The Unholy Trinity
Hunched-backed and graying but with eyes that pierce the darkness, Bonita
rises from her bed, steadies herself with her cane made of roughly-hewn poui,
shuffles over to the rocker, and picks up her sewing. With so much on her mind,
she finds it difficult to sleep tonight. Time is running short and she’s not
ready. In two weeks they all have to
leave this Socorro Valley -- the only home they have ever known .
Bonita wonders whyeveryone is so resigned to their fate. They say it’s
God’s will. But not her God.
She pours rum in libation to Yemanya, and to her forbears who came here
to clear forests, and give birth to all these cocoa estates. Indigenous
Guarajuns, Spanish, French,
Indian, and
African, all melded together in harmony for two centuries -- the living, the
dead, and those yet to come. She brings the bottle to her lips, thinking, “This
is our place, el lugar de nosotros,
and if we must go, there’ll be hell to pay.”
In this cradling place, with its tall wafting bamboos, cool Immortelle
shade, and the pungent smell of rotting cocoa leaves and overripe sarapia, she
was born, lived her whole life, and raised eleven children. The first, Virgie,
passed away during childbirth the same night of the pronouncement. Virgie’s
unnamed stillborn has joined the unbaptized Douens,
committed to roam in limbo for all eternity.
Now she must leave them all to make way for the dam the governor says he
is building.
Somebody will have to suffer.
Miguel, the husband Virgie left behind, no longer calls out to Bonita or drops
in on his way home from work. He has started staying out late, drinking,
running the streets -- no doubt scattering wild seed where he owns no garden,
leaving the children to fend for themselves. Bonita wonders in whose bed he is
tonight. She adjusts the white jersey headtie she always wears wrapped tight
around her head, like a mapipire, coiled and ready to strike.
“Hmm. He better watch that reckless behavior.”
While her husband, Ignacio, recovering from the heart-attack he got on
that fateful night, snores on, Bonita picks up the memory mat she is making. It
is coming along nicely – almost done, but not quite. The underside is smooth,
but the topside, with its knots and loose ends of many colors and textures, is
the side that everybody sees and wonders what the hell she is doing. When it’s completed, it’ll make perfect
sense. They’ll see. Virgie’s wedding
dress, her shroud, a piece of the altar cloth from their now-dynamited Santa
Ana church -- each strip represents a different vignette of their life in this
place. This one is for Nella, Virgie’s
firstborn, the one that reminds her of herself: the same feisty glint in her
eyes and the same hot-blooded bacchac temperament.
Bonita glances over at the makeshift window.
Hmm. Full moon tonight. This is
her favorite time.
There is an unnerving stillness around her. On nights like this all
decent people remain ensconced in their homes. And every zandolee finds its
hole. On nights like this, they say, the gathering of dark night people under
the big silk cotton Ceiba tree at the Cascabel Junction near Bonita’s house, is
especially populous.
Bonita feels the mat slip from her hands. Her needle falls silent. She
nods off. Strips of cloth scatter across
the floor. The rum bottle lies on its side, spilling its contents.
And now her three protectors emerge ready for action. The Unholy Trinity
rises from the colorful swirl and beckons her to join their assembly under the
silk cotton tree.
“Hmm. Everybody - toute moun --
better watch they arse.”
**
The matriarch, Sukuya, rum bottle in hand, draws herself up to full
height. She has not sucked salt; she can fly. No longer the bocey-backed target of their jeers, she
now flaunts by night the very power they deny her by day.
With one shrug of her bony shoulders, she frees herself of her old,
shriveled up black skin and steps out from behind the thick trunk of the Ceiba
tree.
Sukuya spreads her wings and takes to the sky like a batti-mamzelle, a fiery dragon-fly,
whizzing away in search of that haughty governor and his hoity-toity wife. They say the abettor is worse than the
thief. Her voice cracks as she sings her sweet lavway,
“Show no mercy.
Sans humanité.”
Sukuya lands on the green sloping roof of the pretentious mansion wedged
between the Savannah and the Botanical Gardens.
She enters through one of the hundred windows they say it has, though no
one has bothered to count – or close. The mansion erupts in pandemonium.
“Oh, Lord, sir! It don’t look good for she at all,” Priscilla, ebon black
and buxom, cries, hustling necessities into Lady Audrey’s ornate boudoir with
its heavy gold brocaded drapery.
“That big blue mark on she leg. Is Sukuya that suck she. Open a scissors
in the form of a cross under she pillow, sir.”
“What nonsense, Priscilla!” Si Liam Lester says. “You people are so
superstitious. Come. Check her temperature while I call Dr. Sellier. And stop
mumbling all that primitive rubbish.”
He paces the room, worry lines complicating the look of permanent
aloofness on his face. His navy terry-cloth robe and his blue pin-striped
pyjamas seem in disarray; his hair lacks
its customary severe, slicked-back shine.
He cannot explain the mark either.
Lady Audrey’s hallucinating and running a fever that isn’t responding to
Paracetemol. Priscilla hovers over her applying cold compresses to her
forehead.
“Sir, you want me rub she down with warm soft-candle and put more
blankets to sweat the fever out?”
“No more silly old wives’remedies, Priscilla. The doctor’ll be here
shortly.”
Lady Audrey lies curled in a fetal ball in the middle of the huge canopy
bed. Her hair is tousled, her face wan, her eyes dark, sinking into a vortex of
ever-deepening circles. With unexpected strength, she leaps toward Liam and
latches on to him with the tenacity of a tree frog. Priscilla pries her away,
and guides her back to the bed.
“It must be about 102 or more now,” Priscilla says, touching the back of
her hand to Audrey’s forehead.
Liam pours his fourth stiff drink of the night-- Johnny Walker Black on
the rocks -- and downs it with one loud gulp. Strange things have been
happening since he revealed his plans for the dam project.
“As soon as this crisis is over,’’ he tells Sellier, “ I’m requesting a
transfer.”
Sellier, a short, rotund man with
horn-rimmed glasses, yellowing teeth, and a balding, mottled scalp, shows none
of the local deference for Liam’s gubernatorial authority. He slaps Liam on the
shoulder and shouts, “Cheer up, old chap. It’s just one of the usual viruses.
This is the tropics, you know. She’ll be up and about by tomorrow, I
guarantee.”
Audrey is asleep now. Priscilla
escorts Dr. Sellier out, and Liam goes to the decanter again.
Sukuya watches while he downs four more, before slumping into an almost
supine position in the Victorian wing chair, barely aware of his surroundings.
She takes the glass from his hand, finishes the contents, then dashes it to the
floor.
In glee, she mounts him and begins her slow, sinuous ride. “Sans humanité.”
He does not hear her raucous laughter when, sated, she lets herself out
through the same window by which she came; he does not see the ball of fire
zinging across the midnight sky.
Back at home base, Sukuya begins to sing her verification formula to
re-enter her discarded skin.
“Skin, skin, you know me? You know me old skin?”
Then she stops.
“No. Not yet. We still have work to do.”
***
Not too far from there, near a mossy rock jutting out sharply from the
Socorro River, Madame Mamaglo surfaces, fortified with rum, and lifts her full
bosom to the wind.
“Woohoohooohoohoohoo!” Her warbling laughter is as rippling and chilling
as the river that is her home.
In her diaphanous seaweed-colored negligee, she throws back her head, and
shakes pearls of water from her waist-long, tangled tresses. She sits on the
rock drying her scaly backside. La vie
est bon. Life is good.
She has accomplished much today –things that could neither be postponed
nor delegated – water sources to guard, water courses to traverse. There’s
always something. If it isn’t a greedy fisherman, it’s some untrained
schoolchild who has not been taught the virtues of conservation, or some
over-zealous colonial offical out to gain political mileage from dam-building.
But this dam . . . is damned.
“Whooohooohooohooohoohoohoo!” Her laughter is scandalous, bacchanalian
even.
She had fun today: prodding every subject to come to life at her
bidding, caressing every leafy green
lizard fond of enjoying its mating rituals in the sun.
“And they better not touch one scale on anything that swishes a fin in
these watery depths.”
Mamaglo settles down to await her serpentine lover, Monsieur Macajuel.
Whenever they come together all who dare disturb the peace of her watery home
are sent skating on their way to forever.
This is where Andrews unwittingly encounters her later as she lies
intertwined in Macajuel’s love embrace.
Andrews, the tall lingay one
with the raw pink complexion, red bushy beard and angular body, pauses, takes
off his hard hat and wipes his brow where his sweat-soaked hair has dripped its
excess.
Although it is late, the heat is still punishing. Mamaglo knows him well.
His name is really Andrew. But he has come to understand that for a nobody to
get some respect among these British expatriate workers, you have to add an
‘s.’ Immediately thereafter, the name stops sounding like that of a mischievous
brat. Now, when the word ‘Andrews’ is uttered, the ‘Mr’ automatically attaches
itself as fitting prologue. He likes that.
But the tropical heat here does not care where one stands on the social
ladder, and neither does she. “Sans humanité.”
Andrews shrugs off his khaki shirt
and bares his scrawny chest. He hacks up
a wad of yellowish brown phlegm laced with tobacco juice and spits it as far as
the wind will carry it. Mamaglo, still basking in the afterglow of her amorous
entanglement, ducks sideways and lets it whizz past to land inches from her
tail-fin. Narrow-eyed, she watches as Andrews stoops to test the temperature of
the water. Frigid and refreshing, she knows, just the way these Northern types
like it. Andrews splashes some of the icy water on his face and calls over his
shoulder,
“Taking a swim, Cor Blimey!” His pallid body slices its way into the
murky pool and disappears.
“Ça
c’est couyon! What a fool!”
Deep within her, excitement bubbles like fizzy champagne in celebratory
ascent. Andrews doesn’t know it yet, but tonight he will mate with her in her
watery bed. She will instruct him in many things. She knows Macajuel, now
stretched out somewhere deep in sleep after having his fill, will not mind.
Mamaglo throws her head back, licks her lips, and traces her fingers
lingeringly along the voluptuous lines of her cleavage, all the while shivering
in anticipation. Let him ramajay,
show his motion now; she is not in any haste. Poke-a-poke, little by little, she will catch up with him.
Then, with élan, and sleek, unhurried grace, Mamaglo slips under in
pursuit of him. Unlike Andrews, she has
plenty of time.
***
Right there on the Cascabel Junction bridge that marks the Crossroads entre la vie et la mort, between life
and death, Mademoiselle Lajablesse sits waiting, cross-legged and demure.
Her sisters have taught her well.
Lajablesse likes the shady comfort of night and its element of surprise.
She takes a swig from the petit-quart she carries hidden in her bosom, adjusts
her frilly skirt to conceal her one cloven hoof and serpent tail, and snickers
as the time draws near.
This is the moment she has been salivating for. Tonight he will be all
hers. She will teach him a lesson he’s not likely to forget. “Sans humanité.”
But wait. He is nowhere in sight.
Always the impatient one, she goes in search of him.
She finds Miguel lying spread-eagled on his back in that woman’s bed, his
naked body draped haphazardly across the
bed, the covers long gone. He is staring at the ceiling, letting his thoughts
ascend to what he thinks is the nothingness above.
“Man, that was a wicked session last night,” he shares aloud with the
emptiness. “You ain’t see how Virgie come alive? Since when she enjoy this
thing so much? Time for Round Two.”
“Round Two? Eh eh! You’re mine now.”
Lajablesse cackles.
She cannot resist his olive skin, soft curly hair, his god-like features,
his hard muscular body glistening in evidence of earlier exertions. She bends down and touches her lips to his,
letting her tongue linger a while to lap up his sweetness. She moans as the
tips of her breasts brush against his chest. It’s torture to wait any longer.
“Levé! Levé! Get up, m’sseur lover-boy, get up!”
Miguel stirs as he feels what he must think is a little bug of some sort
roaming on his body, tickling his moustache. His free hand goes up to brush
away the disturbance. The woman nestled in his arms stirs. Miguel is fully awake now.
“But wait! Ain’t Virgie dead?
So who the hell is this?”
He looks down and his face grows pale. It is Schoolteacher Dorothy, the
one they call Uglita. She has been pining after him for years.
Lajablesse can tell he is wondering what he is doing sleeping with this
woman he can’t even bear to look at by day. He springs up from the bed, pushes
her to the far side, hauls on his faded dungarees, and bolts without a backward
glance. He has forgotten to take his boots. But no power on earth could make
him go back now.
At the Cascabel bridge, he rests his eyes on this gorgeous
caramel-colored creature sitting there in red satin dress with cinched waist
and long billowing black petticoats that kiss the ground. Her wide-brimmed straw chapeau shrouds much
of her face. Despite his resolve, he
feels the usual tightening in his trousers. Lajablesse lowers her eyes. Miguel
whistles a low catcall, but says nothing.
Lajablesse jumps up and comes to stand within a hair’s breadth of him,
rubbing her palms up and down his thighs, her expert fingers teasing him with
the promise of more to come.
“I could walk with you?” she asks, her voice coy, coquettish, seductive;
her eyes downcast.
He nods, his heart romping apace like lappe
on the run.
They fall into silent step. His manly hackles are on alert; she feels the
heat emanating from his loins. He is breathing hard, no doubt racking his brain
for something clever to say. Lajablesse is eager to plant her kiss of death.
But she must wait. After all, this is only the foreplay. Her love nest, from
which no man has returned to give report, awaits just beyond the mountains.
The wind stirs up a whiff of her
faint powdery perfume. It is the unmistakable scent of death flowers these
villagers have wisely learned to fear. She must be careful.
But too late.
Beads of icy perspiration appear on Miguel’s brow. His eyes search for a
way to escape.
Then he
remembers. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out an Anchor Special and puts it
between lips that tremble under the unaccustomed weight of long-forgotten
prayers. He strikes a match. He must know she is afraid of fire -- and even
more, of prayers.
Instantly, she vanishes from his sight.
Miguel rushes home in record time and collapses just inside the front
door, her eerie, mocking laughter still ringing in his ears.
“Kya-kya-kya! You lucky you ain’t talk or I would have gone with you.”
***
Way past midnight, Bonita awakens, rubs her blurry eyes, stretches,
twisting her neck this way and that to lubricate the bones along her aging
spine. A haunting talcum aroma teases her senses. She gathers her rum bottle
and scattered scraps. Across the way,
she sees the lights go off in Miguel’s house.
“Hmm. That strange. He home already?”
She folds away her precious handiwork and crawls into bed beside her
Ignacio, who never strayed even after all these years. She is feeling aroused
tonight -- like on all full moon nights.
Next morning, Bonita is sitting on the low wooden bench in her front
yard, sewing and sipping her rum-laced coffee, when Miguel comes through on his
way to work.
“Hmm. Long time no see. Early night last night?”
“Yes, ma. Ain’t no use running from grief. Only get you into more
trouble.”
Her chuckle mingles with the last sweet drops in her demi-tasse.
“Another worker drown in the dam
last night,” Miguel says. “ And the news
say the governor’s wife pass away in her sleep, and he self in hospital. Like
somebody put a good cut-arse on him.”
“Hmm. They musn’t mess with what they ain’t put down. I tell you, that
place cursed. They will never finish that dam. Mark my words.”
He shrugs. “Well, later, Ma.”
“Hmm.”
Bonita wonders why everything she has just heard has such a familiar ring
to it.
She knots the last pieces into place – strips of gold brocade, sea-weed
colored rayon, navy terry-cloth, blue pin-stripes, khaki cotton, faded denim,
white jersey -- all tied together into the crocus bag base with threads that
look like strands of corded hair.
Bonita holds up her tapestry to the light.
There, in a blaze of vibrant color, la
trinité sans humanité appears in circular mosaic, faces uplifted as if in
exultation.
“ Se acabo. Fini. It is finished.”
---
©K.P. Lewis (Kalypsoul)
04.24.2011
