Kitchen Jumbee

My name rhymes with my dead sister's. Her memory used to wash inoutinoutinout of my brain, on my command whenever I felt the need to conjure her. Water receding on a riverbank. Now she's in my kitchen.I used to think of her. I work as a hospital clerk in Morris Park. I know I can get away with eight but I get bored easily; and what would it say about me if I run home during daylight when all those nurses are tramping back and forth, fighting the onslaught of ER cases we receive? When I wasn't too tired after twelve hours of being screamed at, I would make a cup of tea, push my sofa to the window and, with the blinds closed, look at the world through cheap red fabric. I say world but the only thing visible outside my window is the side of some warehouse. A side with no windows so I can't even look into the square boxes and see what other people do for fun. Three-quarters of my sight is the building and one-fourth is a line of sky whose blue is indiscernible through the blind, but I know that blue is there and that makes me feel less tired. Sometimes I read the newspaper. Sometimes I searched through my memory for her and, while staring at the building and the sliver of sky, the images took shape upon the oxidized concrete and it was as if I sat in the cinema, watching a movie.Mother went into labour in the back seat of father's truck. He was inexperienced about the world of women — all men in my village are — so his hands didn't the strength to drive into town for the hospital. His brother drove while father fumbled with dousing a rag in Limacol. Our mother's juices, which were our juices, leaked out of her and stained the leather seat for eternity. Years after, when our father used the bus as a taxi, people would ask him what the faint musty smell was and he'd look toward the seat in the back and tell them how he was too much of a coward to drive that day and could only spill Limacol into he wife's mouth while she bled and bled.Then mother was hauled into the maternity ward where nurses tied her to a bed and demanded she stop acting up. Another woman dead in that room last night and if she keep acting up, sheself will dead too. Eventually they got so frustrated with her bawling that they stomped out the room, and locked the door, leaving mother pinioned to the bed like a delirious moth. Later, when I asked her if she remembered what that was like, she told me she only remembered the one lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and thinking it was the cause of all her suffering. Of course, the real cause of her suffering was outside, getting drunk in the truck with uncle. That's the only way these men know how to confront pain or happiness. He only slunk inside the hospital, like a criminal, when he was sure the worst had passed. After the doctor already pulled me out from mother. I was overweight. Even as babies, girls can be overweight. I'd given her some trouble. While father was preoccupied with belching into my scrunched-up face and laughing at my reaction, unbeknownst to us all, my sister crept out of the cavern of mother. That's when this business started, why I'm starting so far-far back — no one rubbed her arm or belched into her face, while she stopped at the precipice of the bed and looked up and grimaced at us all.I sometimes think the dead woman haunting that room was watching all of we. When my sister came out, she went in.When we were young, my sister and I used to accompany father to the riverbank of the Essequibo behind our house. I say our house because, at the time, I didn't know the house belonged to our grandmother and she loaning it to she son until he get though with the paperwork to move to America. The house has since been torn down, built up again, repainted an ugly pink colour, and spray-painted with a black bunny outside. Father is still buried somewhere on the property. Bones yearning for crisp riverbank air. I was talking about the riverbank. The riverbank comes back to me whenever I see a body of water, no matter its size. I could be washing wares and when I notice the water pooling in the sink because of the clogged drain, it comes back. When I see an advertisement for an inflatable pool on television. Sometimes it comes back even if the pool isn't filled with water. I'll just see a container that could potentially hold water and then it come back. Anyway, when father took us to riverbank, father used to get a look in his eye that our eyes couldn't pierce, so we kept to our childish world while he gazed out at the blue turning white in the sunlight, making sand castles at his feet. Hard task. He held tight onto our wrists so we wouldn't run into the riverbank and drown ourselves. He used to talk about teaching us swimming. He and he eight brothers swim in the creek. I didn't care to learn. When he talked about swimming, however, my sister's eye gleamed in the obscure way our fathers’ did and when he took us to the riverbank, I'm now remembering, on those outings she didn't look at us but she'd build her castle and squint at the shimmering white water as if she was searching for sheself already bobbing out there.When we returned home, mother handed us each a glass of cherry juice that she'd been mashing the whole morning. My sister and I took ours to the ditch that ran along the right side of the house. She sat herself in the mud, staining up her romper in all kind of way I knew mother would box her ears for. I used to wipe she down with my bare hands before we went back in. My sister made little people out of mud and gave them big lives, stopping to gulp down the juice she propped up between her outstretched thighs. I stood outside the mud, hands wrapped around my glass and my eye on my little sister spilling juice. Romper, legs, overripe red. We was so close to house we could hear the cricket match father snored along to, his juice attracting flies where it rested forgotten on the center table between sofa and television. Mother was in one of the rooms, looking out a window and sighing to herself in between sips. She the kind of woman who like to sigh. But even back then — in spite of her waking early to make parsad to throw into the river, in spite of praying until her knees sored — she probably sense we was all doomed.If you tear a hole in the spacetime continuum, poke your little head in and watch us back then, you wouldn't think so. We were a happy family. We were. I can only think of two days which marred that happiness. One is what you so eager to hear. One of them this. Our parents left us home alone. That's not of any importance because back then there weren't laws about children being left home alone. That was the norm, parents were the exception. I hear things are starting to change and, in some villages, now, a teacher or a government official goes around knocking on doors. Back then, you could get away with anything. We knew when they was going to work. Our mother had she uniform. She was a typist in Georgetown and would stuff her breasts into a white collared shirt and her hips into a tight khaki skirt, rub perfume on the sides of her neck, leave the house smelling sweet as a rose and come back a sagging pile of sweat. And father, well father did fishing where he went into a boat and stayed on the ocean for months and months. We learned his schedule.Otherwise, they never gave us a hint of where they were going or what they did when they got there. We knew better than to ask questions because children had to let big people do they business in peace. They needed fun, too. We tired weself out with climbing cherry tree (she climbed, I worried), pelting cats, and cooking in the ditch with our plastic cooking sets. Then we throw ourselves onto the grass and bake. We make weselves happy. When my sister picked up father's hammer and brought it down next to me, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for she to do.Staggering under its weight, I lifted the hammer as high as my twelve-year-old hands could. I'd only meant to amuse she but then she smirked, and I was hurt so I had to bring the hammer down onto she naked little toe. She didn't scream. Girls who get hit with a hammer should scream. That what scare me most. She face turned white and for the smallest part of a second, I thought I killed my sister and she body, upright and devoid of brown except for she dark hair, was a corpse unawares it dead. She stayed so until evening, when our parents returned, and she rediscovered the art of crying. Me was kneeling in front of the altar inside, mumbling gibberish I hope approximated the words our mother said when she prayed. I asked the gods for — I don't remember what I asked them. I was convinced I was holding my clasped hands too high or too low and, because of this error, whatever I praying would never ever reach them, even though me was crying much louder than she was.We never talked about the hammer, but that was just like my family to never talk about anything. I think that's why we was happy until then. If abedeze did talk, really talk, what horrid things we might have said.My sister was master at staying quiet. She could ignore people until they starte questioning they own existence. I saw this happen with our classmates when they teased us about running away to America, and forgetting that we was from backdam. Now, when I did something to upset her, sometimes my stoic sister would falter and cut me quick with she eye, forcing me to relive that day and making me see what she little toe must look like inside she patent Mary Jane, swollen and curled into itself as if it lost all trust in the world. Me could have confronted she silence and ended this madness then. Me know that. Sorry. I is so sorry. Take me by the shoulders and throttle me until I turn as pale as you was that day when you little toe turn as red as the sari Mother Durga wears sitting on that terrifying tiger, wielding that sword with vengeance in she eyes. Or I could have been kinder. Let she keep the boiled egg in she eddo curry instead of running stealing it out she plate. Smile so sweet she would have no choice but to say Well, what's wrong with a limp toe anyway? But I did nothing because it as my sister said when she put the hammer in me hand, I is coward, coward, coward.I enjoyed her in these deliberate recollections. Then I come home one day and she sitting in my kitchen. Kitchenette. I live in a studio. She wore the last clothes I'd seen her in — jean shorts and a pale pink shirt, yellow plastic slippers on her feet. The only difference was she hair. On the day she died, mother plaited my sister's hair in hassa-back and tied it with a bubbly. The jumbee sitting in my kitchen chair had she hair loose. She hair scared me more than anything else. My sister hated she hair loose. I slipped off a pom-pom from my wrist and reach for she hair but my hands fell through. She look so living and plump on that wobbly kitchen chair.She looked at me. She look was the kind that make you sweat and burn. I couldn't meet she eye, but felt she gaze on me, only on me, wherever I moved. The corner of the kitchen she in was shadowy. My light does give problem though, so it was easy to think my eye playing trick on me. I knew, though. I knew I was in for it bad. Seeing a jumbee no small matter. She spoiled for choice when it come to spiting me. She doesn't need any of those other reasons I mentioned to hate me because this one is enough, is too-too much. She over there, while I walk them streets over here and, do you know, after twenty-four years my chest still heaves when I pass by a girl pickney and catch a glimpse of brown out the corner of me eye and I want scream Don't go. Don't leave me.No point in calling mother because I knew she'd be useless. She has a heart condition and calling she would've thrown she into a fit and next thing you know she too appear in my kitchen. Them nurses in the group home would call to buse me up What kind of stupidness you telling this poor lady?, and that would have confused me more. My mother doesn't need anyone shattering the fortress of forgetfulness she built up. Forgetting easy when you leave the country you enter when you crawl outside you mother's womb because, well, time not the same for you anymore like it does for other people. Time become malleable and twistable, and you can wipe one side out like dead flies on you windshield. I saying you but I mean mother.I tie up some rope and scattered knots at she foot. Nothing. I spill a sack of rice in front of she. Nothing. Then I had to get down on my prematurely arthritic knees and sweep up every grain because I hate food wasting. I even bought a pair of Mary Janes for she but she already inside my house and she already wearing them yellow slippers, with feet that were normal except for she one limp toe. For all the lessons about jumbees grandmother used to give we, she never mentioned sometimes none of it true. Sometimes you just have a jumbee in you kitchen and nothing you can do. I guess jumbee does cross oceans too. After a week passed and she didn't do anything but follow me with she eye, I give up on the rope and shoe foolishness. I got accustomed quick because I used to seeing she. I mean I see she whenever I catch my reflection in the mirror. She bruised lips twitching, always on the verge of saying something but never quick enough to complete the action before me run away.Me could get used to she, yes. Mute she. Ultimate master of silence. Me can get used to anything. Me pride meself on this trait. Most people can if they set their mind to it, but most people lose patience and always want to have the world spinning at they own speed. Once you give up control and accept nowhere it written your dead sister can't appear in your kitchen one day, well, then living become easy. When me sleep, me think about she sitting there in the dark, how easy it would be for she to slip inside me body while me soul wander at night and live me life as she: parading around, making me do absurd things like walk out in my nightgown and twirl in the middle of the road to the rhythm of horns blaring at me — at her. The precautions I take of cutting mmye hair short, attacking it with the straightener each morning, plucking my eyebrows to wisps, wearing dresses and never pants — none of this can stop her. But I did it. I got used to her.I used to go to work and ruminate about her sitting at home, wondering what she was doing even though she never did anything. I'd come home and I wouldn't have to sit and watch out the window. I sat next to my sister and told her about patients in the hospital. Sometimes I'd laugh. Sometimes I'd reach far back and talk about memories I didn't remember having but were nestled in my brain. Do you remember that time we — ? She never reacted to anything because I'm sure nothing can surprise you when you're dead. You kind of know everything anyone can ever say. I I was too tired to talk, it was easy to preted she was a quirky but dainty painting, like what those artsy types collect and put on display in their living rooms to strike up cheap conversation, and bury myself in my bed.Forget everything because the world's changing and I don't mean in a political or economic or sociopoliticoeconomic way but changing as in now she talking.Now she's talking to me. She's talking and her words are all I hear. She wraps the fingers of her right hand around her neck and goes, Is here he —all dem orrible bits about going with mami to visit a sick neighbour, a man on a bicycle callin she to chase cows, de creek, de rip shorts, de seaweed dem find in she mouth, in she gut, she head caved in, she mouth freeze as she was chokin and clawin to git above watah, above de mud where someone wud pass by and say Gal, wha da matter with you? Wha happen? Who do dis? Someone who wud pull she out so when de man on de bicycle bring abee mami, carry she on de bicycle, to show she wha he do, she won't be bury undah watah an mud but will come up behind mami and say I here. I alive. I fool yuh.She body was too mangle for viewing and mami wouldn't let meh see she, but meh pieced togeduh wha happen to she from dem adults whisperin and it wasn't hard to strip naked in abedeez bedroom — me bedroom — an look ah me naked self an imagine. In de end she cremated like most we kind do, and throw into dat same ravah dadi used to take we to where we build sandcastles an me sis would get dis funny look in she eye. But meh nevuh knew de details. Now she en me kitchen saying all did craziness. When she talk, she voice is hoarse, but not in ah scary orror-flick-jumbee-in-me-kitchen kinaway. She sound like a chile burnin wit fevuh. Don think meh don't know why she actin up, an me don't need ayo to tell me eithuh. Me know wha she want meh do. He still out dey; he was too rich to spend uh day in Now he go an do dis to someone She want me to de next home an on every me find And if me can't find him meh to in de middle of de an scream me is running