KAROLYN K SMITH
The way I remember it, many things happened on the night my Papa pulled the stars from the sky. Maybe it was just the one thing…I’m trying to work through the remembering. It’s confusing, I know, but stay with me because I’m delving into the mind of eight-year-old me. I grab the gossamer thread of memory and pull it taut following its silver trail to the twilight before my Papa made magic.
The twilight before my Papa pulled the stars from the sky
There is something about twilight in the Caribbean that is unmatched, twilight in this place I call home no matter how old I get and no matter where I roam. Papa and I sat quietly watching the sky being painted with the brightest hues of magenta, red, yellow, orange, violet and other colors I had no names for then or now. It was a spectacular sunset – an explosion of technicolor dreams.
As the day faded slowly into that in-between time when mosquitoes were preparing for their evening meal, I watched Papa through the corner of my eye. We sat on two large boulders at the top of the road overlooking the green of the sloping valley to both sides with our house behind us. Papa was on the larger boulder of course and I, on the boulder to his left with my feet dangling. Papa’s farmland and animals were in the valley to our right as we looked towards where the graveled road met the main road. The smell of recently cut grass, chicken feed, and cow manure intermingled and wafted through the air. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, it just was.
I watched as Papa slowly cracked the shell of a peanut between his teeth before opening it up with calloused fingertips, revealing the nuts covered in reddish-brown, paper-thin membranes. They reminded me of the peeling skin of a red birch tree – dying things. I looked down as a gentle evening breeze led the peanut coverings in a wild dance until they lay lifeless on the graveled road at the feet of our boulders. I hate dead things. I quickly looked away and focused on Papa’s face. I think Mama hates dead things too because when Papa eats the peanuts on her verandah and creates the graveyard of peanut shells and their brownish-red membranous coverings on her tiles, she always cusses at him.
Mama usually cusses with bible verses: “The good book seh cleanliness is next to godliness and it look like a di devil a rule yuh life!”
Papa’s only response would be a kiss-teeth, which, after each cussing, lengthened and deepened in intensity. I would then rush to clean up when Mama wasn’t looking; gather the dead things in the hem of the dress Mama made me and put them all on the pile of burning things in the backyard. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Besides the dead things, twilight was my favorite time with Papa. We didn’t say much to each other, yet those quiet conversations were the most at peace I’ve ever felt in my life. We watched as the evening swallowed up the day and spat out the blackness.
Mama and the Moons on the night my Papa pulled the Stars from the sky
Mama stood with her arms akimbo, brown feet rooted to red soil. I found it odd that Mama’s feet were bare outside. The only time I ever saw her bare feet touch the ground was when she stepped out of the bath…and even then, she always made sure to step on the bathmat. Mama always took care that the soles of her feet were clean. Especially after she had gone to her sister-in-Christ, Sister Gwen’s, house within an hour after her passing. Mama said it was a crying shame how Sister Gwen’s foot bottom was as black as coal and no matter how the family scrubbed them the dirt never came off.
“How God gwine let her in wid dirty foot?” Mama was saddened that Sister Gwen had possibly ruined her chances of getting through the pearly gates so she was ever careful to keep the soles of her feet clean.
But on this night, Mama’s brown feet stood firm, and she seemed to be growing out of the red soil. She grew as big as the frangipani tree in the front garden. I almost expected to see the fat yellow and black caterpillars dropping from her branches. Philodendron vines grew up my spine and wrapped around my chest. The vines pulled tightly as I watched Mama. With a swift movement, she broke her beautiful pearl necklace and began to throw them one by one at the sky. Where she threw them, they held in place, defying gravity. Each pearl began to swell in size, becoming as big as the moon. Each becoming a moon. I clapped my hands to my ears as the roar of the sea was deafening. Where was the sea from here, I thought. The beach, whenever we managed to get there, usually took a while to get to. So why could I hear the waves crashing so loudly from here?
I heard a neighbor cry out over the roar of the crashing waves, “But lawd have mercy pon us! A wha dis puppa Jesus!”
Sea foam misted in the air, salt settling heavily on my lashes. An ethereal fog enveloped the backyard. Yet, there growing out of the soil, was Mama, glowing like silver moonlight. I blinked.
The gossamer thread of memory pulls me back even farther — to Sunday mornings in church. I know I digress. I know you want to find out how my Papa made magic but come sit with me and Mama in church. I won’t take long.
Richard Nattoo. River Mumma II, 99cm x 127cm, Watercolor, Pen and Ink, Acrylic, Water from The Salt River, Rio Grande and Benta River in Jamaica
2024
Sunday mornings in church when the sunlight glinted off the tambourine cymbals
My black patent leather shoes glistened in the sunlight. They were so shiny that when I bent over and peered at them, I could see my reflection, sweat forming on my dark brown skin, staring back at me. I smiled and sure enough, my gap-toothed reflection smiled right back. I swung my feet, for it would be a while before they would touch the ground while sitting on the church pew bench and watched the sunlight from the slatted windows bounce off them and hit my mama’s tambourine before the light nestled on her smooth cheeks. I loved to watch Mama in church. She became more herself, more alive, than I had ever seen her. Not even the plants in her garden could arouse this look of rapture on Mama’s face. In church, she radiated light and her voice, smooth and clear, rivaled the angels in heaven (I had never heard angels sing but Mama always said their voices were the sweetest God created and I’ve never heard another voice as sweet as Mama’s when she sang). I watched as she hit the tambourine against her left palm and the dappled sunlight from the window danced off the cymbals and created a light show in church. The light from the gossamer thread grows brighter and I blink to refocus on the moons and the stars from the night of magic and mayhem.
Of the moons and the stars on the night my papa pulled the stars from the sky
Transmutation is a word I learned much later. My eight-year-old mind and body transmuted emotions into sounds and images the therapist says. But she doesn’t understand, she’s not from there. That land is magical. Its people are magical. So, when I explained what happened, it was more than emotional. It was as if all the magic had reached up through the soil and surrounded us. These were the things that happened on the night my papa pulled the stars from the sky:
- The chain of the rolling calf dragged heavily on the graveled road shifting the rocks, soil, and leaves under my feet; the demon’s menacing snort so close I could feel its fetid breath on my cheeks.
- The large dark brown moth with its velvety wings brushed against my left arm and left goosebumps in its wake.
- A screech owl circled above, its wingspan blotting out light, casting its shadow along the road. Its loud cries were almost deafening.
- Cicadas from every parish joined in the discordant symphony of the night.
- A lounge of croaking lizards, oatmeal colored skin and big black eyes, vied to be the loudest in the night’s choir.
- A plague of mosquitoes, bellies fat with stolen blood, buzzed frantically through the air.
Six. 6. Six things.
The cacophony of sounds grew louder, spreading around me, around the night, like a musical shroud blocking any other sounds or sights in. But something got in. Something pierced the shroud.
There was a light show in the sky. The stars abandoned their constellations and rushed towards the moons. The moons merged, forming one giant pearlescent orb. The ocean roared in response; salt water splashed my face. The stars were like comets, and I could feel the heat burning my skin like the midday sun, yet the chattering of my teeth echoed in my ears synchronizing with my galloping heartbeats. I watched as Papa reached up with his arms, and with a quickness I’d only ever seen him use for trapping the mongooses that threatened to eat his chickens, took each glowing, fiery star and flung it at the giant pearlescent moon. My body shook and my teeth were set on edge by the rolling calf’s thunderous bellow over the ocean’s roar. My mama, still standing firm and larger than the frangipani tree, began to dim, her skin losing its pearlescent glow and returning to weathered brown. The giant moon shrank and separated into smaller moons that kept shrinking. The ocean was no longer audible, yet I could still feel and taste the salt on my face. Pearls fell to the ground. I watched them fall silently like balls of raindrops from the sky. I looked up and there was a black space in the sky where stars used to be. My papa’s hands were red and burnt.
The gossamer thread of memory grows slack at this point. The remembering ripples. Yet, I still taste the ocean spray on my cheeks and whenever I look up at the night sky, there’s always a blackness where stars should reside.
