Island on the Edge of the World

by Deborah Rodriguez

“Sometimes.” Charlie had always kept her nightmares to herself, sparing her grandmother from the darker visions of what her life in the jungle had become.

  “You should listen to your dreams.”

  “My dreams are just dreams.” Charlie deposited the towels into her grandmother’s lap to be folded.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  Bea’s bony fingers worked their magic, turning the pile of terrycloth into a tower of tidy little squares within minutes.

  “You know, Charlie,” she said once she was done, “I think you take after me more than you probably care to admit.”

  “Seriously? You mean I’m nosy and cranky and stubborn?” Charlie knew exactly what her grandmother meant, but that didn’t mean it was true. “Bibi, I’m about as far from being psychic as I am from being an astronaut.”

  “Ha ha. Not funny. I’m serious. You are like me. We’re not like other people.”

  Charlie had to laugh. She never felt as though she was like other people. She’d been a fish out of water for practically her entire life: at first in the jungle—before she learned to blend in like a chameleon, eventually becoming more Amazon than California—then later, after her exile back to the States, when the stress of trying to pass as just another normal, everyday American college kid took its toll. Life after that, spent couch-surfing and house-sitting, continent-hopping and driving cross-country back and forth like a criminal on the run, didn’t allow Charlie enough time to fit in anywhere. And she definitely had nothing in common with anyone here in Carmel-by-the-Sea.

  “So maybe we’re not,” Charlie said. “But I think it’s best that you stick to your talents, and I’ll stick to mine.”

  “Suit yourself. But I’m telling you, something’s going on down there in Haiti.”

  Charlie turned her back on the old woman and busied herself cleaning the combs. “I don’t want to hear it. If she wanted our help that badly, she would have found a way to let us know.”

  “You know how controlling that man is. You think he’d let her even get near a phone without him listening in?”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?” Charlie turned around to face her grandmother, her hands coming to rest on her hips.

  Bea swept her arm through the air as if swatting a fly, the heavy bangles stacked on her wrist clattering like a train on the tracks. “Never mind. What do I know? I’m just a silly old woman who only sees in her sleep. You go about your business. From now on I’ll just keep my dreams to myself.” She paused, then added: “Even if it means something terrible might happen.”

  “Cut it out, Bibi. I know what you’re doing, and it’s not going to work. Not this time.” Charlie went to the door and flipped the sign around from Closed to Open.

  “Even if—”

  “I’m not listening.”

  “But let me just say—”

  “Stop.”

  “If there’s one—”

  “Shush.”

  “Maybe—”

  “Enough, Bibi, I am not going to Haiti!”

  2

  “Did you find the sunscreen? You know what happens to that fair skin of yours.”

  “I have it, Bibi.”

  “And don’t forget the insect repellant. There’s bound to be tons of mosquitos buzzing around down there.”

  “Got it.”

  “Hand wipes? Band-aids? Your hat?”

  “Yep.”

  “You got all your shots, right?”

  “Yes, Bibi. Remember I lived in the jungle? I know about shots.”

  “And make sure you grab some leaves from the aloe plant on the kitchen windowsill.”

  “I’ll be fine. Stop worrying so much.”

  “I’m not worrying, Charlie. I’m just helping. Oh, and take my pashmina, the peachy one. It will go with everything.”

  “I’m not going on a cruise, Bibi. I hardly think what goes with what will matter.”

  “Well, a little color never hurts any situation, that’s what I always say.” Bea forced a smile in Charlie’s direction. In truth, she was worried. After finally seeing success with her most recent attempt at convincing Charlie to try to reconnect with her mother, she didn’t want it to backfire. It had taken a long couple of weeks, filled with Bea’s increasingly vivid tales of nocturnal visions, underscored with a few tears, to get Charlie to cave in and agree to go down to Haiti herself to check on April. Bea had glowed with satisfaction at her victory, then had almost immediately become concerned about what Charlie might face once she got there. The last thing the girl needed was to be knocked off her feet, yet again.

  For Bea, her granddaughter smoothing and folding her clothes on the bed between them brought back memories of the first time Charlie left her. That was the day her heart had truly broken in two.

  “Why don’t you leave the girl with me?” she had begged her daughter, during a standoff in this very room. The suitcases were already by the door. “At least let her finish out the school year here.”

  April had shaken her head firmly as she checked the empty bureau drawers one last time.

  “It’s your choice to go live in the godforsaken jungle with that man, not hers,” Bea pleaded.

  Still her daughter didn’t answer.

  “What, now you’re not speaking to me?” Bea asked.

  April spun toward her mother. “Charity is my daughter, not yours. And ‘that man’ is my husband. And it’s my husband’s calling that we go. And it’s my duty to support him. And that’s all I have to say about it. Done. Finished.”

  Bea hated the name Charity. The girl had been Charlie to her ever since she was born. And she’d cringed at the word “husband”. April had been married to Jim for less than a month, and had known him for three, at most. He’d set his sights on her one afternoon at the coffee shop in town and never let go, reeling her in with sappy compliments, stopping by the salon with hot chocolate and flowers, the type of attention a single mother of a five-year-old wasn’t used to. Next came an invitation to his church up in Seaside. April soon started attending two or three times a week, twice on Sundays. Bea had no objection to religion, though she leaned toward a more personally curated brand of spirituality herself. It would have been one thing if the guy had simply been one of those Jesus freaks who used to gather by the dozen down at the beach, with their puka-shell necklaces and ponytails and their charming thoughts about peace and love and living in harmony. But there was something that felt a bit dark about Jim’s devotion, both to April and to the church. Something that made Bea worry her daughter was diving in way too deep, way too fast.

  “You barely know the man, April. Take your time to sort things out. Don’t drag the baby with you. It’s not fair to her. He doesn’t even know Charlie. Hell, he doesn’t even know you! At least get to know each other on familiar ground.”

  April shook her head again. “This is bigger than Charity, Mom. It’s bigger than me, and bigger than you. Jim has been called on by God.” She shoved the last empty drawer shut.

  “Since when did God become the one telling you how to raise your child? What the hell are you going to do when you’re four thousand miles away in the middle of nowhere and have no one to turn to for support if things get rough? The girl needs her family, April. Charlie needs me.”

  What had she done, Bea thought, to make her daughter so vulnerable to this smooth-talker’s bullshit? She’d always allowed April her freedom, but her past rebellions were never anything like this. A missionary’s wife? In the jungle? God help us all.

  “Despite what you so obviously think, Mom, Jim is a good man. God spoke to him and told him we were to be a family, that I was to be Jim’s wife. Just like you have your crazy dreams, God speaks to Jim. You’d never understand.” She turned her back on her mother and began to check the closet.

  “I understand that you’ve gone nuts, is what I understand. Why else would you want to drop that innocent baby down in the middle of a jungle, in a place you know nothing of,
with a man you’ve barely spent ten minutes with?”

  April slammed the closet door with a force that seemed to rattle the whole old wooden house. “You can’t stop me, Mom! It’s God’s will.”

  “So it’s His will that you take this child away from her own grandmother, the woman who’s practically raised her? All of a sudden you’re hearing what God has to say so clearly? Or is that Jim’s voice in your ears?”

  “What don’t you get?” her daughter yelled. “For the first time in my life I have a chance to do something that matters, to be part of something bigger than myself. And all you can do is try to manipulate me into staying here in this stupid salon, on my feet all day, making nice to women who whine about stupid little problems that no one in their right mind would give a damn about. You want me stuck here, clipping and curling and sweeping for the rest of my life, just like you? Well, you know what? I don’t want to be like you. I want to do something important with my life.”

  April’s words had hurt. Of course Bea had dreamed of something more for her daughter, but she was also proud of her profession, and enjoyed her life behind the chair. But it was April who got herself pregnant right out of high school, with a boy from up north who, shortly after, wrapped his motorcycle around a telephone pole. It had given the town plenty to gossip about at the time. But Bea hadn’t given a damn about any of that, because then there was Charlie. The only thing she did regret was that her daughter hadn’t had more of a chance, early on, to find herself, to become the person she wanted to be, before becoming a mother.

  That last conversation had not ended well. More slammed doors, both of them yelling and crying. They never did have a proper goodbye. And Bea regretted the row every single day of her life.

  The sound of a zipper closing brought her back to the present. “You’re done?” She wagged a spindly finger toward the spot where Charlie’s bag rested on the bed. “Open it back up. I want to make sure you’ve packed enough.”

  Charlie sighed and did as her grandmother asked. “I don’t need that much, Bibi. I’m only staying for a couple of days.”

  “You never know.”

  “Yes, I do know. I promised you I’d do some snooping around, find out whatever I can find out. That’s it.”

  Bea shrugged her shoulders.

  “You know he won’t let me see her, Bibi. What am I supposed to do then?”

  “You’ll find a way, dear. Trust me.”

  “Well, even if I do manage to see her, I’m in and out. That’s it. I’ll be back for my Friday appointments.”

  Bea kept quiet.

  “I’m only doing this for you, you know. She didn’t exactly barricade the door when I left. My own mother practically handed me my suitcase.”

  Bea knew very little about what had happened in the jungle during those years before Charlie left. She’d seen her daughter and granddaughter less than a handful of times after their move, while the family was back in the States on hiatus, traveling up and down the West Coast raising funds for their mission. Even in those early days of their marriage, Jim was keeping April on a short leash, allowing visits with her mother to take place only under his supervision, and only for an hour at a time. Those visits were torture for Bea, sitting there muzzled by his steely glare, bursting with questions she didn’t dare ask.

  And Charlie! The feeling of that girl rushing into her arms never failed to bring tears to her eyes. Even though each time they met the child’s legs were a bit longer, her body a tad heavier, her words more skilled, it was always as though she’d never left. The two of them would escape into the salon and spin around in the swivel chairs until they were too dizzy to stand, then she’d let Charlie try on wigs and play with makeup while Bea painted her toes a reddish-brown to match the color of her hair. Charlie’s broad smile was enough to make Bea burst with joy. But the joy was always tempered by the sense of the ticking clock. Bea wasn’t able to learn much about their lives, but she did know one thing. Though April may have appeared quiet and serious when under the watchful eyes of her husband, inside her stony demeanor was a woman who loved her little girl with all her heart.

  “Sometimes people do what they have to do,” Bea now said to the girl, cringing at the utter uselessness of her words.

  “What does that even mean? She said she’d come. She said she’d follow me. So what happened?”

  Bea heard the catch in her voice, and reached out to fold her granddaughter’s hand into her own. “Your mother loves you, Charlie. Don’t ever question that. She had to have had her reasons.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “And I’ll say it again. All I know is that your mother needs us right now.”

  “Us?” Charlie laughed. “Really? I don’t see you packing any bags, getting any needles jabbed into your bony arms.”

  Bea’s right hand instinctively went to the sore spot on her opposite arm.

  Charlie stopped dead in her tracks, the duffel cradled in her arms. “What? You’re not …”

  “Well, just in case. I thought maybe you might want—”

  “Seriously, Bibi? Are you kidding me?”

  “I know, I know. What use would I be, an old fart who can barely see past her own crooked nose? It’s just killing me, Charlie,” she said with a sniffle. “How could I live with myself, knowing that something wasn’t right and I didn’t do a thing about it? I’m not about to go to my grave carrying that around my neck.”

  “Stop it, Bibi. You’re not about to go to any grave.” Charlie stood and grabbed a tissue from the nightstand.

  “And I just worry about you, going all the way down there by yourself.”

  “You know you don’t need to worry about me. I was just fine on my own for all those years, before I came back here to stay with you. Think of all the places I’ve been, and returned from in one piece to tell you all about.” Charlie plopped back down on the bed and took her grandmother’s hand in her own. They sat without speaking, the squeaky ceiling fan counting out the seconds like a metronome. Bea waited.

  “I don’t know, Bibi. All that travel? And the weather. You’re not used to that kind of heat.”

  “I’m not going to melt.”

  “And I’ll probably be doing a lot of running around.”

  “So go and run. I’m a grown-up. I can take care of myself.”

  “But you’ve never been anywhere.”

  “Well then, don’t you think it’s about time?” Bea waited for her granddaughter’s response.

  Finally Charlie let out a sigh. “Okay.” Bea squeezed her hand, hard. “But here’s the deal,” she continued, shaking out her fingers. “I call the shots. All of them. No dreams. No premonitions. No ‘I have a feeling, Charlie.’ If you do, you keep it all to yourself. We’re going on a fact-finding mission. Nothing more. We’re just going to see if she’s okay, make sure she’s not in danger, and we’re outta there. Understood?”

  “Understood. I am completely at your command.” Bea smiled and nodded, her middle finger crossing over her pointer as Charlie stood and headed to the door.

  3

  The thickset woman was perched on the edge of her seat, one hand anxiously gripping the handle of her suitcase, the other firmly atop a pile of belongings taking up the spot next to her. Charlie gestured toward the seat, the only one available on a busy morning at the airport, and the woman shifted her things to make room.

  “I apologize,” the woman said. “All this stuff I’m toting around. Hard to keep myself organized.”

  “Not a problem.” Charlie guided Bea to sit, and thanked the woman with a slight nod, her gesture returned in a nervous smile.

  “Y’all missionaries?” the woman asked, her voice telling of a Southern, or maybe Texas, background.

  Bea’s sharp laugh bounced across the waiting area like a billiard ball. Charlie shushed her grandmother with a nudge of her foot and replied. “No. Not missionaries.”

  “My mistake. I just assumed y’all were on a mission. I didn’t think anyb
ody who wasn’t with the church went to Haiti. Well, at least not voluntarily.”

  “So you’re a missionary?” Charlie asked, noting the gold cross hanging from a chain around the woman’s neck.

  “Oh, goodness, no.” She shook her head. “Not me.” The woman stuck out a hand. “My name’s Lizbeth. Lizbeth Johnston.”

  “Charlie.” As they shook, Charlie couldn’t help but notice the perspiration coating Lizbeth’s plump palm.

  “Charlie,” the woman said. “Isn’t that an interesting name for a girl.”

  “My real name is Charity,” she explained, sweeping her long curls over one shoulder. “Charlie for short. And this,” she said as she placed a hand on her grandmother’s shoulder, “is my grandmother, Bea.”

  Bea waved her hand in the general direction of the woman. “Hello.”

  “So I take it this is your first time going to Haiti?” Charlie asked.

  Lizbeth looked at her as if she were mad. “My first time in Florida. I’ve never even been east of the Mississippi before.”

  “Well, I would hardly call this Florida.” Charlie chuckled. “We could be in any airport, anywhere, right?”

  Lizbeth shrugged. “I don’t really know about that. I haven’t traveled all that much, other than when we took our son to Disneyland, once, and a couple of cruises with my husband. We didn’t get a start on cruising until after Darryl retired from his teaching job. He was always working before that, even in the summers. He’s passed now.” The woman’s eyes seemed to lose their focus, as if she were thinking about times long past. “This is my first time traveling solo.”

  TMI, Charlie thought. The poor woman was obviously a nervous traveler. Charlie checked her phone for the time. She hated layovers. All those wasted hours. She always just wanted to get where she was going already. Especially on this trip. In and out. The sooner the better.

  “And in all my fifty-eight years I’ve definitely never gone anywhere like this,” Lizbeth added with a wrinkle of her nose.

  Charlie cringed a little at Lizbeth’s words. “Honestly, I’m not sure what you’ve heard about Haiti, but I doubt it’s as bad as you think. Trust me, I’ve probably seen much worse.”