, leaving the stragglers to peep through the painted wrought iron or the open brick of the white wall.

  The house was larger and fancier than the others they had passed. Corinne had never seen one like it. Everything was white. Its walls gleamed in the sun. There was a lower verandah covered in tile and another one above it. Corinne wondered how many people lived here. A teak tree loomed over the house at one side, and on the other, there were lime and soursop. But most impressive were the masses of bougainvillea that ringed the yard. The paper-thin pale pink and white blossoms shivered in the air. A few blew off the stems, brushing whisper-soft against Corinne’s skin. And even the little snakes seemed soothed by the cool calmness of Ma Dessaly’s yard.

  “εna mema wo aha!” Kahiri called.

  A woman wearing all white, from her headscarf to the wide, cotton dress that fell to her ankles, stepped out of the heavy wooden door and onto the tile verandah. She was tall and thick. Her feet slapped the ground and spread wide. Her hands went straight to her hips, making her look even wider and larger. “Hello, hello,” she began, and finished her greeting to Kahiri in Twi. But she tilted her head when she saw Corinne, and her greeting trailed off. A look Corinne could not describe came over her face. It didn’t feel friendly.

  Kahiri bowed his head slightly. “Someone has come looking for you.”

  Corinne took a step forward.

  “What’s that shaking?” the little snake asked.

  Corinne realized it was the thudding of her heart.

  “For me?” Ma Dessaly said, picking up Kahiri’s English. “What do you want, little girl?”

  “I have come back for the jewel,” she said softly.

  “Eh?”

  Next to Corinne, Dru, Bouki, and Malik were stiff as boards. But Kahiri pushed her forward. “Louder,” he whispered.

  “The jewel,” Corinne said. Her voice seemed to have squeezed out of a crack, starting small and getting too loud at the end.

  Ma Dessaly eyed Corinne as if she was crazy. “What jewel is that?”

  Corinne planted her feet wide to match Ma Dessaly’s and puffed out her chest. “You know which one,” she said. “Bring it to me.”

  Ma Dessaly’s large frame began to shake, and she shook her head. “You . . . you don’t look like what I expected,” she said. A giggle escaped from her, and she held her hand to her lips.

  Corinne tried to be still, but the more she tried, the squirmier she felt. Ma Dessaly wiped a few tears from her eyes and stopped chuckling.

  “Ma,” Kahiri said. “She really is the goddess.”

  Ma Dessaly folded her arms. “If I catered to every fool, crazy person, or trickster who came to this house, what position would I be in? Where is your mother, Kahiri? Does she know you came here to harass me?”

  “No, Ma,” Kahiri said quietly.

  The woman looked Corinne up and down. “And if you are Mami Wata, then you should be able to get by me and take what’s yours, not so? Go ahead. Try to find it.” She planted herself more firmly on the ground and arched one eyebrow to complete the challenge.

  Corinne dropped her head.

  “It’s wrong to impersonate a goddess,” Ma Dessaly said. “Whatever you think you are going to get will turn sour.” She shifted her weight to one leg. “Wo din de sεn? Who are you, really?”

  Corinne felt the wind knocked out of her. She didn’t know. She stammered something that didn’t sound like her name, or a goddess’s, or even Mama D’Leau’s.

  Ma Dessaly took two long steps and grabbed Corinne by the arm. The snakes slid off and one latched on to Ma Dessaly’s finger with its fangs. The woman spun and flung the snake clear across the yard.

  “Scatter!” the little snake called out.

  Ma Dessaly hopped out of the way as snakes slithered around her. She grunted and stamped her feet.

  “It’s an ambush!” the little snake yelled, and the snakes turned on Ma Dessaly. Her eyes went from fury to fear in an instant. She hopped and screeched like a frightened child. Her size and bulk brought her down hard on the ground. She slipped on the tail of one snake and fell back, crushing a bougainvillea. One of the snakes crawled in after her and she leapt out, screaming, “Stop them!” Her voice was several octaves higher than it had been moments before. “Get them out of my yard!”

  Bouki and Malik set off trying to scoop up the snakes, but Dru would only get close enough to push them with her sandaled foot. Corinne didn’t help.

  “What are you doing?” the little snake hissed. “Isn’t this what you wanted? A diversion?”

  “Yes, a ruse,” another snake said as it darted to a shady spot and let out a long sigh of delight.

  Corinne noticed that although her friends were scooping up snakes, they were putting them down again just a few feet away.

  Kahiri was standing at the door to the house. “Some got in here!” he yelled, and he waved at Corinne to follow.

  Ma Dessaly opened her eyes wide and tiptoed clumsily to the house with the hem of her dress gathered up in her wide palms, screaming, “Ah ah ah!” with each step.

  “Go on!” the little snake in the shade called out. “This subterfuge will only last so long. She will see it’s a scam and she will slaughter us for sure!”

  Corinne nodded and ran into the house after Kahiri. Ma Dessaly ran back out with a long-handled broom gripped over her head like a club. Corinne heard the scrape of the bristles against the stones outside and the crack of the handle amid a string of Ma Dessaly’s screams.

  The house was a large, open space with few places to hide anything. Ma Dessaly was clearly its sole occupant. Kahiri searched through cupboards. Corinne ran upstairs and looked through a bedroom, digging down into a woven basket of dirty clothes, all white. She tunneled under the bed and climbed up to high shelves but didn’t find the stone. She went to another room and saw Ma Dessaly through the window, swatting wildly with the broken broom at the slithering snakes, as Dru and Bouki moved them just out of her way. Malik dug in a corner. He was up to his elbows in red mud. He looked up at Corinne and shook his head. She continued searching but turned up nothing. Kahiri met her at the bottom
of the stairs. His hands were empty. The screaming outside had dissipated.

  “We have to go,” Kahiri said.

  Corinne nodded and ran out. She and Kahiri scooped up snakes as they went.

  “The escapade is over!” the first snake called. “Retreat!”

  “I hope this sorry episode was successful,” said a snake hiding in a puddle as Bouki snatched it up.

  The five children ran out of the gate with snakes swinging from their hands.

  “Scarcely,” the little snake said. “It was a disaster.”

  22

  Things Fall Apart

  Kahiri led them on a roundabout route down narrow alleyways, and through high grass that made their skin itchy, and murky, ankle-deep water that made their sandals ooze and squish. The moment they were close enough to the inlet where they had all met, the snakes twisted, launched themselves like springs out of the children’s hands, and made off, spitting out a litany of insults as they slithered away.

  “Gutless!”

  “Simpletons!”

  “Imbeciles!”

  They were far upstream from where they had met Kahiri; here the water ranged from knee- to shoulder-high. As the five of them waded through, the rocks at the bottom bruised their ankles, and their wet clothes and shoes chafed their skin. Kahiri kept opening and closing his mouth as though something was on his mind until Corinne finally snapped, “What?”

  “You are not the goddess,” he said slowly.

  “No,” Corinne whispered.

  “You are a crook, then. Like all the others who have tried to get Ma Dessaly’s stone.”

  “It’s not hers,” Dru said. “We didn’t lie about that.”

  Without looking at her, Kahiri said, “It is if the goddess left it to her.”

  Corinne stopped in a waist-deep spot. “We were sent to get it,” she said. “From across the sea. The mermaids brought us. They’re her mermaids. Not ours. We didn’t even know about them before yesterday. But it’s not Ma Dessaly’s stone. And if we don’t get it back, people are going to be hurt.”

  “People here will be hurt if you take it,” Kahiri said.