CHAPTER TWO
By some particularly sick-minded cosmic practical joke, Manda’s surname was “Love”. Yet if there was any part of her life that was a right mess, a dark-comedy for the gods, it was her love life.
To begin with, her father’s family hadn’t always had the last name, “Love”. The family name used to be “Graves”. The story went that when her paternal great-grandfather Latimer Graves was a young man, he used to be plagued with a mysterious illness. Lattie had traveled to every corner of Jamaica, visiting every kind of doctor he could think of, in an effort to find a cure. The doctors had never seen anything like it, a disease that defied definition and resisted all treatments. Finally, when regular doctors couldn’t help him, Lattie went to see an Obeah woman. She told Lattie something that cut him to the heart. She said the only way he could cure himself was to change his last name. If he didn’t do it, he would soon die. Lattie was mortified. He had always been proud to be a Graves. The name carried much importance in his part of Jamaica.
According to family history, Mortimer Graves, a former slave, had given his master so much grief that the master had two choices: kill him or free him. The master chose the latter, being a man who had inherited slaves, but opposed slavery in principle, and also being a man who was known to rule with a cotton fist. Mortimer made his way to Pebble Beach where he built himself a house, married an Arawak Indian woman and had seven sons. Mortimer’s sons had then given him so much grief that he had two choices: kill them or free them. He also chose the latter, and his sons had gone out to spread their seeds and their name to nearby towns. The Graves men were known to be a rebellious, headstrong and enterprising lot. They were good with money, and owned nearly half the land from Pebble Beach to Linstead. People respected the name. How could Lattie give it up? But as the Obeah woman said, his choices were clear. Either live without the name, or die with it.
And so Lattie decided to change his name. He wanted one that would carry its own power, and bring him and his progeny good fortune. He thought about the one thing that had always been missing in his life. Love. His parents hadn’t been very loving. He had a wife, but as it turned out she loved other men more than she loved him. Three of his children had been conceived while he was traveling around Jamaica looking for doctors.
Lattie went home and wrote the name “Graves” on a piece of wood, as the Obeah woman had instructed. He built a fire in the yard, gathered his family around him, and had the youngest child throw the piece of wood into the fire. Lattie’s mysterious illnesses disappeared, and he went on to live to ninety-seven. The name Graves had been burnt out of his bloodline forever, and in its ashes, Love blossomed.
But not for everybody. Skip forward three generations and here was Manda, slumped down in the seat of a London bus headed for Lewisham, wondering what exactly had gone wrong in her love-life this time. She had always been extremely unlucky when it came to men. Even her mother had finally given up and sold the sixty-piece Wedgewood dinnerware she had always planned to give Manda on her wedding day. It wasn’t that Manda had never been loved. It was just that men usually dumped her just when they seemed to be falling in love with her. One day she might get flowers and a tender love note, then the next she might get a Dear Jane telephone call or an email with some baffling explanation, and that was the end of it. The pattern never changed – that is, until Daniel came along. His proposal had been so unexpected, every one of Manda’s dead ancestors, including Latimer, must have sat up in their graves and bumped their heads. But now Daniel was gone, just like the others before him.
Manda had come to conclude that falling in love was like being afflicted with Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. This rare affliction caused its sufferers to temporarily see people and things in a distorted way – usually bigger or smaller than they actually were. It was all in their heads, of course. With Daniel, she had tried her best to remain as objective as possible, and see him for exactly what he was. But the Daniel who had abandoned her recently, wasn’t the Daniel she thought she knew. How had she been so blind again?
She had spent the first few days after Daniel’s departure curled up in bed like a dead caterpillar, drowning in grief. She couldn’t bring herself to leave the house, let alone change out of her nightgown. Even the sunlight spilling through the window was an insult to her grief, and she had gone around the flat and drawn all the curtains closed. Her mother, Myrna, had taken on the terrible job of breaking the news to everyone that the wedding was off. Sherrie had wanted to stay with her for a while, but Manda had insisted she go home. She didn’t want to share her pain with anyone. Myrna stopped by and tried to pry her out of bed with a huge container of curry chicken and rice, Manda’s favorite dish. She wouldn’t leave until Manda had eaten a chicken leg and a little of the rice.
Manda kept her phone in bed with her, and from time-to-time she would call Daniel and leave him yet another message. She had also spoken to his distraught mother, his brother who was supposed to be his best man, and two of his sisters. No one knew where he was, or why he had left. It was as much a puzzle for his family as it was for Manda. That was the worst part of it – not knowing what had led him to abandon her in the first place. Even Daniel didn’t seem to understand his own behavior. But in spite of the amount of times she had lost at love, she wasn’t prepared for this kind of grief. The all-consuming, body-racking, stomach-cramping kind that made it hard to draw in simple breathes.
Then as if she wasn’t feeling bad enough, Sierra’s gift had arrived the day before. Manda couldn’t even look at the box, but Myrna had opened it out of curiosity and then tried to hide it among the other boxes in the living room. But Manda had seen the box, and when she peered inside, she clapped her hand over her mouth. There, lying on a bed of blue tissue paper, were two dolls the size of one-year-old children. They weren’t just any dolls, but a girl doll that looked remarkably like Manda – long thin body, big floppy hair and all – and a boy one that resembled Daniel. Manda’s doll was dressed in a white nurse’s uniform with a little white cap sewn onto her hair, and Daniel’s wore a black suit and had a little red Bible glued to his hand. Now she knew why Sierra had asked her to email a picture of him the month before, although Sierra had improvised with the Bible.
Sierra, how could you do this to me, she had thought. But Sierra hadn’t known what would happen. She must have imagined the two of them opening the box together and having a good laugh when they saw the dolls. Manda picked up Daniel’s doll and studied him. He had big brown eyes and big feet, just like his human counterpart. She started to laugh, but the laugh quickly turned to wails as she felt a sudden, crushing love for the real Daniel. She missed him so much. She held up the doll and kissed him all over his cool rubber face. He just stared back at her with his big, sad eyes. She took the doll back to bed with her and held it through the night.
On the fifth day, Manda had finally gotten up and spread her bed. Then she had gone into the bathroom to wash up. Every time she entered that room, she felt as skittish as a frightened cat. She would avoid looking in the mirror, afraid she might see the old woman’s face again with its two horrible eyes.
But when Manda did happen to glance at her reflection in the mirror, the only image that made her gasp was her own. Her face was a mess, the skin puffy and dull. And worst of all, there were four prominent gray hairs at the front of her temple – four gray hairs that hadn’t been there a few days earlier. Was she aging rapidly? She had heard of extreme stress having that effect on the body. The first thing she did was to take a tweezer from the medicine cabinet and pluck out the hairs. Then she had rang Aunt Beryl, hoping to pay her a visit. Manda wanted to tell her about the strange things she had seen on the eve of her wedding, and ask what she thought about them. Since Manda and Sierra were little girls, they had been running to Aunt Beryl to talk about things they couldn’t discuss with their own parents. Nothing phased Aunt Beryl, because what she had to say to them, was usually more shocking than anything they could come up with.
When she got to her aunt’s house in Lewisham, Manda had to pound on the door for several minutes before she finally heard footsteps coming down the stairs. The door barely opened before an arm shot out and grabbed her, pulling her into the house. It was Aunt Beryl, wearing a pink dressing gown over a too-tight white bra, and a black girdle that squeezed her belly upwards into a wide lump. She had big fluffy pink slippers on her feet and her hair was braided against her scalp in cornrows. For a fleeting moment, Manda wondered what an Aunt Beryl doll might look like.
“Minchie, why didn’t you come round the back?” her aunt asked, slamming the door fast.
“Sorry, I forgot,” Manda said. “My mind isn’t too clear right now.”
Aunt Beryl rarely ever used her own front door. She claimed the ex-wife of the man who had rented her the house had gotten someone to work Obeah on her. The woman had lost the house during the divorce, and she wanted it back. Whenever Aunt Beryl entered the house through the front door, something was sure to catch on fire soon afterwards. She said she had a hole in her favorite bedspread, a blackened kitchen counter, and a burn on her right buttock to prove it.
“Yes, I heard what ‘appened to you, so I’ll forgive you this time.” Aunt Beryl grinned, exposing the gold cap on one of her front teeth. She drew Manda into her damp arms. “See, if I forgive you, then it’s myself I’m forgiving then, ain’t it?”
“What?” Sometimes Manda had a hard time following Aunt Beryl’s logic.
“It’s just like if I pinch you, then I’m really pinching myself.” She pinched Manda on the arm with two red, talon-like nails.
“Ow, what the-.” Manda flinched away from her fingers.
“See? That ‘urt me too. What I do to you, I do to me, you understand?”
“Not bloody likely.” Manda looked at the two indentations in her skin. She rubbed her arm. “You really shouldn’t-,” she started to say, but Aunt Beryl’s behind was already wriggling its way back up the stairs.
“Come, Minchie, “I don’t have a lot of time to spare,” Aunt Beryl said, as Manda followed after her. “I’ve got to meet someone soon.”
Minchie was a pet name Aunt Beryl had given her when she was small, and it had somehow stuck. Long before Manda, the name had belonged to a beloved puppy Aunt Beryl once owned that had been trampled by a goat.
“Aunt Beryl, I thought you said you had no plans this evening. I have to talk to you about something. It’s important.”
“I didn’t have plans then, did I? But Cleavus called an hour ago and asked me to go dancing. You would like Cleavus, darling. He’s fifty, but he’s as fit as a boy, and he’s quite spiritual now. Prison really was good for him.”
Manda wondered what he had gone to prison for, but then decided she would rather not know. Aunt Beryl’s boyfriends always came with a twist. The last one had been a recovering drug dealer.
“Go make yourself some tea, Minchie. I’ll be in the bedroom.”
Manda went into the kitchen and made some tea and brought it back to Aunt Beryl’s room. The air smelled of toilet water and cigarettes. She had once given her aunt a medical pamphlet on the dangers of smoking, but Aunt Beryl had taken out a lighter and set it on fire.
The bed was covered with colorful pieces of lingerie. Manda pushed aside a camisole and a crotch-less red knicker and sat down. She looked around her in a daze. Aunt Beryl opened the red lacquered jewelry box on her dresser and took out a pair of gold loop earrings. Her jewelry box was a pirate’s dream. It was filled with every piece of gold jewelry she had collected (or pilfered from other relatives) over the years. She loved gold more than anything else under the sky, and gold bangles had always adorned her wrists ever since Manda could remember.
“Aunt Beryl, something horrible happened to me the other night,” Manda said.
“I know, darling. I’m so sorry about what that wanker did to you,” her aunt said, hooking the earrings in place. “But you’re only thirty-three. There’ll be lots of other men.”
Manda bowed her head and stared into her tea. She felt the darkness of the past few days descending on her again. “I don’t know how I’ll get on without Daniel,” she said.
“You’ll learn to cope, lovey. It’s amazing what a bottle of wine and a cucumber can do.”
“What? Oh,” Manda said when the meaning dawned on her.
Her aunt winked at her in the mirror. Manda spotted a box of condoms sitting beside a pack of cigarettes on the dresser. There was no doubt how Aunt Beryl planned to end her night.
“My poor Minchie,” Aunt Beryl said. “You look like you haven’t slept in a fortnight.”
“I feel like I haven’t,” Manda said.
“Well, as I said, preacher or not, that Daniel is a right wanker.”
Manda bristled. “Aunt Beryl, I don’t want to talk about him.”
“I know, the truth ‘urts.” Aunt Beryl came over to the bed and pulled a pair of black stockings from the frame. She sat down beside Manda, threw a leg up on the bed and started to work the stocking up over her foot. Her legs were shaped like chicken drumsticks, skinny at the ankles and fat and fleshy at the thighs. She was the only person Manda knew who wore stockings over her girdles, instead of under them. When she was done, she went to her closet and took down a black mini dress that had been hanging on the door.
“Manda, I never planned to tell you this, since I’m not one to cause trouble between lovers,” Aunt Beryl said, fighting the dress up over her waist. “But our Daniel wasn’t as good a bloke as you imagined him to be. When we got together for your birthday at that Chinese restaurant, he made a pass at me when you went to the loo. He asked if he could take me ‘ome. It was the way he said ‘ome. I told him I wasn’t that type of girl, and you were my niece after all.”
“Aunt Beryl, he was offering to take you home because you were a bit sloshed as I remember.”
“Manda, how dare you. I only had one bottle of Stella,” Aunt Beryl said, wheeling around.
“You fell off your chair,” Manda said, growing indignant. “You squeezed the waiter’s bottom and told him he had a lovely arse.”
“I was only playing with the man, but I wasn’t drunk. I don’t get drunk.” Aunt Beryl scowled. She went back to her dresser and picked up a curling iron that lay beside a white foam head with a red-haired wig on it. She started to curl the ends of her wig. “See, that’s why I never told you. You and your sister have always been naïve when it comes to men.”
“Aunt Beryl, I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Manda yelled.
Her aunt almost dropped the curling iron she was holding. “Lawks, Minchie, you nearly give me a ‘eart attack. You’re really not yourself these days, are you?”
“No I’m not. I’m sorry, but I’ve been going through a really hard time. Blimey, I feel like I’m going mad.” Manda put her teacup on the bedside table. She massaged her temple with her thumbs. “The night Daniel left, some other things happened…frightening things…and I’m not sure what to make of them.”
“What things, Minchie?”
“Well…” Manda said. “Before Daniel arrived, I saw something in the mirror when I went into the toilet.”
“What was it?” Aunt Beryl eyed her through the glass.
Manda told her about seeing the old woman in the mirror, right before Daniel had arrived. “And those eyes.” She shivered as she remembered how they had looked at her. “They were the most frightening eyes I’ve ever seen.”
“You saw a duppy?” Aunt Beryl turned around, her own eyes growing round. “Lord, Manda, that’s terrible.”
“Well, it might just have been my imagination, I don’t know. I was under a lot of stress that night after all. And I really don’t believe in ghosts. At least…I didn’t. Have you ever seen one?” She looked up at her aunt.
“Yes, of course,” Aunt Beryl said, her voice filled with excitement. “I’ve seen at least two duppies when I was still in Jamaica, and when I was also at the flat over in Brixton I saw an old English man standing by my bed more than a few times. I think he must’ve lived there a long time past, and didn’t want me there. Why do you think I moved out so fast?”
Manda had heard it was because the landlady had caught Aunt Beryl under her husband, and had chased her out.
“But duppies don’t visit you without a reason. Like maybe she wanted to warn you about Daniel.”
“I don’t know what she wanted,” Manda said. “And that wasn’t all I saw. When I was in the car afterwards, I had a vision. It was about Sierra, and it was awful.”
“Oh lord, what did you see?” Aunt Beryl rested her curling iron beside the wig this time, and hurried over to sit on the bed.
Manda told her about the vision and how she had been in such a state of shock, she had promptly fainted when a concerned old man had appeared at her window because he had seen her car stall. When Manda was finished, Aunt Beryl got up and paced the carpet in her stocking feet.
“You saw Sierra falling off a cliff? Did somebody push her?”
“I don’t know. I just saw her falling backwards.”
“Minchie, I hope you’re taking this seriously. Remember the time when you were twelve, and you came and told me about another vision you had? The one about your teacher?”
“Mr. Franks,” Manda said. “Yes, I remember.” She had tried very hard to forget Mr. Franks. He had been her favorite teacher, and such a marvelous man, tall and handsome and full of jokes.
“You told me you saw him sprawled in the snow unconscious, you remember that?” Aunt Beryl said. “And I told you, you better warn him, but you were too ‘fraid to do it.”
Manda saw Mr. Franks in her mind again, lying in the snow, his body twisted at an odd angle. She had tried to warn him one evening after all her schoolmates had gone - but instead she had dashed from the classroom, afraid he would think her quite mad. Then they had returned to school the following Monday just to find out Mr. Franks had met with an accident. He had smashed into a tree while skiing.
“It was terrible,” Aunt Beryl said. “The poor man was almost killed, and you were wracked with guilt.”
“Yes, I was.”
“Well, Minchie, I’m not surprised you had another vision. I always did think you were a bit odd that way, what with that weird ring around your eye and all.”
“Thanks,” Manda said, sarcastically. Her eyes were a deep brown, but her right eye had a thin, mysterious band of blue wrapped around the iris, much like the bright band of white that rings the black moon in a solar eclipse. Aunt Beryl always said the blue ring was a sign that Manda was a bit of a mystic. Especially because there were a few other times in her life when Manda had seen things before they had actually happened. Each time she had told her aunt about it, Aunt Beryl had linked it to that eye.
Aunt Beryl went over and lifted her wig from its head. She pulled it over her cornrows and stood by the mirror, trying to twist it into place. “Maybe you could’ve stopped your teacher’s accident,” she continued. “Minchie, everybody has a gift. Mine is physical.” She cupped her large breasts in her hands. “And yours is otherworldly. But you have it for a reason, and you’ve got to use it. If anything ‘appens to your sister and you could’ve stopped it, you’ll never forgive yourself.”
Manda sighed. Aunt Beryl had a good point, and she couldn’t deny it. Her visions always seemed to come true. And now she had seen Sierra’s future and this vision frightened her more than any of the others had.
“But what am I supposed to do about it?” Manda said, falling back on the bed and staring up at the ceiling.
“I don’t know, but you better act fast. Minchie, don’t you see? It’s just like that Obeah woman said all those years ago. It’s the curse coming round.”
Manda sat up again. “The Obeah curse? That thing about me and Sierra? I’ve only heard bits and pieces of that story.” A lot of West Indians of her parents’ generation believed in Obeah, and Manda had grown up hearing secondhand accounts of Obeah magic and duppy sightings. But all of those things had been like empty threats from a dark, mysterious island world where her parents had been raised. In the civilized city of London people didn’t bury the dead in their backyards like countryside Jamaicans did, unless they were serial killers, and only people like Aunt Beryl still thought that everything that went wrong in her life was the result of Obeah. Manda had never even met an Obeah person, and the idea of a curse hadn’t meant much to her. Until now.
“Yes, I know your mother likes to pretend it never ‘appen, because it makes her look bad,” Aunt Beryl said. “I was just a girl then, but I remember it all.”
“Aunt Beryl, can you tell me about it?”
“Oh, lord, I’m late. Cleavus is gonna have a fit,” Aunt Beryl said, but she came back and sat on the bed beside Manda. And while Manda listened quietly, her aunt recounted the whole story of how she and Sierra came to be cursed, even before they had seen the light of the world.
***
Before Manda’s parents moved to England at the end of the 1960s, they had lived in a small country town in Jamaica called Pebble Beach. No one remembered how the town came to have that name. Though the town had plenty of pebbles, there was no beach to speak of. Pebble Beach was located up in the hills above Linstead, and you had to take a hair-raising drive up one of those thin mountain roads that had no barrier to stop you from plunging over the edge, just to get to it. Bertram and Myrna had both lived in the town all their lives, and had grown up knowing each other.
Myrna’s best friend was a girl named Darette Brown, whose mother, Dar, was the local Obeah woman. Little, dried-up, toothless, pipe smoking Dar, who could stop a man’s heart with a few choice words, and who came from a long and mysterious line of Obeah women originating all the way back to somewhere in Africa. Dar was the town’s doctor, psychologist, police force and executioner, all rolled into one bony little package. She could often be seen wandering around the rocky hills and dirt lanes of Pebble Beach at twilight, bending down to pick the herbs and plants that grew all over the countryside. She seemed to know every last inch of the land. Not a small feat for a woman who had been blind since birth. Some people said that what Dar couldn’t see with her eyes, she could sniff out with her nose – much like a blind mongoose. And so people would seek out her Obeah skills for various reasons, because like all such arts, Obeah can be used for good or evil. For healing the sick, igniting love, blessing a man, cursing his brother, breaking up a relationship, or breaking a neck.
Dar had apparently done all of the above. She was the first person people turned to whenever they were in trouble, and whether you feared, scorned or revered Obeah men and women, you knew to give them a healthy dose of respect. Even the local preacher, Pastor Wright, stopped railing against Obeah when he opened his Bible one Sunday and found some lizard bones and bird claws in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Dar had her own bible, a Black Heart book that she would consult when she wanted to work the worst of her Obeah curses. Rumor had it, this was the book she had turned to when she put a spell on a woman who stole some money that was for a sugarcane crop. Every year during sugarcane time, the woman would tear off her clothes and run through the streets naked, barking like a dog. The woman was now living in a madhouse in Linstead.
People eventually learned never to cross Dar, and life in Pebble Beach went on peacefully for a while, Until Darette fell in love with one of the Love boys. Back then, there were still more donkeys on the main road than cars. In the mornings when Bertram rode his donkey past the gully where Darette lived, she would be sitting on a rock by the road waiting for him, with a plateful of coconut drops or some other delicious treat on her lap. People started warning Bertram – “Don’t be a greedy wanga gut. Never eat nothing she gives you.” There were too many love spells a woman could use to “fix” a man and make him hers forever, and food was the biggest weapon. She could let her sweat drip into a pot of rice and then feed it to him. Or if she was really desperate and evil, she could mix a little of her blood into some gravy and feed him that powerful spice. That was why he must especially stay away from stewed peas with salt beef, dumplings and brown gravy, which did happen to be his favorite meal. But it wasn’t long before Bertram fell under Darette’s spell – which was how everybody explained it. How else could an Obeah woman’s daughter catch a man, if she didn’t work a little magic on him? But on Bertram’s part, he defended his love for Darette to everyone he knew. Not only was she sweet and pretty, but she was the best cook in the world. So what if she practiced a little Obeah on the side? Everybody had a hobby.
Before long, Bertram and Darette were engaged. Things went on quite fine for a while, and even Bertram’s family got used to the idea of the two of them. That is, until the day when Bertram started having terrible stomach pains. Darette mixed up some bush tea for him to take, but Bertram wouldn’t touch it. He wanted to try the “real” doctor first. Darette complained to her mother about it, and Dar was livid. That was strike one. Bertram rode his donkey down to the closest clinic in Clarendon, where Myrna worked as an assistant. The doctor said Bertram had a bad parasite and gave him some medicine for it. Myrna started dropping by Bertram’s house in the evenings to help nurse him back to health, and she told him to stay away from Darette’s cooking until he was better. That was strike two. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. When Darette no longer had access to Bertram’s stomach, she also lost his heart. It now belonged to Myrna. The two of them had quickly fallen in love while playing nurse and patient. For a while, Myrna did her best to hide her feelings from him. She told herself that these visits were strictly professional. Strictly practice. After all, she did plan to go off to England soon to join a nursing program. And Darette was her friend after all, and deeply in love with Bertram.
But one day, when Myrna was sitting on the side of Bertram’s bed spoon-feeding him some soup, their eyes connected and this time she didn’t look away. Myrna put down the soup bowl, leaned over and brushed her lips against his. He pulled her to himself and the two of them kissed long and hard.
“What Myrna did was foolish,” Aunt Beryl told Manda. “Because ‘ell hath no fury like an Obeah woman scorned.”
At the bottom of the hill behind where the primary school sat, there was an old hut where people once used to go to buy their cocoa beans and chocolate. People called it the Chocolate House. It hadn’t been in use for over two years, when the last of the cocoa farmers had let his crops dry up and moved away to Canada. Pebble Beach was once a thriving little country town, but in the 1960s when Canada and England had been opening their gates to West Indians, Pebble Beach had lost much of its businesses. And so places like the old Chocolate House was now used for more intimate transactions.
When Bertram got better, he and Myrna would meet in that old hut every night at twilight and make love on a pile of crocus bags, with the scent of chocolate filling up their nostrils (for years afterwards, if one of them wasn’t in the mood, all the other had to do was wave a piece of chocolate under their nose and that was it. Fireworks).
It was Dar who, coming within half mile of the hut one twilight, apparently happened to smell the scent of sex and chocolates in the air. She followed her nose to the hut, and caught Myrna and Bertram right in the act. People could hear Dar screeching from miles away. But it was too late. Myrna was already pregnant, and Bertram immediately broke off his engagement with Darette and took up with Myrna instead. Soon afterward, Bertram asked Myrna to marry him. Myrna’s yard was cleaned and decorated, the fattest goats were killed, and a big rum cake was baked for the ceremony. The whole town was invited. In Pebble Beach, there were twelve funerals for every wedding Pastor Wright performed. It was no wonder everybody was excited. They didn’t care about the background details.
On the afternoon of Bertram and Myrna’s wedding, Dar showed up in the yard during the ceremony. Just as Myrna was about to say “I do”, Dar walked up and tossed a jar of oil on her, soiling her hair and wedding dress. In front of all their guests, she declared to Myrna,
“You will have two daughters, but none of them goin’ breed. The daughter in your belly will pine after rich men, but she will meet her end before she reach thirty-five. And your next daughter, she will never find love. She’s goin’ end up a lonely old woman, and rats will bite her up when she’s dead.”
The wedding guests chased Dar out of the yard, and one man threw a rock and konked her on the head (she cursed him too, and within weeks he died in a freak attack when some woodpeckers mistook him for a tree). Myrna and Bertram soon moved away to England, where Sierra and Manda were born.
“So you see, Minchie? Those Obeah people don’t joke,” Aunt Beryl said. “They have a lot of power. I wouldn’t…” she paused.
“Wouldn’t what?” Manda asked.
Aunt Beryl grabbed her arm tight. “Wait. You said the duppy you saw was an old woman with mean-looking eyes?”
“Yes, she had very mean, awful eyes.” Manda said, shuddering at the memory.
“You know, I think it was Dar you saw. Of course, it would make sense. She came back to stop your wedding and work out her Obeah curse.”
Manda stared at her aunt. Could that explain Daniel’s behavior? And the reason for her vision? A rope of fear twisted around her stomach. “Do you really think it was Dar?” It all sounded so mad.
Aunt Beryl rubbed her arm. “Lord, Minchie, with Dar on your tail, you have your work cut out for you. You’d