A Phoenix First Must Burn

by A Phoenix First Must Burn (retail) (epub)

  Still, my mother doesn’t know about this game we play. I don’t know what she’d do to us, to me, if she found out.

  “Mr. Donald Hightower,” Lourdes says when she reaches us. “The Don for short. American. New York, I think. Rich, for sure. And he has his preferences.”

  “But I’m sick of consuming old rich white men,” Veronique whines. “I think they give me a rash.”

  “Ah, but the vengeance is so sweet!” Lourdes says, who’s all legs and teeth. The knee-length uniform fits her mid-thigh, and she’s always grinning wide-wide.

  “What has he done?” I ask. Lourdes is good for just throwing out names for our game. She thinks it gives her an edge, but it doesn’t. “We don’t go after innocent men, no matter how rich, no matter how white.”

  “Ha! Old rich white men and the word innocent don’t belong in the same sentence, Solange. Especially if they’re here in Kiskeya. We all know they come for holiday to titillate their shriveled-up, incompetent loins with the likes of us—Black island girls, tender and sweet. Again, his name is Donald Hightower, and he’s staying in the Tropical Suite at the Golden Sun Resort. How long until sundown?”

  “We have another one. So we’ll have to take a vote on who we aim for first. What is Gerard’s full name, Giselle?” Martine says.

  “But wait, I want to know what Donald Hightower did. A cheating island fisherboy can’t be as bad as an old rich white American man,” I say.

  “The better question is who did he do?” Lourdes responds. “Stefanie. Let them see your face.”

  We all turn toward down the hill because none of us is named Stefanie. Soon, a light-skinned girl wearing a bright pink sundress appears. Her hair hangs over her bare shoulders in narrow ringlets, and her lips are a deep rose, naturally probably. When she steps closer, I notice the brown freckles dotting her cheeks.

  “Why did you bring her here, Lourdes?” I shout. My own voice startles me. The words burst from my lips like rolling thunder. “We don’t need to see the victims. Your word is enough.”

  “Ah, Solange. She is not just a victim. Stefanie, why don’t you—”

  “Why don’t you let her speak for herself?” Martine asks.

  The light-skinned girl clears her throat and raises her chin to say, “Lourdes says that I am one of you!” Her voice is like caramel, too soft and too sweet to be anywhere around us on a night like this.

  We all laugh. Every last one of us. The joke resonates so deeply that we become a chorus of laughter—a harmonious melody forcing our bodies to bend forward as we hold our tight, aching bellies from the sheer ridiculousness of what this sun-yellow girl has just said.

  “Bullshit,” I say. I’m the first to wipe the smile off my face and stare the girl down. “How dare you? We will devour you right here if you’ve come to insult us, little girl.”

  She steps back, but it’s Lourdes who shields her. “Do you want her to show you?” Lourdes asks.

  “Impossible!” Martine says. “She’s too pale. Soucouyant are black like night. It’s the only way to hold the fire that lives in us. This sponge cake of a girl will burn her own skin if she starts to shed.”

  “If I start to shed?” the yellow girl says, and in an instant, that familiar soucouyant red-orange glow begins to pulse beneath her pale skin. “Lourdes tells me that you have a race and there’s a prize. I want to play.”

  We all gasp—one collective inhalation of the warm island air.

  “She’s faking it!” Veronique shouts.

  “It’s a trick!” another girl hisses.

  “You can’t play,” I say. “We don’t know where you’ve come from, and you are not of soucouyant stock. We don’t have any pale skins among us. The prize for this game is to have kissed the sun and become even darker than we already are. Our mothers know to check the tips of our ears when we are born to make sure that we will be dark-dark, as if we’ve been hugged by the island sun. If you are indeed a soucouyant, your own soul would’ve burned you alive when you first started to shed at the age of nine. You are too light. Your skin defies tradition. You can’t take the heat.”

  “But I am here,” Stefanie says. “I did not die. I did not burn. Let me race you. All of you. I will prove to you what I am.”

  “Please, Solange,” Lourdes says, coming closer to me. “We have nothing to lose by letting her race. If she’s not a soucouyant and she sees us shed tonight, I will personally handle her.”

  I make sure to look deep into Lourdes’s narrow eyes. The splotches on her face have cleared up. I almost slapped some sense into her when we found out she’d been bleaching her skin. Doing such a thing as a soucouyant is like suicide. She’s always been the hungriest of us all—the first to shed and the last to get back into her skin, never even trying to get close to the sun. She just wants to feast. This hunger for souls is her weakness, as well as her hatred for her dark skin. She loses focus while flying. Too eager. And maybe, too trusting of this light-skinned girl.

  “Vote!” I shout to the girls. It’s always been the nine of us, with the rest of the soucouyant girls on the island doing their own thing. No one has ever asked to join our race until now. So if this yellow girl wants to join us, I know that it is vengeance she seeks. And maybe, just maybe, she wants to be kissed by the sun, too, and make her skin darker, like it ought to be.

  “Our ice is melting,” Veronique says. “Did our visitor bring her own? That will determine how we vote.”

  “I don’t need ice,” Stefanie says.

  “So what do you do with your skin while you fly?”

  “That is my business,” she says.

  With that, we let her be. Our great-grandmothers used to store their skin in wooden mortars. That was when the air was pure and not polluted with all kinds of chemicals and toxins. That was also when the island people didn’t know where to find us to steal our skin. Now we have to keep our skin cold in ice, away from the harsh elements, so it doesn’t shrivel up into a floppy mess. And we have to stay hidden deep in the hills. The protest tonight is also a welcome distraction. The other five girls have rolled an even larger cooler up the hill, and they’ve already agreed that they would share it. I have my own ice-filled cooler. Giselle is the only one left without somewhere to keep her skin cold. So I offer.

  “No. I’ll be fine,” she says. Her eyes are fixated on Stefanie. “It will be a short race.”

  I glance back at the light-skinned girl before picking up my cooler. I notice how Lourdes is all over her, pointing to the sky, toward the moon, and showing her the best path to the sun when he begins to creep out from his palace beneath the sea. “Just over that huge flamboyant tree at the edge of the third hill,” she says.

  I look back at Giselle. Still, she stares at this girl out of the corner of her eye. It’s not suspicion painted on her face. It’s something else. Something much worse.

  “Vote!” I yell again. The girls pause and look at me. “We have Gerard . . . What is his last name, Giselle?”

  “Pierre-Louis. He lives in one of the jalousies along the Petitville hill,” she says with her voice as distant as the moon.

  “Gerard Pierre-Louis of Petitville, and Donald Hightower, an American tourist and businessman.”

  “What are their crimes?” someone from Lourdes’s group asks.

  “Infidelity and—”

  “Attempted rape,” Stefanie says with her brows furrowed and her fists clenched.

  “Rape,” I repeat quietly while looking at Stefanie. I swallow hard and nod at her—a silent apology on behalf of my mother. As owner of the resort, she’s supposed to keep all girls safe from those preying tourists and businessmen. But the fisherboys not only cheat, they help those men and women get whatever it is that they want for the right price, including girls.

  “Surely, rape is much worse than a philanderer, Solange,” Lourdes says. “We aim for the Don first.”
r />   “The Don or anybody else like him would not even think to touch us girls if it weren’t for the fishermen and their sons,” Martine says. “Traitors!”

  “Does it even matter?” Stefanie shouts.

  “Oh, a temper,” Martine says. “I guess maybe you are a soucouyant after all, but I’ll have to see this.”

  “Okay, enough!” I say. “Stefanie, you can’t vote. We need an odd number in case we have a tie. Plus, we don’t trust you yet. All in favor of aiming for the Don . . .”

  Six hands raise, including Giselle’s.

  “All in favor of Gerard the fisherboy . . .”

  Martine and Veronique raise their hand.

  “There. I don’t need to vote. You’ve made your decision,” I say. “Thank you, Lourdes.”

  She smirks, only looking at Stefanie and not me.

  “No. Thank you,” Stefanie says.

  Then I clear my throat and raise my chin. “Let me repeat the rules: Shedding is a solitary act. Please give each other enough privacy. Keep your moans and groans to a minimum. The best way to deal with the pain is to bite down on a piece of cloth and grunt if you need to, or take deep-deep cooling breaths. The start of the race begins at the moment of shedding. Take flight as soon as you are fully formed. Remember, our smoke consumes the souls, not our flames. Please don’t burn down my mother’s resort, or else we all lose much more than this race. If you have the name of the first victim, then you know the face and the location. Your fire instinct will guide you. Asking for more information will be cheating. And no, it would not give you an edge. Your anger does. The hungrier for vengeance, the quicker the shedding, the faster the flame. So, inhale the soul for energy, fly fast and fly far, touch the moon, kiss the sun. Stay up there for as long as you can until the earliest signs of daybreak. Fly as close as you can. If you kiss our beloved, bring back some of that sunfire with you. We will only know the winner once we’ve all settled into our skins. The darker the skin, the closest to the sun. In the unfortunate event that you do not reach the victim in time, you know what to do, and keep it to yourself. Our first victim is Donald Hightower, nominated by Lourdes. The Golden Sun Resort. Tropical Suite.”

  “Is that all?” Stefanie asks.

  “Oh, this game is too easy for you?” Martine says. “You are free to leave, you know.”

  “What she means is”—Lourdes interrupts—“I made it sound much more complicated than that.”

  “You told her the rules before you even brought her here?” I ask, but I put up my hand so Lourdes doesn’t respond. I don’t need to hear her excuse. I will know what her true intentions are soon enough.

  A loud bang makes us all jump, and we turn our heads down the hill. More flames are raging on the streets as night falls over the island. The National Guard trucks are rolling into town from the capital. I’m sure my mother is looking for me right now. All our mothers are. But they also know that this is the night we feast. We are safe. Others are not.

  Someone hisses. It’s Veronique. The skin around her arms glows and begins to bubble up like molten lava. She quickly runs behind a bush, leaving Martine to drag the cooler to where they’ll be shedding.

  Beads of sweat form on Giselle’s forehead. She knows better than to fan herself. She’s one of the lucky ones who gets to sweat while she sheds. It eases the pain. She looks around for a spot. Soon, she’s out of my sight.

  Almost all the girls are, except for Lourdes and her friend. She’s helping her with her clothes. “Careful now, you don’t want to burn them,” Lourdes says.

  I squint to get a better look at the two of them now that darkness is beginning to wrap around us. “What are you doing, Lourdes? This is a race, and we’re not on teams.”

  Lourdes raises both her hands off Stefanie. “You’re right. Stefanie, this is your race to win. Good luck, child.”

  But Lourdes doesn’t stray too far from her. Stefanie sits on the ground with her legs crossed and simply stares out into the late-evening air as if she’s meditating. Soon, she is all red. Her skin doesn’t bubble like ours does. It’s like blood. Smooth. Liquid. She’s quiet and still as if her skin will simply melt off without her even crying out in pain.

  My shedding starts at the bottom of my feet—a tingling sensation, then it’s as if I’m standing on hot coals. I have to slip off my sandals. I can’t even stand. I find a spot behind a lime tree where I can still keep my eye on the new girl and Lourdes, and from where I am, I spot Giselle, who is also watching Stefanie.

  Shedding is several simultaneous sharp, grazing pains as if many knives are peeling away my skin from bottom to top. I used to sob like a baby, the pain was so unbearable. It moves up my legs, and that burning sensation reaches my bones, where I can feel everything start to melt into thick liquid. We are volcanoes when we shed. Heat rises up from the pit of our bellies until our souls combust into flames.

  I waver between clenching my jaw and fists and taking in deep breaths. I don’t follow my own rules by biting down on the balled-up hem of my skirt. At this point, I can either submit to the pain or fight it. The worst part of it all is when I hear my soucouyant sisters cry out in agony. Our collective hearts are melting into bloodfire. To the island people, we are the sounds of the warrior ancestors who succumbed to the great big revolution that drove out the colonizers centuries ago. That is not true. We never succumbed. We are still here.

  Do you know how hard it is to not be able to release pain with our voices, to not be able to scream into the air with hopes that the deep aching will finally release us from its deathly grip? Our very breath has become like tiny grains of cayenne or Scotch bonnet seeds. Everything burns. Until it doesn’t.

  Shedding human flesh is liberating.

  In the frenzy of it all, I had opened the cooler and sat my round behind on hundreds of cubes of ice, and that is where my skin rests as I combust into a blazing flame, crackling and whipping the warm night air.

  Four girls have shed before me, and one of them zooms up into the now starlit sky, aiming for the Golden Sun Resort. I stay high enough above the treetops, searching for the light-skinned girl. She’s still there, slowly turning into a dim firelight barely strong enough to take flight. Ah! That’s the only way she’s still alive, poor girl. Her flames don’t burn as bright, as hot. She’s not a fireball, she’s a lit matchstick of a soucouyant, if I can call her that, and here she is wanting to be part of this race.

  I press my fireball body against the night air and begin to aim for the resort, but the presence of two soucouyant flames keeps me where I am, circling the hill and careful that my flames don’t lick the treetops. Stefanie has completely shed now, and she leaves her skin at the edge of a bush. Her flame is still a dull, yellow-orange ball of potential. She flies past me, slowly, as if the air itself is molasses. Poor child.

  But it’s not Stefanie’s weak flight that makes me pause. Lourdes and Giselle have already shed, but they’re circling the hill just as I am. They’re not joining the race. I fly higher so that I am above them, watching. I’ve never won a race, because I’m always keeping an eye out for any cheating. Of course, we don’t have eyes out of which to see, or lips out of which to speak, but as flames, we still have feelings and intuition. We are still living energy, another state of matter. We are humans become gas, so we still have to eat.

  I’ve never seen a soucouyant stay behind while a feast of human souls awaits. Sometimes, our hunger for any human soul is sharper than our thirst for vengeance. None of us would give up consumption for anything. Even if we didn’t reach our voted victim, we would feast on our own and not mention a word of it to anyone. The human we’d consume would be our own secret.

  But there are no humans left on that hill. What are Lourdes and Giselle waiting for?

  Then I spot it—Stefanie’s skin left unprotected on the cool ground. No ice, no cover, no guard.

  I watch as Giselle and Lourd
es circle each other. Giselle’s flame is mostly blue, her hunger and vengeance much deeper than Lourdes’s, who is an even mix of orange, yellow, and turquoise. Her crackling flames extend much farther than Lourdes’s, too. It looks as if she’s out for blood and soul, except it’s not the Don’s or even Gerard’s. The second that Giselle shoots for the ground, I know for sure that she’s out for skin. New skin. Stefanie’s skin.

  Lourdes lunges right behind Giselle, and immediately, I aim for the both of them. My flame latches on to theirs when I reach them, but they are too strong, too angry, and they roll out of my grip.

  But Lourdes catches up to Giselle, and the two flames become entangled until they look like one giant, rolling fireball. I throw myself into their chaos, but their battle is so fierce, so hot that I bounce right off them as if they’ve become a solid bubble of flames. They’ve encapsulated themselves so that nothing can penetrate their little war.

  I can no longer tell them apart. Soucouyant energy is like a human face. The way the flames dance and how the colors reveal themselves tell us who is who. But it’s as if one flame has consumed the other. Soucouyant are souls, too. But this is a taboo, one of only two. We do not consume the flaming soul of a sister soucouyant. We do not enter the skin of a sister soucouyant. These are not simply the rules for our game. It is tradition. It is a mandate from our foremothers.

  Hunger pounds against my soul, and I’m sure by now that one of the soucouyant has reached the Don. He is probably a shell of white man now, body and no breath. It’s time for me to feast, but my sisters are locked in a tiny war for a light-skinned girl’s skin.

  In an instant, I recognize Giselle pulling away from Lourdes, and she quickly descends to the ground, as flame, then as firelight, then as soul. The skin suctions around the soul, and it fits like a sock to a foot. Skin doesn’t discriminate. It needs a soul, any soul, just like a soul needs skin so it can become fully human.

  Lourdes flies away, and I am left alone to watch Stefanie’s skin become Giselle’s body. She curls herself into a fetal position on the ground, hunger gnawing at her core because she hasn’t feasted, and she begins to weep.