Michael wouldn’t look at me! He snapped his own belt open, undid his fly faster than I could see. He lay back on the bed, lifted his hips and pulled the pants down to his ankles. He was wearing snug briefs, bright blue. The contrast with his brown skin was lovely. Legs akimbo, he struggled to get the pants off his feet. “I’m sorry,” he muttered.
“It’s all right,” I whispered. “I guess this gets easier with practice.” He threw me a stricken look, and I remembered that we might never do this again. But surely we would with other people? Now I felt too awkward to try to explain what I’d meant.
Michael finally had the pants off and deposited in a bundle on the floor. He sat on the bed beside me.
“Michael.”
“Mm?”
“Take your socks off too.”
When we were done with our experiment that afternoon, Michael lay beside me, still shivering. He looked up into the ceiling, stared at the empty white space as though there were something there to see. He’d drawn my thin blue cotton sheet over his middle. There was barely space on my narrow single bed for the two of us. I tried to lie beside him, wanting his warmth, but taking care not to let my body touch his. He didn’t respond. I curled around my own belly, feeling my skin cool. I tried to take in the unfamiliar feelings of having been entered by another person (my private explorations with an empty, conveniently shaped deodorant bottle had felt more under my control), of having felt my internal spaces shift to make room for a new presence. Of the stickiness on my thigh, fast drying to a powdery glaze. Tried to decide whether I’d liked it. “Michael?”
“Shit!” He sat up suddenly, nearly tumbling me off the little piece of the bed I was cotched on. I reached a hand to the floor to steady myself.
“When your father coming home?” he asked.
“Late, I told you.”
“He might change his mind. I have to go.” He was on his feet, already had his briefs on, his shirt. He was stepping into his pants as he talked.
“But—”
“And I have homework to do, girl.” He perched on a corner of the bed, far away from me, started putting his socks on. He flashed me a brief, bright grin that went no further than his teeth. “Trig, you know? Blasted Mr. Pape. He’s going to take up the assignment in class tomorrow.”
I sat up, reached for my dress. “Let me walk you to the dock, then.”
“No, no, no. It’s all right. Don’t fret yourself.”
“But…”
He was out the door before I knew it, still buttoning up his shirt. I watched him run along the rocky road, his book bag tucked under his arm. He held it tighter than he had held me.
I stared at the fleeing flag of his white shirt until the dark swallowed it up. “You Make Me Feel Brand New” was playing on the asinine pink radio Dadda had given me two years before. When the song got to the lyrics “Precious friend, with you I’ll always have a friend,” I yanked the plug out of the wall. I sat on the bed and blinked until my eyes were no longer brimming. I got up and pulled on a smock top and my favourite jeans—wide-legged elephant pants in a soft brushed cotton. Then I went and made myself a quick supper. I had homework to do, too.
Next day when I went into the caf for lunch, Michael was already sitting at a table with his guy friends, talking and laughing. He saw me, but I looked away. I found an empty seat at the other end of the cafeteria.
Evelyn’s husband Samuel picked us up in a Beamer, tastefully grey, that did not so much drive as it floated silently through the streets of Cayaba. I was used to bumping and grinding along in my rattletrap old Victoria. Samuel’s car glided as though there were no gravity. The ride was so smooth, I could barely tell up from sideways. I felt a bit queasy.
Samuel was a quietly handsome light-skinned black man, his features vaguely familiar. His temples were a distinguished grey, and he reeked of money. I wondered if he gave a smooth ride too. I gulped down my queasiness.
“So,” he said, looking at me through the rear view mirror, “you’re a librarian?”
“No, a library supervisor.”
“Chuh,” said Evelyn. “Probably no difference. Chastity was always so modest.”
“I get paid many thousands of dollars less a year than a librarian,” I told them. “Was too busy looking after Ifeoma to get the Master’s degree. Couldn’t have afforded it, anyway. I would have had to go abroad to study.”
The conversation went dead. I seemed to be good at making that happen. But pretty soon we were at the waterbus docks. Dealing with the business of paying our fare and navigating the car onto the waterbus kept Samuel busy. Evelyn looked out the window and drummed the fingers of one hand on the dash. Once the waterbus was underway, I said, “Samuel, thanks so much for rescuing me, eh?”
“It’s all right, man. Don’t mention it.”
Perfect gentleman. “I’m just going to stand by the front.” Never mind I wouldn’t be able to see anything in the dark. But it was a relief to ease myself out of that silent car and step into the night air and the sea breeze. Evelyn’s gaze after me was wistful, but she didn’t say anything. When I pushed the car door closed, it snicked shut with a quiet, solid thump. You had to slam Victoria’s doors to get them to close properly. The sound she made was like dropping a tyre iron, and was usually accompanied by flakes of rust snowing down onto the ground.
I moved around the other cars parked on the waterbus. Not too many at this late hour. The wind slid cool, delicious fingers along my scalp. I made my way to the front of the boat and stood there. The boat’s running lights threw a widening, disappearing triangle of yellow onto the water. Outside of that, there was nothing to see, only endless dark. The prow of the boat pitched and jumped over the waves, occasionally spraying a fine mist of water over me. I looked down, tried to imagine sea people stroking through the water. I shivered. I hated night swimming.
Off in the distance was one of the Gilmor Saline barges, heading for the other side of Dolorosse. These past few weeks, the amount of dust blowing around Dolorosse from the construction was a lot less. The plant would be officially open for business soon, the week before the election. Don’t tell me that Johnson hadn’t planned it that way to make himself look good.
We were coming up on Dolorosse. As I got back into the car, Samuel turned to look at me. “When we get there, you have to direct me to your house, all right?”
He had a really warm, friendly smile. It was hard to keep hating him just on principle. I smiled back. “All right.”
We drove down the gangway onto Dolorosse. The car took the gravel lanes of Dolorosse with the same mute grace with which it had handled the streets of Cayaba. “Left here,” I told Samuel, directing him between the two silk cotton trees which arced towards each other on either side of the road.
“They look like people holding hands,” he said. “The trees, I mean.” So he had imagination, too. Another point for Samuel.
Evelyn was craning her neck all around, seeing what she could of Dolorosse in the dark. “You know,” she said, “I’ve never been here. And after the hurricane, I just didn’t have the taste for making the trip.”
“Dadda told me that a lot of Cayabans stopped coming out to the islands after that hurricane.”
“Good thing, too,” Samuel said. “Gave the seal population time to get their numbers up.”
“Now you sound like Hector,” I told him.
“And who’s Hector?” Evelyn had a sly, knowing kind of tone to her voice.
“Strange man from the university.”
“A handsome strange man?” she asked playfully.
“If you like that type.” I did, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “No, he’s a biologist. Marine biologist. He’s studying the seals. Lives in a little launch on the water all day and night, watching them through a scope and making notes.”
“That sounds romantic,” said Evelyn.
“Seals are all he can talk about.”
“Oh.” She looked back out the window again. Shame on me, b
ad-mouthing poor Hector. But I didn’t want Evelyn getting
too nosy.
“Why he studying the seals?” Samuel asked over his shoulder.
“You asking me? We don’t talk much about that.”
Evelyn couldn’t resist. “What you talk about, then?”
Stuffy in here. I needed some fresh Dolorosse air on my face. “Samuel, how you roll down the windows in this fancy car of yours?”
“The little green arrows in the door,” he told me. “Up is up and down is down.”
“And never the twain shall meet?”
Evelyn giggled at me. I pushed the “down” button, inhaled the cool, salty breeze. You would think someone with enough money to run a car like this could keep the air conditioning going.
Ant crawling up my bare arm, I could feel it. I slapped it off, only to feel another one on the outside of my right thigh. Inside my panty hose? I rubbed my hand over the spot to squash it. But then there were more, crawling up my shins, down inside my blouse, the back of my neck; more than I could sweep off with my hands. “Shit!”
Evelyn looked over her shoulder. “What happen?”
By now I was doing a strange dance, trying to rub the ants off me from everywhere I felt them crawling. “I think you have ants in your car, Samuel.”
“What? Evelyn, you left a raisin bun in the glove compartment again?”
“No. That was only the one time.”
The tickling was driving me mad. “Stop the car, please. I need to get out and brush them off.”
Samuel pulled the car over and stopped. I hopped out. But all I rubbed my skin, slapped at the tickling places, the sensation wouldn’t stop. “Jesus!”
Evelyn opened her door. “Can you see them?”
“The ants? In this dark? No.”
Now Samuel was leaning over into the back seat, searching for ants by the light of his cell phone. “I don’t see anything here,” he said.
The little feet had stopped crawling all over me. I waited a second, then said, “It’s all right, Samuel. I think I got them all.” He and I checked the back seat before I got back in, but not a thing we could find. “Let’s just go,” I said to him.
He got back in the driver’s side. “I’m so sorry, Calamity.”
“But you don’t have to apologise. There’s nothing in the car. I wonder where they came from?”
“Maybe you picked them up from the waterbus?” Evelyn asked me.
“Maybe.” I slipped my shoes off. After all day in the sweaty panty hose, my feet were itching.
“Make a right here, Samuel.”
Now my hands were itching, too. I scraped at one hand with the nails of the other, switched. Christ on a crutch—don’t tell me I was allergic to ants now. “Just follow this bend around to the right,” I told Samuel.
My heart was pounding, my body feeling trembly inside. “Evelyn?”
“Ah?”
“You carry anything like Benadryl on you?”
“No. Why?”
“Nothing much. The ant bites just making me a little itchy. A left, Samuel.” The itching promptly got so bad I had to fight not to claw at my hands and feet. “A right here, Samuel.”
Thank heaven, the itching was easing up. It was almost gone now. Looked like I’d be all right.
The air in the car was thick and close. Heat blossomed in my chest and swept upwards to my head. Sweat broke out on my face. I panted for air, trying to do it quietly so Evelyn and Samuel wouldn’t hear. I leaned over and turned down the other window. Evelyn glanced briefly back at me. “Samuel,” she said, “turn off the air conditioning. I think Calamity prefers the night air.”
The air had been on all this time? “You sure the air conditioning is working?” I asked them. “Make another right, Samuel.” I fanned my face with my hands, parted my knees to let some air get to my thighs. “Woi,” I said. “Hot night, you don’t find?”
“Oh!” said Evelyn. “How about we keep the air on and the windows open? Believe me, I know how the Change of Life can be.”
The Change. Knowledge landed on me like a sack of bricks. “Shit. You’re right.”
“Pardon?” said Samuel.
Bare Bear; Dumpy; the almond tree; every time something had shown up, I’d been perishing for heat and scratching those two fingers.
“Calamity?”
“It’s menopause. That’s what’s doing it.”
“Well, don’t be ashamed, my love. It’s nothing Samuel hasn’t heard from me, plenty times.”
“Samuel,” I said, “it’s the next left.” What had manifested now? And where? Must have been something big, to be putting me through all this.
We passed Mrs. Chin’s place, and Mr. Robinson’s little store where he sold candles, eggs, and so: basic items for people who didn’t want to make the trip to the big island just to get one or two little things. I was still gasping a bit. I stuck my head out the window, sucked in air, pulled at my damp clothing. What I saw up ahead brought on chills. “Samuel, you’re going to make a right at that…thing there in front of us.”
He peered at it. “What that? Some kind of sculpture or something?”
“It’s stones. Big, flat rockstones piled on each other. The island children made it.”
“How sweet,” Evelyn murmured.
In fact, only one island child had made it, because there’d been only one child in those days. Me. That sculpture came from Blessée. I’d built it over the days of one long summer to mark the border of our property. I’d pretended the yellow-blue brown girl from the sea was helping me, hauling rocks alongside me, and urging me to come and swim when we got too hot.
It was me. Every time I had a power surge. I shuddered, not burning up any longer. Chilled.
We were coming up to the corner; around the bend was Dadda’s house. Behind my ribcage, my heart was splashing like a drowning man in the sea.
“Chastity?” said Evelyn. I didn’t correct her. I was back in small-girl days. Chastity was the right name. “You didn’t tell me your father had started up the cashew farm again.”
He hadn’t. My skin pimpled at what I saw out the car window.
Our cashew grove. From Blessée. Resurrected.
“I didn’t think to tell you,” I murmured as we passed the fence, the mass of trees that had once been neat rows, but which Dadda had neglected until the seeds they’d dropped had spawned a
cashew jungle, battling with their parents for light and air. Casuarina pines ringed the orchard as they had when I was younger, to protect the cashew trees from the wind. The spiny casuarina leaves rattled in the slight breeze, like the coco broom Mumma used to use to sweep any dead leaves away from the orchard, so we could better collect the fallen fruit. There it all was in front of me. I thought I was going to be sick.
“You cool enough now?” Samuel asked. I saw his concerned face in the rear view mirror.
“Never better,” I told him, trying not to let my teeth chatter.
There was the house in front of us. The Dolorosse house, thank God, not the drowned one. I let out a shivery breath, then another. “That’s it,” I told them. “There’s no real driveway. Park anywhere, except over there.” I pointed. “I have some tomato bushes coming up.”
The car drifted silently to a place in front of the house, off to one side. Samuel turned it off. It was scarcely any quieter than when it had been running. We sat in the dark as the engine ticked down. A thought unfurled in me like ice water poured into my veins. Dadda. Mr. Lee said the dead don’t stay quiet.
“Calamity?” came Samuel’s cultured voice. “You want us to see you to the door?”
“Don’t you be so polite,” Evelyn chided him. “I want her to invite us in.” She turned to me. “Just for a little while, please? I know it’s late. But you and I still have to talk about children from the sea.”
“Isn’t that a brand of tinned tuna?” Samuel said with a chuckle. Evelyn play-swatted him over the head.
If Dadda was back, what was ba
ck, exactly? What shape was he in? I didn’t want to move out of the car.
“Calamity?” Evelyn was facing me in her seat, kneeling in it like an eager young girl. “Please? Only if you say yes. Otherwise we will just see you to the door and leave you alone. You and I can talk tomorrow.”
Leave me alone? With a jumbie walking somewhere there-bout? Not a rass. I leapt out of the car, yanked Evelyn’s door open. “No, no; come on in. Sit and have a drink with me. Please.”
I led them to the front door, my skin prickling the whole way. The cashew trees shushed the night. Mumma used to tell me that the sound they made was their way of reminding bad little girls to go to sleep when night come. So many nights of falling to sleep with the crash of the sea coming in one window and the whispering of the cashew grove from the other.
I unlocked the door and threw it open wide. It banged against the wall and rebounded. Samuel stopped it with his hand before it hit me in the face. I reached inside, swiped my hand over the light switch and pulled it back outside before anything unknown could touch me. The hallway light was dim when it came on. I kept meaning to change that bulb. Its dusty yellow light revealed the narrow space, cluttered with two and a half pairs of my tennis shoes, a towel from the last time I’d had a sea bath, and a stack of books I kept meaning to return to the library. Good thing I didn’t have to pay overdue fines. “Come on in,” I said to Samuel and Evelyn. I picked up the towel as I stepped in ahead of them. If Dadda’s jumbie came at us from the darkened house, I could throw the towel round his head, or something. Did a jumbie need to be able to see to grab you? I went on into the house, my protective towel wrapped around my hand and held before me.
“Everything okay?” Samuel asked.
“Oh, yes. Never better!” My voice was so bright, it was blinding. I reached around the entrance to the living room with the towel-wadded hand and flicked the light on. I stood bravely in the entrance, barring Evelyn and Samuel from going in until I checked it out. I looked around. Unless he was hiding behind the sofa, Dadda wasn’t in there. And by the end, he hadn’t been agile enough to crouch down anyway. But the skin on my arms was still horripilating. I took a surprised Evelyn by the hand and marched her into the living room with me, Samuel following. Nothing leapt out at us, smelling of the crypt. “There,” I said to them. “That’s all right, then. Cashew liqueur, anyone?”
The New Moon's Arms Page 14
