The Coconut Latitudes: Secrets, Storms, and Survival in the Caribbean

by Rita M. Gardner

  Daddy tinkers with his crafts in the backyard workshop, shaded by a giant ceiba tree. At a wooden workbench under a window he makes jewelry using shells and seeds. Berta and I scavenge the beach, piling rose cockles and coquinas here, green limpets and spider shells there. One of the trees in our yard grows a circular pod packed with boomerang-shaped seeds all held together in a big ball until it’s ready to pop. On hot days, after ripening, a series of these explode and the pods spin out, two-toned brown and black. Daddy polishes them up until they shine like ebony. The wires strung across the window sag with jewelry. I stand on my tiptoes and look up at the parade of dangling earrings that sway like little dancers in the breeze. He ships most of his creations to the gift shops of fancy hotels in Ciudad Trujillo.

  In a dark corner of the shop an oil portrait of Berta and me is tacked up inside a cabinet. It was painted when I was three and we lived in Spain for a year. Berta looks out from the canvas from pale blue eyes like she’s not seeing anything at all. I stare, leaning forward, my eyes bright. Mama says we squirmed a lot during the sittings. My parents don’t think the artist did a very good job, so they don’t hang the painting in the house. Instead, it’s pinned on the cabinet door like a dead butterfly, hidden away and forgotten. I think it’s beautiful—we have bows in our hair and collared dresses, nothing like the khaki shorts and faded shirts we wear now.

  Berta and I are schooled at home. Daddy builds an enramada in the back yard—a circle of cement with a center pole holding up a thatched roof. It’s shaded by the cacao trees full of hard pods as big as papayas that we harvest to make chocolate. This is where we do our lessons. A big carton arrives from The Calvert School of Maryland with our school supplies for the year—new books, rulers, lined paper, lesson plans, yellow pencils, and pink rubber erasers. I’m in Grade One, and Berta is doing Grade Five. Every day Mama gives me my assignments, but Berta’s old enough to read the lesson plans by herself, so she doesn’t need Mama’s help.

  After Berta and I are finished with our daily schoolwork, Mama teaches me how to make cookies and breads from her 1951 Joy of Cooking cookbook. We have to improvise when the ingredients, like walnuts or pecans for nut bars, can’t be found at the store. Yeasty, warm smells fill the house when we bake. Berta grinds the coffee beans and Mama shoves hunks of meat through another grinder. Sometimes she hums as she cooks. The sound calms my stomach and even Berta shows a smile or two. She never says so, but Mama seems happiest when it’s just the three of us together, bumping into each other in the tiny kitchen, and Daddy is spending the night up at the finca tending to a harvest. We know the night ahead will be quiet and peaceful—no need to clench my stomach when six o’clock, Daddy’s cocktail hour, comes with the threat of rum-talk, or—worse—hours of his drunken rantings before we can go to bed.

  Daddy builds two boats from Chris Craft patterns he’s brought from the States. The big one is an open skiff and will transport us across the bay to Cocoloco in good weather. The small rowboat, which we name Frisky, is for the laguna. In late September, a tropical storm sneaks up on us, different than the usual chubascos, the sudden rainstorms that file through, dumping rain as loud as thunder then moving on just as quickly. We wake up to the sound of crashing waves instead of the usual lap-lap rhythm. The white-capped sea has turned cloudy like beach glass and our skiff bucks at its line at the end of the new pier. Daddy hops into it and pulls up the anchor, surfing ashore. He steers the boat onto the rocky beach and ties it to the big avocado tree, which is swaying back and forth as if it doesn’t know which way to go. He points to Frisky, bobbing in the laguna, and yells at us to bring it ashore too.

  The weather is making me all jumpy and excited, and I close my arithmetic book and hold the line as Berta pulls Frisky ashore. After we’ve finished, I try to get back to my lesson. Instead I just draw lines with squiggly tops that are supposed to be coconut trees all bent over from wind. I add figures of a woman and two children running away from the edge of the sea. I make their pictures larger than the trees behind them, just like Daddy taught me. He calls it “foreshortening”; he says it makes the picture look real.

  In the house, the battery-operated Zenith radio is tuned to weather news. Daddy scribbles the latitude and longitude of the storm, now a hurricane called Charlie and just a few miles from the south coast of the island. At sunset, the sky shrieks orange and purple. The waves pound our pier and loosen its planks. We stand at the edge as the waves churn, and, afraid I’ll blow away, I cling to Berta, who says I’m being a silly goose.

  The sky darkens into blue-black. Back inside Casalata, the kerosene lanterns flicker and the aluminum walls glow bright then dim. Daddy says we have to keep the windows open so the air pressure stays even, but then the rains come and we close everything up. After dinner we play Monopoly in silence because the rain and the wind drown out our voices. They even drown out Daddy.

  By morning the overflowing river pours into the laguna, which has broken through to the ocean, washing away two young trees. Mama kneels by the hole where the saplings once grew and clucks her tongue. “They never had a chance to take hold. If they’d been older, the roots would have kept them from being torn out of the ground.” She sighs, a long broken sound. “Oh, well,” she finally says, “We’ll just plant something else here—we don’t even have to dig a new hole, so that will be easy.”

  We pile up the fallen leaves and palm fronds. Our pier is destroyed. For days afterward, local boys scour the beach for missing planks and sell them back to Daddy for a few pesos. In the meantime, the shattered pilings stick out of the water like broken nubs of teeth, brown and jagged. The waters recede and the sandbar heals like scar tissue, sealing the laguna once again into its own world. I explore the changes brought by the storm, spending hours suspended in the rowboat, drifting, looking at the water below the surface. It darkens to a ruby red, still clear enough to see snapping turtles and small fish and pollywogs.

  Below that is a layer of silt that looks like dark chocolate, which I disturb with a stick and watch settle. I’m scared of the unseen bottom—the quicksand that I’m afraid will trap and suck me down if I fall in. It doesn’t matter that I can swim; the fear is always there below the surface.

  I get the same feeling when I pedal my bicycle past the empty house we used to rent, the one owned by Trujillo’s asesinos, or when it’s nighttime and Daddy is yelling at Mama or us—something he’s started to do more and more. His drunken jags are like a never-ending series of storms. We get very good at predicting the weather ahead. His eyes are like a barometer, telling me if it’s just a light squall passing through or the beginning of a cyclone that will pound us through the night. Part of me wishes that Charlie could have been a monster storm, something that would make everything in our life change—something that would jolt Daddy into being different. I don’t know yet about the storm that will shatter our family into pieces of wreckage, like our broken pier.

  Chapter Three

  Friends and Enemy

  A year after we move to Miches, one of Daddy’s workers brings us a puppy, a wiggly ball of white fur and pink tongue. “Para las niñas,” he says. For the girls. Daddy first says no, but Mama begs him and he finally says we can keep him. The dog likes to bob about in the laguna, chasing the loons that are too smart to let him come anywhere near, so Berta names him Bobby. My job is to groom him; that’s a fancy word for pulling off ticks. Every afternoon, I sit him down on the porch step with a pair of tweezers and a jar of kerosene. I find the ticks that are all filled up with blood, as fat as little grapes. Bobby usually sleeps outside, in the enramada. His favorite spot is under Daddy’s chair, except when he’s drunk. Then Bobby’s tail curls under and he slinks under my bed. I sneak him up to my bunk and he licks my face.

  Berta and I have made good friends in Miches, and we play together after their school lets out and our own lessons are over. Daddy doesn’t think much of the local schools. He says Trujillo promises every child an education, but it’s all propaganda and
they only learn what El Jefe wants them to believe. “I’ll bet there isn’t a single adult in this village who could pick out North America or Africa or anyplace on a map besides this island and maybe Cuba or Puerto Rico,” he says.

  On Fridays it’s my turn to go grocery shopping and I haul out my bicycle and set out, stopping first at a stall where I can find the local delicacy, dulce de coco. María la Sorda has a candy stand in front of her house, and she boils up batches in a big cauldron. Bobby and I follow the smell of the charcoal fire and a strong sweet aroma on her street.

  “Buenos días,” I say too loudly. She opens her mouth in a toothless grin and her gray hair shakes in its bun. She grates coconut meat into cheesecloth and squeezes a stream of the white liquid into a simmering stew of milk and sugar. As the candy thickens, she tosses in a bunch of twigs tied into a small bundle, and the air fills with the bite of cinnamon and the scent of vanilla beans. After pulling the heavy cauldron off the fire, she ladles a layer of dulce onto a large sheet where it hardens before she cuts it into squares for sale. I buy ten pieces to take home. María la Sorda gives me a coconut embrace that feels warm and smoky and good and makes me wish Mama would hug me like that sometimes. I just wish she’d hug me, period. With my still-warm candy in hand, I race to the grocery store with Mama’s list and hope I don’t run into my enemy, who often lies in wait for me at Juan Kair’s market. I careen past scolding chickens, avoiding most potholes along the gravel street. Bobby trots alongside, barking at roosters. Since there are only a few jalopies, the bus, and a few battered trucks in the entire village, I’m not worried about traffic, but I am on alert for my one enemy—a boy named King Kong.

  Once I arrive at the store, I scan the surroundings before dropping the bike in a corner just outside the old wooden building. Maybe today I’ll be safe. I step inside the store, which smells of green coffee and sweet oranges. Bobby follows me, sniffing and wagging his tail. Señor Kair wraps a purchase in brown paper. He has a kind face and white hair that rises in tufts. He reaches out for Mama’s list and pulls a worn pencil out from behind his ear. I want him to hurry, but he takes his time assembling the goods. Rice, red beans, sugar, and a chunk of beef, all carefully weighed on the rusty scale. I love the smells, even the stink of raw meat as it leaks red through the paper. He ticks off the rest of the list: A bottle of rum, of course. Coconut oil, soap, and a loaf of pan de agua, the local bread. He finally hands the heavy bag down to me and gives Bobby a treat, a stale bun he gulps down happily. I’m ready to load up the basket and wheel away home. I know that once I lock the backyard gate behind me, I’ll be safe.

  But no luck today. King Kong grabs my bike just as I come outside with my hands full of groceries. My bicycle disappears around the corner before I can grab it. With a nasty laugh, he pedals out of sight, his shirt flapping like a brown moth. He’s the local troublemaker. I know he’ll just ride around for several minutes before getting bored and dropping the bicycle a few blocks away. He just does it to scare me, since everyone in town knows it’s mine. Today, Jesús the barber pedals back with it ten minutes after it has disappeared. I’m sitting on the curb, trying not to cry. Bobby licks my face and whimpers. When I get home, I tell Mama what happened, but she says she can’t do anything; besides, I got the bike back. That night I pull Bobby up into my bed with me and he settles in by my toes. I tell him he did a good job trying to protect me from the bad boy. He licks my fingers and snorts, and it makes me smile.

  King Kong got his nickname from the occasional traveling picture show that turns up a couple of times a year. This caravan sets up a generator in the gallera, the village cockfighting arena down by the river, and they tack up movie posters all over town, promising danger and excitement. On a Saturday evening just after sunset, children and adults flock into the thatch-roofed shack. For ten centavos everyone sits on hard wooden bleachers in the darkened shed, which smells like chicken droppings and dust. We huddle as black-and-white images jerk across the screen, which is really just a white sheet stretched between two poles. The movies are dubbed in Spanish. Cowboy Westerns with snorting horses and gun-shooting heroes are popular. Other times we get cliffhangers with villains, or stories about monstrous dragons.

  One night a young boy jumps in front of the screen, his shadow looming huge, and startles the audience. The movie is about a big ape that climbs tiny skyscrapers, holding a wriggling girl in his huge hand. Imitating the onscreen action, the boy hops and pounds his chest, yelling “Yo soy King Kong!”—I am King Kong!—before someone shoos him outside.

  The name sticks. On the days when I’m lucky and Señor Kair himself chases the boy away before he can nab my bike, I’m still afraid. King Kong just lopes off, unrepentant, taunting, “La próxima vez, la próxima vez”—next time, next time, I’ll get you.

  Chapter Four

  Rum

  Daddy isn’t a drunk. He isn’t one because drunks—he says—start drinking in the morning. In the daytime Daddy is hard at work with finca business. At lunchtime he makes Mama laugh with corny jokes, or tells her how good her macaroni casserole tastes. After siesta he shows Berta how to change the tire on the bicycle, or teaches me more about perspective so I can draw trees and people with everything in the right proportion. While the sun is shining, I’m not afraid of him. It’s like when the tide is out and the beach is clean and shiny with shells and treasures to be found. He doesn’t drink until evening, and he says it’s only to relax, but that’s not true. He starts with tall glasses of rum and Coca-Cola at sunset to wind down, but that’s really when he begins to wind up. His drinking is like a storm tide that comes in and washes over everything and turns Daddy into something scary.

  Berta and I dread the dusk. We never know whether it’s going to be a good night or a bad one. Mama drinks, too. She’s happy if Daddy’s in a good mood, or silent and sad looking if he’s not. On a good night they’ll play Scrabble on the porch while supper is cooking, laughing and smoking cigarillos, the unfiltered cigarettes that smell both sweet and rotten at the same time. Sometimes Berta and I play games with them too—Scrabble, Monopoly, or Parcheesi. Then we have supper, clean up the dishes, and settle into reading by lamplight until it’s time for bed.

  But on bad nights, Daddy keeps drinking until he’s wobbly and sloppy, and anything can happen. He might decide we’ll all go dancing at the local bar, but when we get there he falls down drunk on the dance floor and Mama and Berta have to prop him between them to walk home. Or he’ll invite whoever is in the bar to come to our house for a fiesta, and then change his mind as people start to arrive. On those nights Berta or I have to meet our guests at the gate and say we’re sorry, but Daddy’s not feeling well after all, so there will be no party. Or he’ll get all wound up about something he reads in the news and the whole family has to sit in the living room as he rants and raves about whatever is bothering him. Mama doesn’t interfere; she smokes one cigarette after another and hunches in a corner seat, almost as if she’s a ghost. Sometimes she cries.

  Even good nights can turn awful, because when they have parties, Daddy makes Berta and me put on the grass skirts and paper leis he brought from Hawaii the year he repaired ships’ electrical systems in Pearl Harbor after the war and we have to dance the hula in front of guests. Berta said no to that activity, just once, and was spanked. I squirm with embarrassment and try to move my arms like Daddy showed us real hula dancers do. I don’t want to be spanked. Even on good nights, Berta chews on her fingernails and I get stomachaches.

  When I run away for the first time, sticks and gravel poke sharply against my skin and waves rake against the stony shore behind me with a dull hiss. I’m crouched just beyond the front gate. My stomach hurts, my head is tight. At this time of night there’s no one else on the dirt path that skirts the shore. I hear my name being called. I lie still, barely breathing, afraid to be found, afraid not to be found. I don’t even know how I got here, and I’m too scared to go any farther in the darkness.

  Daddy is very drunk;
he’s been screaming at Mama. I don’t remember exactly what he said. He swung around to slap at her face, but his hand missed and he stumbled. She cringed like a dog that just got kicked, and her hands trembled. She wrung them together as if she could wash away his words. My head filled up with the sound and it was too loud; it was all noise. He leaned forward and I was afraid he’d hit her this time, but he knocked over a glass instead. He stood there, weaving, looking at his spilled drink, saying, “Goddamn, goddamn, GODDAMN.”

  I know that no matter what happens, Berta and I have to stay put until Daddy says we can go to bed. I wanted to pee so badly I was wetting myself, but I held it in until finally I whimpered “I have to go” and just got up. Nobody moved. I ran to the bathroom, shaking, and when I was done, I couldn’t go back to the yelling room. Then I was outside by the kitchen door and I don’t remember running at all, but here I am, looking through the hibiscus along the fence line toward the flickering lamplight inside Casalata.

  I’m here, I’m here, I cry in my head. “Stop yelling at Mama,” I whisper as if Daddy can hear me. My throat aches; it’s worse than when I have a cold. I shudder as I huddle against cold rocks and sticker vines.

  Flashlights poke through the darkness like fireflies. A light finds me; it’s Berta. She’s shaking, even though it’s not cold. She pulls me up easily. “Where did you think you were going?” she asks quietly, not scolding.