Grandmothers told many stories that they claimed were true, absolutely true-true, like the misfortunateadventures of Pessyette.

The story began with a description of an old, old, old grandmother who lived with her granddaughter, aslightly curious child, in a tiny little house. The story never told what had become of her parents.

Every evening, the sun had barely set when the oldwoman barricaded the house, fed her granddaughter,and urged her to finish her plateof food beforesending her off to bed.

“Why?” Pesseyette asked.

“Because you have school tomorrow,” her grandmother replied.

Sometimes there were other excuses.

“So that you don’t learn bad manners…” “Because I’m tired, too…” or simply, “Because I said so!”

And so, every evening, with her dinner finished, little Pessyette washed her feet, her face, her teeth, andthen pulled on her nightshirt. She laid down in bed,in the darkest corner of their home. Her grandmother then brought her a large glass of water for her to drink.

Soon, she was fast asleep.

Pessyette’s sleep was always deep, and unfolded without the slightest interruption. Not a singlenightmare, nor adream, for that matter.

The same ritual every night.

In the morning, she woke up after having just laid down.

Things could have continued like this indefinitely if the little girl hadn’t started to wonder.

What time do other children go to bed? Why did her grandmother rush her to bed so much? Why did she fall asleep immediately as she laid down, when moments before she wasn’t even tired? Did her grandmother go to bed right after her, too?

Pessyette knew that things would never be the same again, butshe decided to do everything she could tostay awake.

All she had to do, she thought, was to try the best she could to stay awake.

She saved her strength by day to prepare herself when night fell, but, as soon as she had drunk her glassof water, she collapsed without any resistance. She had tried pinching her arms, holding her eyelids open,but nothing worked.

She even tried, one evening, to combat sleep by chewing apiment oiseau, a very spicy pepper. Thisonlymanaged to delay the inevitable a minute or two.

One day, Pessyette thought about how to find what happened while she slept, replaying the evening routine in her head: dinner, peepee and brush teeth, a glass of water, then night-night.

She tried to remember her grandmother’s mood during the different phases: an unusually cheerful excitement at dinner, an annoyed sense of impatience, and a slightly satisfied smile when she gave her the glass of water, whispering: “Tiens! Bois! Here! Drink up!”

More precisely, she told her, “Tchien! Bois!” a phrase that Pessyette mentally repeated to herself a few times until, bingo! She heard it at last, “Tchenbwa,” the very name that people gave to the various practices of local sorcerers. The tchenbwa of the tchenbwazeurs!

So she knew that the solution would involve refusing to drink clear potion that looked like water, but thathad, when she thought about it, a slightly bitter taste.

*

That evening, Pessyette shared in a little of her grandmother’s excitement as she wolfed down her cow’sfoot soup, slurping loudly while her granddaughter told her stories oflavi antan lontan, the world ofyesteryear.

She told her about daily life on the old plantations and recounted the adventures of slaves in flight, the terrible Nèg Mawon who everyone admired and feared because they were afraid of no one, and perhaps still lived in the mountains, free as the air around them.

When the time came to brush her teeth with the help of a little powdered charcoal in a washcloth, to washher face, and clean her feet in the basin of rainwater, Pessyette didn’t need to be asked twice.

She slipped on her nightshirt, sat down on the edge of her bed and held out her hand to receive her potion.She gulped and kept herself from swallowing. As soon as her grandmother turned her head, she pouredthe contents of her glass into the thick part of the bed. Once she lay down, she let the bitter liquid dribbleout her mouth and set about showing all the normal signs of falling asleep.

She yawned many times, blinked, closed her eyes, and then exhaled with the drowsy, weightless rhythmof a tired child. She heard the old woman extinguish the oil lamp, blow out the candles arranged in the corner of the one-room house, except for one, near the kitchen.

Pessyette opened an eye, hidden by the merging shadows of her body and the bed, and saw her grandmother standing at the other end of the house. By the glow of the candlelight she saw the old woman, normally bent over, was presently standing stick straight. Without the slightest hesitation, she grabbed three vials from atop the buffet and poured a few drops of each into a glass.

She drank the smoky concoction and immediately started to pulsate with a reddish glow.

Pessyette struggled to maintain her regular breathing. Her heart was beating so hard that it threatened to betray her at any moment.

Thinking that she was sheltered from the indiscretion of onlookers, the old woman placed her hand on hermouth as she opened wide. She pulled on her lips and herskin, now elastic, peeled away from her face,then from her entire body until finally, the orifice on her face opened wide enough for her to leap out completely.

On the verge of panic, Pessyette rocked herself slowly, back and forth, to keep from screaming.

Having barely escaped from her skin, the luminous form shrunk until it resembled the size of a large cat.At the same time, two bats’ wings appeared on her back.

The creature jumped up to the windowsill, turned its little red eyes towards the little girl and, with apiercing shriek, spread its wings and flew into the countryside.

A flying rat! Pessyette thought, horrified. My grandmother is a flying rat! A soukougnan!

Tears poured from her eyes as she repeatedly asked: “Why did I want to know?”

Trembling, the little girl tried to persuade herself that she was living in a nightmare. That Nothing thatshe’d thought she’d seen had really taken place. Everything was made up. Nothing was wrong. The nightwould end and everything would be just like before.

She ruminated on these thoughts for a moment, then fell asleep.

*

A few days after the discovery of her grandmother’s nocturnal activities, Pessyette hardly ever thought about what she’d seen. It was seldom more than a fleeting feeling whenever she wasn’t keeping busy enough. Then, all she had to do was shake her head to convince herself that the visions she had seen werejust her imagination. After all, her fatigue, boredom, the rich meal, her grandmother’s tales of adventure and the flickering glow of the candle were a perfect explanation for those illusions.

With a renewed sense of zeal, Pessyette carefully followed the various phases of her soothing ritual:dinner, washing up, a glass of water, or whatever it was, that she swallowed deliberatelybefore sinkinginto a deep, dreamless slumber.

She could not, however, stop herself from considering her grandmother, whose touch now repelled her, ina new light. Did the old woman’s eyes always have such a worrisome glow? Were her fingers not moretalon-like than others? Where could the scent of poisdoux come from as she awakened?

By chance, Pessyette stumbled upon troublesome conversations among the neighbors.

Man Huguette complained after being visited the night before: “Whatever it was shrieked above the roofof my house! Woy! Can’t even closeyour eyes at night!

As for Man Lucienne, she had seen the thing: “A red beast with huge wings! It let out shrieks that would make your blood run cold! I crossed myself to keep her far away. She lingered at my doorstep for a longtime, but, praise be, she finally left.”

The neighbors talked about the oddity, attributing a stronger spiritual grounding to the lucky women whoignored the whole affair, like Pessyette’s grandmother.

These accounts plunged little Pessyette into a bottomless well of shame. These women who were mistaken about her grandmother’s morality would find out about everything and she would be caught up in all of this devilry. She alone knew what everything was about. Staying silent was to be evil’s accomplice. She could not stand idly by and silently partake in the misfortunes of her neighbors.

It was her turn to act.

*

“Drink your soup, Pessyette! It’s getting late.”

The little girl hurried to swallow the burning-hot broth, helped to clear the table, quickly washed up, and changed.

She managed to pour out the contents of the glass she was handed into a corner of the bed without being noticed. She pretended to fall asleep and prepared herself to watch, hoping to notice nothing strange in the shadows.

She would’ve liked to believe that the old woman innocently put order to her kitchenette, that the drops she poured into her glass, one by one, was nothing more than the remedies of a respectable woman, but the scene that unfolded, déjà vu, careened towards its intolerable dénoument.

The woman, glowing a phosphorescent red, slipped out of her skin and hung it carelessly on a nailbeneath the windowsill. She then transformed herself just like the last time into a rat, only a little larger,outfitted with serrated wings.

Mortified, Pessyette waited for the thing to fly off, then quit the safety of her bed, and headed for the kitchen cabinet.

There, she pulled out a bowl into which she ground up a few spicy peppers with a pinch of salt. She addedwhite vinegar while stirring the mixture, just like her grandmother had shown her. The only thing missingwas oil and garlic to make a perfect spicy marinade, but she wouldn’t need them this time.

She walked over to the hanging skin that, although empty, remained warm to the touch, like a living set of clothing. She pulled it down and slathered the inside with sauce. The skin shivered a little in contact with the sauce, but nothing else happened.

Pessyette hurried to clean the dishes, put them away, then return to her observation post where she struggled not to doze off.

A little before dawn, the creature reappeared. She stood on the windowsill, placed her claws in front and, as she stretched out, she progressively regained her human form. She unhooked her skin and quickly slipped it on. At the moment when her flesh touched the seasoning, the old hag howled in pain:

Ouayy! Ouayayayy!

She started running around the house. She overturned furniture that stood in her way. Amid the chaos, her transformation was incomplete. One of her wings remained intact even as the reddish glow that emanated from her body faded.

Daybreak came and the soukougnan, as though scorched by the sun, escaped out the open window. The neighbors who had been awakened by her howling came out of their homes. Pessyette stood, fascinated,at the threshold of her door, her arms dangling.

The screaming finally ceased when, exhausted, the evil creature fell at the base of the fromager she hadclimbed.

Nobody was surprised that she chose this tree, known to be sacred, and whose roots plunged deep,according to popular belief, into places forbidden to humans.

What a shocking spectacle for the neighbors to behold, at daybreak, thisrespectable woman without apast, dead and naked like an earthworm, hampered by a completely demonic wing.

What a surprise and relief to know that, from now on, the nighttime could carry on without the slightest supernatural disturbance!

They burned what remained of her corpse during a grand celebration that evening.

*

“And the little girl? What happened to her? the children always asked when they were told this story.

Although everyone understood the heroic role she had played, they were not so sure what her role was in this whole mystery. So, they grew suspicious of her.

What’s more, after her misadventure, Pessyette was not in her right mind anymore. Incapable of staying in her grandmother’s house, she wandered the streets. People saw her stopping in a village from time to time. People knew her story. They offered her something to eat to avoid the evil eye, and they crossed themselves immediately after, pleading the cause of the poor girl.

People often repeated to their children that they must absolutely keep their curiosity at bay when it came to their elders’ business

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Ketty Steward is a poet, essayist and author of fantasy and science fiction. She is the president of Plurality University network, an association that explores alternative imaginaries for the future. Clinical psychologist and doctor in psychology (Paris 8 University – LPPC), she works on the use of narrative in care.

Nathan H. Dize is a translator of Haitian and Francophone Caribbean literature. His translations include the novels The Immortals and The Emperor by Makenzy Orcel, I Am Alive by Kettly Mars, Duels by Néhémy Pierre-Dahomey, and Antoine of Gommiers by Lyonel Trouillot. He has translated poetry and short prose from French and Haitian Creole (Kreyòl) by Jean D’Amérique, James Noël, and Évelyne Trouillot. He is also a founding member of theKwazman Vwa collective and the co-editor of the Global Black Writers in Translation Series at Vanderbilt University Press.

Corine Labridy is a native Guadeloupean and an assistant professor in the Francophone, Italian, & Germanic Studies Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work focuses on Caribbean and French Black cultures and literatures, and she is particularly interested in the uses of humor and dystopian tropes to signify and challenge totalizing universal narratives. She is a co-founder of Kwazman Vwa, a collective of Caribbean literature scholars based in the United States.