“Jumbie Girl”

by Michelle John (Trinidad & Tobago)

I stopped believing in fairytales at age eight.

There were no fairies. No Prince Charming riding a dashing steed came to save you. It was all a myth. But there were monsters. Humans who hurt others, who pulled your skin inside out, slashed you to pieces.

You had to rescue yourself.

My stepfather was one of those monsters, and I guess my mother, too.Frederick street, not the fancy one in town with the endless lights and skyscrapers, the one at the south of the island nestled behind god’s back and Satan’s big toe, bred monsters. A village stretching one street, which seemed so big when you’re small because you don’t know any better. Where Trinidadian politicians forgot to visit even during voting season. A village that protected its human monsters.

They protected mine. And I did too since I never told.

He held me down in the only bed in our one-room shack. The same one we all slept in, cuddled together to fight off the night’s chill. Heavy hands covered my mouth. The same voice that read me stories and told jokes warned me not to make a sound.

“Enjoy it,” he said.

Mother stood at the two-plate burner and stirred a pot. Stirred away as he stripped me, while he twisted my soul into a decaying barbwire fence. And when he finished; satisfied, she stood over me with a face offering no comfort.

“Ent yuh fast, and want big people thing. Well, yuh get it.”

I had not been fast. There wasn’t any big people thing I wanted. She stared at me, nose flaring and eyes hard enough to cut any material placed before it.

“Wash them sheets good, eh,” she said.

And she went back to stirring.Days turned into weeks as the season turned wet instead of dry. I kept my secret tucked away, hidden under running around my school’s playing field trying to stuff a dead frog down Andrew Thompson’s pants or sucking mangoes in the tree the Principal forbade the students to climb. The sweet pulp worthy of getting the skin peeled off my backside.

Each day, my secret threatened to revolt against its locked cage. One made of sticks and vines and weakened each time my stepfather held me down and my mother stirred her pot.

I didn’t notice the anger growing behind my secret until Nikolai Ali.

Frederick street children learned from watching the adults—how to catch and descale a fish, the best traps to hunt agouti, and how to decompose the souls of little girls. Nikolai grew up watching his father, uncle and grandfather take from the girls of their household. The day he braced Keisha Oliver, a little stick of a girl from the Infants first year class, against a tree and stuck his hand up her uniform skirt, I became someone’s hero.Keisha wrapped her arms around me, tighter than a boa constrictor, as she wailed. And Nikolai…Blood poured from everywhere while I gasped and shook. A monster sat on his chest. Not the kind like my stepfather or Nikolai’s family, but what anyone would call a real monster. Except it was the size of a house cat. Pink, shiny fur covered its body down to large paws too big for its small frame. A scaled tail lashed back and forth.

A purr thrilled as it licked the blood spurting out Nikolai’s nose. Unlike a cat, its purr sounded as if it said wooeh. Purple eyes glimmered at me, while a long tongue resembling a snake’s scooped up another dribble of blood.

“Bitch, you broke my nose,” Nikolai said.

His hand fumbled around the lapping tongue. He glared at me and not at the monster on his chest. Voices shouted. Some whispered about the blood, the short-winded fight. Someone dashed off to tell the Principal.

The monster smiled. Eyelids blinking sideways.

It followed us to the office with a too-human grin creeping over its bloody lips. It kept making the little wooeh sound while Nikolai glared at me and Keisha gripped my arm. The principal kept me back after she heard the entire story five times. Behind her, the monster curled on the window sill within a shaft of light. As it yawned and curled its tail around itself, monster sounded too mean. Although I had no clue what it was, it protected Keisha. It made its little sound again, so I named it Wooeh.“Amala, we do not condone violence at this school.”

She rose from her desk to stand beside me. Wooeh cracked an eye open before swishing its head out the window.

“Good job,” she whispered, patting my shoulder.

Wooeh grinned, teeth gleaming even after it disappeared.

Keisha followed me around for the rest of the lunch break. Her little friends joined each with a story to share of someone hurting them. Wooeh reappeared as a little girl spoke about her brother locking her in the closet at night while their parents slept. It sat on her head, tail curled around her neck. Purple eyes stared into mine. And, although Wooeh didn’t speak, I knew what it wanted.

My body trembled during afternoon classes. A frequent thrill travelled between my fingertips and toes while my stomach bubbled. Wooeh sat on my head. Its warm weight pressed against my skull while its furry underbelly tickled my scalp. Each breath it took moved it up and down and helped me mark the minutes ticking away until dismissal.

Though I expected the shrill bell, I jerked straighter in my seat. The teacher droned instructions as I threw my things into my bag. I scrambled outside, pushing a path through my rambunctious classmates struggling to exit. Students left Frederick street to attend secondary school; if they went at all. They dismissed a half hour earlier than we did, so it wasn’t unusual for older siblings to wait outside our gates. I spotted Keisha’s little friend trudging to her older brother. When she was near enough, he snatched her hand and tugged her down the street. I followed. Around the bend, down a track of dirt where some houses rose out of tall bushes… Frederick Street Extension, where houses cobbled together, lined a river bed.

The roots of a large Julie mango tree broke the patch of mud before the first house. There, I pounced. Wooeh leapt from my head, unto the older boy’s, nails scratching across his eyes, down his cheeks, leaving bleeding welts. It scrambled down the boy’s body, tail lashing as it went, plucking patches of skin with the bone-daggers protruding out of the scales. When the boy laid in the mud, bleeding and sobbing, I stood over him.

“Be nicer to your little sister.”

My voice rumbled. Sheltered in the mango's tree shadow, the little girl poked her head out, a smile shimmered in her eyes.

“Thank you!”

I became the champion of Frederick street. Brave children approached me during school hours to voice their requests. Sometimes, I’d find notes. Scraps of paper with hastily scribbled appeals about other students, siblings or cousins. Each job I took, something inside me swelled. And Wooeh; grew.

In three weeks, it sprung from the size of a house cat to a lion. Thick muscles rippled around its legs, and it grew into those enormous paws I’d noticed when it first appeared. It had yet to make another sound than its namesake. But those keen, knowing eyes watched. Each look shouted a different meaning. I’d learn to unravel them—the vindictive hunger, the playful teasing glare, the sleepy glance—all except for the one it gave me after we met and I went home to a house emptied of my stepfather and my mother not stirring her pot.

That one kept me up at night, shaded in red and drenched in the scent of blood.

Three weeks and no sight of my stepfather, the butcher, the drug-addled old man who lived near the school, and Oso—one of two “taxi” drivers of the village—the one people whispered to others to avoid, had the adults frantic. Talk swished around involving the police. Of counting blessings more so for Oso and the old man, and scandalous rumours on my mother and the butcher’s wife's inability to keep a man happy.

Wooeh growled a deeper, longer roll of its namesake sound anytime it caught these people’s names. It sent an unpleasant tremor through my body. We had never taken action against an adult. None of them knew of my expanding business since I lived in the whispers of children. I found justice for the weak Frederick street children understood.

What did Wooeh do when it disappeared? This question haunted my thoughts because I still had no clue where it came from or what it was. Wild animals, however friendly, should never be trusted. I’d guess the same stood for monsters.

Yet, I kept Wooeh. Found an unused bowl from the kitchen to feed it our meal time scraps. Placed a worn, hole-filled blanket from the closet’s depth behind the tall dresser to make it a bed. Wooeh was mine.

The butcher’s body tangled in driftwood and vines emerged downriver. According to stories shared between neighbours, his bloated scratched-up body refuted the agreed upon idea that he had left his wife for a younger, fitter upgrade. Murder, those voices claimed. When Wooeh heard this, the look I had shoved inside the blackest part of my mind stretched over its face. Lips snarled, sharp gleaming teeth gashed, and its eyelids winked horizontally in beats of four.

Police officers came without our call. They swerved into our narrow street, five loaded jeeps, dressed in tactical wear with specialised equipments pulled behind them. They swept the riverbed, length-to-length from the barely flowing pebbled laden basin at the forested edge of Frederick street to the rapid sweeping course at the border of our village and the start of another nameless, forgotten one. Oso’s body snagged their line. Then, the old man’s frail naked one. Each body had the same look appearing on Wooeh’s face.

I huddled on the bed while mother stirred a pot. The fish broth within flooded the room. It made my stomach wobble, not because of how delicious it smelt, instead a sick remembrance of gobbling this meal up the day my stepfather didn’t come home. The police had called it a day’s work after the old man, but I couldn’t stop the thought of whether they’d drag up my step-father next.

A dark fear spurned; could Wooeh kill?

So far, it had scratched deep grooves capable of leaving scars. Left puncture marks from the dagger-like extrusions from its tail.

“Get your lazy ass up and come eat.”

My mother’s yell sliced apart my thoughts. I fumbled off the bed to the tiny wooden table where three chairs stood in a poor example of a triangle. Dark shadows hung under my mother’s eyes. With her knotted weaved hair held upright in a messy bundle, she looked nothing like the woman I knew.

“Amala! Eat your food and stop watch me. You fast no tail, eh girl?”

Wooeh glowered, and for a second I hoped it took my mother away too. It squeaked a huff, a half-hearted whistle of a noise before settling again with its head rested against the dresser. As I swallowed my fish broth, washed the dishes and prepared for bed, I buried the idea of a dead mother.

The next day, I didn’t have time for stray thoughts while I readied for school. Morning bell rang after I slipped between the open gate. I shimmied around children rushing to their class lines where the Vice Principal stood on the first landing of the exterior staircase, commanding their attention for prayer time. A siren wailed. As one, we turned to the main gates, where a police car flashed its light and sounded the siren again. The guard rushed out of his booth, hands fumbling with the iron rods meant to hinge the two gates together.

Two officers jumped out as soon as the vehicle slid into a parking spot behind our assembly. They’re swaggered to the Principal who rushed to meet them. Students who stood at the front jostled to catch a better glance of either the police cruiser or the officers.

“Officers, you’re interrupting morning assembly. Please come this way.”

The Principal waved them to her office. Wooeh appeared, coiled on top of the Principal’s head; face crooked into the look I didn’t like.

Wild speculations and exuberant whispers filled the lines, while dread iced my insides. Wind tumbled between my ears as the Vice Principal shouted for silence and stayed as I plodded in line to my classroom.

The P. A system blared, “Amala Parkerson to the office.”

Every child in my class watched me walk out. Children from the other classes, blackboards separating the space, peeked through the gaps. Class after class, their eyes followed my march. The adults stared too; except where suspicion gleamed behind the children’s eyes; pity shone in theirs. After the butcher, the old man, and Oso, the police only had one more body to discover.

My mother sat opposite the Principal. A freshly installed weave hung to her middle back, make-up decorated her face, and she wore the most appropriate looking outfit that had to have been dug from the recesses of her closet. Or borrowed. Three police officers sat in chairs angled towards the back of the room where the Vice Principal patted the free space on the couch next to herself. I scanned the officer’s uniforms. Living in Frederick street, you had to know who was who in the police force.

“Do you know why you’re here?” The Principal asked. Wooeh no longer sat on her head. I surveyed the room to discover where it hid.

“No.” I mumbled.

The higher ranked officer cleared his throat. “We have proof of what you did.”

My brain pulsed around what might be proof. Frederick street people protected their own, but my allies were children, not yet sweetened in the art of not squealing. My previous misdemeanours and my mother’s disregard for what happened to me meant I was on my own. People like me, from places where I’m from, don’t get do-overs.

“Gerald deserved what he got. It good he’s dead.” I spat.

“Your stepfather?” The junior officer asked. His face spun between confused and intrigued. The senior officer tutted.

“Why do you think he’s dead?”

My mother’s clear eyes, tear-tracked free cheeks, and how well she put herself back together—like a puzzle that never lost its pieces—spelled something I missed.

“Because everyone else dead?”“And what you know about that?” The senior officer asked.

I nibbled on the inner lining of my mouth. I didn’t really know anything, but I suspected. Another glance around the room didn’t reveal my suspect.

“Amala, you know in Trinidad we can charge children with murder? You’re older than seven, which means you’re criminally responsible.”

While the officer meant to scare me, all I could think about was that Wooeh should have appeared in my life one year earlier.

“Why you think I did it?”

I wasn’t that bigger than Keisha Oliver. Two feet taller, but no less a scrap of a little girl. How could I’d murdered anyone?The senior officer leant into my space.

“Because your stepfather said you tried to kill him.”

The wretched man lived. He had been hospitalised for one week and a half. Recovering from multiple stab wounds, and a near-drowning. When released, he spent the remaining time the village thought him missing with the police, building a case against his attacker: me. My stepfather claimed I ambushed him in the forest where he went to hunt for wild meat. I approached him with a dagger. He laughed it off. Until I stabbed the blade into his arm. He told the police I had the strength of a thousand men, and he couldn’t pry me off.

Where two officers arrived at school, another went to fetch my mother. She allowed him to search our house. He found a blood-stained dagger wrapped in a near falling-apart blanket behind the dresser. The officer matched my fingerprints to the ones on the dagger’s handle. The blood to the butcher’s body.

The officer’s words spun like cotton candy. Light, and almost non-existent as I fumbled through the nightmare that Wooeh was never real. An officer laid his hand on my shoulders, nudged me out the Principal’s office, into the police cruiser and eventually through the doors of a community residence where I had to await my trial.

Wooeh wound through the window’s burglar-proof bars as if its mass were an afterthought. Sleek fur rippled where muscles flexed to contour itself in a sinuous dance. It’s head flicked back and forth.

“Go away, you’re not real.” I muttered.

“I am as real as you. Deep inside, you know it’s true.” A gruff male voice said.

“You can talk?”

He was right. I’d spend the hours since being tossed into this room arguing with myself. Each time, a whisper in every cell of my body promised Wooeh existed.

Wooeh tossed its head back. “Are you ready to claim what’s yours?”

“I don’t understand.”“You are jumbie born; a controller of us.”

“Us? There are more like you?” Wooeh nodded.

“We are few. You are fewer. So I answered when I heard your call.”

I don’t remember calling. “Join with me, and I’ll hide you like I do myself.”

The times Wooeh vanished. An inner call bellowed for justice for those who couldn’t fight for themselves. People like who I had once been; afraid, broken and sure no one would save them. Girls like Keisha Oliver and her friends. Those other children who sought me.

“Join with me, and you’ll do all that and more,” Wooeh said.

I’m not a new type of fairytale. Instead, I am a girl who commands a jumbie.