Written and Ilustrated by
Tiffany Osedra Miller
Tiffany Osedra Miller
Bassa Bassa Arts
(c) 2008-2015
words and images by:
Tiffany Osedra Miller
all rights reserved.
(c) 2008-2015
words and images by:
Tiffany Osedra Miller
all rights reserved.
Please Missus, can I have some more Goatwater?
You can have as much Goatwater as you like, Officer. Just go to the Table of Contents, start at the beginning or start anywhere. Got it? Now, quit all that begging.
----
----
presents
A Caribbean Dream
Carnival Cartoon
Carnival Cartoon
The Krewe of the Kracked Figurine
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
***
The revelers of Goatwater Island, as do most revelers, desire good food and hunger for bad love, but what they mostly long for are dreams that inspire epiphanies.
1.
Just before the advent of Carnival, at a meeting of the Krewe of the Kracked Figurine held in the Kris Kolumbus Konference room at the Hotel La Fete, one Reveler, Maman, asked the Krewe Leader for a piece of coco bread to quiet the noise in her belly. The leader, masked poorly as an aristocrat, asked Maman, in turn, why was she always so hungry. Maman, sucking her teeth so explosively they rattled in her jaw, responded:
“Check it. Last Sunday morning I went to the Dreamside Chapel to partake in their free breakfast program, which includes one likkle bowl of goat water, minus the goat meat. The servers smooth over this offense by offering big cups of cocoa tea, sans the cocoa, damn the tea and, of course, hold the rum. I must say, though, the water for both the cocoa tea and the goat water is typically very hot, all praises – What was I saying? Oh yes, on my way to the Dreamside Chapel for the free breakfast program, I was careful to shield myself from the sun’s darkening effects to ensure the world wouldn’t suffer to treat me like my name is chimney sweep or pariah. Them aristocratic parishioners tend to whine, suck them teeth and withhold wages whenever anyone on this hot, homely island dares to endure a ‘likkle too much sun.’ That sun is a bitch, ain’t it?
“Yes, on my way to the aforementioned chapel, not far from Saint Pillila Parish, I came across the Octaroon, that local high yella misfit and missionary, customarily clutching her likkle dolly house church and reclining like she name is Trollop O’Hara inside of a structure much like the Dreamside Chapel itself. The chapel, by some stroke of cracked magic, had transformed itself into a poor man’s vision of a vehicle operated by a poor looking man. The Octaroon appeared to not notice me as she was pretending like she ‘sleep. Restless and haunted as she always seems to me, I doubt she’s never known one piece of restful sleep in her entire wretched life. Just like the rest of us on this island. What’s more particular in her case, however, is that she often looks as though she lives right on the border of Haggard and Unkemp’. Now, what was I saying? Ah yes, the Dreamside Chapel business.
“‘Hold it Devil,’ I called out to the dream drunk driver. To his credit, he stopped straight away.
‘Where the Devil you taking the damned chapel when I’ve just come for me free breakfast? The chapel troubling you?’
“‘Shh,’ he replied. ‘You’ll wake the Octaroon.’
“‘How you mean? She ain’t ‘sleep.’
“‘That doesn’t mean she can’t be woken up, ain’t it?’
“‘Listen, man, I don’t have time for talking tautology. The Free Breakfast soon finish. Tell me what in the hell going on, else I will call the officer to come and make an arrestment.’
“‘An arrestment? For what?’
“‘Theft and kidnappery.’
“‘Okay, okay, ease back.’ he said. ‘Listen, I am nothing but a cracked figurine trying to make it out here on this stupidee island just like you. To put it another way: the whole of this island is an altar and we are all just cracked figurines, hardly able to move around on it. Okay, how about this? I’m just an ailing acolyte for the oppressed, pursuing, for a mark or a shilling, of course, God’s bless-ed will. And finally, if you must know, the Octaroon is in the midst of having an Epiphany. Therefore, for the time being, we must let the bitch alone.’”
2.
“An epiphany? An epiphany?” Maman cried out inside of her story. “You mean they ain’t serving up the free breakfast today? Lod Jesus, this gon’ take all of awhile. Why she get treat so special? Is it because the sun hiding in she skin so deep you all won’t let her suffer for it? Chuh! Meanwhile, I and I is hungry. What a disgustin’ life this is, Devil.” Maman sighed and released a flatulent chain of expletives causing the driver to wrinkle up his nose. Maman had recently had an epiphany herself and though she knew exactly what her epiphany was, she couldn’t at all remember what it had been. Maman just knew that she was no longer the same.
Maman climbed into the Dreamside Chapel and sat down beside the unconscious Octaroon. The Driver didn’t dare object to this transgression as there were already two warrants for his arrest. Maman was struck by how small the Dreamside Chapel, a place dedicated to dreams, seemed inside. Maman stuck her head out of the window.
“You have any codfish cakes, Devil? The kind with the actual cod in the cake? There ain’ no free breakfast in here!”
“You mean it’s true? You just came for the free breakfast?” the Driver asked. “You didn’t come to the Dreamside Chapel to pray for a dream? Ain’t that what it’s here for? The breakfast is just a courtesy. What’s more is we dead, Aunty. Remember? We done with food. The free breakfast is an offering. We on this ghostly island don’t need no bigger food. We need bigger dreams. Dreams will feed us. Inside your dream you can eat till your dead belly burst. In other words, you won’t become fat like a butter unless you purposely dream to. Pray for a dream, Aunty. You need it.”
Maman sucked her teeth and shook off the painful revelation.
“Make you go find a mango tree, Devil. Then we can talk prayer. Oh Lod, how I’ve been longing for a piece of breadfruit or a sugar apple. But wait. Dead!? Me? What am I to tell my children? Dem find out I is dead, they are sure to piss. How they gon’ eat? Stop, Devil! Let me out of this blasted carriage so I can go to them and tell them to say goodbye to me, their fairish Mother, for I has bled and dead. No, no, no never mind, carry on. If them two pickneys’ heads “so far up the ass” to realize I gone what can me say but boo and watch them run the yard in eccentric circles like dem name is fool and fool.”
While the Octaroon snored gently beside her, Maman looked outside of the moving vehicle at the quiet, barren stretch of island where she was born, bred, and dead.
“Why is everything just dry so? And dead. It used to be so lush. Now all the lush belong to the private rain forests and botanical gardens. And dem make you pay to even kiss a coconut,” she said curling her lip at a group of early morning tourists sun-bathing behind the high fence around their resort and eating mangoes and sugar apples by the twos and t’rees.
“Them aristocrats have stolen all our fruits and gone,” she said.
3.
During the tenderest part of nighttime, at that moment when carnival begins again just before it ends, all things and not-things in the universe join together in harmony before cracking, dividing and splitting apart. It was right at this time, as Maman lay inside of the Dreamside Chapel, in the subtropical state between vigilance and vertigo, that she prayed to God for a dream to fill her belly. What streamed through the window of the Dreamside Chapel at that instant was the bright light of the High Yellow Moon.
“Maroon, Maroon,” a quiet voice emanating from deep inside of the Dreamside Chapel said. The Chapel seemed as big as a cathedral and was crowded with the sleeping shadows of dreamers.
The Octaroon, whose body began to shake and skin to sweat, sat up inside of the Dreamside Chapel. With eyes more yellow than her moonlit face, she turned to face Maman, whose own eyes were fixated on dreams emanating like mournful mists from the sleeping shadows. Maman jumped in her seat when she turned and saw the Octaroon’s eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?” Maman asked, then called out to the Driver: “Devil, something else wrong with the misfit!” But neither the Driver, nor the Octaroon said a thing. The Octaroon’s skin began to glow and change in color. Maman tried to open the chapel door to get out, but couldn’t.
“Lod have mercy. Get me out of this Dreamside Chapel. What kind of holy hell is this?”
“The Yellow Maroon is a half-breed runaway Moon, Maman. You can see it running across the sky,” the Octaroon said, glowing brighter and brighter and pointing skyward. “Look.” Maman looked up out of the window and saw the moon, with legs, running in the dark.
“Holy Father! Since when the moon can run?” Maman said. “Ain’t it only yellow because it have a big piece of cheese in it? I confess, when I’ve felt my hungriest, I’ve wished to God I could eat the moon, but I know God would beat my hide till it turn from bleach to purple if I ever dared pluck out his precious moon from the sky to eat it. Father, forgive me for my ignorance and desperation. I knew stars could shoot. But I never knew the moon can run.” Somehow, this sight made Maman feel a little hopeful, yet deeply sad.
“But what gon’ happen to the night if the likkle yellow maroon run away?” Maman cried out, her face like a child’s.
“People like you and me and them,” the Octaroon gestured outside of the chapel, “will always chase it as it’s such a fantastic planet, Maman.”
“Maroon, Maroon!” sang a chorus of disembodied voices. “Maroon. Maroon!”
“Octaroon, can you hear that choir? Can you? I’ve never heard anything like it. But why do they sound so sad?” Just then, a flock of colorful wooden birds with wide mosaic wingspans flew out of a hole that opened up on the moon’s surface. Maman, in the sweet shock that accompanies the sudden presence of the Holy Spirit stood up inside the Dreamside Chapel and hit her head. But she didn’t feel it.
“Those are the Maroon Yellowbirds singing, Maman. They are part of the carnival Krewe, our Krewe, the Krewe of the Kracked Figurine. Our carnival float is an ancient altar on wheels. We are its figurines. We stand motionless, our spiritual bodies encased in wood, on top of this altar as it transports us to the carnival grounds. We stand amidst tall burning candles, pictures of ourselves, the way we were in life, and ornate mirrors revealing what we look like in death. We drink from the silver cup of life on the altar table and we dance to calypso music, singing stories of how the Aristocrats have stolen our Dreamside Chapels and gone, and of our struggle to bring our dream chapels back. Listen, closely. Those Maroon Yellowbirds are singing their grief electric. They are singing our grief electric,” the Octaroon said, and glowed some more.
Maman was overjoyed, as she hadn’t heard or seen a Maroon Yellowbird since she was a child. They’d all flown away and never returned after the aristocrats attempted to capture them, put them in cages and sell them to circuses and zoos. Before they left the island, a group of the Maroon Yellowbirds, in an unprecedented act of protest, collectively pooped on the aristocrat’s slave-drawn carriages as they drove along the island roads back to their plantation houses.
“Maroon, Maroon!” Maman cried out in solidarity. The garment of her skin proudly glowing. First, her skin glowed a beautiful deep burgundy, then a mahogany red, followed by a yellow brown and finally a pitch black. Maman and the Octaroon, gazed out of the Dreamside Chapel Window at the Maroon Yellowbirds, who resembled flying pieces of wooden stained glass, each panel occupied by a brown or black saint.
“Octaroon,” Maman cried out, suddenly regretting the years she’d bleached the color from her skin. “How could I ever want to change a damn thing about me?”
And then to a symphony of somber and joyous tunes,
Came the march of the Regal Black and the High Yellow Maroons,
Led by the Karnival King and the Karnival Kween
Of the Krewe of the Kracked Figurine.
***
Morning dawned on Goatwater Island and the Octaroon finally woke to find Maman watching her closely. As Maman’s dreaded sun rose, her eyes, which had so softened in the night, were quickly turning hard in her head. Despair stirred inside the Octaroon’s heart.
4.
“Good Mahning, you ole batty Octaroon. I heard you was having an Epiphany, yes? Well, does your Epiphany have any free breakfast with it?” Maman asked the Octaroon, who yawned demurely and wiped the sleep from her eyes. “I and that poor Devil driving the bus out there, haven’t eat since yesterday. Lady, I talkin’ to you!”
The Octaroon spun around to face Maman and cried out: “Please be silent, Maman. Morning is for the Mourner’s Carnival. Have some respect…”
“Mourning? Lady, but why are you always so miserable? Wandering ‘round the island like you can’t find your five star hotel, carrying your likkle church like it’s either a pointy headed pickney or a holy dingleberry. And then you colonize the Dreamside Chapel and monopolize the Free Breakfast Program,” Maman said.
“Turn off your animosity. We are in the middle of an Epiphany,” the Octaroon said. “Don’t you remember the electricity?”
“We? I’m glad your grief give you electricity because dem shut off me juice last week. Juice! Oh, how me could use a rum punch just now. Oh, and a likkle money. I am partial to Benjamins.” Maman said as the Octaroon, sucked her teeth, turned up her nose, opened the door and exited the Dreamside Chapel as fast as she could.
“Where are you going, misfit?” Maman called after her. “Can I come along with you? I tired traveling alone. Wait, never mind, out there look hot, the sun look brutal and me, because my name is idiot, forget to walk with me bleach.” The Octaroon wandered deep into the barren island until she disappeared.
“I told you to let her alone,” the dream drunk driver said from his perch. He turned to drive down another empty road. “Let her travel the Dreamside in peace. She is having an epiphany."
“Ya backside, Devil,” Maman said. “No epiphany should take so long it jam up me free breakfast well into my mid-naught dinner. That is not an epiphany. That is a shit.”
“Maroon, Maroon!” a chorus of disembodied voices once again sang.
“But wait! What’s that gorgeous sound, Devil?” Maman, asked, a smile tearing across her face, ripping the corners of her mouth. Maman recently had an epiphany herself and knew exactly what her epiphany was, though she couldn’t at all remember what it had been. Maman just knew that she was no longer the same. The driver sighed and shook his head.
Epilogue
The meeting of the Krewe of the Kracked Figurine had long since ended. The Krewe Leader, masked poorly as an aristocrat, who had instigated Maman’s account, had long since climbed onto her carnival beast and rode away. Maman, still ever so hungry, sat in the dark and dreamed alone, because dreams were free and wouldn’t steal food out of her children’s mouths or take her beloved island away.
Postscript
Though they were considered not only cracked, but daft, the residents of Goatwater Island longed to live in a state of constant epiphany. Their Epiphanies sometimes began with a spell of vertigo, a loss of life, a birth of loss, a mix of blood. Sometimes their epiphanies were summoned through excessive prayer, when residents found themselves suffering from a condition known on the island as “Too Much Sun In The Skin, Too Little Money In The Purse.” Epiphanies could also be brought on by a familiar drumbeat, indigestion, a melancholy echo, a blood red bone, a big black piece of wood, an ancestor’s wail, or a Calypsonian’s whistle.
A dream can inspire an epiphany and she often does.
***
This is the sixth world. That’s twice what the third world is for those of you not yet caught up on your maths. Twice as many devastations. Twice as many delights
END
brought to you by:
5/20/15
