“Yes, there are others,” I say softly, looking directly into her large, round eyes. Giselle’s smooth skin looks almost navy blue in the late evening sky. She’s one of the darkest of us all, the prettiest. But some of those boys would have her think otherwise. “Gerard needs more than just a water girl to keep him balanced. He needs earth and wind, too—all four of the elements. That doesn’t make him a bad person, Giselle. You two just need to talk it out.”
“What are you saying, Solange?” she asks, her shoulders dropping, her lips turned downward.
“Gerard goes to see La Diablesse at the top of the mountain.” Martine cuts me off.
“Shut up, Martine!” I shout. Then I add, “He asks for one of those goat-footed girls, yes.”
Giselle raises her chin as if trying to hold on to the ounce of dignity left in her. But, thank Goddess, her red-orange glow has cooled to a dull yellow. “Oh, is that all? A goat-footed diablesse? You think I will be jealous of a girl who has a hoof for a foot?”
“I hear they are ruthless in bed,” Veronique says. “Make those fisherboys writhe their greasy bodies out of shape from pure ecstasy.”
I narrow my eyes and purse my lips at Veronique, but she doesn’t see me. “I’m sorry, Giselle. Just talk to him.”
Giselle holds her head even higher and clears her throat. “And the wind? You said he goes to the wind for a girl.”
“He fucks the loup-garou, Giselle! Those nasty shape-shifting girls,” Martine says. “Well, girls one minute, beasts the next. Fickle like the wind. I tell you . . . That’s why I don’t keep no man or boy. The sun is my tried and true!”
We’re all quiet for a bit as Giselle drops her head and starts to fidget with her hands. The dull yellow glow is gone now. Her anger has settled in her human body. I’ll give her a moment before I ask her why on Goddess’s green island did she not find another way to bring ice.
“You did not say anything about the tourists. At least he stays away from them,” she says, still holding to a tiny piece of hope.
“Giselle, those pale-skinned tourists are his favorite!” Martine says. “The ones with skin like the moon, with hair flowing over their shoulders in waves. Steups! Typical. I guess he considers them magical creatures, too. That slimy eel of a boy!”
I reach over to pinch Martine’s arm and pop my eyes out at her. But she only rolls hers at me and crosses her arms over her large bosom.
Giselle is broken now. Her whole body melts even as she stays standing. But it’s not anger, so her skin doesn’t glow. It’s disappointment, maybe. Sadness. So we let her have this moment without uttering another word.
But the sound of approaching footsteps and voices slices through our short-lived silence. The other soucouyant girls are coming.
“We need to settle this now,” I say. “Giselle, how do you feel?”
“Yes! How do you feel?” Martine repeats, stepping closer to Giselle. It’s clear she doesn’t have a victim’s name for tonight. None of us do. That’s why we’re prying one out of Giselle.
“I feel fine,” she whispers.
“Liar!” Martine shouts.
“Who is a liar?” someone from down the hill shouts even louder.
I step closer to Giselle until all three of us surround her. “Come on, Giselle. Let it out,” I say. “How do you feel?”
She inhales deep, scrunches her face, and through clenched teeth says, “I feel angry. Angry, Solange! How could he do this to me?” Her voice shakes. Tears well up in her eyes, and the fiery red-orange resurfaces on her skin in just seconds. But she can’t shed just yet. She has to hold on to it, for her sake. For our sake. We have to shed together. This is our strength.
Martine and Veronique sigh.
“Good,” I say. “But I don’t want you to be angry, Giselle. Push it back for a little bit. Hold on to it. You might win tonight. You might be the only one of us who gets to kiss the sun. If and only if you feel like hurting him. Do you?”
She closes her eyes and nods slowly.
“You want to stop him from hurting other girls?” I ask.
“No,” Giselle says. “I want to stop him from loving other girls.”
“Yes!” Martine exclaims. “We have our first soul for the night!”
“Yes we do!” someone shouts.
The other girls are closer now, and I can see their heads bobbing up the hill. Lourdes comes into view. She’s all smiles even as she still wears her uniform from the resort—a red pinstriped shirtdress dotted with yellow hibiscus flowers. We’ve all changed out of our uniforms for fear that any of the island people might see us coming up the hill and report us. That wouldn’t matter, though. My mother, a soucouyant herself, owns the Golden Sun Resort. She would simply feign ignorance and accuse the tattle-teller of making up backwoods stories. My mother would claim that she is a woman of Christ and she doesn’t believe in the island’s stories of magical creatures. That little fib has worked for years.
Still, my mother doesn’t know about this game we play. I don’t know what she’d do to us, to me, if she found out.
“Mr. Donald Hightower,” Lourdes says when she reaches us. “The Don for short. American. New York, I think. Rich, for sure. And he has his preferences.”
“But I’m sick of consuming old rich white men,” Veronique whines. “I think they give me a rash.”
“Ah, but the vengeance is so sweet!” Lourdes says, who’s all legs and teeth. The knee-length uniform fits her mid-thigh, and she’s always grinning wide-wide.
“What has he done?” I ask. Lourdes is good for just throwing out names for our game. She thinks it gives her an edge, but it doesn’t. “We don’t go after innocent men, no matter how rich, no matter how white.”
“Ha! Old rich white men and the word innocent don’t belong in the same sentence, Solange. Especially if they’re here in Kiskeya. We all know they come for holiday to titillate their shriveled-up, incompetent loins with the likes of us—Black island girls, tender and sweet. Again, his name is Donald Hightower, and he’s staying in the Tropical Suite at the Golden Sun Resort. How long until sundown?”
“We have another one. So we’ll have to take a vote on who we aim for first. What is Gerard’s full name, Giselle?” Martine says.
“But wait, I want to know what Donald Hightower did. A cheating island fisherboy can’t be as bad as an old rich white American man,” I say.
“The better question is who did he do?” Lourdes responds. “Stefanie. Let them see your face.”