“Oh,” I said. “My mistake. So sorry.”
The next five minutes or so were pure joke as the sea people tried to help me into my boat. Every last one of them naked, wet, and slippery. Me shaking so much I couldn’t control my muscles. I would get a foot up on a helpful shoulder, but it would slide off one time, and braps! I’d go into the water again. It would have been funny, but I was so tired. And so cold! My arthritic knee was giving off a bright, gonging pain. “Should have climbed that blasted almond tree a few more times for practice,” I gasped at them.
Finally a sea man leapt agilely into the boat. He was fat. Right now, I envied him that. But that hair, milord, just hanging off his head like seaweed in the surf! So much for the legends of mermaids combing their hair out while sitting on the rocks. Whatever they were doing on those rocks, it wasn’t grooming. Getting warm, maybe. Or playing dangerous jumping games with little land girls.
The man got to his knees, held out his hand to me through the pelting rain. I reached for it with both of mine. He began to pull, but I couldn’t hold on. I wasn’t light like little Chastity used to be. I wasn’t nimble any longer like she had been. And I couldn’t make my fingers grasp. The man grabbed my wrists. The boat dipped sideways. If it shipped too much water, it would sink.
In the water, a pair of hands brushed my behind. I jumped. The hands held me firmly, long fingers wrapped around my ample thighs. “Leave me alone!” I croaked, no voice left to yell. Agway chuckled and shouted something out. He thought it was a game. I was in deep shit; half-drowned, and now about to be sexually assaulted by a sea creature. I kicked out at him. The water dragged at my leg and slowed it down.
The man in the boat was crooning something in a soft, encouraging tone. Then I felt a head between my thighs. “Get the fuck away from me!” I tried to push off, away from the person feeling me up so.
I was rising higher in the water. Oh. A piggyback, then, not freshness. The man in the boat made an approving sound. When the one below had got me high enough, the man in the boat leaned forward and wrapped his thick, strong arms around me, just under my armpits. He crushed my breasts to his naked chest. His breath smelled like raw fish, and under that, like human breath. “Up little more,” I said, panting. There…almost…
Just a few more inches and I was able to get one knee against the inside of the boat. The man in the boat called out something. The others in the water echoed it. Fuck me; they were cheering me on! That gave me little more strength. I dug my knee into the side of the boat. Of course it was the bad knee. The man below heaved, and the one above pulled, his face right up against mine. Suddenly I was up on the boat’s rim. My weight overbalanced the man pulling on me, and we both fell inside. The boat rocked beneath us.
I was in the boat. I lay there, pulling in air and wiping rain out of my eyes. “Oh, migod.” The rain felt chilly. My arms were all goosebumps. I was woozy.
The man under me was making funny heaving noises.
“Sorry,” I panted, but I had no energy left for moving. He had to roll my dead weight off him.
He was laughing! Blasted fish man was laughing at me!
And then I was laughing too, though I was dizzy and it hurt my chest. The two of us lay there, trying to catch our breath, laughing with each other. I could hear others in the water chatting, and Agway’s cheerful, high voice amongst them.
I managed to lift my head to look over the side. I ate Agway up with my eyes. Little brute. Clasps on the life jacket were just like the one on the old briefcase I’d given him to play with.
The man sat up. His knees and ankles pulled apart with a wet Velcro sound, and he tailor-sat. Christ. That’s what the patches were for. To streamline the legs so they could swim better. And I had let Evelyn take Agway’s away. I had fucked everything up so badly, I didn’t know how to unfuck it.
The boat was moving. They were towing it. Good, ’cause I didn’t feel in any shape to steer it myself. I didn’t even have the strength to bail. I lay and looked up at the stars. I was going to get up. Soon. For real. “I just hope it’s back to shore you taking me,” I said to the man. I barely understood myself, my teeth were chattering so hard.
“Yes,” he replied.
Holy shit. “You talk,” I gasped.
“I talk like you talk,” he said.
Nice accent. “All of you speak English?”
“No. Only some. We hear when land people speak.” He said something over the side.
“Where the fuck’s the rum?” a voice called out from the water, in a fair, though somewhat bubbly, imitation of an American accent.
“My God,” said another, “this is some shit-kicking weed. Trust the natives to grow the good stuff.”
From the other side of the boat came “Steven! Steven! Drop the anchor! Plenty fish here-bout!” That one was pure Cayaba.
And, “So I put twenty thou into the bank they have here. Offshore investment fucking rocks, man.”
From behind the boat, “Daddydaddydaddy! Look at me! Look at me, Daddy!”
When one of them launched into the sound of the Coast Guard siren Dopplering across the water, I wept, too far gone to laugh.
“The problem is heat,” I creaked at my new friend. “Water will chill your body down twenty times faster than air. Can’t remember where I put my fucking glasses, but I can quote back a fact somebody said to me weeks ago.”
A shriek from the water nearly stopped my already stuttering heart. A woman’s voice, swelled with outrage and fury. Something heavy slapped against the boat. A hand grabbed the side of the boat and bodily tilted it towards the water. I nearly rolled out. The man in the boat held on to me.
A head followed the hand from the water. Agway’s mother. She was big and strong enough to tilt the boat, and even to my blurry vision, she looked ready to kill. She cradled a scared Agway along one arm. She turned one of his thighs outwards to show me. The bandages had long washed off. I whispered, “The doctors did it.” Couldn’t hear whether I was speaking aloud. I was shuddering with cold. Hypothermia could kill, even in the tropics sometimes.
My friend in the boat translated for me. Mamma made it clear that she didn’t give two shits for that lame-ass answer, and she was going to reach into my mouth and tear my liver out with her bare hands. I said, “He couldn’t manage on land with those things, waddling around like that.”
The man translated. Still no go. I was shaking like a leaf from the cold, the shock, the confrontation. The woman shoved herself off from the boat and lunged towards one of Agway’s nnas. She pushed Agway into his arms and demanded her wrap back, or whatever it was. The man refused, though it looked like she outweighed him. She got into a tug of war with him, raging the whole time. Agway kept trying to get a word in edgewise. Finally she dragged the thing out of the man’s arms. She put it around her shoulders. Agway shouted something as loudly as his little body could manage, launched himself towards her, and yanked on her hair.
She stopped. He said it again. I made out “Camity,” and “nne.” So I was his uncle, too? So difficult to hear over the driving rain.
My mind was wandering. Concentrate, Calamity. “I fucked up!” I shouted. Barely a squeak came out. I tried to raise my hands towards her, but I couldn’t feel my arms any more. Just a thump as my head hit the floor of the boat, and everything went black. My last sight, strangely clear, was of the sea woman with her sealskin fur coat clutched around her. What is this fashion for leaving the heads on? I wondered. Then I didn’t think anything at all.
The ship began to creak more, and to shudder. The dada-hair lady could hear the thundering of the surf. The boss man was shouting orders, the sailors running back and forth. Some of the sailors began pushing the people back towards the stinking, cramped holds. Some of the men tried to resist, but they were beaten for their trouble. And no sign from Uhamiri.
The ship slowed down, then tacked. The turning motion brought the dada-hair lady’s nausea back. Some of the others retched, too. The ship proceeded a li
ttle way further, then lurched, throwing them all to the deck. There was a thump and a massive cracking sound. The child was thrown from the dada-hair lady’s arms when she fell, dragging the two chained to her along with her. Boards snapped. People were screaming and calling on their Gods. Not the dada-hair lady. She had already begged help, but none had come.
As she lay tumbled on the deck, the dada-hair lady felt wetness between her thighs, and a cramping of her womb. Her monthly blood had returned. She grinned fiercely. “She heard me,” she said to her shipmates, who were too terrified to pay her mind. Holding on to whatever she could, the dada-hair lady dragged herself upright. She looked around wildly for the little boy she had held. There! He had seen her. He was so small that the sailors couldn’t really see him in the throng. He was pushing his way through adult bodies to get to her. And the determined little child made it; squeezed between the last two people separating him from the dada-hair lady, and ran to her. She swept him up, laughing even through her own terror. She readied herself. It was time. The lost ones would go home.
The ship was tilted perilously to one side, and breaking up as they watched. The noises of cracking timbers, sliding cannon, and screaming people were astonishing.
The dada-hair lady bade her gift come down.
And for the first time in months, it did.
Me Uncle Time smile black as sorrow;
’im voice is sof’ as bamboo leaf
But Lawd, me Uncle cruel.
When ’im play in de street
wid yu woman—watch ’im! By tomorrow
she dry as cane-fire, bitter as cassava.
An’ when ’im teach yu son, long after
yu walk wid stranger, an’ yu bread is grief.
Watch how ’im spin web roun’ yu house, an’ creep
inside; an’ when ’im touch yu, weep…
—Dennis Scott, “Uncle Time”
TURQUOISE. LAPIS. VIRIDIAN. I SHIFTED MY BOTTOM to a more comfortable position on the almond tree branch and tried to name all the blues and greens of the sea this afternoon. Cerulean. Teal. Indigo. I filled up my head with sea colours, and wondered what Agway’s words for them were.
“Look her there!” shouted a child’s voice, a boy’s. My heart hammered in my chest before I realised it could not be Agway. Stanley ran to the foot of the almond tree and peered up at me. He had to look into the sun to do so. No flicker of a second eyelid, though.
“Calamity, what you doing way up there?”
“Watching the sea.”
Ife appeared over the rise. Michael was with her. They joined Stanley, and the three of them stared up at me gape-mouthed.
“Everybody’s here now,” said Michael. “You going to come down and eat something?”
“Just one second.” I went back to my watching. The police and the Coast Guard had declared Agway missing, presumed dead. While in my care. Hector surprised me by telling them we had been coming to pay him a visit. Jade. Royal. Mint. “She takes people, you know?” I told them. “The sea does. And she never gives them back.”
I had had flash after flash, but no Agway came to me. Why would he? From the time he had jumped into that water, he wasn’t lost any more.
“I found the dump truck that Agway used to play with,” said Stanley. “Your old dump truck.” Stanley was crying. For Agway. Agway was alive and happy, but I couldn’t tell them that. Only Gene knew. I had to watch my grandson wrestle with the pain of a grief I couldn’t relieve.
I got off my branch and started climbing down.
“Careful,” Ife cautioned. Michael tried to help me the rest of the way down.
“Last man who tried to hold me up nearly sprain his back,” I said. I got down by myself and took Stanley’s hand.
“Come and show me where you found the truck,” I told him. After we’d walked for a bit, I said to him, “I meant to help you with your project. I never wanted to let you down like that. But I did. It wasn’t right, and I’m very sorry.” He looked at me, perplexed. “Maybe one day you’ll give me another chance.” A few more steps, and I said, “And your science fair project was brilliant.”
He smiled a little. “The bat was the best,” he said. “It was right down low, close to the water. But I didn’t sink the glider.”
“I’m very proud of you.”
We had to walk past the orchard on the way to the house. It was rioting out of control. Branches had extended themselves, looping into sideways knots and tangles that defied gravity. Every morning I found that new shoots had thrown themselves skywards overnight, to fight with their predecessors for light and air. The trees were clotted with blossoms and with fruit in all stages of development; in the early afternoon heat, the perfumed stench of both was cloying. Even the tiny saplings were bearing before their time. Overripe fruit fell constantly as we watched, to smash against others already on the ground. The unharvested cashew apples rotted within a day; the air below the trees buzzed thick with blue-bottle flies, drunk on fermenting cashew ichor. The trees bore and bore and bore. In the space of a week, some of them were already dying. The prodigious growth had started when Agway went from me.
Ife took Stanley’s other hand as we sidled past the mad orchard.
Men’s voices rumbled from the kitchen. Good smells, too: coffee brewing, fish, spices. I peeked in. Orso and Hector, cooking up a storm. I couldn’t face Hector just yet. “Where you found the truck?” I asked Stanley.
“In here.” He led me into the bedroom that had been Agway’s, and Dadda’s. The Aqua Man sheet I’d bought was still on the bed. Dumpy lay on the pillow. Stanley ran and picked it up, brought it, held out, towards me.
“It was under the bed,” he said. His face was crumpling into sadness again. I reached for the truck, but he cried out and threw it at me. He missed. It smashed through the window glass. I heard exclamations from the kitchen; chairs being pushed back; feet running in our direction. “Why you had to take him out on the water like that!” sobbed Stanley. “It’s your fault!”
“Stanley!” said Ife.
“No, let him say it. It’s the same thing all of allyou thinking, anyway.”
Stanley hugged himself and cried. I bent and picked up the truck, over the protests of my back and both knees. “Agway used to throw it like that,” I told Stanley. “Will you let me hold you?”
He threw his arms around my legs.
That wake nearly killed me. Then they could have just waked for two. Mrs. Soledad accepted many refills of white rum, and told stories about the cute things Agway had done that I had missed because I was at work. Stanley taught us Agway’s words for man, and boy, and goodbye, and told us that his name was—had been—Chichi. Silence fell when he said that. Three chi-chi men of a different kind right here in the room. I looked at the floor. That writer guy was right; God is an irony. When Hector, a catch in his voice, launched into the story about Agway eating raw shrimps, I excused myself and went out onto the porch. If I’d stayed in there any longer, I’d have broken and written myself a ticket straight to the madhouse by informing them all that Agway was a mermaid who had gone back to his home in the sea. So I sat and breathed, and watched the cashews ripen and fall, fall, fall.
Ife came outside and sat beside me. She said, “Don’t watch the news for the next little while, okay?”
“I can just imagine what they’re saying about me.”
Her dress was shapeless as usual, but this time it was a stylish shapeless, in a nubbly indigo silk that brought out her colouring. Even her sandals were pretty. “You looking good,” I said. She raised her eyebrows. I ignored it. “Like breaking up with Clifton is suiting you?”
She looked down at her hands. “It has its advantages.” She wasn’t wearing her wedding rings. “But I still miss him. Half of me wants to work things out with him, and half of me wants to leave.”
“Something I never told you.”
“What?” she asked, her tone wary.
Push on, Calamity. “You right; I didn’t want to have
you.”
Ife pressed her lips together and made to stand up. I was doing it all wrong. I took her hand. “Please wait, Ife. Just hear me out.”
She sat back down, her face unhappy.
“Over the months of carrying you,” I said, “I got used to having you right next to my heart. Could put my arms around you any time I wanted. Then time came I had to push you out. Finally got to meet the prettiest baby in the world.”
She gave me a sad, surprised smile.
“And looking after you was the hardest thing I ever did in my life. Plenty of times I hated it. Plenty of times I wanted to stop. Give you up for adoption. Something.
“But then I got to know you. A mischievous little girl with a curious mind. A dreamy, impatient young woman who was always looking for magic. Fuck. I’m not saying this right.”
“I think I’m kind of liking it,” she replied. “Keep trying.”
“I didn’t start out loving you. I had to learn to love you. It was like an arranged marriage, you know? Only not.”
She was half-laughing now. “You say the strangest things, Mummy.”
“Calamity. And I not finished.”
“What else?”
“I had to learn to love you for who you are. About half the time I screw it up.”
Obsidian glint to those eyes. “Go on.”
“So from now on, I want you to tell me right away when I get it wrong. Don’t save it up for thirty-eight years.”
She took that in, and nodded. “Sound good,” she said. My spirits started to lift. “But one pretty speech not going to fix it.”
I bit back the ready barb and waited for her to finish. “You have to walk the talk for a while before I’m going to trust you,” she told me. “You on sufferance.”
“Christ. You and Orso been comparing notes, or something?”
She nodded. “Something like that.” We watched the cashews fall. Ife said, “You know, I never told you the wish Dadda made at the wishing tree.”
The New Moon's Arms Page 27
