James Marlon - John Crow's Devil

“God no like when you fuck for free either, donkey la-la.”

“If me hafi pay money,” he said, throwing the bills at her crotch, “then the pussy better more tight. How bout fi her own next time?”

“Fi who? What you talking bout?”

The man motioned to the mirror but the woman turned to the doorway, to the blur of Lucinda running away.

“What the—”

Lucinda sat outside on the steps eating police-button cookies. The force came so sudden that she felt nothing. The bag of cookies flew high in the air and landed in the dirt after she did, hands first, then face, as she skidded in the dust. Her mother nearly lost balance after kicking her.

“Nasty nayga bitch.”

Lucinda knew the underbelly of the country. She knew the secret springs, winding roads, and invisible spirits more than anyone twice her age. Most she had learned from her mother. Two weeks later, on a moon-tinted night, Lucinda helped her mother brew the callaloo tea, then watched her drink. They were behind the house, close to the river to hear the flow, but hidden between trees so thick that no light could be seen. Her mother grabbed a bottle filled with river water, took some into her mouth, and spat into the bonfire. As the vapor vanished, so did she.

Lucinda had stopped speaking to her classmates after the pit toilet incident, but spoke the day before Christmas Eve. There was nothing remarkable to the day. Some passed it with lethargy, some with industry. But Elsamire, who sat beside her in class, was dead.

They found her on the rocks, by the spit of the sea. She had landed with violence, her body exploding like a smashed tomato. Above, back on the cliff, looking down, were her fellow students of the school outing, including Lucinda, who whispered to Mary, “Ah bet she wish she could a fly.”

She had seen the body, but it was at Elsamire’s funeral, where the casket was closed, that Lucinda saw the devastation of death. She vomited on one of Mr. Garvey’s nephews, infuriating those around her for trying to steal attention at the poor little girl’s funeral. They wouldn’t have known, but her mother knew. She raised her chin and looked down at her daughter from the ridge of her nose.

Lucinda went home to her cot and fell asleep. When she awoke, night had fallen and a candle burnt in the room, throwing jagged shapes on the wall. One of the shapes broke away from the others and sat down beside her.

“Me know what you did,” her mother whispered. Lucinda said nothing. “You hearin me? I say, I know what you did.”

“Mummy?”

“Don’t Mummy me. You think you fool everybody? You nearly fool me too until me see say me missing a few ingredients. Special ingredients. Things you mix and brew if you want a certain bitch out of the picture.”

“Out of the picture, Mummy?”

“Go on, play fool to catch wise, but I know you. It start sweet you, don’t it? Me see it in you face. You starting to like how blood taste. Make sure what happen a night no come back in day.”

Lucinda sat alone at her desk for the rest of the year, never approached by anyone.

Adolescence was brutal for all except Clarence. His looks were miraculous, especially considering the ugliness of both parents. Pretty and ugly were loose words in Gibbeah, and as such, his beauty had as much to do with light skin and pink lips as anything else. Pity about the picky negro hair, his mother would say. His growth was a matter of pride, and shame for others. Clarence knew this from the day the boys stopped bathing together. They had stripped naked as they always did and dove into the frigid water screaming and laughing. But as Clarence climbed out, the other boys knew for the first time that he was different. They saw a patch of hair where there wasn’t before, hair that they didn’t have, and it was red. Lucinda saw the red hair too. A day would not pass where she did not sneak down to the river and hide under the cover of banana leaves as she watched the boys frolicking naked in the water. She watched as day by day all the boys stopped coming to the river except Clarence.

“Them things you want to do, you can do to me,” she said to him from the river bank, half hiding in the shadow of banana trees. Clarence knew where to look. He had been watching her watching him for months.

“Oh? You think so? You don’t even have titty yet,” he said. He waded through the water toward her. Lucinda tried not to look at his red patch.

“Is not titty you goin use, or you didn’t know?”

“What? Look yah, cross-eye chi-chi, me know everything.”

“Then show me, nuh?”

“You want me to show you big-boy things? You think you ready for big-boy things? Alright, big girl, see me here.”

“No now. Tonight.”

“Little girl catch her fraid.”

“Me not fraid! Is you fraid. Me say tonight.”

“Tonight, then.”

“Me want it in the cemetery.”

“The cemetery?”

“The cemetery. Or you nah get the pokie.”

It turned out that Clarence knew nothing of female genitals. He cursed her tightness for minutes until he remembered that he too had an anus. When he finally stuck her aright, he pushed her down on a dirty concrete grave. His hips slammed into hers a few times before he pulled out and sprayed her thighs with semen. Then he left her in the cemetery. She heard her papa’s footsteps. Lucinda cried for days.

A week before Lucinda’s twenty-second birthday, her mother found Jesus. She told Lucinda to throw away all the witchery things, and she did, keeping only some of the jars and potions for herself. She spent the next two years beside her mother, wearing white as she wore, standing when she stood, shaking when she shook, and screaming Hallelujah! when she screamed. Her mother had a second stroke, but was still coming to church — praise God. Now if only Lucinda would go get herself a man before her pokie dry up and she can’t have no pickney. Look how she make good man like Mr. Greenfield get way and go married that Mary girl who live in her dead mother house.

“Lucinda, go cream you hair.”

“Lucinda, God don’t need no wife.”

“Lucinda, you think is only pissing it make for?”

“Lucinda, what you doin round the back? If me catch you with no spirit business, I goin broke up you backside in this house.”

“Damn fool you is, fi make man like Mr. Greenfield get way. And a town man at that. You know say him buy Mary Palmer house from Mr. Garvey and give she?

“Lucinda?”

“Me reading me Bible, Mummy.”

As a Kingston man who had experienced piped water, Mr. Greenfield resented bathing by the river. But he and Mary Palmer were not married and she would not have a man getting naked in her mother’s house. At least he was alone. As he washed himself, what should he hear but the indelicate splashing of Lucinda, who had come to wash herself too? Her polka dot dress around her neck, hanging like a noose.

“Me know you want to do nastiness with me,” she said.

She was a church-going sister who was known as such. Nobody who knew Day Lucinda could find out about Night Lucinda. But as she released her buttocks to his coarse hand, a feeling came over her that in the past had only come from spirits. Lucinda reached to embrace, but he kept her away and they stood apart at the head, apart at the feet, slamming in the middle. When he came, he stepped away and spilled his seed into the river. She went over to him, rubbing her breasts on his shoulder. “So me and you goin married now?”

Greenfield looked at her eyebrows, raised for pity above her crossed left eye. He burst into a laugh that bounced all over the gorge through which the river ran. He pushed her away and she lost balance. When she fell backways in the river he walked off, not bothering to dress himself beyond a towel. She could hear him laugh all the way up to Mary’s house.