KAMARANG…Bathing at night near the silk cotton tree

Apr 08, 2019 News

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By Michael Jordan

As she headed down the backstairs of the brothel, Abby the prostitute reckoned that it hadn’t been such a bad night after all. For one, she had almost gotten in on the red woman’s man. For another, she now had a real customer.
He had come up the stairs about eleven-thirty. He was over fifty, a biggish one in the Government. In fact, he was once a Minister, until, according to street gossip, his visits to Lombard Street’s night spots had caused him to lose favour with the Comrade Leader. Abby had slept with him a few times before. He was an easy-going customer who would pay a little extra to get freaky.
But first, he’d told her in no uncertain terms that she had to take a bath.
“Please have a bath first my dear,” he had said in that loud bass voice that he used in his speeches; speaking loud enough, she was sure, for the highfalutin cross in the corner to hear.
So she borrowed a towel and a bar of Lifebuoy soap from Marilyn, and headed to the backyard of the Ritz, to the crude, concrete structure that passed for a bathroom. There was no shower; just a galvanized bucket that you filled at a tap in the yard.
She paused at the bottom of the stairs, feeling the beginning of unease as she surveyed her surroundings. The yard was sunken, easily flooded during heavy rainfall. A huge silk-cotton tree leaned its weight against the southern fence. A full moon threw shadows around the four corners of the backyard. To her, the concrete bathroom, with its door-less entrance, reminded her of the old, moss-covered mausoleums in Le Repentir Cemetery.
It was just about a month ago that a prostitute named Anita was almost gang-raped while going to this same bathroom at night. Since then, the girls would only go there in pairs, and sometimes with their clients. She half-turned to go back upstairs to ask Marilyn to accompany her, but then recalled that her friend was in the middle of a short-time hustle. And if she, Abby, didn’t move fast, the horny old fare-picker upstairs might get impatient and go with somebody else. She couldn’t afford to lose out on him, when she only had three dollars in her purse.
Sighing, she headed for the bathroom, which lay about twenty feet away. She picked up the galvanised bucket at the entrance, then stepped cautiously on to a line of crookedly laid boards that led to the nearby tap. She shooed away a toad from the tap, filled the bucket and returned to the bathroom.
Darkness hemmed her in as she stepped inside, and again, she found herself thinking of a mausoleum. She cursed the brothel owner silently as she unwrapped the towel from her waist. Some people really cheap, she thought. He could have at least put in a light bulb. She hung the towel and her underwear on the rack that someone had rigged up inside, cursing again as her brassiere fell.
She should have been younger, or high-complexioned, the way men seemed to like their prostitutes; then she could have been at the Penthouse, or Pakaraima, instead of this ‘kiss-me-ass’ place.
Abby stepped further into the darkness until one of her feet touched a wooden pallet. She groped around in the bucket for the plastic bowl. She could just wash her face, armpits and between her legs, then spray on some perfume, and who would know the difference? But no…maybe she wasn’t high-coloured and good looking, but at least she was clean.
But she would make the old politician pay dear for sending her to bathe at this time of the night. She would ask him to stay till day-clean and hustle some twenties from his wallet while he slept. God knows she needed the money. It was time she bought some new threads, and underwear, and maybe some Ambi for her complexion.
If only she had threads like that highfalutin Amerindian…
She splashed more water on her face as her thoughts turned to the girl. She had hoped that the girl would have reacted when she’d pushed her, but the girl had looked so damn cool, that she’d felt like scratching that white face, but maybe she’s gone too far in chucking her; she hadn’t really meant to do that, though she’d been waiting for her to as much as suck her teeth.
Instead, the girl had just smiled, and a strange look had come into her eyes, and she’d walked away.
Abby lathered her breasts. She didn’t know why, but the girl’s presence at the Ritz puzzled her. There was something wrong wrong wrong about her being there. There was something wrong about the girl herself. Where did she eat? Where did she bathe? Who was that man who picked her up in the black Morris Oxford now and then?
Abby shook her head, trying to chase away the unease that had returned. She lathered her body quickly. Her hands lingered between her thighs, and now she found herself thinking about the girl’s lover and how she had almost tricked him into sleeping with her.
If only it was the boy who was waiting for her upstairs…
Her eyes were closed, and she was still thinking about the boy, when she felt someone breathe lightly onto the nape of her neck.
She gave a yelp of surprise and looked around, half-expecting to see some raving maniac standing behind her. Nothing…
Unconsciously, her hands flew to her breasts. She locked her thighs together.
She stared outside. Again, there was nothing. Nothing in the moon-lit, shadowed yard. But yet, she found herself staring at the silk-cotton tree near the southern fence. She saw nothing, but yet she felt that someone was standing there and staring at her with a mixture of mirth and fury. Not a sex maniac, but something worse.
“Who…who’s duh?” Her voice echoed in the tomb-like structure. She thought of screaming, but her throat felt locked off. Then it came to her…a faint, unpleasant odour that she knew she had smelt before. Oh God, she knew that smell…but it couldn’t be…
Yes it is, yes it is, you ugly whore…a cold, amused voice in her head answered, while the thing she couldn’t see continued to stare at her.
What was the Psalm that Auntie Rhoda had told her to say in the presence of evil? The Lord is…the-the-Lord is my…oh Christ…she couldn’t remember anything else!…The-the-Lord—
She had to get out of here quickly, or they’d find her dead in the morning…oh lawd…oh Gawd…
Whimpering, she grabbed the towel from the rack, feeling at the same time for her panties, but it wasn’t there, it was somehow gone. So she stumbled outside, still feeling those hate-filled eyes on her, but nothing leaped out at her from the silk-cotton tree. She ran for the brothel, sinking in mud, stubbing a toe on a stone, now pounding up the stairs and clutching at her unraveling towel; reaching the top and leaning to the open door like a sprinter trying to breast the tape first…
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Later, with the politician snoring at her side, she stared at the ceiling, still thinking of that smell that couldn’t be, because it was the smell, akin to frozen and tainted meat, that had stayed in her clothes that time the police had taken her to the Lyken Funeral Home mortuary to identify her murdered mother. She’d brought the smell home. It was in her clothes, her hair. It had lingered even after she’d shampooed and taken a bath. It had mingled unpleasantly with the perfume she’d sprayed on herself.
In the end, unable to sleep, Abby smoked a marijuana joint. But yet the smell of her long-dead mother stayed with her. It stayed with the memory of that staring, invisible thing that had entered the bathroom, silent as smoke, breathed its stench onto her neck with playful malice, and, for some reason, had made off with her underwear…
Taken from the supernatural novel Kamarang by Michael Jordan. Book design by Harold Bascom.) .
The author can be contacted on +592 645 2447 or by email: [email protected])

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