by Mary Morris
She peered down across the fields in the moonlight and then down to the wall in the garden where she saw Jessie and Zach. They were speaking in whispers, so that their voices could not have disturbed her. Mara tried to imagine what they were talking about. Her fascination with his finger? Serpents in the garden? All the good the world has known? Or about something mundane. The guest list, Jessie’s dress, the hill towns of Italy they would visit.
The moon was almost full. Perhaps it was the light that had woken her. In it Mara saw Zach take Jessie’s arm and pull her to him, not to kiss her, but just to have her near. It was a simple gesture, but somehow it moved Mara almost to tears. Then Jessie turned into Zach’s body and lay against him. They walked, pressed together. In the moonlight they appeared white as if they were naked and cold.
Once she had watched her own parents from the window of her room on a warm summer’s night, and they had walked in the garden like this. Mara had thought, even then as a little girl, how something palpable flowed between them. And it had been that way for her with Sam. Decades ago. It had been like that when they’d driven on weekends when the moon was high, to a meadow to make love.
Now Mara watched Jessie and Zach, their faces in shadows, walking in the garden. The trees and flowers, the lilacs especially, were redolent. They floated like ghosts.
She watched as they headed toward the wall. They were going out into the fields. But for an instant before disappearing they paused, intertwined, standing perfectly still, shimmering like a tree in the moonlight.
Lenore sat on the plastic lounge chair, listening to the wind. Except for the young lovers a few chairs down who were nestled under a hotel blanket and the very fat couple who stared straight ahead, she was the only person out. The wind had picked up the night before when the air was cool, but suddenly it turned muggy and strong, a south wind that blew the scents of hibiscus and wild ginger out of the air and made the islanders smirk when the tourists asked, “How much longer do you think it will last?”
Lenore had noticed this smirk after she’d asked three or four people because already the girls were getting antsy. They could play video games and roll around on a mat at Woody’s Day Camp for a few hours a day, but after that, Lenore had to improvise. Aunt Patty, who ran the day camp, said that a pony named Angel was supposed to come and give the kids rides, but Angel didn’t like the wind.
Lenore didn’t like it either. It didn’t bring rain and there were no signs of an oncoming storm, but the palm trees were tilted at odd angles and the fronds slapped like an audience impatient for the show to begin. The wind didn’t have the excitement of a storm or the promise of something untamed and dramatic that would carry itself across the island and out to sea. It just blew sand in faces, skirts into the air, clothing off the lines. It made people act strange. Earlier, when she’d tried to take a walk up the beach, she’d passed a tall, thin black man, dancing. He swayed back and forth, his eyes closed, moving his feet as if to a calypso beat, but there was no music. Then she’d headed over to the lounge chair where she now sat.
Lenore, Marty, and the girls had arrived on Wednesday for their one-week package (sixteen hundred including meals; children ate free). A week on the islands, sipping papaya drinks and piña coladas. They’d chosen the Holiday Inn because Marty wanted “a familiar face in an exotic place.” He didn’t mind walking up the road for a ham-and-cheese sandwich or to bargain for a T-shirt from the duty-free shops. He’d even tried the jerk chicken at the evening buffet, but he didn’t want things to be too different from what he was used to. “I’m a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy,” Marty liked to say.
They had had two days of sunshine and their twin daughters—Crystie with the beautiful hair and Claire with the beautiful voice (this was how people told them apart, as if they were characters in a fairy tale)—had ridden the paddleboats and snorkeled and even tried windsurfing, though they were only nine. They had pleaded with their mother to take them out on the glass-bottom boat and Lenore had gone along reluctantly because she’d never done well in deep water and once she’d almost drowned.
The next day the wind had started. It had blown the people inside. It blew panties and bathing suits drying on balconies off to sea; it blew coffee cups cold and beach chairs across lawns. As Lenore sat by the pool, she saw a cat fly across the deck and into the bushes where it disappeared.
From her lounge chair Lenore could see into rooms. Babies were confined to their cribs, parents gazed hopelessly at board games and portable video games. Tourists huddled in unmade beds, reading dimestore novels whose pages were sodden with moisture from the sea wind. She saw feet draped across beds, empty glasses on nightstands. Faces peered out of closed curtains, scanning the sky.
She hadn’t slept well the night before because the people in the next room were having a party. She’d heard their music and laughter and finally she’d woken Marty, who was a light sleeper but hadn’t heard a thing. She’d asked him to do something about what was going on next door, but when he went to knock, everything quieted down.
That morning Lenore had gone to the front desk to complain. She was unhappy with her room, she’d told the desk clerk, a dark, indifferent man. She said the people next door were too noisy. The desk clerk punched something into his computer, then told her that he was glad to change her room, but that the room next door to theirs was unoccupied. “That can’t be,” Lenore said. “I heard people there.”
The desk clerk looked at her wide-eyed, askance. “It’s under construction,” the man said. “It doesn’t even have furniture.” He offered to give her a key so she could see for herself, and with a defiant look she snatched it from him. Without telling Marty, she went to the room next door and turned the key. She’d walked into an empty space with a green blanket over the window, a cement floor, and a housekeeping cart with clean towels in the middle of the room. She had quickly closed the door.
Now she sat on the lounge chair, the key still in her pocket. She touched its impression to make sure it was there. She’d planned to return it, but decided to do it later. The fruit lady came by—papaya, coconut, mango in a basket on her head, a cleaver in her fist. Lenore asked her to smash a coconut which she’d take back to the girls. “Sounds like a hurricane, doesn’t it?” Lenore said.
The fruit lady looked at Lenore with disdain as she lowered the basket from her head. Lenore watched as the woman removed the coconut and cracked it with a firm whack right across the side. “No,” the fruit lady said, “this is just wind. When it’s a hurricane, the air whistles like this.” And she made such a screeching sound that Lenore put her hands over her ears.
———
The glass-bottom boat couldn’t go out because of the wind. In fact, all beach activities were suspended until further notice. There was no windsurfing, no paddleboats. As Lenore broke the news, the girls shrieked, “Oh, Mommy, our vacation is ruined.” Marty headed out to the bar to watch CNN because there were no TVs in the rooms. This was intended, Marty had surmised, to keep the guests outside, renting waterfront equipment or drinking at the bar where the TV was always on. The girls slumped on their bed, faces buried in their pillows, pretending to cry. But Lenore was secretly relieved.
The boat was a simple skiff, the kind they’d rented in Wisconsin one summer, except this one had a dirty glass-paneled floor. Claire and Crystie had, of course, loved it as the boat sailed above sea grass and reefs where they looked down on mushroom and elkhorn and fire coral whose touch produced acid burns. They’d squealed as the boat glided over spotted eels and camouflage fish, brain coral, and those iridescent blue fish, the jewels of the sea, and the one long gray fish that Gosset, the disgruntled Jamaican boat operator, said was not a shark.
But while the girls cried in delight, Lenore felt a sense of panic as she stared into the dark opening above a murky green sea. It was the same feeling she’d once had when she’d gotten stuck in an elevator in the Central Illinois Bank building. Even though she’d known help was on the w
ay, she’d had to fight for air. On the glass-bottom boat her heart had started pounding and she couldn’t catch her breath. Later that night the wind had started and her pain—the mysterious pain that crept from her neck down her shoulder into her arm—the pain she had almost come to believe was gone, returned.
Then Claire lost her voice. She had a voice that sang as sweetly as meadowlarks after a rain, but that morning she’d woken up and whispered, “Mommy, I can’t speak.” While she was relegated to silence, Crystie’s silken strands turned to a Brillo-like frizz. As Claire scribbled notes in a child’s hand—“I’m bored,” or “I’m hungry, let’s eat”—Crystie sobbed in the bathroom as she tried to comb out the snarls.
Now the girls picked up their Aladdin video game and Lenore snapped at them. “Put it on mute,” she said, heading into the bathroom where she squeezed T-shirts and socks that she’d hung on the clothesline two days before that were still wet. She heard the girls squabbling and she didn’t want to be in the room. Next time they’d splurge and get two rooms, but then who ever thought that on a vacation in Jamaica you’d be stuck inside.
Crystie wanted to go to Woody’s Day Camp to see if Angel the pony was going to show, but Claire just wanted to walk the shore, so they dropped Crystie off and trudged along the paved walkway that followed the beach, their faces wincing in the wind. They passed a tall black man in khaki pants, cutting the hedges with a machete. He was humming to himself as he sheared off the tops with smooth, even strokes, but as they walked by, he looked up and said hello, smiling through white, shiny teeth. Lenore wondered as she smiled back if he wasn’t the same man she’d seen earlier that morning, the one dancing to no music. This man was long and thin as a drinking straw and his skin was creamy like chocolate. Claire croaked back, “Hello.”
“What’s wrong with your voice?” the man asked.
And Lenore told him. “She lost it.”
“Oh, it’s the damp and the wind. You need the milk of a green coconut. You drink that. And then you need to make an herb tea with banana seeds. Boil it nice and hot; it will cure her overnight.” He extended his hand, a gesture that surprised Lenore. His palm was pink and she was startled by its rough touch. “My name is Erroll,” he said. “After Erroll Flynn, the famous pirate.”
“Oh, yes,” Lenore said, “Captain Blood. He was a bad man, wasn’t he?”
Erroll grinned. He had a wide mouth, nice teeth. “My mother didn’t think so.”
“Well, where can we get the green coconut?” Lenore asked. Erroll smiled again, pointing overhead. Lenore watched as he wrapped his arms around the trunk of the coconut palm and shimmied up it. His khaki pants slid along the tree and Lenore thought, though she’d never say this, that he looked just like a monkey without a tail. He chopped down a green coconut and it fell to the sand with a thud. Then he used the tip of his machete to pierce a hole in the top and he told Claire to hold the coconut back and drink it, that it would taste watery and sweet as mother’s milk. He told her not to try to say anything for twelve hours. In the meantime he would bring her the herbs and banana seed. In the morning, he said, she would speak.
Then he noticed Lenore rubbing her neck where the pain was working its way down. “You’ve got something wrong with you, too,” Erroll said. He stared at them with a look of concern. He said that maybe the white witch had cast a spell on them. Lenore couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. She was a white woman, he told them, who’d killed her husband when he betrayed her with a black woman. Her duppy is around here, he said. You know a duppy because of the white mist that moves along the ground like a cloud, rising slowly in the air. Salt, he told her, keeps the soul heavy and on the ground. That was why black people couldn’t go back to Africa: because the slaves ate salt. Everyone knows that African people can fly; it’s the salt that keeps them down.
Lenore had dreamed of this vacation all her life. She had never been anywhere. Not to Europe or even to California. Sometimes they went to St. Louis to the zoo, and once they’d taken the girls to Disney World, but that was about it. Usually they put their money into fixing up the house. Last year they’d added on a family room with wood paneling and a little bar with recessed lighting. Even though Marty had done all the finishing work himself, they’d had to take out a home-improvement loan.
But Lenore wanted to go to Jamaica. When she was a girl, her mother had moved dreamily through the house, singing Harry Belafonte songs. Her mother was half in love with Harry Belafonte, but she would have slapped Lenore’s face if she’d so much as suggested it. She’d slapped her face many times for much less.
When Lenore got back to their room, the twins in tow, she found Marty, red as a lobster, naked and splayed on the bed. Startled, he quickly pulled the cover across him. “Daddy’s got a sunburn,” the twins crooned.
“I told you to put on thirty-five,” Lenore scolded. “I bet you put on sixteen.”
“There’s no sun,” Marty protested. “Look, it’s all overcast.”
“That’s the worst kind for someone with your skin.” Lenore plopped down next to Marty, rubbing her neck, hoping he would notice and massage it for her. When he didn’t, she patted him on the leg, making him wince. “Come on,” she said, wondering how a man who knows he burns can let himself burn. “Let’s get something to eat.”
They hadn’t crossed the road yet but now because of the wind Lenore convinced them to get away from the shore. She’d heard from Aunt Patty that there was a good deli in the small row of shops just beyond the security gates. Across the road was different from their side of the road, where they had bought ham-and-cheese sandwiches from little stands. On the other side, reggae poured from the shops and along the curb, where rows of black men sat. Men with gold teeth and shells around their necks. The minute they saw Lenore, Marty, and the girls, the men all leapt to their feet. “Hey, Man, take a ride in my cab. I’ll take you to the falls.” “Hey, Man, buy your duty-free gold right here. Gold and silver. Pirate’s treasure, Man.” And when it became apparent that Lenore and Marty and the girls weren’t going to buy anything except lunch, the shouts became jeers, “Hey, Lobster Man, I take you to the clambake.”
The deli was in a small grocery store down a narrow path lined with shops that sold Aunt Jemima dolls and Bob Marley tapes, both of which the girls wanted, but Lenore said they’d have to wait. Inside the deli, which smelled of coconut oil and peppers, it was difficult to find the line. Swarms of people, mostly black, though a few tourists appeared from time to time, stood around the counter, buying curried goat, jerk pork. Lenore thought the conch fritters looked good. Marty pointed to pale strips of meat in a reddish sauce. “What’s that? Baked armadillo?” The girls laughed, but Lenore shook her head.
Though they tried to hold their place, they seemed to be moving farther and farther away from the counter as more people arrived, butting in front of them. Then they pushed their way back up to the front, only to drift again toward the back. They finally made it to the counter when someone else cut in front of them. “Hell of a lot of nerve,” Marty cursed under his breath. Lenore sighed, watching Marty grow irate, which he rarely did, and which, of course, she couldn’t blame him for now.
There were things she could never get used to either here. At breakfast when they asked if she wanted cream, they meant milk, but never bothered to explain. They never smiled when she changed money, and in the pharmacy she’d seen the salesgirl refuse to do an even exchange for a boy’s triple-A batteries for double-A’s. People danced when there was no music. And nobody waited in line.
Marty was about to tell the man who’d just cut in front of him that they were here first when Lenore realized it was Erroll. He turned to her with his wide-toothed grin and said, “You gotta let them know what you want,” he said. “Don’t nobody wait in line. Hey, Man,” Erroll shouted to a woman working in a white apron, “take care of my friends.” Then he ordered for them. Lenore watched the woman behind the counter fill take-out containers with peas and rice, conch fritters, cur
ried goat, fried chicken for the girls.
Marty and Lenore thanked Erroll as they headed back across the road toward the iron gates of their hotel complex. They nodded at the security guard, who pushed a button and the gates parted slowly. Lenore heard feet behind her, scurrying to get in, and when she turned she saw Erroll again. “Is that guy following us or what?” Marty asked, walking on.
“He works here,” Lenore said. Erroll was just a few paces behind them, carrying a small brown bag that didn’t look like lunch; he strode with his head down as if he had something to hide. It occurred to Lenore that he was following them. She dropped back and asked if there was something he wanted. He said, keeping his head down, “I brought you this.”
She opened the brown bag and saw tufts of grass, bits of bark. The smell of cedar closets and something rotting like a dead mouse wafted her way. “Boil it,” he told her. “Make a good stiff tea. It’ll take your pain away.” Many doctors had tried to diagnose her pain. Some thought it was a slipped disk, though nothing ever showed up on the MRI. Others said it was arthritis, but she had tested negative for that as well. The pain just came and went as it wanted, like a casual lover. She figured she may as well try this. Quickly, she closed the bag and gave Erroll two dollars, for which he seemed grateful.
When they got to their room, Marty eased his way down on the edge of the bed, his sunburn making it so he had to sit with his arms and legs outstretched like a mummy, and ate his rice with peas and yams. The girls gobbled the fried chicken while Lenore sampled the curried goat, which she decided wasn’t unlike stewed chicken. When he finished, Marty was still hungry, and he saw the paper bag on the nightstand. He opened it and took a whiff. “What is this stuff?” he asked, assuming it was something the girls had collected. Then he dropped it into the trash.
That night Lenore lay down beside Marty, whose sunburn was hot all around her, and she felt like a waffle. She’d wanted to make love once the girls were asleep, but he’d flinched at her touch. For a long time she lay beside him, thinking there was something she’d forgotten to do before she left home. A bill she hadn’t paid, an automatic timer (thermostat, lights) she hadn’t set.
