SEX AND OBEAH
You can read some of my short stories from my collection, Sex and Obeah, here. This one's simple, but chilling.
JOY IN THE AFTERNOON
Barney could feel the
warmth of the sand under his feet as he walked, even though it was long past
midnight. It was pale beige and powder soft; it got between his toes and dusted
his ankles with each step. There was very little lighting on the stretch of
beach, and in the absence of the moon he was little more than a slender shadow.
As he neared the cabin he was conscious of the smell of salt in the air and the
pounding of the surf. He inhaled deeply. He was excited.
He circled the cabin once, then again. The pretty white lady was inside, and he knew she was asleep. He pulled the huge old-fashioned metal key out of his pocket and leaped over the low porch wall. The key slipped into the keyhole with barely a click, and then he was inside. He paused to gain his bearings in the dark. It wasn’t hard; he had perfect vision, even at night, and besides, he had been in and out of the little house hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times before. He lifted his head and sniffed. He could smell her, and the sweet oil she rubbed over herself.
He made his way to the bedroom, and his bare feet made no sound at all on the cool concrete floor. The door was open, and cautiously he peered in.
She was asleep on her back, hands thrown out at her sides, and the covers were off. The windows were open and the rattan-ceiling fan whirred softly above her, but even so, Barney could see fine beads of sweat on her pale forehead. He stood over her, inhaling her scent, staring at the impossible yellow hair. He leaned forward, bolder now that it didn’t seem that she would wake up, and sniffed at her, pulling the smell up into his nostrils like a dog. Coconut oil. He drank his fill of her, then quietly turned and left the way he had come.
***
Joy shifted position on her blanket. The sun was blazing, and the tanning oil she used created a slick all over her body. She was one of the lucky ones who tanned slowly and evenly, instead of turning lobster-red like the group of loud, fat German tourists down the bay. To hell with the scientists and all their skin cancer bullshit. You could live all your life hiding from the sun and then one day you slip and fall onto the tracks at 149th Street or some other goddamn place and get run over by the 5:15 Express. Besides, what’s the use of coming all the way out here if you’re going to skulk around wrapped in a muumuu and go back home as pale as you were when you got here? A waste of eight hundred bucks, that’s what it would be.
She looked up from her book to see the young man standing under the palm trees. As the wind agitated the leaves, the sun threw long striped shadows onto his face. She knew him by sight; he was the son of the man that had rented her the little cabin for the month. They lived further down the cove, she gathered. She saw him on the beach every day, strolling in the surf, picking up shells and stones, and milling about when the men pulled in the seine. She was acutely aware of being watched.
The young man was beautiful, she thought. He was about twenty, very tall, and slender, sinuous. His chest was always bare. Every line, every muscle, was finely and sharply defined, his features strong. A lifetime of sunshine and salt had bleached his thick, woolly hair to a reddish brown. His eyes were wide-set, his teeth perfectly straight, perfectly white. She admired him even more in the water than out of it–he cut through the waves like an eel.
As Joy looked directly at him he turned quickly away and pretended to be scrutinizing the horizon. He threw her an involuntary glance and their eyes met for a moment. A vacant grin split his face, and the eyes that held hers were hollow and dark, reflecting nothing. The boy was retarded; he barely possessed the power of speech. His was the spirit of a child imprisoned in the body of a god.
What a waste, Joy murmured to herself, and pushed her sunglasses further up on her nose. A sampling of the local talent would not have gone amiss. From behind the shelter of the mirrored glasses, she studied the faded cutoffs that he had obviously worn for years, until they had come to fit his form as though they had been cast from the mould of his body. She watched the long, straight black legs that sprouted from his shorts with an imaginative eye, picturing them twined around hers. They’d look like piano keys, her legs and his. The image was not unpalatable. Pity. But she figured she would have other options. She went back to her book.
The past week on peaceful Tobago had relaxed her. After the gruesome divorce she had needed a break; her nerves were shredded. Joy loved the island, loved the food, loved the water, loved the men. The only problem was the heat, coupled with the jet lag from London and her endless replaying of the past two months’ court proceedings. At first the stress had kept her up at night, but her tension was soon relieved by half a sedative tablet and a shot or two of local red rum. With that, she would sleep till morning, guaranteed.
***
Barney looked down at the white lady. In her sleep she was so pretty, so pale, like the moon. And her hair! Moving slowly, slowly, slowly, he reached out and touched it as it lay spread across her pillow. He leaped back, terrified that she would wake up and SCREAM! at him, and tell his Marmie and she would beat him real real bad. But the white lady didn’t move. He soon learned that he could even sit on the edge of the bed and keep her company halfway through the night. He could hum and sing things to her, little bits of nursery rhymes, whatever he could remember. She never woke up.
Each night, as he got back to his home, he would slip the spare key to the cabin back into his father’s drawer with the others.
***
One night he came; the moon was getting bigger now, and the crabs darted across the sand. The house was dark, as usual, and he sat outside for a moment to let his excitement build. Then he got up and let himself inside.
But something was wrong. The house was not quiet. There were voices coming from her room, and other sounds, loud sounds. Barney stood on the smooth living room floor, riveted, listening to the voices. One of them was hers, he knew that. The other was a man’s. He sniffed the air, trying to pick up the alien man’s smell. The man told the lady a bad word and she laughed. He knew from the voice who the man was: Handyman Sampson, who owned two fishing boats and had seventeen children all over Tobago. Sampson had three fingers on his right hand; one night long ago he had lost the other two when he got them tangled in the anchor chain as he tossed it overboard.
Barney knew who it was, and he knew what they were doing, too. He knew it wasn’t good for him to listen, not good at all. But the noises made his skin burn all over, and his breath started coming out of control. His stomach hurt. He sat, got to his feet, sat and rose again. It wasn’t good, what she was doing in there with him. He paced the room, scared, forgot the way out for a second. His skin and his belly were hot. He found the door, there, right at the end of the room, where it always was. He bolted through it and ran all the way home, along the beach, without stopping.
He forgot to lock the door.
***
The next day, Joy missed her familiar shadow. She didn’t see him the day after that, nor the next. She complained to her landlord of a problem with her door: it seemed to have popped open on its own. He came to see to it, but for the life of him, he couldn’t see the source of the problem.
“You sure you remember to lock it?”
She nodded. “Sure,” she insisted. “Very sure.”
He frowned. “And it just open up? Just so?”
She nodded again, slightly impatient that this damn island hick was doubting her word. He stared at the door, turning the handle this way and that, and sucking his teeth until Joy decided to let it drop.
“I haven’t seen your son around,” she observed, mainly to change the subject. “Is he sick?”
“He somewhere, yes,” the boy’s father answered, unconcerned. She didn’t pursue it.
Two days later, he was back again, more shy than ever. It was mid-afternoon; she had had her swim and was preparing lunch, dressed in a short terry robe, when she spotted him pacing before the porch.
“Hello,” she called to him and smiled, beckoning.
He gave her a broad, happy, devastatingly white smile in return.
“Would you like some cake?” she asked, and went inside to cut him a piece without waiting for an answer. He sat on the porch wall and wolfed it down, never taking his eyes off her. When she smiled at him, he flushed with childish embarrassment and turned away.
He didn’t seem inclined to leave, so she let him stay for lunch. She did up something fast: potatoes, sausages, peas and carrots from a tin, served up two platefuls of food, a small one for herself and a heaping one for him, and brought them outside. He ate with eager intensity, without once looking up from the plate. She sat beside him on the short porch wall, bare legs close to his. Piano keys.
“My name’s Joy”, she told him after they were done.
“Bar-nee,” he managed gutturally, and seemed pleased with himself.
She chatted away at him, glad for the company, not minding in the least that he understood very little of what she was saying. His eyes were fixed on her face as she spoke.
He got abruptly to his feet and leaped easily over the wall. For a second, Joy was disappointed, thinking he was leaving. But he only went as far as a small clump of palms, and returned dragging a coconut branch which he stripped of its leaves. He worked diligently, humming to himself with surprising musical accuracy. She watched his tongue peer from between his finely shaped lips as he worked, intrigued. In a few minutes he presented her with a perfect wide-brimmed hat and a broad smile.
“Thank you, Barney,” she said, and tried it on. It was well made, closely woven with all the ends tucked in. She returned his smile with genuine pleasure and gratitude. She ran inside to the mirror to see how it fit.
Barney thought she looked beautiful. He followed her into the house, and stood behind her, watching her make faces to herself in the mirror. As she turned to him he threw his long arms around her in a bear hug, almost knocking her off-balance. He was excited, grinning hugely, teeth bared, laughing his hideous guttural laugh into her face.
Joy flinched, startled, and slapped him sharply across the cheek. His proximity was suddenly repulsive. She felt his breath on her and he was too, too close. She twisted from his grasp. “Don’t do that!” she snapped more sharply than she intended. “D’you hear?” Her face wrinkled with distaste.
Ashamed, enraged, he began bellowing like an animal, a pig, or a donkey. Joy turned to run, shocked by the noise, but with a powerful hand Barney reached out to intercept her, slamming her hard against the frame of the bedroom door. The coconut hat fell to the ground and rolled aside.
Blood spilled out of her yellow hair, and Joy opened her mouth to cry out. He needed to stop her from making any noise. He remembered the loud noises he had heard her make the last time he let himself in. Couldn’t stand the noise. He slapped his large hand over her nose and mouth and held her tight to him, real close to his naked chest until he knew she wouldn’t yell. He let her go, and she slid to the floor, limp.
Barney knelt over the pretty white lady. There was so much blood, spoiling her lovely hair, so he found a towel and wiped it away. Gently he pulled the terry robe off of her body, and gasped as he looked at her. She was so pink, and the hair down there was yellow, too. He reached out and stroked it, curious, and felt his body tingle and burn. But he didn’t put his hand down in his pants because he knew that was bad, and the last time his mother caught him with his hand in his pants like that, she cuffed him in his head and told him he was dirty-dirty.
Instead, he went to her room and found her make-up, and smeared the pretty colors all over her face, on her eyes which were the colour of the sky, and on her lips. He brushed her hair, and placed her head in his lap and crooned softly to her, and hummed, and clicked his tongue. He knew she liked that. He rocked her in his arms all afternoon.
As the sun began to set, he kissed her cheek; it was cold. But he loved her and didn’t want her to be cold, so he gathered her up in his arms and laid her on the bed. To keep her warm, he stretched himself fully out on her, arms around her for protection.
He buried his nose deep in her neck. “Mmmm,” he murmured, as he breathed in the smell of the sea in her long yellow hair. “Mmmm.”
His joy was complete.
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