Land of Love and Drowning

by Tiphanie Yanique

  Anette bought a simple yellow dress. Green was his color and red was hers, but yellow was the island’s and Anette needed this nuptial to be bigger than her alone. At the courthouse, Anette closed her eyes when the judge asked if anyone objected. When she opened them, she saw only Franky, and looking into his eyes, she saw only him loving her and only him staying by her side.

  That week Anette and the girls moved out of Eeona’s flat and in with Franky in his modest two-bedroom. He had moved out of his mother’s house long before it was typical for island men to do such things.

  Eeona stayed alone in the small one-bedroom apartment.

  Now that Anette was remarried, there was no moral obstacle to her promotion and within the week she was called into the principal’s office and told that a teaching position would be available for her in summer school. And if she stayed married, and there was an emphasis there, there would be something permanent when school opened in September.

  Franky started looking for land where he could build a house to keep his promise. But before Franky could build the house and before Anette could become a teacher, some other things arrived. First, there was Jacob McKenzie.

  69.

  Jacob McKenzie did nothing when he found out about Anette’s engagement. Nothing, really. He didn’t study harder at medical school or eat less at the restaurant or reflect on himself or his past failures. He did not take official leave from school or work. Just took one month to gather the money from his earnings waiting on tables—his polished American accent and sandy skin affording him ample tips. Then he just bought a one-way ticket home to the island. Jacob did everything he knew how to do then—but not a thing entered his mind until his plane slid onto St. Thomas and he smelled the rusty hangar and realized that the last time he had seen Anette or his infant daughter was in that very airport.

  Other passengers cut around him to get off the plane because he had stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Jacob stooped down and put his face to the tarmac. He didn’t kiss the St. Thomas ground like he’d done when he’d returned from the Army. This time he licked it. He licked the ground that planes rolled on and hundreds of feet a day walked on. He licked it as if it were a woman. And women stared until the pilot rested his hand on Jacob’s shoulder and told him that his land love was honorable but obscene.

  Jacob didn’t go to his mother’s house. He was bold-faced and hopeless, so he went to Ronald Smalls’s. Ronnie had stayed in the Army and had kept Anette’s picture as his amulet. In Korea, where he’d most recently been deployed, he’d been as chaste as ever and seen no military action at all. Jacob went to him because Ronald had been married to Anette. Ronald had loved her. Ronald had lost her. Ronald would understand what Jacob was now feeling.

  “I had wonder if you would come,” Ronnie said, when the two of them sat down in the parlor. Ronnie’s mother served them guavaberry rum, for it was the Christmas season. She felt bitter on behalf of these boys. She’d never liked Anette for her son. Those Bradshaw sisters thought they were too good for anybody. Hah. Now look at Anette. She was a tart and the whole island knew.

  Jacob nodded at Mrs. Smalls to fill his little rum glass to the brim.

  “I don’t know much, Jay,” Ronnie began awkwardly. “I wasn’t there.”

  “There where?” Jacob asked, as he felt the rum burn down his throat.

  “When they get married.”

  Jacob coughed rum back into his glass. “Mother Mary! I hear she getting married. I only been gone a few months, man.”

  “America eat your brains, Jay? You gone near a year.” Ronnie shook his head sadly, for he understood Jacob’s loss. “Is a nice fellow she marry. In the Coast Guard. Not many of we in the Coast Guard, you know. He does keep the lighthouse. I even went with him for a drink the other day.”

  Now Jacob gulped his rum and put the glass down loudly on the table. “Ronnie, you soft in the head? The man marry your wife and you had a drink with him?”

  Ronald sucked his teeth and poured more rum. “But Jacob, you make a baby with my wife and I here drinking with you.”

  Jacob nodded. In his chest there was a swelling of humility and a tightening of pride and the sweetness of the rum. “Just don’t tell me no more about what the new husband does do. Or what he look like. Or about he character. I just here to make Anette marry me.”

  “So you ready for marrying now?”

  Jacob shook his head. His hair was knotted into little nappies. His clothes were wrinkled. His eyes were bloodshot. “I just ain ready to see her married to someone else.” His eyes started to water, but then he stood up quickly and walked out of the door. He left his bag and his scarf and winter coat on Ronnie’s bachelor couch. His rum glass empty on the coffee table.

  Finally, Jacob went to his mother’s house. He knew his mother wouldn’t be home at this time. She’d be in the market selling her mesple and limes and spellbinding teas. He didn’t want her to see him, for fear she would spin an obeah that would keep Anette and him apart for life. But Saul might be home and might be able to help.

  Jacob opened the door and saw no one. He looked in the two other rooms—the boys’ room and his mother’s room. No one. The piano had been moved to the center of the hall. The sofa had been raised on concrete blocks and sat in front of the piano keys as the piano bench. Jacob sank down into the sofa.

  He didn’t really play something. He just played anything. Harmonies of this, melodies of that, humming something different, stamping his foot to his nodding head. To him, it sounded like American blues music. To those walking by the house, it sounded haunted.

  Jacob played, feeling the sweat gathering underneath his thighs and the tears running down his face. He was melting. The music slow and dirty. No neatness like a love letter, nor like “I do.” It was messy, like “I’m giving up on medical school and manhood,” like “I know I’m late but I’m here now.” Messy with Anette’s two daughters and now a new husband. But Jacob didn’t actually hear any of that, though that was what he was playing. He only heard his fingers on the piano keys and his foot stamping on the piano pedals and his own mouth bawling. He only heard himself. So when his brother entered, early plans for a new housing development under his arm, Jacob didn’t see.

  Saul heard the music and began dancing around the room to a beat that was not of the music. When Jacob heard a man’s steps, he turned his face and he stopped playing. A childhood memory of a man with sea-gray eyes dancing with him in that very spot pulled in before Jacob’s watery eyes and then receded. He wiped his face with the back of his hand.

  “I come for Anette,” said Jacob to his brother.

  Saul stilled. “I know.”

  “You must give her a message for me.”

  Saul fixed his face as if he were receiving a disease. “I ain want no part of this. Mama will maim we both.”

  “Just help me, nuh.”

  “All right, Jacob. I going handle this thing just now.”

  “Why not now-now?”

  Saul looked at this brother. They had shared a bed growing up, but they did not often express affection. It was not the McKenzie way. Now Saul walked up to Jacob and touched his streaked face.

  70.

  Anette smiled tightly and pretended she didn’t know why Saul had come. She knew; she had a sense for knowing when someone was coming. But it was an awful knowing, for it was all too late. Here was a magic that had turned out useless because someone didn’t always come when you wanted. But she knew Saul was coming and she knew Jacob would follow. In the living room Saul spoke to her about their other former classmates and the children—Eve Youme, after all, was his niece.

  “Beautiful girls,” he commented, without looking at them.

  “Get your uncle Saul some guavaberry rum,” Anette directed her daughters. They had half a decanter that Eeona made for selling during the season. Ronalda went for the little glass, but her sister didn’
t follow. Eve Youme, still a toddler, refused to waddle out of the room. There was something off about her even then. Saul looked hard at Eve Youme, who looked calmly back at him. Finally, he gave up hoping for privacy. When Ronalda returned with the glass of rum, he took only the napkin from her. He pulled a fine ink pen from his pocket and scribbled his message. Then he took his leave. Ronalda saw the door close gently as she stood beside her sister with the guavaberry she was too young to drink, the fumes of it rising into her face.

  Anette didn’t open the note then. Not with Ronalda standing there with a glass of rum in her hand. Not with Youme staring at her as if she were reading Anette’s mind—the child’s hair snaking around her head.

  Anette went to her closet for her outing hat and saw her red movie dress. She gripped the fabric in her fist, as though demanding something of it. Then she smoothed it out with a forced calm and went to brush her hair. She left the house, and left the girls, to go read the napkin.

  With her mother gone, Ronalda was in charge. Instead of pouring the guavaberry rum back into its decanter, Ronalda sipped it slowly, then poured some more for her sister.

  Anette walked for a long time. Her heels clicking. She was a proper married woman again. The movie starring her and Franky was coming out in just a few weeks. And then there was the other thing—the child within her, who would be coming within the year.

  How far did Anette need to get from their apartment before it stopped being betrayal? She walked toward the harbor, where there were boats unloading and a few white sailors smoking cigarettes. There was even a large passenger ship docked. In the middle of the harbor was Water Island, where she had danced with her now husband Franky at the Gull Reef Club with the movie cameras filming. She stopped on a bench on the newly paved Water Front. This place had all been sand and rock, and now it was concrete, and cars could park here, and sailors and tourists could walk here, and women could sit here to contemplate infidelity.

  Meet him by Lindbergh Bay at dusk. He say bring baby Eve and only whatever else you need for Stateside.

  Anette was still young. Still Julie mango juicy and still knowing it. But she also knew that her grown-up life was finally beginning. Not this back-and-forth, running-behind-some-man, driving-in-a-car-without-doors life. But a real life with a house and children, and a husband whose mother did not obeah his life. Anette was now teaching history and she’d been taking classes through the mail. Getting her bachelor’s so she could get the higher pay and prestige it would afford her. She wanted to be a real woman, finally. How ironic that now she would be the Bradshaw running away and ending up in America.

  The sun was bright and hot, but there was a smooth trade wind cooling her neck. The world seemed to be open and opening. Anette looked out at the ocean. She looked past Water Island and didn’t think of the movie. She thought instead of the man and woman who had thought she was a chambermaid. She looked out at the possibility of the horizon. The dusk was arriving.

  She shouldn’t have looked that way. She should have looked back at the cars or the people or the buildings. But instead she faced the sea. The sun was reddening the sky. The sea air was filling her. This moving and big and overwhelming blue sea. This active and passionate and relenting blue sea. And she thought of the first man she had really loved. The way they knew each other’s bodies, even in the dark—like they were aboriginal to each other. How even without a wedding ring she had still felt like Jacob’s own. And when she was screaming and pushing out their child, he was screaming, too. His face right beside hers. Until the midwife threatened to kick him out, saying this was not how fathers were supposed to act. He’d pushed the midwife aside and held Eve Youme’s flaming head when it arrived. Like the doctor he would be. How he loved Anette as if she were something worthy of nighttime beaches. How they made love there at night. How they did things that she knew she should be ashamed of. How he said she was so strong that her little body could make him kneel. How she rubbed the gum of his aching tooth and made the pain go away. How he pushed his fingers through her hair and massaged the roots, telling her he could feel the red. How he touched her like he owned her. And how she had felt more belonging with him than she had her whole life. Being with him was being claimed. She had been a fool not to wait for him.

  But now she was married. Now her husband cooked for her and drove her around in his green Cadillac and took her dancing and took care of Ronalda and Youme as if they were his own. But Franky did not feel like kin, despite the marriage that said so. That was Jacob.

  Anette walked back home to get ready. She wanted to belong. She was going with Jacob.

  Jacob had not asked Anette to bring Ronalda. He had only asked for Eve. So for now Anette would have to leave Ronalda with her sister. It would be for the best. At least until they settled. Anette didn’t think about what she knew. That Ronalda would not do well with Eeona. Or that there was another baby on the way and that the baby was Franky’s.

  Anette passed no less than six film posters featuring her and Franky. She was determined not to see the posters at all. People called out to her, famous Mrs. Joseph, and she responded out of courtesy. But she kept her mind tight. Thinking on nothing but her future beautiful life. Her heels clicked on the pavement. She needed to hurry. Hurry.

  71.

  Jacob waited at the beach. Beneath the sea grape tree that she and he had shared on that night he had first made love to her. But it had not just been them; Ronalda had also been there. He breathed and tried to remember that night, but he tried not to think on Ronalda. He could not bring her with them now. He could manage his tiny rent with Anette; it would be a struggle with Eve, but he could handle no more. Not money-wise or mind-wise. Ronalda was his old friend Ronnie’s child, anyway.

  He thought of Anette and the ocean; he thought of them as the same frightening, enticing thing. Behind him was an army of coconut trees. There was the thump every now and then of a coconut hitting the ground. He didn’t turn away from the waves for that noise. He would only turn for the hushed movement of the sand. For the swish of a leaf. He wanted her to come up on him. He wanted her to touch him before he saw her. He wanted it that beautiful. He wanted to just sink back into her chest, her arms circling him. He wanted her to keep him and his soul together. He wanted them to begin again, both looking out at this sea.

  This is not how it happened.

  72.

  Anette opened the door to her and Franky’s apartment. Her husband, the man with a sense of timing, was home early from cleaning the lighthouse. Anette heard him banging around the pots. She smelled onions and garlic and hot canola oil. She entered the kitchen and there was his bare dark back facing her. He was leaning into a pot and stirring it, then stretching to a cupboard to find a spice. “Franky,” she said.

  “Greetings, Mrs. Joseph.” He turned to look at her, his screaming green eyes, and offered a wooden spoon filled with sauce.

  Anette shook her head and stepped back. “Franky, we have to talk.”

  “I know we do. I come home early because I have something for you. But the girls sleeping like they dead, yes. And you ain here.” He spooned the sauce into his own mouth before rinsing it off in the sink and drying it cleanly on a kitchen towel. Anette just stared at him. This was a good man, she thought. A good family man. “Anette, you okay? You looking . . .” He stepped toward her.

  She had always been a small woman. Short and thin and tart. She held up her free hand to stop him now, her purse dangling from her wrist. He was thick and muscled, but he stopped for her. “Franky, what would you do if I left you?” Franky’s upper body shot back as if he had been hit. Slowly, he returned himself back to an upright position. Without a word, without a curl of his lip, he turned back to his cooking. For a long few seconds, for almost a minute, Anette knew it was going to be okay. She had made a mistake rushing into this marriage. She’d done it out of necessity and not out of love. And love was, she knew now, the only true necessity.
Franky would be fine. He deserved a woman who loved him wholly. There he was cooking, after all. There he was, moving on—in his own gentle way.

  Anette watched his strong back but was already thinking about the things she needed to pack. She thought of Jacob and knew he was at the beach already. Waiting for her. Anette lifted her heel slowly, but it was then that she realized the food was burning. She let her heel drop with a click. And then like a switch, Franky was turned on. She saw his hand in slow motion . . . and then pots were flying and hot oil was splattering across the walls and glasses were breaking and he was a hurricane crashing into her shore. And he was howling and cursing and spinning and kicking, and all she could understand was “I here” and “I been waiting for you all these years” and “I building a house for you.” “I ain going nowhere.” He stormed past her, pulled open the front door, and slammed it, leaving it swaying on its hinges before it crashed onto the front steps. Anette stood there in their kitchen. Onion skins settled quietly to the ground.

  But it was a simple act of Franky’s impeccable timing. Because after Franky roared out, Anette hurried to the room to pack her and Youme’s things. Hurried before she came to her senses. But there it was. Hanging in their room like a piece of art. The thing Franky had come home early to give to her. The poster of them in the movie. Framed and all. Above their bed. An American movie, realer than a wedding ring. It was only a matter of timing, not of love, but it was life.

  73.

  Jacob’s second message came the very next morning. It was stuck in the unhinged door that had been propped up into the doorway for the night. Anyone could have seen Jacob wedge it there. Franky could have come home from wherever he had been all night and read it. But Jacob’s note was so small, metaphorically and in reality, beside the picture that now hung above the bed. Jacob’s note was so small and Jacob was so late. Anette plucked the note from the door and knew she was watched even as she read it deep inside the apartment, on her and her husband’s bed, beneath the picture that sealed her to Franky. She was aware of the infidelity. Anegando en mis llanto, she thought, and then did. Afterward, she burnt the note over the stove.