Comess

As Jasmine told me emphatically, "facts" are knowledge -- of correct practices and their meanings -- and provide the antidote to the comess of mixed ways of knowing and of behaving.

Somewhere in the comess, Beti had lost her headpiece.

The seer man revealed that the "comess" (conflict, trouble, confusion) this man was experiencing was linked to cuckoldry (perhaps his own; this part of the story was left vague), explaining that the neighbors "had worked obeah” on him and his family, "put[tin] graveyard dirt and many other things in a buried heap" under the outside stairs.