James Marlon - John Crow's Devil

“Then I’d be lucky, cause word is you whipping young men and killing old ones. But who you going to kill for this?”

He threw the weight down but held onto the sack. It fell to the floor. Those who were closest screamed first. Brother Vixton vomited from the smell. The congregation, most of whom had not seen what he threw down, stormed out of the church anyway, knocking down chairs, benches, the christening fountain, and the children. Within seconds, the church was empty, save for the Rum Preacher, Apostle York, and the goat, cold and muddy with a head twisted upside down, yet seamless with the body. Mud marked the floor. The stench of death woke the altar. The Apostle looked up, furious. The Rum Preacher could see right through his eyes to a second face. Before words were said, a wind whipped itself up into a tempest and slammed the doors shut.

Aweek shy of her tenth birthday, Lucinda’s papa struck her mother, called her a whore, and disappeared like Nicodemus, a thief in the night. Lucinda kept herself awake for several nights after that, waiting for his return. Her mother said he had left because his daughter was ugly and impudent. That was her earliest memory.

Little girl Lucinda was at school, fidgeting with her uniform as she sat at her desk. An hour had passed since the bell rang and the school was empty. She heard the breeze whistling through the louver windows. On the floor below the blackboard was a stick of orange chalk. Usually, she would have leapt for the thing, shoved it down her pocket, and ran straight home where she would teach the plants how to write, in between beating off every single leaf with her belt. Otherwise the silence would have scared her out. She had never been the last to leave the classroom before. The room had never looked so huge. With children in them, desks seemed to be alive. But here, with the wind whistling and the noon brilliance fading, they were coffins with legs. She had been holding her piss for an hour. A cramp would come back, sometimes mild, sometimes monstrous, and she’d squeezed her thighs tight, hoping to send the piss back up. But little drops escaped and damped her bloomers.

They had laughed at her. Even Elsamire, who shared her desk, covered her mouth to hide the slowly growing front tooth. Now their laughs seemed to come back every time the piss came back. She squeezed her thighs tighter, clenched her teeth, shut her eyes, and counted backwards from one hundred to one. If only she could get to one, then the piss would go back. If she could just get from 100 to 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 91, 90, 89

88, 87, 86, 85, 84, 83, 82, 81, 80

79, 78, 7—

“Lucinda! What in Heaven’s name you doing in here chile? What kind of idle skylarking you up to?”

The teacher was upon her before Lucinda could speak. She was so tall that she seemed to scrape the ceiling with her hair. She had no eyes. The thick glasses reflected light in Lucinda’s face. But her hands were strong. When she gave you a beating, you stayed beat. The teacher clutched Lucinda’s cheeks and squeezed.

“You ill?”

Lucinda shook her head.

“Toothache? All them godforsaken sweeties rotting your mouth?”

Lucinda shook her head.

“What about your house? You mother lose her head again?”

Lucinda shook her head.

“Then what is the reason for this dillydallying? Look how long school dismiss?”

There were five voices with which an adult spoke. Lucinda recognized them, because her mother had only one. Mary Palmer’s mother had three. There was the “dinner ready” voice, the “get off the veranda that a just clean” voice and the “never mind, baby, it soon get better” voice. No matter what was said, everything that came from the teacher’s mouth sounded like an inquisition. The “you’re idle and you’re evil” voice.

“Girl chile, do it look like is breeze me talking to? Speak up, little girl, why you not going home?”

Lucinda would not speak.

“I losing my patience with you. Why pickney ears must always hard? Why unu always begging for a beating?”

Lucinda looked down in her lap.

“You want problem? Is problem you round here looking for? Answer when big people speak to you! I will give you nuff problem. Get up this blinking instant. Me say, git up!”

The teacher grabbed Lucinda by the collar and yanked her up. She screamed as the bench rose with her for a second then fell back, tearing off her uniform at the waist. Now you have you throne, Lucinda Queenie, Elsamire had said, chuckling as she waved the bottle of glue at Mary and the others. Lucinda was confused until she tried, one hour later, to go to the bathroom.

“Oh for Heaven’s sake, what is wrong with these pickneys! Is the Devil in them, Jesus, must be the Devil. Them know how much money me pay for that glue? Them think say glue cheap? Straight a Kingston me, meself go buy the glue and look how them waste it. Idle hands, Jesus. Devil’s workshop for sure. Devil’s workshop. Gal, go to you bloodclaat yard before me give you reason to stay. And if you tell anybody what me just say, is me and you tomorrow.”

Outside the wind whispered laughter as Lucinda’s legs felt the warm stream of piss.

She went home on secret roads. She crossed the river instead of the bridge and waited until evening. Her mother’s house was not part of the Gibbeah Plan. It hung like the other shacks on the outskirt but still within the boundary of the river. There were two rooms, a bedroom for her mother and the kitchen-dining-sitting room that was the bedroom for Lucinda. The house was overrun with old furniture stolen from an abandoned plantation. Luxurious red chairs blackened by coal and black magic. Four of these chairs were scattered around the room as if they had placed themselves. A bamboo coffee table with a vase of plastic flowers sat in the center of the room. There was a gray Formica dining table to the right but no chairs, and the tabletop was littered with dried plants, glass jars filled with vinegar and water, spoiled mangos, and shriveled apples. Lucinda opened one of the cupboards and pushed past the jar filled with lizard skins and dog paws to find the last bag of police-button cookies.

Now to figure out how to slip outside without stirring her mother, whose room she had to pass. Her mother sounded busy. Maybe she would not see. Lucinda tiptoed past the room but looked when she heard the comb fall and bounce on his shoe. She followed his legs, moving up from one dot of curled body hair to the next. She moved up to his sweaty buttocks that clenched tight when he plunged in and spread wide when he pulled out. She moved up to his shirt, so orange that the glow tinted her mother’s feet, both of which where on the man’s shoulders. Her mother was on the dresser, her sweaty back greasing the mirror as the man rammed inside her. Lucinda imagined his cock as stubby as he was plunging in and out of her mother’s vagina that was as loose as she was. Then he shifted and she saw it for a second, his penis disappearing into her mother and his jerky balls bouncing like elastic. Her mother had two gentlemen a week, sometimes three. By the time Lucinda looked in the dresser mirror, he had long seen her. The man raised one of his bushy eyebrows and smiled, rounding his fat face. He gyrated, swirling his hips and thrusting harder, as her mother held on.

“Woi! Woi, you donkey sweet, Daddy. Woi, me womb a shif. Take it easy with you donkey-la-la. Easy with you donkey-la-la.”

The man grunted and stepped away.

“Come, black bull, give me the milk.”

The man grunted again. Lucinda heard little drops fall to the floor.

“God no like when man spill him seed, bitch.”