“Yeah, Dad. I think we goin catch something, man. I think the fish must be curious to see a boat like ours after all this time.”
“We counting on it.” But the father didn’t really think so. Not really at all. He only want to be with he son like this. Pete been living with his mother and Mr. Kenny all this time because Mr. Kenny could drop him to school while his father went fishing first thing in the morning. But Pete was still his son and Tony love-love he son. More than fishing even. More than life.
“Jesus. Pops, look.” Pete was staring past he father shoulder. “Pops, she’s frigging jumping.” And sure nough. A woman standing on the railing of the bridge with her arms spread wide.
She tip forward and Pete scream—like he mother’s own son. A high-pitch thing. And the woman above them spread her black wings and begin to fly like a crow diving to the ocean. But Tony ain even see she cause he busy going blind from a light bright like a saint. It was just then that the bridge begin to collapse. And the water around their little boat begin to swell. And their boat itself begin to shake. And boulders of the bridge crash into the sea causing waves that lift highhigh. And then the sound like hell opening its dirty doors—loud like it coming from inside the chest somehow. The boat rip apart before it could capsize. Son holding on to the one half and spinning off into a whirlwind. Father grabbing on the next half rushing toward ragged land.
Tony Magrass knock on Mr. Kenny door that very morning. The easel hard and heavy under he one arm. The palate of paints dainty in he other. Salli open the door and look at her husband of seventeen years. The father of she dead son. She don’ know for sure yet that she son gone, but she know this man ain come cause he hungry. Mr. Kenny not home as yet, so she watch the art ting hard. She look again at she husband and they lock eyes even harder. Despite their distance, there never been a thing but love between them. “Set it up in the corner, Tony.”
4
The Lament of the Queen: as told by a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl in patent leather shoes
Guadeloupe did it for love. Obviously. As they say in all the movies, nothing else is enough. Of course she wanted to kill herself. Attempted suicide is, like, so in vogue now. Though she did more than die, of course. Juan Diego was a real man who knew not to ask about her past. About how she really won (well, almost won) all those teen pageants. He knew not to question anything that had happened before him, not even to question what was happening while she was with him. If it did not stop her from loving him, if it did not rack her with guilt, if it did not make her different, then how could it matter to him? Yes, girl. Guadeloupe was a little whore.
When she said she was a virgin, he agreed. He accepted her with the illusions she presented. Loved her and didn’t care about the lies. You know the type. He was a real college guy, mature about that kind of stuff. Dark skin and tall. Those sweet ones are hard to find, and then the wrongest girls are the ones who find them, yes.
Anyway, she wasn’t like him. She wasn’t mature bout those things. Still in high school and one of those stupid girlie girls. I would have known better. Anyhow, she found a love note, dated like three years before she’d even met him. And she just crumbled from the thought that he’d loved someone besides her. Stupid, hey? Crumbled from the realization that he too had a past, that maybe she was not his greatest love in the whole wide world—I mean he had saved the note for three years and she would have been like a freshman in high school then. And like all girls who don’t know how to forgive themselves—she could not forgive him. So she decided to win the crown, a tiara really, without the usual aids of her body and obeah-magic.
But it would be hard. Because she was Puerto Rican and light skinned and straight haired, though at least her hair was brown. Miss Emancipation, the biggest title in St. Croix, was supposed to be a woman who celebrated the freedom of slaves. Guadeloupe decided to win the crown for the few slave-descended ancestors she had. To show Juan Diego that she could be whatever he wanted. Because when she found the note, she realized that he didn’t think her pure, did not think he had her virginity, did not think her a girl who’d first-runnered-up pageant after pageant by her own merit. But that he’d known all along that she was a fraud. And he’d loved her a fraud, when she’d thought she’d had him loving her pure. Thinking that his love made her pure, because he said he loved her as if she was like the Virgin Mary herself. Anyway.
Well, you saw it. She won. She’d sung for the talent competition something about God, and our people love that. And for the historical segment she’d been the bridge, the thing to connect us; friends to family. While the other girls wore masks of famed teachers and religious leaders on all sides of their heads or boxes of the legislature building around their waists, the judges and the audience thought Guadeloupe was so innovative to bring the present into such significance by making it history. In the question and answer portion she talked about connectivity, diversity in unity. Despite her light skin, despite the obviousness that more of her ancestors had owned slaves than had been them, how could she lose? We’re open like that. We like to know that people love us; we don’t care how they look.
She’d competed without aid in pageants before. First with Carlos McEntire, when they’d been Carnival Prince and Princess. You remember that? Then in middle school she’d been Miss Junior May Fair Queen. Who could forget that one? She mimed for her talent. She was good, too. But then winning became serious, the prizes became substantial. She’d done what was needed to place first runner-up in Miss Talented Teen, Queen of the Band, Miss Parks and Recreation, Lady Alpha. Incantations, meditations, all kinds of tations to win, to not lose. She competed in things she didn’t even qualify for, like Mistress of Housing, though she didn’t even live in the projects. And now she’d won Miss Emancipation. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t prepared, like, her whole life. All the singing lessons, and the walking lessons: until she figured out that learning to walk and learning to sing were the same. (Both required breathing and a straight back and hands clasped before the torso. Like so. She could tell a singer by the sway in the hips, though if you ask me you can tell a slut by the same thing.) Finally, she’d won all by herself.
They sat the skimpy little tiara on her head and her first walk as Miss Emancipation was announced. Her blue gown was covered in sequin stars and she really looked good, as if she was a piece of the sky. Her arms shimmered with the glitter her chaperone had applied carefully before releasing her to the formal gown segment. Strutting down the catwalk she was only aware of herself. The spotlight does that. It blinds you, you know. So bright she couldn’t see the audience, not even Juan Diego, in the front beside her mother. Both of them looking at her so proudly. She could only clutch the red roses tight in her hands, letting the few thorns prick her fingers but not the delicate dress. She felt her chest swell with heat while the darkened faces below smiled—well, they seemed to smile.
Backstage, the other girls congratulated her stiffly, their lips not touching her face at all. And somehow winning without seducing a judge or casting obeah on the other contestants still felt fraudulent. Maybe, like being a fraud might be her true self? She got kinda crazy thinking about that then. She took off her heels in the changing room and put on her sneakers, still in the panty hose and sequined dress. And she ran. No joke. The people parted as she ran by because no one recognized her without her tiara on. She ran to the last place she should have. The Bridge. She had no food and no water but wanted to make it to the other side. She didn’t know how long it would take. She didn’t know why she chose this as a symbol. She didn’t know that when you don’t eat or drink for a whole day you forget to be hungry. That hunger doesn’t matter. Only thirst. It rained the morning of the second day; this is the Caribbean after all. She tilted her head back and kept walking. The worn makeup streaking down her face, then off her face completely. She realized, once the rain had stopped, that her face hadn’t been so clean since she was seven years old.
A full day on the Bridge. Not on the land, not in the
sky, not in the water. She saw the sun set and then rise on this limbo life. Between the night of the second day and the morning of the third she could see the other side of the bridge. The land of the other island just there past the length of her tongue. The thirst for it like, I don’t know, like mother love. Scratching at the back of her throat. There was a black sack figure crossing the bridge too. There were two figures in a boat just below. It was late, dark. The moon was high and crescented. She wanted to be on top of that moon. She wanted it at her feet—like a boat to get her across anything. She was such a frigging drama queen. She couldn’t know what she had in common with these three figures. But she felt she had to choose one set or the other. The weight of her absent crown solid on her head. She knew that if Juan Diego was with her he would hold her up with his two hands like the angel he was until she became something holy, something to make these lands pure and able. His Guadeloupe.
Anyway. She walked toward the figure on the bridge, but the black-sack woman actually seemed to move farther away, climbing the railing away from her. Perhaps Guadeloupe looked a little off, mad you know, a beauty queen in sneakers, hair looking like crap because of the rain and the ragged days of walking. Guadeloupe looked down where the woman was looking and saw the moon below, at her feet. Saw the little brown boy in the boat stand up to hold her. She felt the tingle of the glow. The halo covered her entire body. Not like a tiara; not even like a crown they gave the boys who won for Mister this or King that. The halo coming from her very bones and protecting her. She was pure. She could save lands. She was the most pure and the most good. A human bridge.
The other woman on the bridge looked now like a huge black crane steadying itself for flight. Guadeloupe, this mixed-up girl who was just getting to know herself, watched on in her new state of grace, and the lovely crane leapt into the air, with its wings wide and open to the wind. Guadeloupe pressed her hands together so gently that her pinkies crossed and missed each other—she felt something glorious come from her and go out into the world. And, I kid you not, that was when the miracle of miracles happened. The bridge began to crumble. She was not afraid as the air opened and took her in.
STREET MAN
Let me tell you how I meet this sweet thing. It’s Christmas time so the place fill up with people from the ships and the resorts. She walk into the Sun Shack like she one of them tourist. She even talk all Yankee. I don’t really bother with she because I don’t want to be all Stella get her groove. I let the white lady help she. But Yolanda walk over to me on her own and then her voice change up and she sound like any island girl all the sudden. She want to know about the Maui Jims behind me, so I take them out for her and tell her she look sweet when they on her face. She don’t buy a piece of shades but she leave me her number and I don’t even self pretend to not watch her ass as she leave.
For two weeks we spend some big amount of time together every day. Sometimes I just drive my four-runner to her house on my lunch break and park in the middle of the street. I tell her jokes about the red-faced tourists who come into the shop—how the women does tell me my accent don’t even sound like English, but some exotic native language. How the man them does lean in and ask me quiet-quiet where they could get some weed. Yolanda does laugh so hard that she have to sit down on the pavement and lift her legs scissor-like into the air. She tell me that in college they asked her where she buy her sneakers because they didn’t think Nikes could sell anywhere but the U.S. But when she talk about that kind of stuff, it’s not funny. It’s all serious. And I think that it’s a real good thing that she have a sense of humor and some maturity to boot. When we talk serious it does make her want to kiss right there on the sidewalk. I let she. I let she all the time. At the beach in the water. On the couch in my living room. I never let a girl do that before.
One night we sitting in my car, parked in the middle of her street. Since the last hurricane St. Croix don’t have no streetlights in this neighborhood. If you get too close to either side of the road the house lights shining right into the car. So we was parked in the middle where it dark. We ain having sex yet but since I a lot older than her, ten years older, I cool that she keeping cautious. I ain no young boy. I cooling. Yolanda’s on my lap snaking away—getting her nut. I kissing on her neck and thinking how this young girl have me acting like a schoolboy. She wearing tight white pants and because it’s so dark that’s all I could see clearly, and her teeth when she laugh and the white in her eyes. At this point we only been seeing each other for those two weeks and I already know she like to laugh and kiss and even do both when we fooling around. I like foreplay. I good at it. I mean I good at the whole shebang, but a older guy know foreplay is sweet. Just doing it is for dogs. I too old for that.
Now a car is coming down the street and I have to drive around the block with Yolanda in my lap and me having to look under her arm to make the corners. She love that stuff. Laugh so loud I had to give her a hard stare. “Hush, no, girl. Your laugh will wake the dead.”
When we reach back in front her house she go to me “I have to tell you something.” I know what she going to tell me just by how her eye them all small and her mouth all slack, and I don’t want to hear it yet. So I say “Get off my lap.” When she sitting there in the passenger seat, I try to relax my heart and my dick cause the blood in both is slamming away. “Don’t tell me,” I say. “It’s too soon.” But we been dancing all night and now she been on my lap for almost a half hour. “I have to say it cause it’s true,” she say. So I let her. “I love you, Slick.” Damn. Leave it to a young girl. A college girl. To fall in love and have to tell you the minute it friggin happen. I pissed but I don’t have no choice but to admit it back. “Okay, Yolanda. I love you, too. Now I gotta say something.” And I tell her about what I do on the side. How I deal sometimes. How I have a gun under my seat. I take it out and show her. She get all quiet like she gonna cry and right then I don’t know if I want hold her and tell her I going be done with that shit if she will just be my shortie for truth and I’ll move with her to Tallahassee where she in college. Or if I just want kick her out the car for being such a damn softy, tell her I need a ride or die chick and not some goody-goody college girl that don’t know nothing about the street. I ain gonna change for no man, woman, or child. But she don’t cry. She just rest her head on my shoulder. “Shit, Slick,” is what she say. And her voice is so sweet and she seem so for real that I decide then that I going wait this girl out cause she could be the mother of my youths. And so I tell her, “If you gonna be my woman you can’t be calling me Slick. It’s Anton. But don’t be screaming it in the street.”
For the months Yolanda’s away at college I screw out on her, but not really. I thinking about her when I doing it and I wearing a Magnum so I don’t give her nothing when she come back. On the phone I tell her I just slapping my stuff when I look at her picture. She thinks that’s sexy so sometimes that’s what I do for real and I let her listen. I make more noises and stuff than I would if I was by myself, so she could feel she a part of it. I think it’s practice for when we really do it for the first time. I mean, I love this girl. I have some secrets but they in her best interest. I is a street man. And a street man is the sweetest man. Them goody schoolboys don’t know what to do when they have a lady on their hands. They tell everything and make their woman miserable. They worry about career and shit before they worry about pleasing their woman. Not I and I.
My last name is Colter and that’s a good name on the island. Only my pops is the black sheep so we don’t have no money like the other Colters. But Yolanda’s moms is forgiving. She a black sheep, too. Her husband dead in some American war and now she live down by the seaplanes. So she okay with a street man for a son-in-law. I polite. I say goodnight when I enter. I wash the dishes when they have me over for dinner. And while Yolanda is gone I still visit her moms. Sometimes do her shopping for her. I never bring my piece in their house. I always keep body spray in the car so I don’t smell like sensimania when I knock o
n the door.
I pick Yolanda up from the airport when she come home for summer vacation. First thing she tell me is that she miss me and then in the car she all over me. I call her moms on my cell and say that the plane is delayed but it coming in an hour or so. I take Yolanda to this house on a hill that get blow away in the last hurricane. It don’t have no roof and only one wall but it have a flat for the car to drive up and it have a view of the ocean—which is hard to come by on St. Croix. I know this place because I used to deal to the white folks that owned it. They didn’t like to come around the park so I would drop it off during my lunch break. When the hurricane hit they run speeding back to Texas. They had want to set up some long-distance thing but Fish and me can’t be doing that. We small time and I plan on keeping it so. The place ain been sold yet now so it’s kind of my place. I go there to think. Think like how I might one day own my own Sun Shack place. How I would sell shades to all the local roughnecks. Expensive stuff and good quality, like Fendi or Dolce. I think about greeting the customers and putting the things that don’t sell on sale. I think that I’ll always do my own books so no one even have a chance to mess with me. I think even Fish will come to my place with respect and I going give him a deal. I think maybe I could even have the shop here at this blown-away house. How if someone spare me a loan I could set it up.
I ain never brought anyone else up here. And now I bring Yolanda. We do it right in the driver’s seat. I open the car door so there’s more space. Her back keep hitting the horn and making her laugh. It’s so good, but I don’t want to come too quick so I think about my moms who left the outside light on for me and about how she gonna cuss cause I ain washed her car in a week.
How to Escape From a Leper Colony Page 4
