Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel

by Tiphanie Yanique

  It ain my fault, I want to tell she. It ain my fault that the reason Eeona gone bazadie is that she heart get break. “Eeona. I sorry you taking issue. I real sorry, but he the one for me.”

  “Not this one,” she say firmly, with her hand them tight like she have my Jacob there in she fist.

  I stand up and walk to the next side of the room because I realize that I ’fraid she might lunge at me, though this ain nothing she do before.

  “We have to marry, Eeona. With or without your consent.” I put both my hands on my belly, where the baby there blooming, so she can understand my meaning. Just then Ronalda wake up in the next room with a screaming.

  58.

  Jacob had known who Anette was from the moment he’d sat down next to her at that party. Well, he knew she was the wife from Ronald’s picture. He even remembered seeing her at the dock in that red dress when he kissed the ground, and she was there staring at him as though they already had a history together. But he did not remember running to her on the beach when they were both eight years old, her red dress swimming around her, her queen conch shell crooning in his ear. That was like a dream. And dreams, like all vital things, have to be written down to be really remembered.

  When Anette was nine months pregnant, and clearly growing weary of waiting, he told her his plan. “Once the baby is born, we’ll marry. My mother will support us once the baby comes.” Anette had nodded with eyes facing the sea. She had thought they would be married and living together already. Perhaps she didn’t understand his mother-love because she couldn’t remember her own mother’s love. Or perhaps sister Eeona was right, in a small way, about him. That he couldn’t know how to be a father. Anette wanted to ask Jacob about Esau, but she’d become too reticent to ask him anything.

  She and Jacob walked into the water and made love to each other with their hands. The contractions kept coming hard until she finally walked out of the water and noticed that her own water had broken.

  Eve Youme saw Jacob’s face first, before she saw her mother’s. This is why her mother couldn’t save her from what she became. The only one who might save her was her father.

  He called her Eve, for she was the first female McKenzie anyone had ever known. And like the biblical Eve, she would lose her father. But Jacob wanted the baby when he saw her, even though he let her go. She really did look like the first thing ever created. Jacob was God. Anette was Earth. Eve was of them both. And Eve went wild, of course; what other choice did the first woman have?

  But naming is a voodoo all parents do. Anette listed the child’s second name as Youme. She’d spent hours in the island’s library looking up baby names instead of studying for the teaching certificate. The name didn’t mean “ours” as she’d first hoped. It meant “dream.” But that also made sense and perhaps what was ours was all a dream anyway. Something to keep striving for or something all in our mind—depending. And as these things go on island, the child was never called Eve. She was called Youme early on, but in the islands’ history she will simply be called Me. History could do that, change a person’s name. History was something so simple and insistent that none of us has escaped it. History even derailed Jacob and his Anette.

  You see, another American war was brewing, this time in Korea. And it turned out that there was only one way for Jacob to avoid being swept into that one. And that way was not sinking into the woman he loved. Despite Jacob’s vow to Anette, his mother had still not approved. Indeed, she had told him he must never bring the new child to her house. Rebekah told him that she could see in his future that he would end up in a Korean ditch if he did not listen to his mother very carefully. So, being the mama’s boy he was fighting and failing not to be, he listened.

  “She already has one child. And a girl at that. You have no business raising another man’s child.”

  “We will have help. And it’s not just some other man’s. It’s my mate’s. He’ll help, too.”

  “Do you hear yourself, son? You can’t be a father to a daughter. You will get in trouble with girl children. And two of them? Never. Even the one you think is yours can’t be yours,” Rebekah said. “Remember, you’re a McKenzie and McKenzies have only boys.”

  “Maybe I’m not really a McKenzie,” he said, remembering the man with the sea eyes.

  Rebekah did not even pause. “That woman has put a magic on you. Don’t you dare forget who you are. Then you’ll never be a doctor and you’ll never be anything. Do as your mother says and you’ll be blessed. Go to medical school and don’t marry that Bradshaw girl. Really, son, you don’t want to be in Korea for just eighteen hours before you are taken hostage by the enemy and they strap you to a wooden board, tilt you backward, and pour the sea down your nose and mouth until it fill up your chest because you drowning. Or perhaps you will only think you drowning, which is worse, because you will lose your bladder and you will lose your tears and you will be cowed worse than a soldier in a segregated Army. So, to avoid losing your life and, more important, your manhood, you must go to medical school and become a doctor with the money those McKenzie uncles of yours provide because they believe you are one of them.”

  Jacob heard his mother. He heard the parts that sounded like savior. He told himself that as a doctor he would be respectable. And as a doctor no one would tell him what restaurant he couldn’t eat in. As a doctor he would be responsible for life, like God. Then he would be able to save himself and his woman and his child . . . and, if possible, his woman’s first child, too. He wouldn’t wed Anette now. He needed to get strong enough on his own. So he made another plan. As soon as he got back to America, he would go to his other brother who was a dentist and finally get his reddish tooth bleached white. No more dreams of crumbling seashell teeth. Then he would grin his way through.

  He would come back for Anette when he was a man. As soon as he was free of his mother’s premonitions. He’d taken Ronnie’s wife. He’d fathered a child with a divorcée. These weren’t very gentlemanly moves. He wanted to do right now and doing right meant he must survive and become a man. Then a husband and a father. He tried not to think of his own McKenzie father who’d left and never returned. Tried not to think about his mother finding another man to love. He tried not to think that maybe that other man was his real father.

  But Jacob always knew Anette like a hibiscus that closed in on him at night and made him feel like sand alone. For years he would slip his hands into other women and search for Anette.

  59.

  EEONA

  It is my belief that human beings have children because of a need to love. This is not a sentimental position. After all, is it not so that men fought two great wars because they loved their big countries or their tiny string of islands?

  When I returned from Freedom City, I found I could still love a child, despite what I had lived through. Indeed, it is the least I can do. I have loved Anette’s daughter, Eve Youme. Yet it is in her that I have watched my sins row before me.

  60.

  On the day Jacob left for America, Anette wore a white cotton dress. As a farewell gift, or rather a stay-behind gift, a promise of sorts, Jacob had bought this simple white cotton for her, along with yards and yards of an extravagant red dupioni with yellow flowers. He imagined her in a long skirt, like the kind his mother wore. Red being his favorite color. The yellow of the flowers, he had said, was for the island’s ginger-thomas and bananaquit—the national flower and the national bird, respectively. He wanted Anette to be the island—waiting for him, unchanging in the sea. The white cloth he thought she might make into a wedding dress someday. But Jacob Esau, being male, didn’t understand that a divorcée could not wear white to her second wedding.

  Eeona had made the white cloth into a day dress for Anette, but had refused to make anything in the dupioni. Eeona believed it was a harlot’s fabric. The white dress had classy embroidery at the bottom and at the end of the sleeves.

  Jacob was in gray trousers and a matching blazer even though it was too hot for t
he formality. His shoes had been shined. He was holding Ronalda’s hand; the little toddler’s hair was full of tiny wild flowers that he had picked for her mother. Eve Youme was in her mother’s arms, swaddled in the remains of the white cotton cloth. They were all standing in what had been the Navy’s hangar but was now the island’s sweaty and loud and dark airport.

  Passengers were arriving, checking in, waiting, picking up luggage from mountainous piles in the corner; some were dragging the heavier suitcases by leather ropes. A clutch of tourists stood chatting so loudly it seemed as if they were in a quarrel. Their faces were pink and slimy. The ceiling was too high even for birds to have their nests, but it was still humid inside. There were bats in the high corners, but they were too far above to bother anyone with their blind diving. Some light came from standing lamps that stood not much taller than a man. In the mix of people, Jacob and Anette and the two children might have been a legitimate family.

  No loudspeaker had told them it was time to go, but being there waiting was worse than leaving. What does one converse about in such a time? It’s over. Good-bye. Will we see each other again? Pray. Believe in God or something. So they walked toward the exit, toward the airplane. In the heat Anette’s white dress stuck to her legs. Jacob was glad for this. He didn’t know when again he would see the imprint of her thighs.

  “I going to be back soon,” Jacob said. “Soon as I can.”

  They reached the end of the walkway. Out there was just open space and big planes, the air feeling wound and spinning. They moved aside for others to walk by.

  “I love you.” Jacob said it to remind Anette that he wasn’t leaving her. He was just leaving. And there is a difference. He thought to explain the difference to her, but he knew, he believed, that she understood. Anette hugged their baby to her chest. Eve Youme’s face peeked out of the swaddling cloth and stared at her father without blinking.

  Anette hadn’t said a word. Her man was leaving. He was going to medical school, he told her. He’d come back soon, he told her. And then he could work a real job and not be dependent on his mother or his uncles or anyone. And Anette had smiled and smiled to keep from cracking apart.

  On the day Jacob left, she’d worn the dress from the white cloth he’d bought her. She’d let the red in her hair come in a bit, which he liked. She’d allowed him lovemaking that very morning, despite that the ban after giving birth wasn’t yet over. She had brought her daughter and his daughter. She had even managed to convince him that the right thing to do was to say good-bye to his mother before going to the airport—so that she would have him in his last island minutes. But he was leaving Anette anyway. Medical school wouldn’t bring him back just now.

  Anette had left a husband who loved her. A husband who would have been a doting father. And now the man she loved was leaving—not on a boat, but on a plane . . . but still. There in the hangar Anette was busy doing the opposite of thinking. She was forgetting. Forgetting the seduction magic the Bradshaw women were rumored to have. It was all old talk and stories.

  Jacob leaned over and kissed his daughter—his first child who later would be left out of the family photos. But now she was a baby who knew only that love, like food, was given to her when she cried for it. Eve Youme smiled at her father, for she was an early smiler, as her mother had been. Jacob leaned forward and kissed his Anette—in public—owned her—in public—was her man—in public. Kissed and held her to wake her up, to make her speak. She couldn’t hold him back, their daughter in her arms. But he put his mouth on hers. It felt as if she were giving him strength—even though she was too unherself to give anything.

  He eased Anette’s left hand out of its cradle, the hand that he had not put a ring on, and passed Ronalda’s little hand into it. Then Anette watched his body disappear into the plane.

  And that was the first side of their saga.

  A FREEDOM

  61.

  After Jacob had walked away, Anette waited in the airport for another twenty minutes. She had two girl children now in her solo care. It wasn’t until Jacob had gone from her sight that the announcement was made that it was time to board. Anette watched the clutch of American travelers break apart in loudness. They had been drinking, it seemed. As far as we could see, that’s all the Americans seemed to do—drink rum and buy up land. One half of the group sloped toward the plane. The other half was staying. These were not Frenchies or American politicians or military personnel or old Danes who hadn’t quit. They were the worst kind of white. They were tourists.

  Anette cradled Eve Youme and led Ronalda past the wall of luggage. The American whites who had stayed behind were now climbing into a car almost as big as a truck. They honked at Anette as she crossed in front of them. She nodded, as was the courtesy. They started talking loudly at each other. She was sure they weren’t speaking to her, as the Americans didn’t often speak to us unless doing business. Anette kept walking slowly so the toddler could keep up. Lindbergh Bay, where she and Jacob had first been together, was a long arm of sand and sea at her side—beckoning or dismissing, she couldn’t tell. But she didn’t look to it. She would walk down this street with her eyes straight ahead. March down to Savan to sit with her sister and wait for Jacob. Even though she knew she must not wait. Even though Eeona would make that waiting a misery. But the big car of Americans seemed to follow Anette down the road. And then they were, most certainly, following her.

  Anette stopped; perhaps the newcomers needed something. There was a woman in the passenger seat, but it was the man who spoke to her.

  “Yes, hello. I own the Gull Reef Club over on Water Island.” Anette blinked and tried to smile. She hadn’t heard of the club and she had never been to Water Island. “We’re looking for a chambermaid. Ours, it seems, has just been deported back to Antigua or Anguilla or somewhere. You can imagine we’re in a bind. If you’re free, we could take you right now, tykes and all.” The woman in the passenger seat nodded vigorously to this last part and gestured toward the large space of the backseat.

  If Anette was not at present in mourning over Jacob and if at that very moment Jacob’s very plane had not roared above them, she might have done the fiery thing—which was to release Ronalda’s hand, reach over the driver, and slap the woman in the face. A woman should have known better than to allow such an insult in front of the children. But Anette was too brokenhearted for heat. Instead, she and the woman looked at each other and then the other followed Anette’s eyes up to the roaring plane.

  “Cat got your tongue?” asked the woman, using an expression Anette had never heard.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said finally. “You’ve made a mistake with me.”

  That night Anette lay on the bed. Her daughters stacked there between her and Eeona. Eeona had a satin mask over her eyes. They were in the same place they had been. Just the same. Only now there was another child. Only now Eeona, protecting her beauty, wore a satin mask as she slept. Anette lay there and she thought, finally, that she had been a fool to love that man. But she knew, and hated the knowing, that she would be a fool for that man again and again.

  Anette tried not to think about the Americans in the big car and their Gull Reef Club on Water Island. Weren’t they the ones who had really tried to make a fool of her? Anette would never have imagined that a year later she would find herself over on Water Island at that very club.

  62.

  In America, Jacob went to his dentist brother and had his red tooth bleached white and his wisdom teeth removed. When he woke up from the gas, he was screaming and screaming. His brother stood by and held Jacob’s head down so he wouldn’t flail and break anything. And what Jacob was screaming was something very strange.

  “I am real! I am real!”

  And he screamed until he grew tired and calmed. His brother told him that such screaming was normal. Really, quite normal. Though it wasn’t at all.

  63.

  As a babysitter, Eeona was strict and full of old-time manners, but the girls enjoyed
her enough because she let them play with her hair. Even as Ronalda was braiding neatly and Youme, just a baby, was pulling out the braids, Eeona would sit with her back straight and face set. Eeona did not have smile lines around her mouth—she was never in danger of those. But there was something around her eyes now—they were called crow’s-feet—that revealed she was no longer quite as stunning. She would never marry. That still baby was the only child of her own she’d have.

  She had not been around to watch out for Esau. But now she watched out for Youme. She felt as though it were her fault Eve Youme existed at all. Sometimes Eeona would brush Youme’s hair. Sometimes she would braid it and then she would whisper into the child’s head. A special chant for each strand as they plaited into each other. My own, she thought. My own. She never braided Ronalda’s hair.

  For the months after Jacob left, Anette had waited, though she knew better. She could tell when people were coming and she could tell Jacob was not. Still, she waited for a letter on a ship from America or a long-distance phone call from America. Any sign from America. She waited for a surprise visit or a package at her door. But since he had left, she had not heard cat nor dog of Jacob McKenzie.

  She cornered Saul in the street one morning. “He’s alive,” Saul said stupidly, “Mama’s always sending him stewed cherries.” And so Anette stopped waiting—at least outwardly. She started going out to dances. She thought, in a backward, magical way, that if she went to a dance the band would play “They Say It’s Wonderful” and then Jacob would appear. Anette left her girls braiding and unbraiding Eeona’s hair.

  On this particular night Anette did not go to a church dance; for by now, even a short time later, St. Thomas had changed. There had been a war and then rumors of another. All the men smoked cigarettes. Everyone drank rum and Coca-Cola. Every family had a relative in America. There were Virgin Islanders and Americans on island, but imagine, there were also many, many people from other Caribbean islands! The down islanders were making beds in the hotels. In the market they were selling coconut water straight out of the nut. They even owned things: businesses, houses, cars. Everything was different. The Catholic dances had always had competition with the Seventh-day Adventist game nights, the Lutheran skit series, and the Anglican bowling alley. But the fête Anette went to with hope of summoning Jacob was one of the newest types—this was something secular. She went alone.