Left at the Mango Tree

by Stephanie Siciarz

  But until then, they walked. Gustave in front and the others behind. It was Cougar’s turn at incredulity. “How do you suppose we managed it?” he asked, his feet dry now inside calfskin. Nat replied only with the squish of his soggy sandals. And Bang, he hummed, in key with the leaves that shuddered a broken battle cry and leaned in respectful nod to the pregnant moon.

  As the moon waxed fuller and fuller, proud of the night’s doings on her favorite beach, Gustave waxed a bit proud himself. His plan to pull out all the stops was in full swing. Soon the islanders would be too scared to even look at him, let alone keep watch on his every move. Home in his bed, Raoul was happy, too, knowing it was only a matter of time before Gustave tripped himself up with all his boondoggling. The more magic the better, Raoul reflected, for the sooner Gustave would fall. (Had Raoul known already of that night’s caper, he would have been happier still.)

  As the chums walked home to the song of the shuddering leaves and Bang’s hum, both Gustave and Raoul boasted a puffed-up aplomb. In fact, a good many things were puffed up that night: the last bloated boats of the smugglers, the stuffed pineapple depots on Killig, the bulging pockets of four cheating chums.

  To say nothing of the swollen tide that assaulted Oh’s sandy shores; or the moon. The placid, gibbous moon.

  12

  There is no shortage of words on Oh. Bounteous as the mangoes or the rain, they are available to all the islanders indiscriminately, though not everyone indulges in them in equal measure. The appetites of some are insatiable, like those of the lonely Pedro Bunch; and of others, easily whetted, like those of the widow Corinna, whose words fall aimlessly from her tongue in the marketplace or in front of the Island Post. Some islanders (like Bang, Cougar, and Nat) prefer a healthy, robust diet; while others (like Raoul or Gustave) opt for slighter fare, their cravings best satisfied by private monologue.

  Like legal tender the islanders exchange their words, in sympathy, solidarity, in jest. And in promise, as I’ve already said. This last part bears repeating, for promises are never contracts to be entered into lightly. Not anywhere. And especially not on Oh.

  Abigail Davies and my grandmother Emma Patrice once shared a promise that forever changed the direction my life would take. It was long before my grandmother disappeared on that tall, snowy slope in Switzerland, leaving behind her pearl-handled sewing basket and her two-year-old baby girl. With the sharp edge of a cracked shell, she and Abigail sliced open the dainty brown tips of their nine-year-old index fingers and pledged eternal allegiance, if not in so many words. They mixed their blood, smearing the hybrid droplet into the loops and whorls that distinguished the one girl from the other, declared themselves sisters—blood sisters—and promised to forever treat each other the way that sisters do.

  Accordingly, their alliance took many shapes over the course of the years. Playmates turned confidantes, turned rivals, and back, and sometimes months went by during which the two girls never spoke. The reasons for their silences were many and varied, malicious and not: disagreements, distractions, Abigail’s pregnancies, Emma Patrice’s books. Even then they were her way of escaping, and both sisters must have suspected (known, really, though neither ever said it aloud) that the metaphorical escapes were a prelude to, and preparation for, a full-fledged breakout.

  Despite the occasional hiatus, the sisterhood survived. When Raoul returned alone with baby Edda from that first real family holiday, Abigail felt anew the sting of the salty sea in which she and Emma Patrice had rinsed their bloody fingertips that day so many years before. Her sister was gone! No one knew for certain if Emma Patrice’s disappearance was willful or willed upon her, but Abigail was certain of the former, and so she chose to rejoice in her sister’s newfound freedom, rather than to mourn her demise.

  Raoul saw matters in a different light. He, too, suspected a willful departure on the part of Emma Patrice, though he never said it aloud either, and he didn’t stop (or for a long time he didn’t) hoping she would have a change of heart. Silly Raoul, Abigail thought. He was a good man, as fine as any on Oh, if not better. But he would never have done for Emma Patrice. They should have figured that much before the two ever married. (In my grandfather’s defense, I don’t think anyone would “have done” for Emma Patrice and her escapist tendencies.) Still, Raoul’s glum disposition caused Abigail to wonder if perhaps she shouldn’t be mourning a bit more than she was, just in case. After all, her blood sister’s departure didn’t change the fact that their blood had in fact been mixed. There’s no undoing a thing like that. Not even by running away.

  So with no blood sister left on whom to lavish her devotion, she turned her attention to the next best thing, her blood sister’s baby, Edda. Abigail promised the absent Emma Patrice that Edda would always be happy, that Abigail herself would see to it.

  Like her earlier alliance with Emma Patrice, Abigail’s relationship with Edda, too, took many shapes over the years. Babysitter turned auntie turned tutor and back, to the extent that Raoul would allow. (She reminded him too much of his missing wife, or rather, of the fact that his wife was missing.) Although Abigail’s help was wanted less and less as time went on, she kept her thumb on the pulse of Raoul’s parenting—discreetly, from a distance. Keeping tabs from afar is easy on Oh, if you have a knack for it, as some of us do. Midwife Abigail managed it quite well indeed, for her connections and savvy had only increased with each pregnancy she saw to. When they told her it would soon be my mother’s turn to deliver, her once-pricked finger tingled and she summoned Raoul.

  “Now about your…services,” Raoul stammered, seated in Abigail’s kitchen. “How would it work?”

  “Don’t you worry about the details,” Abigail replied. “I’ll fix everything with Edda, and she’ll be well looked after. I can promise you that.”

  Raoul wanted to ask further questions of this midwife into whose hands he was about to place the future of his first and only grandchild, but ignorance and embarrassment conspired to keep him quiet. That, and the fact that Abigail had always intimidated him just a little bit. He was sure she blamed him for Emma Patrice’s disappearance. Not for losing her there on the slope, but for driving her to go. Abigail was the last person he wanted around, but she was Oh’s best midwife, and my welfare (and Edda’s), thankfully, trumped his pride. He finally stood, resigned if not convinced, and thanked Abigail for taking the time to speak with him, though it was she who had invited him round.

  “She’ll be well looked after,” Abigail repeated, cupping her two hands around the one Raoul had extended to her. “I can promise you that.” It was agreed that Abigail would go to see my mother the very next day to discuss the “arrangements” and with that, Raoul left her small but comfortable house. When he had reached the road that bordered Abigail’s garden, he almost turned back to inquire about the midwife’s fee. He wasn’t sure, however, if etiquette allowed for such negotiations, so he kept quiet again, confident (almost) that he would get his money’s worth, whatever the cost. Then he headed for Edda’s, to tell her the news.

  Abigail could not have been more pleased by the outcome of Raoul’s visit. She had waited a long time to have a hand again in Edda’s happiness. Over the years Raoul kept Edda seemingly perfectly happy, leaving nothing for Abigail to do. He taught her to cook and to sew, taught her manners and good posture, even taught her to braid her hair. And in Bang, Cougar, and Nat, she had three of the most doting uncles a young girl on Oh could want. Added to that, Abigail had been pregnant with problems of her own much of the time, and her pledge to Emma Patrice, though never forgotten, had intermittently fallen by the wayside. Until now. Now that Edda was pregnant herself, and Abigail was pregnant no longer, the blood-sister promise could be properly fulfilled.

  As agreed, the day after her conversation with Raoul, Abigail paid my mother a visit. She explained that Raoul had engaged her services (as if she would have had it any other way), and she assured Edda that there was nothing to be afraid of. Abigail had training and she cou
ld manage the most troublesome of pregnancies, the most delicate of deliveries.

  Though it would take some months more to confirm the veracity of Abigail’s boasts, she was off to a very good start. My mother was well looked after indeed, better than any pregnant woman that Abigail had attended to before. She devoted herself to Edda and her growing baby, spending almost every day in Edda’s company while Wilbur delivered the island post. She sang to her and helped her clean the house, told her stories about her mother Emma Patrice (never mentioning her escapist tendencies), and in between she prepared Edda’s meals. This was the hardest part of Abigail’s job, for as Edda’s belly grew, it grew capricious. Some days her appetite was healthy, robust, and she voraciously satisfied her body’s cravings for fresh purpled octopus, sandwiches with peanut butter and pineapple jam, spicy sausages, and turtle steaks; other days her diet was slighter and functional, intolerant of purpled or pineappled dishes, and best satisfied by simpler fare, a mango or bowlful of beans.

  Once a week, when Wilbur joined Raoul and the others for their nightly nip at the Belly, Abigail stayed with Edda in the evening, too. Sometimes they would sit on long chairs outside, both with their feet up, the island breeze blowing a fine mist of sand between their toes and inside their skirts. If the light of the moon and the stars permitted, Abigail would sew. While she did, Edda would talk, sharing with Abigail her most intimate thoughts and fears. My mother would almost be sorry to see her pregnancy end, for her days and evenings with Abigail were the closest she had ever come to having a real mother, to experiencing the kind of maternal bond that makes one feel calm and protected and sorted out.

  “Abigail,” Edda began, one evening when the two were lounging beneath the speckled sky, “will my baby look at these same stars one day?”

  “Yes,” Abigail answered, then decided that falling stars should be allowed for. “Most of them anyhow.”

  “Will I have a boy or a girl? Why won’t you tell me?” Edda spoke to Abigail but kept her face toward the sky, whose twinklings were reflected in Edda’s dark eyes.

  “I’ve told you already, I can’t always tell.”

  “Please tell me, Abigail. You must have an idea!”

  “No, child, I must not, or else I would have said something,” Abigail lied. She did have an idea. Edda’s shape and her demeanor, her cravings, her complaints, all told Abigail clearly that the child was a boy. But even the most astute of midwives could be mistaken, and given Edda’s unusually fragile state, Abigail preferred not to share her speculations. The truth was that she had begun to sense real trouble. My mother’s was promising to be Abigail’s most delicate delivery yet.

  “If I have a boy,” Edda interrupted Abigail’s thoughts, “will he bother about the stars, or will he be too busy?”

  “Don’t be silly. I imagine he would bother about them just as much as anybody else.” Abigail hoped so, at least. She wanted nothing more than for Edda to have the kind of boy who bothered about the stars and cared about the moon. Having only ever met the kind interested in their fishing rods, their pencils, their paintbrushes and pipes, Abigail wondered if the stargazing ones really existed, and if so, where on Oh they hid.

  For a while after that Edda didn’t speak. She lay rubbing her belly and contemplating the sky, its dark folds and the blinking lights they housed. Like constellations, words speckled the blank thoughts in her head, but though Edda struggled to line them up, she was unable to turn their shapes into sentences.

  Thus, the private monologues of Abigail Davies and Edda Orlean, to the rustling of Abigail’s stitches on my infamous sunbonnet, until the voices of Wilbur and Raoul, who had finally returned from the Belly, could be heard inside the house, signaling the hour for Edda’s repose and for Abigail’s leave.

  Abigail’s devotion to my mother’s happiness did not whither after I was born. If anything, it grew. Because of the hand that Abigail had had in managing my birth, she felt a territorial responsibility to protect the interests of our little family. The delicate delivery feared by Abigail had gone better than she dared hope, and though there was still a hiccup or two to quiet (there were always hiccups in this sort of affair), mother and child were doing nicely. So nicely that Edda didn’t bother about my pale white skin, and neither did Wilbur. The love that inhabited our dwelling was palpable, like a blanket that threatened to smother us all, which, Abigail feared, it just might do, seeing as how it had already blinded my mother and father both.

  Abigail had never experienced this blinding sort of love firsthand, but she had heard of its rumored existence. That its magic could be so powerful as to blot out my birthmark and drown out the chatter of scandalmongers in the marketplace, well, this much she could never have imagined. She was grateful for it, grateful that her charges were lucky enough to succumb to such a spell, for not only did it make our lives easier, but hers, too. We had secured happiness all by ourselves; Abigail had only to safeguard it.

  Which explains the dismay she felt when she learned of my grandfather’s ad in the Morning Crier. She had struck such a delicate balance. Why did Raoul insist on tipping the scales? Had he just kept quiet, the rumors about me would eventually have noodled their way into the casserole of gossip and conjecture on which the islanders inveterately fed, the individual spices (Edda’s transgression, or Gustave’s) lost in the mix. Leave it to Raoul to stir up trouble and spoil the broth.

  Abigail, who never read the paper, preferring to pick up the day’s news at the market with her purchases of curry and flour, bought a copy for herself to confirm what the marketplace sources reported. Juggling her parcels and her pocketbook, she opened to the classified section and found it, sure enough. Just as they had told her she would. Jostling her head from side to side, she crumpled the paper, tucked it under her arm, and rushed to the Morning Crier’s grimy-windowed office, anxious to displace some of the blame she felt rising in her chest. She had naively overlooked Raoul and his perpetual quest for explanations as plain as noses on faces.

  “Bruce!” she shouted, bursting through the door. “Where are you? How could you?!”

  Bruce, the paper’s editor-in-chief, copyeditor, reporter, and special correspondent, peered up at Abigail from behind the keys of his typewriter. “Abigail! Hello! What a nice surprise!”

  “Hello? Is that all you have to say for yourself ? How could you, Bruce? How could you let Raoul place that ridiculous ad?” Abigail untucked the crumpled paper and threw it at the typewriter.

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Raoul came in, had his words, had his money, demanded I put in the ad. I thought it was some sort of a joke, but then I saw he was serious, and I didn’t know what to do. So I just did what he told me.”

  Abigail would not have the blame displaced again so easily. “Did you stop to think for just a minute of that poor girl? You and Raoul have made a spectacle of her!”

  “I don’t know about that. Seems to me that baby of hers is the spectacle. You can’t blame Raoul for wanting to know what’s going on.”

  “I see,” Abigail answered softly, too furious even to shout. “And you think this is the way to go about it, do you? Something strange happens, you put an ad in the paper, and in a day or two you have all the answers you’re looking for. That’s what you think? Since when do things work that way around here?”

  Bruce cowered silently behind the bulky typewriter, happy he had never upgraded to a sleeker model.

  “You should have talked him out of it!” Abigail shouted. Then she turned and walked out, slamming the door so hard that the grimy office windows rattled.

  As Abigail walked home, she wondered how to fix the mess that Raoul had made. She came up with no convincing solution, none of her previous jobs having prepared her for something like this. She could balance accounts and cover things up. She could even keep troublesome things quiet, if she got her hands on them before they were printed in the newspaper. But how to handle a classified ad that
had the whole island talking? She could force Raoul to retract it, though that wouldn’t undo the fact that everyone had seen it. She could assume a disguise and answer the ad herself, tell Raoul a tale that would placate his curiosities. But what could she possibly say? Or she could wait and hope for some other island drama to begin, one that would steal the spotlight that shone on baby Almondine.

  When Abigail reached her house, she still had no plan. But she would come up with something. Some way to protect poor Edda and to quiet the story while Almondine was still too young to bother about it, before the story became who she was, speckling her dark life on Oh like the stars speckled the island’s still, dark sky.

  A tall order, even for someone as capable as Abigail. She knew in her heart that no matter what she did, I would always have to answer for my white skin and my rosy eyes. There was nothing anybody could do, or say, to change that.

  Like the wind that spares no crevice, wrenching the white sands of Oh into every nook and cranny on the island, the rain relentlessly makes its way across the island’s shiny surface. It fills the dips in Raleigh Bello’s corrugated roof and drowns the moonlight that, gasping and splashing, struggles to dominate the spilling, splintering streams. In a feat of magic typical of Oh, it insinuates itself into the heart of the Belly, in the form of Cougar’s watered-down cocktails, which are especially weak when the weather is bad. This doesn’t deter the clientele, as you might expect; on the contrary, the Belly is always especially full whenever a storm is brewing.