Land of Love and Drowning

by Tiphanie Yanique

  The man ain ask my name at first. I remember. I remember, because it was so wonderful and strange. He ask first, “Are you real?” I like that he coming to me with questions, not no arrogance. But still his questions bold.

  We dancing and he have my hand curl up in his, against his chest. I say, “Pinch me and see I real.” He squeeze a piece of my shoulder between his music fingers. I feel that what happening here is magical and dangerous and not just timing. Not just the music or the rain rushing down. Not just chance at all.

  “Well, I’m Jacob McKenzie. I’ll be walking you home this evening.”

  His voice don’t sound like war. It don’t sound defeated, which is how Ronnie always sound even before the war, even before I pass he the divorce declaration. Jacob sound like piano playing and white guayaberas and hibiscus in the hand.

  I bend my neck back-back just to look this man in the face. “Call me Nettie.” I give him a nickname, one nobody ain never call me, but it come like it my true-true name. I stand flat again and stare into his chest. I just start talking to his heart with my mind: You will be open. You will be full of me forever. And before my thoughts finish, Jacob McKenzie say these words to me out loud: “Isn’t the beginning of love wonderful?” And I nod yes, even though I ain never been in love before. Even though he just steal the words from Jeppesson singing mouth. But I nod yes, because I feeling it, too. The song now coming to an end, the piano notes dropping like drizzle. And I feel foolish. But I want to be foolish with this man.

  Really, I ain known chick nor fowl ’bout Jacob McKenzie before. He was a full two years ahead of me at school even though we born the same year. He just one of Saul’s brothers that I see once in the yearbook playing piano. But then he went to war and he come back a man. And then he was the man of my life.

  The rain ease and before Jeppesson could start in on a tune by the King Cole Trio, the janitor come sweeping through the dancers with his broom. Everybody skipping to avoid him, the boys calling out, “Come on, Stumpy, one more song!” But the janitor ain studying us, and when he reach to the other side of the room, he flick the light off and say into the darkness, “Dance done!” And then he flick the lights on and off like a storm until we all drain out.

  In front of the school Jacob standing close to me while we wait out the rain. He brother Saul stroll up to us. He say to Jacob, “Treat Anette good, you hear. She is my classmate.” Jacob nod, as though this was a command. Then to me Saul say, “Anette, this young man is my baby brother. You best give him a damn hard time.” Then he turn and leave we. I remember, because is the approval we never get from Jacob’s mother or from my sister.

  The song say the moon above supposed to be wonderful, but I ain know. Was there a bright star guiding us? I ain remember. It perfect but not a kind of perfection I can explain. I hear a merengue coming out an open door. We walk through the back streets and the step streets, so even though I only live just maybe five minutes from the Catholic school, our walk take a good half hour. It come like even time ain real.

  We turn onto the hill in Savan where my and Eeona shack of an apartment close to the bottom. The wind blowing the curtains open. There is my daughter sleeping in the bed. I ain realize before that if somebody just stand up on the hill street they could lean and glance in the bedroom window. Ronalda’s arms out straight in front she self like she reaching, her legs curl up tight to her belly because she already that kind of child.

  I come accustomed to men commenting on Eeona’s beauty. But is my daughter there. In only a nappy. Her uneasy beauty circling round her like it about to land. I turn to Jacob because I ain sure if he know that this my daughter he watching. I desire to jump through the window and cover her, claim Ronalda hard. To say “mine.” I want to say that if he want me he going have to want her, too. But Jacob just turn to me and say yes. As if I had ask him a question. “Yes.”

  I take his face in my hands, I telling you. Right there with my daughter inches away and me not quite divorced and Irving Berlin in my head. And I kiss him. And this kiss run through my whole body until I feel it punging like a heart in the arch of my foot.

  Nobody used to lock doors back then, so I just open the apartment door. Before I walk in, I turn and see Jacob there, standing at the bottom of the hill. Watching me like he a guard or like he my father. Then he shout “Love is grand!” into the night, just like the song said he would. A rooster screech in response. And I know it. I know is over for me. I pitch myself into the flat and close the door. I lean against the door and believe I could feel it pulsing. Like the building have a ocean waving through it.

  This too wild and fast to be love. But it is. Like in the movies, only for real. These things happen, I telling you. Not always with songs playing, except for the one singing in your own skin. People can need each other like water. It can be wonderful.

  Waiting in the dark apartment, Eeona voice slice like a machete. “You are late, Mrs. Smalls.” But I ain Mrs. Smalls no more.

  46.

  Eeona was not there to reel Anette in by her hair when the man kissed the ground as he left the ship or at the party when she and the man spoke of Anegada and drowning. Eeona was not there. And what could she have said to Anette, anyway? That man is our father’s son. That man is your brother. Eeona would not have been able to bring herself to do it. And it was nothing anyway. Should have been nothing. How could Eeona have known that it would boil everything? By now Eeona would have convinced herself that such a sinful thing was hers alone.

  Let us be fair to Eeona. The morning after Anette came back from that dance with Gertie, Eeona was on her way to refund her ticket to New York. She didn’t know that Anette had met Jacob Esau the night before at the dance. But she did know that Anette had clipped his picture out of the paper. Eeona was on her way to do the right thing, for heaven’s sake. She would delay her emigration. She would delay her freedom. She would stay in St. Thomas just a while longer and prevent Anette’s divorce. But then out of the air came McKenzie. Another McKenzie. Rebekah’s McKenzie. Eeona’s McKenzie. A damn McKenzie who was supposed to have disappeared in a rain forest years ago.

  Now we old wives know that a woman’s beauty is not in her looks alone. Her power is in the way she lies in the sea. The way she fixes her footing on the earth. Eeona has always been a beautiful woman. But then this man sailed in on a seaplane. Consider how obvious it was, after all. A plane is a thing of transport. A plane has a captain. A plane is no different than a ship. And a seaplane, well, that’s a ship but more. He was the age Owen Arthur would have been. He already had a history of loving the same woman Owen Arthur loved. He had been Rebekah’s husband. Technically, he was still Rebekah’s husband.

  The white cruise ship was sitting there in the harbor like a fat rich man, just waiting for Eeona. It would leave in a week. Eeona walked past the big saving ship and didn’t even give it a treacherous glance. She was heading to return her ticket, get her refund. But near the terminal, where the tickets were sold, there was a little gathering of people. They weren’t there for the boat, they were there for something better. A seaplane or airboat, or whatever it was called, was flying in from Puerto Rico. When it arrived, it would take off on St. Thomas water, fly in the air, and then land on St. Croix water. St. Croix! Where Anette was to go to the orphanage, but she had wasted Eeona’s money and fell ill instead. No known Bradshaw had ever seen St. Croix. Even Captain Bradshaw had never had the opportunity. But history was happening now and Eeona stood to witness.

  At the dock, each seaplane passenger was made to step on a scale to be weighed. There was a stoic lady who held her hat on her head with one flat palm even though there was no wind. There was a scrawny young man who beamed out at the crowd as though he had invented air travel. When the count neared the maximum pounds, the others were turned away. Eeona, waiting for the ocean liner desk to open for her refund, watched the chosen six stare at the horizon and then she, too, watched the horizon as the s
eaplane became a dot, then a bird, then a machine skidding along the water, like a thing of Jesus. The seaplane roared as it slapped against the dock. The hatted lady released her hat for a second and it jumped off her head like an animal. She let it fly, her hair swelling into a cloud above her. The plane’s engine quieted. As the door opened, the young man backed away slowly, clutching his one leather bag to his chest.

  When the boarding began, no amount of coaxing would get what had been a young man and was now a frightened boy onto the seaplane. They needed another body to balance the weight. Eeona was already at the front of the crowd because crowds have always had the effect, like water, of parting for her.

  “Last call for Freedom City,” roared the ticket man. For Freedom is what the city in St. Croix was called. Freedom is what Eeona wanted. And so anyone could read what would happen.

  Eeona raised her hand. Her hair was safely in a bun. Her pale blue dress was cinched only a little at her waist and bust. Her beauty seemed simply admirable instead of terrifying. The man in charge of the ticketing nodded at her. Eeona had no bags. Her bag for her trip to America was in the back of their apartment’s closet, fully packed for weeks. Now she passed the man her New York ticket. It cost five times what the seaplane cost. The man accepted it as payment for Freedom City. Just like that.

  Eeona sat in the back of the plane, which suited her because she enjoyed seeing how the other passengers scrunched their bodies toward or away from the windows, depending on their bravery. Eeona wasn’t afraid, nor was she brave. She was in a reverie. It was so much like being on her father’s ship. Only she was flying over the ocean. Like one would in a dream. In the air, she strained her head towards Frenchtown and, without considering it, found herself searching for Villa by the Sea. And there it was, now owned by wealthy Americans. Never burnt down, of course. That had been what Eeona told little Anette, so the girl would not home back to it. Now it was being turned into an inn, so Eeona had heard. She stared at the villa, focusing on it as though it were a bull’s-eye and she an arrow that might dive toward it. But then the seaplane curved. Now Eeona saw Lindbergh Bay where the American, Charles Lindbergh, had landed and left his name. Then Eeona saw St. Thomas dip away.

  She hadn’t left the island since she was a girl. Not since her father was alive. She hadn’t seen Villa by the Sea since she’d left it. Now when they saw St. Croix rise off the skin of the horizon, a Crucian passenger began to bawl above the scream of the engine: “Look my island! Look me, look me!”

  To Eeona the island was the back of a man whose head was under the sea. She saw an eight-sided house at the shoulder of a little cliff, rising like a keloid bruise. But then it was gone from view, a foam of water crashing against her window as the seaplane skidded across the water. Eeona touched her own face and found that she was weeping.

  Her McKenzie was there as Eeona stepped off the plane. He had been on the seaplane but in the cockpit, and so she had not noticed him. He looked like a white man, but any island person would know he was not.

  He would tell her he was from Anegada, because that is what he told everybody. That was a lie. But it was the perfect lie for Eeona. And he would tell her that he was the captain of the seaplane. That was the truth. It was the perfect truth for Eeona.

  47.

  So Eeona freed herself of the island the morning after the dance. But that same morning Anette was still back in their flat. She was only now waking because baby Ronalda was stroking her face. Anette was so tired from all the dancing the night before. But also she awoke smiling, for she had met Jacob.

  48.

  One more thing happened that morning after the dance. Over breakfast, Jacob Esau told his mother that he had met Anette Bradshaw. At this, his mother’s hair, cut just below the ears since her sons had all reached puberty, stood out straight as if it were a den of snakes she carried hidden in her scalp. She hissed at Jacob Esau. Her tongue flicked out long and she stamped her foot like a steed. Though he was afraid, he had presence of mind enough to think to himself that she did this expertly.

  And then Jacob remembered seeing the hoof. Remembered the man who had danced with him as his mother played the piano and remembered then that she had seemed to be the happiest she’d ever been and ever would be again. And he, now grown, stood up and turned his back to his mother and said, “This is not real,” a crooked version of the question he had asked Nettie. And when Jacob turned back around, his mother was just his mother and she said calmly with her hands out in offering: “Not that girl.”

  And that evening he didn’t bring Anette to meet his mother—he never would—but he imagined that their love grew into something alive, something to be smelled and touched and tasted. And when he bit into this love, it was sweet, like the stewed cherries his mother sent to him during undergrad at Howard. In the bed that night Jacob reached out for this love and clenched his sleeping brother instead. But Saul, deep in his own dreams of flying buttresses and bookshelves that opened onto secret rooms, didn’t allow the groping fingers to spoil his sleep. So Jacob plunged into this love like a feast. The food of this kept coming until he bit hard on the candied seed and he had the dream again of his teeth loosening one by one. His teeth rattled around his mouth, clanking against one another like tiny shells—filling his mouth and making a chiming noise. He didn’t want to spit them out this time because the woman was not there to give them to. And so he woke up instead.

  He dressed and then walked out of his house. Past his mother who sat on the settee in the dark and watched him go. Past the goat who always bleated at passersby. Past the big mango tree that didn’t bear anything but fungus. Up the small hill. And in the middle of the night he looked through her window. The shutters were open and he could gaze at her face sleeping beside her daughter’s. The elder sister was nowhere to be seen. He reached his hand through the window and brushed aside a bit of her hair from her face. He noticed that the roots were red in this light and he told her out loud: “I love you, Nettie.” Because this was the woman who would save his soul, and being saved isn’t a bad reason to love. It’s a better reason than many others. He wanted to tell her about his dreams: the crumbling teeth, the cow foot, his fears in solitary, the gray-eyed papa who had danced with him.

  His fingers brushed Anette’s forehead and she opened her eyes. And she thought that she saw the sand-colored man with the moon behind his back. “Don’t let me go,” she said, as if she were casting a spell. And then she smiled in her sleep because her spell now meant that she would always be had. And for a girl who had been orphaned, this was not a bad reason to fall in love. It’s better than many others.

  As Jacob McKenzie walked home, he no longer thought on his real-real father, who was also Anette’s father and who had been a sea captain and who had known that magic was real. Jacob knew only that he wanted this woman and more, wanted her to want him, respect him, know him as a man.

  And when Anette woke up the next morning, she knew that she would slide her dignity aside for that man.

  Their knowing was not fully understood.

  His mother was home waiting for him, but he did not go home that night. He knew she was angry enough to put a spell, make his charlie shrivel like an earthworm, make his heart run like water. Instead, he went to a fancy rum shop owned by two American ex-servicemen. He sat down at the empty piano and told the room, “I’m a veteran. Get me drunk.” He started playing something sad and then realized that his mother had taught him only sad songs. Still, he kept playing, and the bartender passed him firewater as long as the music poured on.

  49.

  On Jacob Esau’s birth certificate, where the question was “father,” the answer “Benjamin McKenzie” was written in bold caps. But Benjamin McKenzie did not go by that name any longer. Now he called himself Kweku Prideux, and when Kweku first saw Eeona Bradshaw, he was sitting at a canteen by the dock in Freedom City, St. Croix. He was still in his Powsen Passenger Seaplane captain’s uniform. E
eona had stopped to buy some crackers in a tin. She did not know what she was doing or what she would do. But Eeona was calm and controlled, and she looked for all to see like a woman who had landed where she belonged. To all, that is, except Kweku. To Kweku she looked arid and severe. Her hair was pulled back, poking out defiantly at fierce angles like branches. She walked stiff and straight as though she had bark for spine. He did not see what other people saw. He didn’t see the beauty. The obeah that had been done on him had stripped him not of life but of love. Which is the same thing, really. All Kweku saw was Eeona’s skin muddy because life had been a steady rain on her body.

  She was not walking toward him, but she was walking his way. As she walked, she unbuttoned the top button of her blouse. She felt hot. She had done something wild and intrepid by getting on that seaplane.

  Kweku stood when she walked by. He stood so that he was in her way, not because he wanted to take advantage of her, not yet, but because he recognized her. Well, not her exactly. He recognized what she was. An escapee. Like himself. A woman who was running away from her family or herself or her island. Same thing.

  She spoke to him quickly and easily. “Either I can hire a burro or you can point me in the direction of a boardinghouse appropriate for a lady.”

  “Burro?” he said, and opened his mouth to laugh, but did not. “Are you such an old-fashioned lady that you still ride an ass? Welcome to Freedom City, St. Croix, in the United States Virgin Islands. I’ll give you a ride in my automobile.” And because it was the late 1940s and because he was still in his captain’s uniform, Eeona trusted him. And because she seemed to him like a thing he’d been taught men should conquer, and because he had tried and failed to conquer Rebekah, he decided to take Eeona and never bring her back.