Her name was Mrs. Clementine, and she used to live up on de hill near the Ramdial’s, but no one has seen her since. Some say she committed suicide; some say she’s an obeahwoman who practised too much obeah where the spirits come and took her as part of a sacrifice of some sort. De village made up a lot of ridiculous rumours to the point where no one knew what truly happened to Mrs. Clementine. Only I know that Kevon Ramdial may have a fair idea of what truly happened to her that night.
~
“Hema, I need to you to go to Mrs. Pauline’s for me to collect ah bag of vegetables she have for meh,” my mother shouts as she barges into my room, opening the curtains to allow the sunlight to pool in. “It’s Saturday, I assume you don’t have any classes today, plus yuh have been lying down on yuh tail whole ah today, time to get up and take some fresh air,” my mother complains as she exits my room.
“Do I have to go now?” I whine.
If only my mother had an idea of the real cause for spending the majority of my time doing everything on my bed – from eating, sleeping, doing my university work, to leisurely watching my Korean dramas. University was depressing the hell out of me just to gain a good grade to maintain my GPA, as I am constantly reminded, I would be nowhere without my education in this country.
I change into proper clothing to go down the road, and rush down the stairs as my brother Hasan looks up from his game, takes in my worn out track pants and old tee shirt, and with a puzzled face ask, “Where yuh going?”
“To Mrs. Pauline’s,” I state, putting on my track shoes. Mrs. Pauline is a villager in our area who treats my mother like a daughter.
“Come home early, before de Soucouyant follow yuh home eh,” my brother snickers as I suck my teeth at him. Whenever I leave the house to go to Mrs. Pauline, my brother would always comment that I am red riding hood and I would always tell him that he was talking rubbish, because if I was red then who was the big bad wolf?
You see going to Mrs. Pauline was like a protocol us villagers had when walking up the hill to go down by the beach. I’ve always heard to never interact with anyone from the two houses on the hill, of which one belonged to the village recluse, Mrs. Clementine.
Mrs Clementine is an old woman who I saw a few times from a distance in the market when Hasan and I would help tote mummy’s market bags. Even though the village recluse lived in a small wooden Spanish style home that was built too close to the road, there was always the village children stealing mangos from her next-door neighbour, the Ramdial’s. These neighbours have many acres of land full of different fruit trees and their property takes up majority of the top of the hill.
Everyone in my village knew of the Ramdial’s before the head of the family died from dengue. My village used to call him a ‘folklore enthusiast’ because he was always making up some surreal folklore story. The rumshop talk was that the Ramdial family earned their wealth through a bargaining with the spirits for Mr. Ramdial’s spirit. However, I knew this was false, as the Ramdial’s had different types of businesses from food to kitchen appliances around Trinidad, even though they live in a village. They weren’t flashy people, plus their son Kevon and I shared classes at the University of St. Augustine.
aminahwrites.wordpress.com 