It is the season of the Commonwealth short story. The Commonwealth Foundation in London has awarded the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Overall Prize to Kwame McPherson of Jamaica for his story “Ocoee”. This will be properly addressed in a future column since today, in keeping with the season, we turn our attention to another example of the great promise in Commonwealth short fiction writing: an example from new Guyanese literature.
Among the winning entries in the 2022 Guyana Prize for Literature, writers old and new indicated the current directions in which fiction has moved. This is fiction rooted in Guyana as a place with cultural traditions that persist in the memory of the older writers and shine in the imagination of the younger scribes.
One of most promising among the latter is Makeda Braithwaite who won Third Prize for the Best Book of Fiction for her first collection of short stories An Anthology of Shivers (2022). She emerges as the nation’s most outstanding new talent since Subraj Singh. Like him, she was an English Major at the University of Guyana, where she is currently employed in the department dealing with public relations, editing and the University Press.
Below is one of her stories, “The Pastry Shop Round the Corner”, with its distinct stamp of new Guyanese fiction. It is a modernist tale of the imagination, immersed in the occult – a new world brand of obeah – but still steeped in the Guyanese cultural and traditional roots. It is set in Guyana with a strong sense of place, but with a concern for morality and healing over a malevolent force of evil. Chairman of the Guyana Prize Jury, prize winning novelist Prof Funso Aiyejina, described Braithwaithe thus, in his citation: “Using elements of Guyanese myths, legends, and culture, with an unobstructive under-current of continental Africa, Braithwaite crafts a collection of suspenseful speculative fiction firmly rooted in the Guyanese landscape. The writing is sophisticated both at the level of content and style. This is the work of a writer to watch.”
The Pastry Shop Round the Corner
“One sausage roll.” I hand the pastry to the older man across the counter. The sausage is a homemade pork one, with my sage, thyme, white pepper, and bird pepper seasoning ground into it. The seasonings are all from my garden or gifts from Malachai. The pig, hand-slaughtered and sausage sack hand-filled in the old machine used by my mother, her mother, and her mother before us. The pastry is my own recipe — flaky, buttery, and coated with finely ground, dried gotu kola that I had gotten from the Chinese supermarket on my last trip to town. It was finished off with a Ndyukan chant taught to me by my grandmother; one that kept the Maroons from ever being lost and from eating poisonous berries that resembled sweet cherries.
He takes it into leathery hands with a grateful smile, inhales the steam before speaking. “Memory. Right, Asest?”
I nod, it is a little well-known secret about my baked goods in the village. People came to my mother and I for more than fresh-baked loaves of bread. “Enjoy.” I don’t confirm or deny, but the mere fact that Mr. Jones can remember my name is proof enough of my skill.
My mother hands over his change and welcomes another person up the counter. My next customer is private — I let my mother deal with the others, my spells are hers and our recipes stay true.
The private room is on the side of the shop, away from my expansive pantry in the back, far from my hidden study facing the garden, and beyond the bustle of the other customers. It has one grill-covered window facing the black river that flows out to the Atlantic, the walls are painted in a protective haute blue with white trimmings to each corner, chipped and flaking and sticky to the touch. It has never dried properly, and generations of LeCrae children have dug their nails into it to clean it, but we have never gotten more than a combined baccoo fingernail of paint off. A worn Berbice chair near the window offers a pleasant view of the river, but the bench near the opposite wall is cooler, thanks to the rattling, grimy fan.
I press a palm to the black door to ground myself as my customer takes a seat on the bench beside the fan, cooling her sweat-glistened skin.
She’s up to my ribcage — I am not tall — frazzled, and barely twenty-something. Her name is Charlotte. I have seen her around the village before, though she is new; in from Berbice for work and study. She’s frantic.
“I’m worried he’ll leave me if I don’t get pregnant soon.”
I have a recipe for that, of course. But it won’t work. Not since her boyfriend has been coming to me for contraceptive teas and muffins.
I remind myself of the covenant. I can’t feed her fertility cakes. If she gave birth now, it would only be an unconsented curse of magick. Not a child, not a demon; a hybrid of wickedness.
The hardest lesson I have learned is that sometimes you have to heal people in the way they need to be healed, and not the way they want to be healed. They will be angry, but the divine mother gives you good grace for this. I have not failed her yet.
So, instead, I hold her hands, and rub them to calm her. I give her plain, unmagicked tea and lemon fish pie with an infused rosemary shortcrust pastry that has a pinch of rhodiola. The latter is very much magicked like most of my other pastries, teas, and loaves of bread. In a month, after she’s eaten it at least thrice, she will be able to see that her boyfriend does not want children with her. She will see the downstairs neighbour he sleeps with when she’s off working overtime to pay off the car she bought that he drives to see his child’s mother in town.
When she leaves, blubbering thanks, I cleanse the space and close the door. “Ah been seeing crow all day,” my mother says as the last bread is sold.
I lock the gate and turn our sign to closed, careful not to ding the bell by the red mailbox. The old pot hound nips at my hands as I release him. I kiss my teeth at his attitude. He growls as he trots through the opened side gate, into the backyard.
“Your right eye twitching?”
She hums. “Nah.”
“Well, at least it’s not death.”
“Big changes though, rebirth.”
I shrug, wiping drool on my back thighs. Across the road, the idyllic white cottage in a yard of overgrown daisies that’s been combed over by construction workers for the past six months is finally without a crowd. Instead, there’s just a woman in the yard. Long-necked, eagle- eyed, and auburn-dyed hair cropped to her ear. An orange truck is beside the house, full of suitcases and boxes.
She waves at me, obsidian sitting in sterling on her dainty finger, a musk of magick stinking the air. A challenge. A competitor. A threat.
“Well,” my mother interjects with her infinite wisdom, “there are different kinds of birthing.”
∙∙∙
The next morning the cock crows as I pick herbs for drying from the backyard. The ding of the bell makes me tuck my basket on top of the bench beside the greenhouse. I go through the side gate toward the front yard. It is unsurprising to see the woman standing there. Checking out the competition already.
“Blessed be, neighbour.”
I return the greeting but am not too happy to entertain her. A young witch that lacks etiquette. Why had she not sent over a pan of pone? Or toasted cassava bread? Not even a konkie. “What brings you to the village?”
“Oh, change of scenery,” she says airily, introducing herself with a name that holds no import to me. Delilah is the name I have decided for her.
“Really?” In my village?
“Yes,” Delilah drawls, her eyes drift to my garden, her lips pull backwards in a grin. “Is that pimenta?”
“All-spice,” I correct.
“How cute. I haven’t heard that name in years.”
Condescending bi—
“Perhaps we can share recipes, I’m having a grand opening today. A little tea and baked goods shop. Cakes, mostly.”
“Right across the street from one?”
“You see, I got the house from a friend who had a debt to me. I don’t normally deal with fae of that kind but who was I to turn this down?”
“It’s a small village.” Two witches in a tiny little spot, in a tiny little country.
Black nails tap the iron of my fence, she cannot enter my domain, and it seems to frustrate her. “I’ve always wanted to slum it. My family is from Adventure, ya know.”
Then go there. Her eyes go bright, I groan. I had not meant to say that out loud.
“How could I turn away from the delicious magick here? I could taste it the moment I stepped off my plane!” Her yankee is forced, trying hard to suffocate the creole. Some honey and lemongrass would fix that right up.
“I—”
“Anyway, I’ve got to go, big day! Lots of prep work and food to make.”
As she flutters off to her yard, emotion crackles up from my belly and the laughter that tumbles from my throat causes the dog to hide in the kennel. This girl will choke on her ambition and drown in her greed.
∙∙∙
Malachai brings me my favourite wine; jamoon fermented for six hundred and sixty-six days with notes of dark honey.
“So what if another witch is cooking up something? People travel across the islands for you.” He tries to comfort me, kissing my neck as I eye the shiny red sign across the street. Circe. Very on-the-nose and very Western. If I concentrate hard enough I could make it explode, but it’s too risky. Malachai cleans up messes, but I never want him to clean up mine.
Another witch in the village. She hadn’t called or sent a note with a familiar. That alone crossed lines of diplomacy. Instead, she came to my fence in a faux-nice passive-aggressive meeting. I stir the soup; adding rosemary and shallot. In the bubbling green, I stir to life softened eddoes, ripe plantains, yams, and boiled creole eggs. Carrots in brilliant orange float, deep warmed-over pok choi tangos with callaloo. I am careful not to have the fire on for much longer, lest the greens become colourless and useless. I wave my right hand clockwise; a slow Yoruban chant of strength and protection leaving my kiss-swollen lips. It is the most basic of rituals.
Every meal has this first craft, etched into each pot are wards of protection. For him though, I put in a little something extra because I love him. Ginseng and basil, sweat glands of jaguar, and blood of a cougar.
I turn the stove off and dip some soup into a calabash, setting it onto a wooden tray. I add cornflour garlic dumplings and orange glazed steamed snapper onto a plate beside it. These are just for pleasure.
Malachi has salt and pepper hair peppering his square jaw and a bouquet of black roses for hair that feel like velvet when I thread my fingers through it. He makes my space look smaller but does not eclipse it. The wooden chair suits him like a throne, the dim light of the candles and the white walls add some romance to the space. I have never seen a demon look so angelic. I pour myself a glass of wine and grin as he moans into the food.
“This,” he says between bites, “is pure magick. This is karmic and balanced, you do what is needed. Your magick has no backlash.”
I blush.
It could be that it was my second glass of wine or the softness of his eyes, but I look away and stare at the street below. Malachai laughs at me.
“Jackass.” The word is laced with all the affection I can muster.
I see the private client from yesterday, trudging along the sandy road in her work boots and coat. I remind myself to double the incantations on her next dosage. Maybe add a rune to the dough.
Malachai pulls me away and kisses me, his wine and my soup make for a full evening of flavour. I do not think of mischievous young witches or heartbroken girls.
He consumes me and I am euphoric.
…
It takes an entire two weeks before my clients start to dip. I expected it but still worry. Delilah has not come for balance, but for chaos; she has come to strip me. She does not belong, but she is shiny and new. At first, my loyal customers still roll in steadily, the old man happily collects his warm sausage roll, the girl takes her fish pie.
Then the old man dies mysteriously — alone in his home, facing the river. It feels unnatural but he is eighty. There was no local authority I could go to; I dared not go to the magickal kind because of the consequences she would face. Delilah is still a young witch — a rude and dangerous one of course, but young still. Soon, the shop has only the lizards for company and the girl, Charlotte.
Then even the girl stops coming. Delilah has made a mess of my life and that of the villagers, and I am no longer faintly amused, no longer worried. I am infuriated.
The next week I finally see Charlotte again, but she ducks into the white cottage, holding a cardboard box. A line has been crossed. I know it is not a fertility spell because green smoke would pour from her kitchen. I fear what it could be, I bite my fist ‘til it bleeds.
Perhaps if I am cordial with her? I reason, untying my apron and grabbing a wide brim sun hat. Perhaps she is young and does not understand that humans do not really know what they need, just what they want. She does not know the duty, that we have to feed them what they need.
“Circe.” I call, using the name she gave me. Up close, the house is different. The sign is crooked. The rotting brown of the wood beneath it cracks from wood ants. The white paint is brilliant. But it looks like make-up over a sore, oozing raw pus. It is dreary, the insides without light and dark, unpainted with grey aged woods. It smells of a rotting nursing home, a rat three days dead. Despite months of construction workers, the beauty I saw from my yard is a facade.
I am old enough to know what she’s done, but young enough to sympathise with ambition.
She pops out with dark rings around her eyes, ruby lips parted, and her white skirt blackened at the hem. “Asest, blessed be.”
“You have entered a covenant with someone who is mine already.”
Circe laughs. “Yours? The girl wanted a child and you gave her clarity.”
“And? You gave her something else. A passenger. A parasite.”
Her eyes are hard — stubborn. “I gave her what she wanted. I fed her as she wished.”
“You poisoned her!” Enraged, I grip her fence. The ivy stings my hands like red ants. I pull them to my chest with a hiss.
Circe grins. “Mind your own vineyards.”
A spell falls from my lips with the ease of a breath mending the furious red blisters. Circe swallows and all mirth is gone from her face as I turn healed palms to her, I remind her who is senior amongst us.
“I will not allow this.” It is a promise.
Circe juts her chin. “I don’t need your permission.”
Her arrogance eats the compassion I had for her away. Feel sorry for magga dog and magga dog bite you; I learned my lesson.
Back in my home, surrounded by salted iron and thick stinging nettle, I submerge my palms into cool coconut milk and aloe gel. The wound heals but the pain lingers.
She has given the girl a mimicry of a fertility spell, a false child to bring an abomination for her to leech from.
“How are you so sure?” Malachi asks.
“I’m not as young as I look,” I remind him. “I know a parasite curse when I see one. The birth is non-consensual, Circe has darkened her craft beyond what I imagined. It’s all greed.”
“Ah,” he taunts the next word with contempt. “Unbalanced.”
Chaos and magick cannot hold hands. “Exactly. Magick borne from poison like that only served to enrich dark recipes — once the child is born Circe will take it as a power source to further her poison.”
Briefly, I wonder how many other women she had doomed for quick access to powers beyond our divine mother’s scope.
“I can haunt her if you’d like,” my own personal demon suggests, unpinning my hair.
I cock a brow. “Nine hours.” Malachai’s thick fingers massage my scalp — I almost moan out loud. “The passenger spell takes nine hours and she’ll be calling for my mother.” My mother had been the village doula for decades, and centuries before that. “Then Charlotte will die and Circe will leave with the child and a well of magick.”
“Your competition gets rid of itself.” Malachai is unmoved by human deaths and trials, but he pays a kindness to them for me. “I am sorry about the girl. Carol.”
“Charlotte.” I whisper as his hands work my neck. The backlash of the spell is not enough. Circe is dealing with filth and when the girl dies in birth, I am sure she will make the child disappear and leave the village. It will be a tragic, evil story that will spell doom for me — me, who they will chase from the village. Me, who they will split from the belly to my throat.
Me, who will be drowned in the black river. Me, who will have to kill them all if they try to attack me.
I close my eyes. “They would hang me for her crimes. I am helpful when I can serve, otherwise, I am the devil.”
“Stealing my job?” He kisses my mind with secret words. I will burn the world before harm comes to you.
I smile. I know.
“Do what you do best.” His hands slide down to meet mine, holding them in the chill milk and aloe. “Bake her something.”
And I do.
∙∙∙
Circe woke up in a cold sweat, hands gripping her sheets. Last night, she had done as always, drank a little dark rum and ate a bowl of fresh fruits. The pain feels like a cramp, there is the stabbing and heavy movement of tissue — bulking and travelling, but far worse. Something was clawing through her canal to see the world.
Breaking the barrier, the serpentine mass is slick with mucus, slithering around her thigh and crawling onto her bosom, soaking her skin in blood. Circe screams and screams. The red- eyed creature still escapes her, a never-ending length of vile scales and thick muscle.
It coils onto her chest, red eyes unblinking until Circe’s throat is dry and morning’s purple dawn turns orange. The snake dissolves into lumpen flesh.
There is a dividing that occurs in a slow and tedious fashion. The flesh carves out a crescent moon. Stumps grow in two pairs, before fingers and toes sprout. A crown morphs into a sapodilla-coloured mango seed. It assembles for what feels like hours until it is solid and crying.
Circe cups the squirming body, throat sore and silent from wailing. The baby looks at her with brown eyes, like mine, before I am shut out from its birthing. My vision whirls from being jolted back home, I clutch the wall beside my front door to steady myself. I take in the smooth wood before me, the feel of the morning chill on the wood beneath my hand. The distant smell of tea blends until the world stops spinning.
“You seemed pretty confident I would be getting a calling right about now,” my mother taunts, her coffee strong enough to wake the dead.
“A different kind of call,” I say, unlocking the front door to reveal Charlotte coming to our gate with an empty Tupperware container. One that had held poignant pastries I baked for her last night and dropped off before three, right when she came home from her night shift. I wave her in, “Hello, Miss Charlotte.”
“Miss Asest.” She lifts the shiny, empty container. “The cake was delicious, the pie too! The tea was great, I feel bad but I didn’t share it with anyone. I, uh, have a confession to make.”
I lean in like a conspirator.
“I tried the new lady but her stuff don’t do the good yours does. I was vex with you, ya know? Miss Circe told me you’ve been giving me things to get me away from Daniel, and she’d get me something to keep him.” Her fingernails scrape her throat. “This morning I saw him tonguing our neighbour so I don’t wanna keep him. Damn liar. I’ll keep coming to you. You feed me right.”
I pretend not to have known, accepting the Tupperware and waving her off as she scurries out the yard without looking at the cottage across the road. A crow lands on my fence, facing east with twitchy wings, ready to take off at any moment.
Before I go back inside, the front door of the cottage swings open. Circe looks mad. Red hair like solid fire in the sun, bags half open as she stuffs them into the back of the truck. Behind her is a little boy, no more than three, who looks me straight in the eyes and smiles.
Abomination.
A shiver runs through my spine, but I remember that that isn’t my problem. She birthed it. It is her curse to bear. Circe could have avoided it if she only kept her recipes kind. I can’t think of her, not when the village needs me. The pastries are stuffed and rising in the oven, the scent of the teas fill the shop — I have added a little aloe — the breads are golden; wrapped in paper and tied with twine. We open at noon.
Makeda Braithwite (2022)
