The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

by Junauda Petrus

  “Do you know what Life Wish is?” I ask Jazzy, after plopping in her ride and swinging my bag to the back seat. She is burning incense and it smell sweet. She has her hair in a box braid bob with she baby hairs in beautiful swirls on her forehead and by her ears. She rolls off into the early morning fog toward our school.

  “Good morning to you, too, boo. Nah, did you Google it?” Her eyes are trained on the road and she’s hunched over her wheel like Auntie Pearl do.

  “Oh, I sorry, good morning. Yes, I did; they supposed to give young people who is sick and dying something they want. When I was leaving today, Ms. Coco was talking to she sister about how they asked Mabel what she wanted and when they found out that she wanted to free Afua, they ain’t want to give it to she,” I say.

  “Hold up, wait, what?!” Jazzy pulls over. We is still a couple of blocks from school. She turns her body around and looks at me, and I can see she is really vex, same like I is, about this whole thing.

  “Afua, who is in prison, who write she the letter and wrote that book she love and reads all the time?”

  “Yeah, girl, remember we all reading that book now? That’s my new favorite book.”

  “Well, she asked Life Wish to let he free as she wish, and they won’t because of politics. Ms. Coco say she get so vex, she hang up on the stchupid woman who work there. Girl, I is so vex too when I hear this. Why won’t they even just try? She is dying and this is all she want: for she friend to live. These adults is just being stchupid and useless,” I say, and it really hit me when I say it out loud. That she wants to save he life.

  “Mabel is so dope for doing that! Damn, as usual, she ain’t even thinking about herself. I woulda been basic and ask for VIP tix to see the Minnesota Lynx and chill with them for a day. But not Mabel! She out here asking to save this man’s life. Sometimes I just can’t stand how unfair this whole dying thing is, ughhh!!” Jazzy is looking down at her lap. She starts shaking her head and then starts yelling and beating her steering wheel. “This ain’t fair!”

  I find myself start crying and screaming too with she. And we is sobbing and yelling. And then we just crying. We cry for we friend, and the tears come from deep, unstoppable and cleansing. We look at each other, and we is just crying and watching at each other. I know I is looking wild, but I feeling wild too. Jazzy face is all snot up and wet, she lipstick smear and she mascara make she look like a jumbie.

  And I ain’t know why, but it look funny and I start giggling, then try to stop it, but then it rumble out my body and I bus’ up laughing even harder. I never see she out of place in she face. And it feel good so I can’t stop. Jazzy start laughing too and yelping and screaming in laughter, then I laugh even harder ’cause now she sounding like a jumbie too. After a while, the car is fogged up and warm and my stomach is hurt from laughing and crying. Then we start exhaling loud with long sighs, like when you’re really laughing and you need to slowly pump the brakes down on it.

  “This our girl’s last wish on this planet. She just want to free a brethren who deserve to not live like he a slave ’cause of this Babylon system,” I say, and I holding on to my pouch underneath my sweater and I feel a tingle in my body, like flickers in my skin, like a current is in the car with us. “What if we plan a walkout at school?” I say. The idea pop out my mouth before I know what I’m talking about. I was remembering vaguely Mabel talking about another school walkout before.

  “Ooooooh, girl! YASSSSSSSSSS! Now, THAT’S an idea! Let’s do a walkout and get some attention for our girl and her wish. Show them there are no backsies on wishes, bitches! We finna get Mabel her wish reparations!” she says, and she start grinning real big and her excitement give me hope.

  “You think it could work? Like we could do it tomorrow?” I ask.

  “Honey, you know I got this, and Imma holler at Ursa. And Prism will be down, and the other student groups would love to help Mabel and Afua . . . Oooh, girl, we gon’ be in them hallways, like, ‘Mabel forever! Free Afua!’ And get people from band, just playing some jams with horns and drums, and we all loud as hell, clanging cymbals in the streets, like CRASH! CRASH! Wake up! CRASH! Get up out your house and get our girl her wish!” She pulls out she phone and start typing. “Lemme start texting homies and figuring it out. We should also talk to Ms. Sharkey and Mr. Trinh, because they could help us too and they really love Mabel. Audre, this is a really good idea. I think we at least have to try our best to get Mabel her wish and get Afua free.”

  “I feel that this is right, in my blood I feel it,” I say.

  “Aud,” she say, “I think about when we get older and doing our thing and figuring out life and get to be grown and move out or whatever, that Mabel—if she don’t live—won’t get to do that. This why this gotta work, so she feel like she will always live on . . . And no matter what, we gotta always be cool and connected to her and each other. Even if you is in Trinidad and I’m in South Africa, Ursa in New York, and Mabel is in heaven or in Black Eden. We will always be fam.”

  ARIES SEASON

  spring Ram

  child of the new leaves,

  beginnings and daybreaks.

  curled horns, fury and fire

  heat spiciness unveiled

  passion overwhelming energy to become

  the newness of all thing

  i am the first green

  bud within the seeming never-ending frost,

  seeking sun is the desire to erupt.

  a break into life, a possibility

  for lushness and becoming.

  the pop off, the sho nuff, the hotheaded uncle

  black knight. skin filled of fight

  the honey with the thick thighs

  in a red dress

  prepared to bring you to goddess

  through the fire making of rubbed thighs

  smiles and sacred lust

  i am the hot block

  the corner of action

  of possibility

  of tricksters

  of fools

  MABEL

  “CORNELIUS, I’d gladly buy that fight from you. I would love to bus’ someone stchupid ass today as a cool down from dance,” I say, stepping from behind a couple of bystanders who there to catch a fight between the Davida and Goliath of Laventille. It is evening, after my African and modern class. I is walking up into the small red brick and steel houses, green hills and dirt road by we house, and I humming, “Sun is shinin’,” my sandals getting coated and scraped by earth and rocks. I feeling free and irie after dancing for hours, but when I overhear commotion and I realize what going on, I jump in right away.

  Cornelius, a friend since I young, is the Davida, a skinny and red child who live downstairs from my auntie Norma’s rum shop. He fourteen like I am and always been an easy target because he small and does move like we girls and hang with us. He sometimes even would wear pieces of we girls’ clothes and is often prettier. And although Cornelius is small, he mouth big and he use it to curse and maco people who mess with he even if he get he ass cut. The Goliath in the mix is Earl, a mean, funny-face bully who live down the hill from we and think he a gangster. Earl fantasize he some kind of ladies’ man because he lie to everyone about pum-pum he getting from girls in Laventille, which he, in truth, ain’t the recipient of. He even fix he stchupid mouth to throw my name into the lie and that’s why I find myself impulsively volunteering to cuff down he tail in Cornelius’s place.

  “Elizabeth, I don’t fight girls, so mind yuh business, nuh,” he say, looking from me to Cornelius, he original victim.

  I slice my body between Earl and Cornelius and square myself in he gaze so he see I is serious. “But what if I does fight boys, Earl? What if I will pay money to stand in Cornelius’s place, so I can beat one specific, stchupid, dotish, arrogant, lying boy ass?” I ask.

  Cornelius with more sense than m
ost boys shamelessly slink away once I offer to defend he in battle. Earl look me down and size me up. I is lanky and muscular with no tut-tuts to speak of in my leotard and jeans and my little Afro. I go to the barber to make me look like Miriam Makeba. Earl peel he face into a hearty laugh at the idea of me as he opponent.

  “Yuh letting Elizabeth fight for you? This picky-head bitch is too ugly to do anything but fight,” he say, leaning into the space of dust Cornelius disappear from, while spitting “Elizabeth” into the air, the name that never feel like it belong to me and which no one, even me own granny, don’t call me.

  “I might need to whoop your ass, because ain’t no one teach you how to stay in yuh place as a woman,” he continues.

  “Fuck yuh mudda, Earl,” I say, upping the ante and listening for the crowd to gasp and egg we on at the fighting words, my mouth a reckless weapon. “I is waiting for you to put me in my place.”

  “All right, nuh. You leave me no choice, Eliza—” And before he finish insult me again with my birth name, I cuff he, springing on him like a panther, tired of he postponing the festivities. I whirlwinding and punching, kicking and scratching. When he grasp for my body, I swing my arm under he chin and twist he around to the ground, pretending I is Bruce Lee.

  “Get-t-t-t-t yuh ass off me before I whoop yuh, you crazy mudda cunt!” he says, choking words through the passageway I is blocking with my armpit on he throat.

  “Whoop me, nuh? I see you was about to beat up Cornelius, like he yuh rag doll. So whoop me, nuh!” I show he a mudda cunt.

  “Uhh-uh-h-h. I-I-I-I don’t. Fight-t-t-t. Girls! Stop . . . squeezing . . . my . . . neck . . . It’s . . . too . . . tight-t-t-t . . .”

  I is wrapped around he neck, like I is a boa constrictor, and I is cuffing any part of he I can grab with my next arm.

  “Tight as your pantie up your ass in a second if I hear again you telling people you and I fuck. I ain’t want no part of the frowsy sadness between your legs,” I whisper into Earl’s ear, as he struggles against my power like a trapped bug, choking and spitting against the air. Just then I hear Daphne’s voice crack my triumph with duty.

  “Queenie! Queenie! Bring your ragamuffin ass here! It’s Bamba Rose, she wander off again. Come let we find she!”

  My big sister is coming down the hill from by where we live, already swiftly headed in the direction of town. I, without hesitation, release my grip, giving Earl one last shove as I walk past he. “And, unless yuh name is Sister Mary Rose, I is Queenie to you, yuh understand? Go play with yuh self.” I throw the words behind me, cut through the crowd, and fly behind my sister to look for our beloved great-granny.

  * * *

  • • •

  Walking through the tracks and alleys of Laventille trying to keep up with Daphne, whose long legs and steady stride carrying she towards the main road, where we have found Granny in the past.

  “I thought when you turn fourteen you would be done fighting, Queenie,” Daphne say, glancing back at me.

  “You ain’t even know what happened.”

  “How is it I live my whole life and I figure how to avoid fights, but you is in one every week?”

  “Because people does have a problem with me . . . and this time, I was protecting Cornelius.”

  “No boys likes a girl who is always fighting in the street.”

  “Good. I ain’t want to deal with they foolishness.”

  “You say that now . . . ,” she says, like she know better.

  We walk up the road into the hills where Granny’s sister used to live, before she died giving birth to her eighth child, thirty years before I was born. The house still belong to our cousins. When we ask if Bamba Rose come through there like she sometimes do, none of them see she. We head down the hill until we pass by our auntie Norma’s bar. We ask she if she see we granny.

  “Yes. Headed to the panyard. She pass by here for a shot of rum,” she say. We thank her and keep searching.

  “Since when she does drink rum?” I ask Daphne, as we walk toward the panyard and the sky becomes dusk around the hills of our home.

  “Since today, I guess,” she says.

  “I ain’t know what is going on with she,” I lament, hoping for some commiseration.

  “Let we just find her first, Queenie,” she says with her usual non-distractible determination. Her pace, quick and steady, her hair pressed and curled neatly under her ears. Walking in silence behind my sister seems to be my permanent existence in this life.

  Our Bamba Rose is becoming a new woman as of lately, and it make she pick up and leave from time to time. From since we young, she would always be home. Watching we kids, she read she books, clean and cook around the house, and garden a lot. But she always right by we home. But since last year Granny wants to be in the street, telling nobody where she going. And we is the ones who must always find she. It is slowly becoming twilight, as we approach the yard, and we is already feeling the steel rhythms on the breeze. I sway a little feeling the pulse of softened metals in the melodies. In the yard there is a circle of drummers from all over Laventille, sweating and focused on the rhythms.

  Folks is there liming and enjoying the atmosphere. I can’t imagine where my granny would be within all of this. But then all of a sudden, we do see she. She have every piece of gold she owns gathered from her jewelry box and adorning her. And she is wining she waist like an expert, and she looking happy, smiling into the evening air, with a Carib beer in she hand. Daphne and I both pause by the entrance of the yard, watching our granny be a self we never see. I feel it almost wrong we seeing she, but also it make me smile. Was this wining always in Bamba? Daphne look confused too.

  “Uh, um, Queenie, we should get she, okay?” she say, like she is convincing she self.

  “Okay, Daphne. But we should probably let this tune finish, nuh?” I say, and she nods.

  When the song done we come close to Granny and she smiles at us with recognition.

  “Y’all is late! Yuh waste some real good bacchanal,” she say, sipping the last sip of her beer, her smooth and soft skin shining with sweat from the night heat.

  “You ready to come home?” says Daphne, lacing her arm with our great-granny’s and guiding her to the door. “Come with we nuh, Granny,” I say, while I lace my arm on her other side. When we walk out the yard, back home, a silver moon hangs fat, almost full on the horizon of Port of Spain. The mellow evening casts a blue on Granny’s dark skin, and all three of our feets slide forward in unison like ballerinas, moving at Granny’s pace.

  When we reach the house, Daphne goes in to work on she schoolwork, and I sit with Granny in the yard, we both ain’t ready to go inside yet.

  “When I little-little, I would have a particular dream over and over,” she say, her eyes is looking ahead into the past as she talks. “I is walking in the bush in Saint Vincent, by where I is born. I ain’t seeing nothing, it all dark but I feeling that is where I is. And everything is fuzzy and real shadowy, so I is barely seeing it, but like I say, I is feeling it,” she say. “I look above me and a set of glasses fall from the sky onto my face and then I is seeing everything around me and it beautiful shiny and sharp. That is when I start seeing things in my dreams, getting messages. Mmm-hmmm . . .” She close she eyes as a breeze drifts past us.

  “My grandmother from Senegal, I ever tell you? She prettier than night, tall and strong. My father born Saint Vincent, Black Carib,” she say. “They is who teach me how to deliver babies and release souls from wombs, heal people from they deathbed. They know how to cure everything from all the bushes that grow around where we live. You will know these things too.” She has the certainty only old people speak with.

  I is in she quiet. Listening to she thinking and she breathe and the birds and bugs awake to the evening.

  “My whole life I always wanted to know who I really is,” she say.

  “You
ain’t know who you is?”

  “I think I is still figuring it out, yes. Even this old. I live my whole life doing for other people; I only now seeing who I is. Life is hard for we women, because we strong and the world ain’t wan’ to love us for it. From since I young, I see it,” she say. A flock of corbeaux birds is flying around in the distance, carving the sky with their wings.

  “You know we brought we seeds and we Gods with us from Africa when we came? When they steal we, they work we people so hard.” She take a breath and grab my hand. “But we always fighting and killing and burning people who trying to control we souls. I ain’t want you to fight. You is free, Queenie,” she say. She look in the distance and start pointing beyond the sea.

  “We people come from the star tribe, you understand?” she say and I ain’t know what she mean, but I listening. She hands are shaping her story with the words, each finger have at least one gold ring on it and her wrists swing in gold bangles in the purple night.

  “We had to hide what we know and what we believe. We had to be free on the inside of we, where the white people couldn’t see it,” she say, and she eyes is piercing mine to listen to each of she words.

  “We read the sky and hear how the plants sing healings.” She grab a leaf from the bush on the side of we house and chew it up in she mouth. “This leaf is to remember your mother’s dreams.” She finish chew and then swallow. She still got every teeth in she head.

  “Bamba Rose. I think you look real, real good with all of your gold on, so.”

  “I always like gold. This all the gold people leave me over the years once they gon’ to glory without me. I never feel I could wear it. But today I decide I wan’ sparkle every day of my life, now.”

  “You is free, Great-grand. Yuh old, you is free,” I say, and she giggle at me.

  “You is free too. ’Cause I is ol’, I feel like people finally let me be.” She pause as if she is in thoughts far away from us and this time. “But you, Queenie. Don’t wait to be free.” And she smile at me, and I nod and hug she. We sit on top of Laventille and we both free. The runaway and the fighter.