Caribbean literature used to really get me angry when I was younger. I thought it all a waste, waddling in the pains of the past, reiterating the hurt and anger of anscestors and claiming Africa though hardly any of us would actually see it. It meant nothing to me. Africa was supposed to be this place where my skin tone and the shape of my nose would identify me. Where even if I found my "place" the tongues would be so different it would not have been worth the journey. There would be no story to claim and that is what I wanted most of all.
Now things are different and I'm starting to feel a yearning to want to know my past. I'm not talking back to Africa I mean, my grand mother's grandmother kind of past. Each generation has a story to share. Women learn to remember their stories, To share them through generations, to plait them into the braids of their daughters, to leave them on the tip of a pot spoon. To share that tongue as much as they can. It was thinking of that a while ago, I wrote this...

Spirit Voices.

Marie looked towards the window trying to discern where the sounds were coming from. She knew it was not outside but there some instinct causing her to believe in her own false reality. The lies of her imagination were easier, perhaps, to accept than the truth. For three months she heard the voices at night. Just as she was about to close her eyes in her dark room, she felt the coolness of the sheets against her bare skin and the warmth of the pillow as she made her final turn. Then one by one they would start. First it was always a low moan, whispery so she wasn’t sure that she was actually hearing anything at all, then they would trail into the room through the lattice work of the balcony and in through the window.
Fear paralyzed her growing worse when she realised that she would not be able to run if they did become threatening, they had not seemed to want to hurt her though and with time, because they came every night, she began to listen. They spoke to each other it would seem, sounding like the Babel banshees, she could not understand a thing they were saying but knew that it was important that she understand. What she knew was that these women were trying to talk to her. Tonight the noise was louder, she heard them just outside drawing nearer slowly but coming.
The balcony to her room over looked the garden below and during the day she would sit out there enjoying the breeze coming up the hill to kiss her cheeks. There was a glass door separating her from the cold night air at night, though she preferred this time. The glass shone and the room was flooded with light at different times as moons peeped in at her sleeping figure. She would undress in front of the moon allowing the light to bathe her skin, to soak into her hair causing the brown strands to catch it and shimmer it back around the room. She liked to look at herself in the mirror while she did this. Her reflection looked like a different person and kept her company her eyes knowing, and Marie swore that if she looked hard enough she could spot slight differences.
Tonight was a full moon and she could feel the magic of some sort in the air around her as she undressed earlier. Usually she would don a white night gown before settling into her bed, tonight she wanted that full moon lightness to wash into her all night. She wanted to grow in it while she slept. And now her eyes closing slowly to that light, the voices drawing nearer she made one last effort to see. She was not sure what there was to see but the goose bumps on her skin told her there was going to be something. Her eyes rolled towards the glass doors and for a moment a shadow stood at the door. Marie stared at the figure waiting for movement, wondering if she really was seeing it and trying to decide if it were something alive or dead.
The darkness lurked at the doors it’s back turned to Marie, seeming not to even notice her trembling figure crunched up on the bed. It began to dance. At first it was a simple side to side sweeping but it added a swirl here and a twirl there. Marie stared still not knowing what to make of this strange happening. She could still hear the voices. There was calm about them, the babbling was a whisper now floating around the room drawing Marie to it. Marie closed her eyes for a second trying to follow the whispery conversations through the lattice work. Still a strange language; always a strange language. It was like something she knew, something she heard all the time, but could not listen to it, could not understand.
She opened her eyes and found the glass doors to find the figure staring at her. The eyes were dead. There was no light there, no joy. It was a woman she could see, but her lips were sewn together, she had Marie’s nose, and hair. Marie recognised her but like the strange language, she did not know who she was or what she wanted. The skirts around her swayed in the breeze and flapped off to the left, showing Marie that she wore tattered shoes like she had been walking a long distance. There was a tear running down her cheek, her mouth quivered like she was trying to say something. She raised a dark hand to the glass, it bore cuts and bruises, the palm had corns at the base of the fingers that squashed down as he pressed both palms against the glass doors.
Marie was afraid now but she found herself slowly taking her sheets away from her body. She sat in the bed looking at this figure, her own eyes filling with tears. Marie recognised its face as her own, it was not a relative of some sort as she had thought but herself. She was looking at herself in the face and could not understand. She walked towards the glass doors. With every step she made the figure peeled off a piece of clothing. They were both completely naked. Marie was shocked to see the skin of this reflection caked with dirt. Her nails were torn off her hands, her stomach sagged like an empty sack and blood ran down her legs.
Marie gasped and placed her hand on her own stomach, she looked down at it quickly not wanting to take her eyes off this woman looking back at her. She felt a pang of pain at the bottom of her back. She grabbed at the pain, her eyes widening and unable to say anything she fell against the glass bracing herself with her hand as she fell forward. The figure raised her hand also and met her against the glass palm to palm. As their fingers met Marie’s sides pinched relentlessly like needles pushing through her body coming together for a great explosion of pain at her stomach’s centre. She looked up through the pain to realise that the figure was no longer alone.
Over the lattice work more women floated towards her. They were white and seemed to carry a light with them, giving the impression that you could see right through them. They came towards the figure and held onto to her. Women of all shapes and sizes floated constantly over the lattice work. They all had some part of Marie and she recognised these as relations, there was one an exact likeness to the picture that hung on her mother’s kitchen wall. It was her grandmother; she had died years before Marie had been born. Every one of these women was part of her in one way or the other.
Marie felt her head lighten, the pain was too great and she was terrified. How could she have this child here? The full moon looked in through the window and seemed sad in some way to Marie, she was tired, the jolting needles came closer and closer faster and faster each time. She tried to regulate her breathing staring into the eyes of herself. Then she noticed the voices again. They were singing. She did not know the song but it was the same sound the first time they were actually synchronised, they were harmonizing in a way she had never heard. She felt herself drifting up and out of herself but reaching out to the other Marie beyond the glass.
The moon shone through the circle of women catching on the end of the figure hair at first then spreading throughout her head and face. As the light passed through her skin changed. She was shedding it in flakes, each piece falling from her and hitting the ground. To Marie’s tired ears it resounded louder than it possibly was. Each thud awoke her a bit and the pain seized her body. She could feel her child pushing its way into the world. She did not want it to come, not now, not like this; she was supposed to do it on white sheets in a private hospital, knowing it was for her alone to bear. As far as she was concerned there was no father. She would have to bring this child in herself and ensure its safety alone.
Marie fell to her knees grabbing at the air trying to steady herself and the pain encompassing her so completely. The figure too was on the ground crouched but still their hands connected. The moon light was shining through spaces in the figures skin. It was screaming in pain also as the thread on its lips burst open ripping her mouth, she was gushing blood down her legs and skin was thudding against the floor of the balcony, leaving a light behind. She was becoming translucent, somewhat like the others but new. There was just a difference now, she was crying and her wounds were ripping and closing only to rip again as the moonlight tore through her. Marie’s creams matched the figures and she too felt like she was being ripped from the core. The child’s head was pushing through her, she pushed to match too far gone to remember her breathing.
She looked up to meet the figure’s eyes staring at her bleeding as hers ran tears. They did not touch or stop screaming into the night. The child’s shoulders came to the opening and Marie felt like she was going, she was drifting out of herself again, tired and fading into nothing, into darkness. The moon’s light broke away the caked skin and tore through the figure turning her completely like the others her light faded into and out of her. The women circling around her opened more for this light to reach her completely, renewing her, making her. Marie felt herself gone now, she saw herself standing among the singing women, looking at her tired self on the floor in the room. She felt too the child still pushing out of her, coming whether she wanted it or not. Till eventually it was all out.
The women were over her body now looking down on her sadly, shaking their heads. She moved in flashes between the ground and looking at herself. She walked towards herself laying on the floor. The women had stopped singing they were babbling again. Marie heard snippets of what they were saying but they seemed to not know that she was there. She pushed through them to see herself when she heard the baby’s cry. Her head popped in to the circle, almost jumping back out as the intensity ion this little girl’s eyes met hers. She could see her. This child, her daughter was looking directly at her, or more at her soul. The women moved aside allowing them the meeting.
“….told her.”
“….new language…”
…teaches the others…”
She looked down into the face of her daughter smiling into her eyes. The women pushed her now and she felt the urge to hold her; to overcome the tired feeling and kiss her daughter. The mothers came to her; they leaned over the child one and one and breathed into her mouth. She had stopped crying now and lay on the floor of the room looking at each of them in turn. Marie could feel her physical self again. She felt tired, she felt the pain, and she opened her eyes to the gurgles of her daughter. She could still hear the voices though she no longer saw them. Understanding was starting to fade from her again and as they drifted off towards the moon and into the night she pulled one phrase before closing her tired eyes again
“Teach her.”