Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel

by Tiphanie Yanique

  Finally, the lamp burnt down and I walked the last bit of driveway to the house that was mine in my heart.

  My Prideux was on the porch, leaning forwards. When he saw me, he rushed forwards with a bitterness that should have been my warning.

  “You had me waiting here so long.” He did not ask me where I had been. Instead, it began to rain. Still, I felt defiantly magical, like some creature who had seen a hint that she might do as she pleased. I could walk down dark alleys of beach road. I could kiss the ocean and run all the way back.

  —

  Oh, dear. Please accept my apologies, for that, too, was a story.

  —

  The very truth, my love, is that I did not even make it to the beach for the baptism I had planned. I did not even get halfway down the beach road. I was too scared and it was too dark. I was not a shadow nor was I a bird nor was I a mythical creature. Instead, I simply stood there and imagined myself going to the beach and swimming and then drowning or drowning myself. Then I turned back to the house. My lamp was dimming. It began to rain and I began to run back. No, no. Let me be true. I only walked back up the road through the rain. The cold rain beat down hard on my eyelids. I felt an abiding shame.

  When I arrived at the gate, I had to rake through a dewy cobweb. I walked up the driveway and pushed myself through our door. Prideux did not even look away from the spiderweb he was tearing from a window.

  I knew then that I would never return to what I had been.

  56.

  The end of Kweku and Eeona is a real story, for true. Kweku had three days to convince Eeona to stay and bear the child in her belly before she would climb onto a boat or a plane or what have you, swimming herself toward her family. And her family, as far as she was concerned, was Anette and Anette’s offspring and no one else at all. Kweku already had children—boys and boys for Rebekah. But he loved this Eeona. He loved her the best his history had taught him how, but the best he knew was bad. He did not know that he had three days. He expected her to leave at any moment or not at all. He didn’t believe in her packing. But for a crazy woman, she was packing meticulously. She was folding her muted cotton bra, rolling her bloomers into a ball.

  Now Kweku stood in the doorway of the bedroom. Inside his mind was flipping because he did want her to stay.

  “Drapetomania,” he said. “That’s what you have.”

  Eeona refolded the blue dress she had arrived in. It was too small for her now with her belly. “I suppose you want me to ask what that is,” which was her way of asking, because even then she could not admit to him that she might be less then perfect.

  “It means you wanting to run away, even though you ain have a cause.”

  So she said nothing aloud, but she thought in her head that he was right. She had a runaway sickness. But there was a cause. There was a whole history of causes.

  Perhaps if Kweku had tried “I love you” instead, he might have won her over and she would have been lost with him in mind and in body until she died—wife or concubine. But the spider man thought that “I love you” could never be enough. That had never been enough for Rebekah.

  Though she wasn’t full-term, Eeona’s water broke the second day of her packing. She kept folding. It seemed as though she were folding all the linen in the world, even though all she had was the dress she’d come in, the nappy rags still in the closet, and the few frocks he’d bought her as her belly swelled. Now Kweku brought her sea grapes and tea, and left them at the door while he sat in the living room drinking rum, waiting her out. She took the food without giving him any attention. Then she napped as though there were not contractions crashing and waving and crashing again through her. The mucusy water seeped out of her and onto the bedsheets—just his bedsheets now. She awoke to see Kweku Prideux standing in the doorway, his pale skin glistening with the shower’s water. Though she couldn’t see it, she knew that the big patch of hair in the center of his back harbored a thick fuzz of bath soap. It was the one place he could never reach. She looked up at him; finally, she looked up. “I still cannot help but believe that I deserve it,” she said to him. “Then again, what is ‘deserve’?” In the throes of labor, Eeona’s beauty was receding like a wave.

  In the doorway Kweku felt clean and empowered. When Eeona was too beautiful, it made him feel weak. When she was less beautiful, it made her feel weak. When she was weak, it was good for him. He would be good to her if she would just stay weak. “Eeona, my baby girl,” he said to her sweetly. “Your water broken. Come on. We have to go to the clinic so you can have our baby healthy.” He thrust his arm into the room toward her. It was the first time in all these months that he had acknowledged that she was pregnant. When they made love, which they still did despite her packing, he would fuck her from the back or the side so he could avoid her stomach, the mass between them.

  But now Eeona closed the suitcase and stood up. “This baby will go where the water goes.”

  Kweku considered letting her be. People who are crazy have a logic that can be convincing. But it is a wrong logic, he thought again, always wrong. “Eeona, that baby going to drown in there.” But she wasn’t listening to him. Perhaps her water hadn’t broken at all. Kweku didn’t know what else to say to her. He had tried, hadn’t he? He walked through the living room to the balcony. He lowered himself and lay down on the floor. He stayed there until the air grew cold and goose bumps raised on his arms. The sky turned orange then purple like a bruise. He listened to the ocean beneath him. He fell asleep.

  He dreamed of himself as a better man. As a McKenzie. As a father to sons. As someone brave enough to love a woman as he’d loved his Rebekah despite what the family men warned. What had happened to him, Benjamin McKenzie? Only in his dreams did he dare to ask himself this question. Perhaps he hadn’t tried hard enough with Rebekah. Perhaps he hadn’t given enough of himself to her. It was just that now, in exile, he couldn’t find the him of himself.

  In the morning Kweku awoke on the balcony. He felt emptiness in his house. Perhaps Eeona had just walked out. Perhaps she’d killed herself. Kweku thought maybe it was time to move again and this time farther away. Someone was bound to recognize him soon enough on a flight to St. Thomas. He’d hoped for that, hadn’t he? But no, it was too late for hope. He’d fly to America perhaps, where no one would even have heard of the Virgin Islands. He smiled. Perhaps it was he who had the runaway sickness.

  In the kitchen he opened the pantry and stared into it. There was bread and cheese, but Kweku did not see anything. He opened all the cupboards one by one and left them opened as he walked out of the kitchen. He went to the bedroom, thinking he would bury his face in the bed where Eeona’s smells might still remain. But there was Eeona, laid out across the mattress heaving with the swells of childbirth. Her suitcase, which was really his suitcase, beside her. Her eyes were open and watching the ceiling.

  “Eeona,” he called quietly. “You leaving me? Go, then. But know is your own fault. You expect too much of me.” None of this was true. But how could he say the truth? How to say I am a fable? I am in need of you. I am in need of us. But I cannot bear my own need. How to say any of that?

  He stepped into the room. The room was bare and white. Only the mattress and the nightstand as furniture. He and Eeona hadn’t even been married. They hadn’t even bought real furniture. They hadn’t talked about their child’s future, hadn’t sat on the pot while the other took a bath. There had been no relinquishing the radio station as a tiny gift, no frying the fish with the right pepper sauce for the other’s palate. They hadn’t really been lovers at all.

  Eeona did not know why she was leaving. He had slept with other women since she’d arrived. This she knew, but even that was salvageable. He had stolen her, but it wasn’t that either. Hadn’t she, in a wild way, wanted to be stolen? Now all she wanted was for him to say the right thing. That he would put her name on the deed. That he would love her and this child, and put the land in their names. That she would be a lady with an elegan
t last name. That they would go into town together and be respectable. That he would not die and leave her. That he would let her call him Papa.

  But how could she know all this, how could she say it? Instead: “Be my husband,” she beseeched him now. Right there on the mattress, hard into a too-early labor. Her face tightening and releasing like a heart.

  And then, as if he did not know how this could kill her: “My love, I is somebody else husband.”

  She must have known. Yes, it was true that he shaved the kinky hair on his head and arms and legs. But still. Despite his mythical chosen name, he was clearly a McKenzie, what with his skin so light he could pass easily for black Irish or Jew. And wasn’t it obvious which exact McKenzie he was—the lost one, Rebekah’s one? But Eeona was knowingly begging away her last grain of sane self-respect. “There is such a thing as divorce, Monsieur Prideux.”

  “A man don’t leave his wife.” And because he was cruel, he said this kindly.

  “You have already left her, Prideux.”

  “She the mother of my children, Eeona.”

  “I am about to be, as well.”

  He looked at her and saw her face like a fist against the pain. “But Eeona, baby girl. That ain your role in my story.”

  What lunacy was he talking? But it made a kind of lunatic sense to her. She had tried not to think about the time she’d seen him, his body covered in shaving soap as if it were a sweater. He’d taken the blade first to the knuckles on his toes and clean shaved his body of all its McKenzie hair. Shaved the parts he’d directed her never to shave on her own body. She tried to conjure the memory now so it would repel her. So she could convince herself that this spider man was not her man. Could never be. But the baby was coming regardless.

  Afterward, her own silver hair was everywhere, matching the sheen of the new spiderwebs. It was beautiful, as though she and Kweku and the whole house had died and been sent to the lining of clouds. The baby was born still. Not alive. Dead. It was a boy, of course. Kweku Prideux was, after all, a true McKenzie.

  Eeona did not cry. Instead, she held the lump of boy child to her chest and thought about her mother. Perhaps Antoinette had been right to return so many children to God before they were born. There was no one else to tell, so Eeona told Kweku that the child was named Owen Arthur. The name would not do for a living child, but the child would not have to live with the name. And no one knew the child had almost existed except for the two of them. Kweku took Owen Arthur’s baby body and flung it over the balcony. He did not look to observe if it hit land or sea.

  Then Eeona laid on her back until she could sit up. Sat until she could stand. Stood until she could walk. Walked until she found a boat. And did not stop until she was in bed with her sister.

  57.

  ANETTE

  After Eeona reach back to St. Thomas, I had to warn Jacob. I tell him that she more than pretty. That he going to think she the most pretty woman he ever see. But he say that he know all about she. That every man raise on this island know of her, but that he don’t want no woman who every man fall in love with. He just want the one he love.

  But he still talk a little funny about she. “I heard that she a little wild,” he say, like is a question he asking.

  “Wild? She only wild by mistake.”

  “Well, I’ve heard that she does get a little twist in the head. Go wandering when she get ready.”

  “Just be a gentleman and you going be fine.”

  He arrive at the door with a bunch of anthuriums.

  But here is the thing. Eeona eyes them looking like empty shells since she return. But from the minute I tell she that I going around with somebody new, her eyes them now squinching up like they full of sand. But she ain ask no questions. She behaving strange. Like she drain of energy. She ain saying where she been these months or what she doing back or what she going do now. She just find she itinerary to America and rip it slowly into pieces as tiny as dirt.

  When Jacob come through the door, she watching hard as if she know him and know something bad. When she ask his background, he speak in his Yankee English, explaining that he is a McKenzie and who he for, who he come from. But is like he name alone reach out and strangle she. Jacob face watch Eeona and he come like a piece of stone. Only when he look at me do his face soften, though it soften in a kind of confusion because Eeona like she hate he on site.

  She ask what he know of his father, and he tell she he ain seen he father, Benjamin McKenzie, since he small and that his mother alone raise him and he older brothers. Then Eeona stand up and speak loud so it come like she talking to a crowd of people, “I regret to inform you, sir, that you are no longer allowed to court my sister,” which is the most words she string together since she appear in my bed two nights before.

  I stand up. “Eeona, what the ass? You gone crazy?”

  She twist her head around at me in such a fast way it seem she a iguana. “Yes, I have gone crazy. Now I have returned to tell you, Anette, that you will do as I say!”

  And this is such a strange thing that it stump me. I ain have time to gather myself and slap she in the face before Jacob stand and said, “Nettie.” Just my name, as though this rigamarole was what he expect. After all, is he tell me that she wild. With the tips of his fingers, he pat the air down as though is water he testing to see if it hot or cold. Simmer down, he trying to tell me. Is okay. Is okay. Then he back out of the house like he can’t turn around. Like he must keep he eye on the enemy. Eeona stand there in the doorway blocking me from following, like she a mountain.

  But I ain really bother with she. I go to the bedroom where Ronalda there napping. I crawl on the bed, careful not to wake my child, and I ooze out the window. Jacob going up the hill and I catch up to him as he turning. He look at my neck and at my hair, but I reach up and grab his face to make him look in my eye. I feeling the tears like a stone in my throat. I feel I can’t speak.

  “That’s not a beautiful woman,” he say finally. “That’s a soucouyant. That sister of yours best put her skin back on every night or I will salt it for her.” For a long few moments we let that sit between us. My sister a ugly witch living in a beautiful woman skin. But then he finally reach out, grab me, and swaddle he arms around me. We high up and we look down over the roofs, down the streets that leading right to the sea. I look with he at the sea and we hold each other as though we might go swim away this very instant. Then he turn and hold my face in he hands, like it belong to him.

  “My mother will not allow us and your sister will not allow us.” Now he put the flat of his hand on my front, pressing my dress ’til he reach the small rounding belly.

  When I walk back down to our flat, I can’t help but think about John Smith and Pocahontas, which I know all about because I studying to be a history teacher. About how they end up with other people. But still, I so stupid and so catch up in this romance that it seem romantic. It don’t seem impossible.

  I start in on my sister as soon as she in earshot, while I still in the street and she still there in the doorway. “Every girl want a McKenzie,” I shout at her. “Even you, Eeona. A McKenzie would do even for you.” She standing in the doorway looking at me as I cross the road to her. I keep expecting that she going fuss with me for putting all our business in the street, but instead she just stand up there until I feel like maybe I should shut up. She don’t even speak to me until I get inside the house and she sitting down in that rickety rocker that she pick up from some garbage heap.

  “He’s a good match for me,” I try again.

  “You do not know the half of him.”

  She speaking slowly and quietly, like she trying not to say the wrong thing, even though everything she saying sounding wrong to me. Then she lower she eyes to look down at she belly like she have something hiding in there. This I ain never seen. I mean, I ain never seen my sister lower her eyes to anybody for any reason.

  “Eeona. I know all I need to know,” I say gently. “He’s good to Ronalda. He will be a go
od father.”

  She look up into my eyes now. “You have no idea what a good father is.” Now, that’s my Eeona. Getting riled up just by mention of Father. “Anette, this young man does not know what a good father is.”

  I can’t bear to stand over her while she seem so softy, so I sit on the settee. Her moods like they all over the place and maybe she gone crazy for true. Maybe them episodes finally become more than episodes and become what she is.

  “His mother is not a decent woman,” she continue. “His McKenzie father”—she say this slowly as though she reciting something she just teach she self—“was a poor example of husbandry.” And now she look up at me with her usual stern Eeona face. “Do you understand my meaning, Anette?” And her face is finally fierce, as if she know these people good.

  I confuse, so I just say what I really mean to say. “Eeona, you too late for whatever it is harassing you so. I done love him.”

  She lean forward, her back straight as a board, looking like she might ram her head into mine. “Anette Bradshaw, did I not warn you against a McKenzie called Esau?”

  “His name is Jacob, Eeona. You thinking of the elder brother, Saul, maybe. I understand your worry. I know Saul is the sweet one who don’t go for woman. But mine is Jacob. Jacob McKenzie.”

  She watch in my face like she casting a spell. “He is Esau. Ask him if he is not Esau.”

  But why I going ask the man such a thing? Not on he Army badge or he driver’s license, not what he friends does call him. Why I going ask the man such stupidness when I know what it is really going on? Eeona jealous. She think I can’t tell that she run away and reach back sour, and that it must be that whatever episode she having is over some man? I done had two man already, so I can easy put two and two together. Must be she finally give that cherry away, but then the man wasn’t so sweet.