Dormitories were only available to undergraduates, not Masters students. So, I rented a room from a fellow Jamaican immigrant.
An alcove studio with lots of natural light, in an old house close to Campus.
The studio was fine — during the day. From daybreak until evening, children squealed, birds chirped, and car horns bleated outside the bay window. It was almost like my rural district back home. At night, however, sunshine peeled off the red brick like flayed skin, and the apartment’s vibrations were unmasked in the silent darkness.
On one occasion, I heard, or imagined that I heard, moaning. More frequently, it was just irregular tapping or creaking. I blamed it on old pipes—or maybe rodents.
But one cold morning between Halloween and Thanksgiving, I heard a wail. Naked, and on the way to the bathroom, I froze. Flicking on the violent fluorescent lights, racing around the tiny space, scanning every corner, I saw nothing. Not a living soul.
Wide emptiness bulged against the walls of the pale room. I pushed the incident out of my mind, not wanting to be that little girl from twenty years ago who hid under the bed in fear of duppies and rolling calves.
That night, as I did every night, I ate seasoned rice with a spoon and listened to my neighbor ranting. Through the flimsy wall, I heard Sean’s every epithet and every detail of his argument with an English professor. Patrick, Sean’s hot roommate, made perfunctory soothing remarks. In the pregnant pauses tucked between fits of yelling, a stomach gurgled. The low-pitched digestive noises were brief but loud. Clear. I caressed my abdomen but knew that the sound didn’t come from me. Nor had it come from Sean and Pat’s place. The direction was wrong; it had been closer.
I pivoted and stood, seeing nothing. The air, as always, was heavy and wet, as if the bay drifted in around the silhouette of the old window. But there was no odor, no movement, and no further sounds. The silence mocked me, questioning my sanity. Noticing the time, I sighed and hurried to the library for study group.
Later — my head swimming with water filtration techniques and blueprints of Angolan desalination infrastructure — I stared at the desolate white walls. A few framed posters were still in a box under the sofa bed. I hung images of Caribbean waterfalls, winged insects, and wild animals. These would be portals of escape, fuel for my daydreams.
I ran my fingers over the pink-gray legs of an ostrich, but they refused to lie flat. A bulge in the paint prevented the thick paper from relaxing against the wall. I placed my hand on the irregularity and felt staccato flurries beating under my palm.
Equal parts curious and afraid, I plucked utensils from a drawer—paring, steak, and butter knives. Sitting on a folding chair, I tapped, then waited, then got to work… Recruiting a cuticle clipper and screwdriver, I dug into the mound under the paint. By midnight, the wall was ruined. A jagged opening gaped like pursed lips.
Glancing at the knoll of drywall chunks and paint scrapings, I rebuffed worries about my security deposit.
Coughing out dust, I slipped into a nightgown, and made tea, calling on the hibiscus to bring me calm.
Clack! A loud noise erupted from the hole. The plastic mug leaped from my hand and slid across the ceramic floor when I jumped.
Pulse throbbing, I grabbed the meat hammer and everything else that I could find to widen the opening in the wall. Probing with my right hand, I touched clumps of gypsum and plastic wood. As the perimeter of the hole splayed, my fingertips penetrated deeper and met something fibrous. I cried out, leaped away, and fell to the floor. It was hair!
I screamed. Then the wall screamed. The sound was muffled but unmistakable. I sat for a few minutes. Then, trembling, my fingers pulled out wiry black strands. Twisting and probing, I encountered something firm and domed. A skull. Rocking and rotating the head gently, debris fell away.
I unearthed eyes, nostrils, and mouth. Full lips parted, and a female voice spoke in English.
“Thank you. I couldn’t get out.”
I fell again, cutting my elbow on a sharp fragment from the destroyed wall. Seated and shaking, I reached up to brush the dust from her eyelashes and brows, avoiding the gaze of the dilated pupils and cocoa-colored irises.
“I will get you out, and help you get justice,” I said. “Who killed you?! Who put you here?”
Her black eyebrows, grey from the powder, raised. She coughed and looked at me. I gathered the courage to look into her eyes, drawing from my grandmother’s brave strength and my mother’s perpetual calm.
Her voice was barely more than a whisper when she said, “I’m not dead.”
“Of course you’re dead, I replied. “You’re a ghost.”
Brushing debris from her neck, I saw that her face was plain but vibrant, and young. She tried to shake her head in the confined space and dust fell around her.
“No,” she said. “Not dead. Hatching!”
