Gravediggers carry the casket holding Gita’s childhood friend into the De Willem cemetery. They weave, snake-like, around the mausoleums overrun by shame bush and sleep-and-wake plants.
As Gita watches them slither farther into the cemetery, she feels an urgent need to pee.
Believing she is a safe distance from the dangers of any roaming jumbees, Gita steps out of the car. Keeping the door open, she opens the one in the back. Now shielded, she squats to relieve herself. Her body tingles, satisfied, as it lets out a steady stream of urine.
Even as she sighs in relief, she thinks about the dangers that a burial ground holds, especially for women and girls.
When Gita was a child, her own Nani’s grave was raided for an Obeahman’s rituals and potions. Her body, laid out for all to see. Nani’s gold teeth extracted, jaws pulled open like the gaping mouth of a dead fish.
Covered in patches of pale skin, her grandfather Kisson, or “White Man” as some called him, was also an Obeahman. The day Nani’s grave was desecrated was the only time Gita ever saw Kisson cry. He knew Nani’s spirit could never find rest—forever cursed to roam the village of De Willem.
As she wills her bladder empty, moving her legs into a deeper squat, Gita feels a strong, cold grasp on her patacake. She looks between her legs and sees nothing.
“Rakesh bhai, help meh, something in between meh legs, meh can’t move.”
Rakesh rushes out of the driver’s seat to where Gita is squatting, her legs splayed far apart, urine still trickling down.
“A wah wrong with yuh? Get up, yuh making a scene. Yuh grown. Act right, nah.”
“Meh can’t bhai, something a hold meh down. Pull me up, nah? Please.”
Rakesh grabs both of Gita’s arms and pulls her toward him. Finding that Gita is not budging, held down by unseen forces, Rakesh grits his teeth and pulls harder until they both tumble to the ground. Splayed out next to her brother, Gita takes a moment to catch her breath, then tries to stand. But like a corpse, she is unable to move a single limb.
“Meh can’t move!”
The gravediggers, eyes glinting, look in the direction of Gita’s screams. Panicked, Rakesh hooks his hands under Gita’s arms and drags her limp body into the back seat of the car. He drives erratic, a whole hour, Gita screaming in pain, back to their home in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown.
There, gulping through her tears, Gita explains to her mother what happened.
“Meh tell yuh nah go to that funeral. Abeh nah supposed to go to them kinda place. Yuh see what happened now?! Yuh forget them things yuh grandfather a used to do?”
Once, for a man who lost his wife to a lover, Kisson made a potion with hair from his wife’s patacake and told him to drink it and not to pee for 24 hours. Another time, a father came with a bloated daughter he believed was possessed by a jumbee. With his teeth, Kisson grabbed a chunk of her hair from her head and, growling, pulled the spirit right out of her.
Shaking her head and sucking her teeth, Gita’s mother extrapolated that she must have peed on a grave, disturbing the spirit resting there, and this was its retribution.
“Abeh need an Obeahman right now. He guh tell yuh wah yuh need to do.”
Rakesh summons an Obeahman. For a not-so-small fee, the Obeahman spreads Gita’s legs open. Peering, lips pursed, he confirms, indeed, she was possessed by a jumbee. They must get her to a river immediately.
With one arm around Rakesh and the other around the Obeahman, they drag Gita half a mile to the Essequibo River, her feet scraping against the ground the entire journey. The three are glistening, drenched in sweat from the relentless Caribbean sun. Gita’s mother fans her daughter and shoos away passersby, hissing, “ayo mind yuh own business.”
Like a mannequin, Gita is positioned in a deep squat near the riverbank, so that the water laps over her patacake. She must relieve herself once again and plead for mercy. The Obeahman stands over her, speaking in tongues, while flicking one of his tonics at her. Gita begs forgiveness. “Meh mek a mistake, meh never gonna do this again, meh so sorry, meh nah meant no disrespect.”
The Obeahman recites his incantations with more conviction, his body gyrating faster and faster with every unearthly sound. Gita becomes desperate, as does her begging.
Just as Gita thinks she will never be free, she feels a great relief as the jumbee rushes out of her, taking with it the excruciating pain that had possessed her patacake.
She stands, sobbing, then lays her entire body in the river, relief washing over her.
is a Guyanese writer who immigrated to Brooklyn at the age of ten, spending a decade as an undocumented immigrant before building a career devoted to immigrant rights advocacy. A year ago, she turned to fiction as another way to tell the stories that rarely make headlines—the humor, the folklore, the stubborn joy, and the colorful interior lives of Caribbean immigrants navigating multiple worlds at once. Her work draws on the oral traditions, spiritual beliefs, and community textures of the Caribbean diaspora.
