Jamaica Kincaid

In the Night
In the night, way into the middle of the night, when the night isn’t divided like a sweet drink
into little sips, when there is no just before midnight, midnight, or just after midnight, when
the night is round in some places, flat in some places, and in some places like a deep hole,
blue at the edge, black inside, the night-soil men come.

They come and go, walking on the damp ground in straw shoes. Their feet in the straw shoes
make a scratchy sound. They say nothing.

The night-soil men can see a bird walking in trees. It isn’t a bird. It is a woman who has
removed her skin and is on her way to drink the blood of her secret enemies. It is a woman
who has left her skin in a corner of a house made out of wood. It is a woman who is
reasonable and admires honeybees in the hibiscus. It is a woman who, as a joke, brays like a
donkey when he is thirsty.

There is the sound of a cricket, there is the sound of a church bell, there is the sound of this
house creaking, that house creaking, and the other house creaking as they settle into the
ground. There is the sound of a radio in the distance—a fisherman listening to merengue
music. There is the sound of a man groaning in his sleep; there is the sound of a woman
disgusted at the man groaning. There is the sound of the man stabbing the woman, the sound
of her blood as it hits the floor, the sound of Mr. Straffee, the undertaker, taking her body
away. There is the sound of her spirit back from the dead, looking at the man who used to
groan; he is running a fever forever. There is the sound of a woman writing a letter; there is
the sound of her pen nib on the white writing paper; there is the sound of the kerosene lamp
dimming; there is the sound of her head aching.

The rain falls on the tin roofs, on the leaves in the trees, on the stones in the yard, on sand, on
the ground. The night is wet in some places, warm in some places.

There is Mr. Gishard, standing under a cedar tree which is in full bloom, wearing that nice
white suit, which is as fresh as the day he was buried in it. The white suit came from England
in a brown package: “To: Mr. John Gishard,” and so on and so on. Mr. Gishard is standing
under the tree, wearing his nice suit and holding a glass full of rum in his hand—the same
glass full of rum that he had in his hand shortly before he died—and looking at the house in
which he used to live. The people who now live in the house walk through the door backward
when they see Mr. Gishard standing under the tree, wearing his nice white suit. Mr. Gishard
misses his accordion; you can tell by the way he keeps tapping his foot.

* * * * *

In my dream I can hear a baby being born. I can see its face, a pointy little face—so nice. I
can see its hands—so nice, again. Its eyes are closed. It’s breathing, the little baby. It’s
breathing. It’s bleating, the little baby. It’s bleating. The baby and I are now walking to
pasture. The baby is eating green grass with its soft and pink lips. My mother is shaking me
by the shoulders. My mother says, “Little Miss, Little Miss.” I say to my mother, “But it’s
still night.” My mother says, “Yes, but you have wet your bed again.” And my mother, who
is still young, and still beautiful, and still has pink lips, removes my wet nightgown, removes
my wet sheets from my bed. My mother can change everything. In my dream I am in the
night.
“What are the lights in the mountains?”

“The lights in the mountains? Oh, it’s a jablesse.”

“A jablesse! But why? What’s a jablesse?”

“It’s a person who can turn into anything. But you can tell they aren’t real because of their
eyes. Their eyes shine like lamps, so bright that you can’t look. That’s how you can tell it’s a
jablesse. They like to go up in the mountains and gallivant. Take good care when you see a
beautiful woman. A jablesse always tries to look like a beautiful woman.”

* * * * *

No one has ever said to me, “My father, a night-soil man, is very nice and very kind. When
he passes a dog, he gives a pat and not a kick. He likes all the parts of a fish but especially the
head. He goes to church quite regularly and is always glad when the minister calls out, ‘A
Mighty Fortress Is Our God,’ his favorite hymn. He would like to wear pink shirts and pink
pants but knows that this color isn’t very becoming to a man, so instead he wears navy blue
and brown, colors he does not like at all. He met my mother on what masquerades as a bus
around here, a long time ago, and he still likes to whistle. Once, while running to catch a bus,
he fell and broke his ankle and had to spend a week in hospital. This made him miserable, but
he cheered up quite a bit when he saw my mother and me, standing over his white cot,
holding bunches of yellow roses and smiling down at him. Then he said, ‘Oh, my. Oh, my.’
What he likes to do most, my father the night-soil man, is to sit on a big stone under a
mahogany tree and watch small children playing play-cricket while he eats the intestines of
animals stuffed with blood and rice and drinks ginger beer. He has told me this many times:
‘My dear, what I like to do most,’ and so on. He is always reading botany books and knows a
lot about rubber plantations and rubber trees; but this is an interest I can’t explain, since the
only rubber tree he has ever seen is a specially raised one in the botanic gardens. He sees to it
that my school shoes fit comfortably. I love my father the night-soil man. My mother loves
my father the night-soil man. Everybody loves him and waves to him whenever they see him.
He is very handsome, you know, and I have seen women look at him twice. On special days
he wears a brown felt hat, which he orders from England, and brown leather shoes, which he
also orders from England. On ordinary days he goes barehead. When he calls me, I say, ‘Yes,
sir.’ On my mother’s birthday he always buys her some nice cloth for a new dress as a
present. He makes us happy, my father the night-soil man, and has promised that one day he
will take us to see something he has read about called the circus.”

* * * * *

In the night, the flowers close up and thicken. The hibiscus flowers, the flamboyant flowers,
the bachelor’s buttons, the irises, the marigolds, the whitehead-bush flowers, the lilies, the
flowers on the daggerbush, the flowers on the turtleberry bush, the flowers on the soursop
tree, the flowers on the sugar-apple tree, the flowers on the mango tree, the flowers on the
guava tree, the flowers on the cedar tree, the flowers on the stinking-toe tree, the flowers on
the dumps tree, the flowers on the papaw tree, the flowers everywhere close up and thicken.
The flowers are vexed.
Someone is making a basket, someone is making a girl a dress or a boy a shirt, someone is
making her husband a soup with cassava so that he can take it to the cane field tomorrow,
someone is making his wife a beautiful mahogany chest, someone is sprinkling a colorless
powder outside a closed door so that someone else’s child will be stillborn, someone is
praying that a bad child who is living prosperously abroad will be good and send a package
filled with new clothes, someone is sleeping.

* * * * *

Now I am a girl, but one day I will marry a woman—a red-skin woman with black
bramblebush hair and brown eyes, who wears skirts that are so big I can easily bury my head
in them. I would like to marry this woman and live with her in a mud hut near the sea. In the
mud hut will be two chairs and one table, a lamp that burns kerosene, a medicine chest, a pot,
one bed, two pillows, two sheets, one looking glass, two cups, two saucers, two dinner plates,
two forks, two drinking-water glasses, one china pot, two fishing strings, two straw hats to
ward the hot sun off our heads, two trunks for things we have very little use for, one basket,
one book of plain paper, one box filled with twelve crayons of different colors, one loaf of
bread wrapped in a piece of brown paper, one coal pot, one picture of two women standing
on a jetty, one picture of the same two women embracing, one picture of the same two
women waving goodbye, one box of matches. Every day this red-skin woman and I will eat
bread and milk for breakfast, hide in bushes and throw hardened cow dung at people we don’t
like, climb coconut trees, pick coconuts, eat and drink the food and water from the coconuts
we have picked, throw stones in the sea, put on John Bull masks and frighten defenseless
little children on their way home from school, go fishing and catch only our favorite fishes to
roast and have for dinner, steal green figs to eat for dinner with the roast fish. Every day we
would do this. Every night I would sing this woman a song; the words I don’t know yet, but
the tune is in my head. This woman I would like to marry knows many things, but to me she
will only tell about things that would never dream of making me cry; and every night, over
and over, she will tell me something that begins, “Before you were born.” I will marry a
woman like this, and every night, every night, I will be completely happy.