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

by Rita M. Gardner

  I’m assigned to be hall monitor for our floor of the girl’s dorm. I walk the halls after lights out and note which rooms have light under the door frame and give the room numbers to the housemother the next day. One of the popular girls gets into trouble that way; she waits for a few days until Beth is out of our room, then barges in with one of her friends. “You bitch!” she yells, and they shove me into the closet. They lock the door somehow and slam out, and I sink to the floor, feeling like the time Berta and I got locked inside a storage box in Casalata for hours before we were rescued. Panic injects me and I begin shaking as if I’ll never get out. In Miches I had Berta beside me, calming me down, but now I whimper and curl up in a ball beside the dirty laundry in the darkness. My racing heart says no one will find me. Beth does, of course. She hugs me tightly, her hair smelling like Breck shampoo and minty deodorant. I breathe again and tell her what happened.

  “They’re the bitches,” she says. “Come, let’s walk down to the lake so you can calm down.”

  I’m afraid I’ll run into my tormentors, but Beth says to just ignore them. We follow the footpath along the edge of the water. A light breeze comes off the lake and whispers through the pine trees. Tree branches wave in the humid air like old ladies’ arms clothed in gray-green scarves of Spanish moss. I tell the housemother I don’t want to be hall monitor any more.

  I don’t pay much attention to the news, although there’s a lot of talk these days about the cold war. The US and the Soviet Union are in an arms race. It reminds me of roosters in the Miches cockfighting ring puffing up their tail feathers to look bigger and stronger than the opponent. At chapel on Sunday, Mr. McFarland says we must all pray for our country and our president, for Mr. Khrushchev to make the right decisions, and for Cuba, so close to us, to dismantle all those deadly weapons. But in the middle of all this, our classes go on as scheduled, except for mandatory emergency drills in the auditorium. We make nervous jokes about how all those preparations won’t matter anyway if we get blasted by a nuclear bomb, and as soon as we’re dismissed, we focus on the school’s upcoming Halloween party.

  I don’t have a real costume, but with lots of eyeliner and a cheap black wig from Eckerd’s, which Beth whips into a mountain of teased hair, I’m supposed to be Elizabeth Taylor. It’s my first Halloween party. The gym is a forest of orange and black streamers. I ruin my makeup bobbing for apples, but two boys ask me to dance anyway. I hardly remember their faces because I’m terrified they’ll find out I don’t know any steps to American music. I mimic them as much as I can but am glad when the party is over and I can go to bed. I still have bad dreams about Berta, but mostly I drift away with Beth’s soft snores reminding me I’m not as alone as I think.

  School closes for winter break and Beth invites me to spend Christmas at her home in a small town on the Gulf Coast. The Trailways bus chugs through spotty forests and around a black swamp with water so opaque it looks like the glazed eyes of dead fish. As we get closer to the coast, the swamplands fill with mangroves, their tangled roots rising out of the water like dripping skirts. When the Gulf of Mexico comes into view I’m happy to see open water and the dark gold sun dipping down to the horizon. I’ve forgotten how much I miss seeing the ocean, how hungry I am to breathe salt air and watch sunrises and sunsets tint the water.

  “Look, look.” Beth punches me with excitement when we pull into the bus parking lot. Charlie slouches against a black convertible, looking like a poster of James Dean with his dark curly hair in a ducktail. “Isn’t it pretty?” I realize she’s referring to the car, which she’s told me is a 1960 Buick Electra with whitewall tires. Charlie’s father lets him drive it on special occasions. I can’t tell if Beth is more excited to see Charlie or the convertible. She runs to him and plants a kiss right on his lips in front of everyone, something no girl in Miches would be allowed to do in public.

  When we get to Beth’s house, Mrs. Porter opens the front door with a hug that smells like the apple pie she’s baking. I met the Porters when they came to the school at Thanksgiving. She waves us in to Beth’s room, where an extra bed has been made up for me. A teddy bear perches on it with paws open in welcome. In the living room, a Christmas tree is crowded with shiny ornaments, strings of real popcorn, and silver icicles. At dinner, Mr. Porter pours iced tea; there is no liquor in sight. I start to pick up my fork, but Beth’s hand is on my arm, and everyone joins hands while Mrs. Porter says grace. Then everyone except me is talking at once, laughing, and eating, and it’s so strange to be sitting at dinner with a family, with no reason to be silent or afraid.

  The next day Charlie takes us to a drive-in hamburger place with waitresses who roller-skate out to the cars. When we get back, he says we should double-date the next night with his friend Steve. I’ve never been on a real date. Steve has a sandy crew cut and greenish eyes. He’s just a bit taller than me, with big shoulders. I’m tongue-tied at first, but he gives me a wide smile and then we all pile into Charlie’s convertible. The Shrimp Shack is at the end of a long pier and is decorated with fishing nets and glass balls, the kind that wash ashore on the beach at Cocoloco. Charlie and Steve are on their high school football team so they talk about sports until a mountain of steamed shrimp arrives, followed by a bucket of coleslaw and hush puppies. I feel all bubbly inside.

  Back at the house Steve walks me to the porch and invites me to a party the next night, Christmas Eve. I’m shocked; he didn’t have to ask me out again. The next afternoon Beth coaxes my straight hair into spiky rollers and when she’s all done I have a rather stiff flip, courtesy of about a gallon of hair spray. Steve shows up trailing a cloud of English Leather. He’s driving his uncle’s beat-up Jeep, but the inside is disinfectant clean. We rattle our way to the party and can hear The Sensations halfway down the block, blasting “Let Me In.” As we walk up the driveway, Steve takes my hand like it’s the most natural thing to do. When they play a slow song, he pulls me close and I let him guide me as Ray Charles sings “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” and I manage not to step on his feet. After the party we drive back to the Porters’. He walks me up to the porch and takes my chin in his hands. Right there, he gives me a quick kiss on the lips—just a flutter, like a butterfly landing and taking off. I take a sharp breath in as he whispers, “I had a great time. Can I call you tomorrow, you know, after the Christmas stuff is over?”

  “Okay,” I say and melt inside the front door. Beth is still out with Charlie, but Mrs. Porter is reading in the living room. “Nice time, dear?”

  “Yes ma’am.” Oh yes, I think—you have no idea. I lie back on the bed, fully dressed, and replay the kiss in my mind like a record, over and over and over. The next morning is Christmas Day. Even as I untie ribbons, inside I’m unwrapping the memory of last night’s kiss and know I already have the best present ever.

  That afternoon Steve calls and we make plans for a beach picnic with Beth and Charlie. We squint in the low winter sun and spread out a beach blanket, anchoring it with the cooler. I dig my bare feet into sand for the first time in months as gulls squawk and scold above the whitecaps. The boys build a fire on the beach and we roast hot dogs. Charlie and Beth gather driftwood and Steve and I hunt for shells.

  “Here.” He hands me a shark’s tooth. “Something to remember me by.”

  Wrapped in a blanket, we lie on the chilly winter sand, my head on his shoulder. He smells like salt and cologne and smoke. I feel comfortable and excited all at the same time. He turns my face to his and runs his finger over my lips. I study his eyes, pale green with flecks of gold. Suddenly he kisses me, and his lips are smooth and soft. I press back and he wraps his arms around me. Now his tongue is darting between my teeth and I sit up in shock. Fear seeps in like a fog, along with a low voice saying “slut, whore,” and I push Steve away abruptly. My whole body is trembling now, as if Daddy were right there on this Florida beach, spitting out nasty words. I try to shake off the feeling of dread, try to shut off Daddy’s voice. Now it’s Berta’s voice too, an angu
ished wail. Steve stares at me.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes,” I manage to respond. “It’s just a little cold here.” That’s all I can think of to say. I can’t tell him about the voices in my head. He gives me his jacket and calls out to the others that we should be going. On the last day, Steve and I go one last time to the pier and he pulls my hands into his and asks me to go steady, and I laugh because I can’t believe he’s asking me.

  “I’ll write you every week, honey,” he whispers as Beth and I climb aboard the bus on New Year’s Day. Honey—he called me honey. I close my eyes and taste salty kisses as the bus rumbles back to school. “You’re smitten!” Beth crows. Smitten. I like that word.

  An envelope with unfamiliar handwriting arrives the next week. I tear it open and photographs from our picnic on the beach spill out. Steve writes about how he misses me, how his jeep broke down, and ends with, Bye. Write me. Con amor, Esteban. P.S., see, I’m learning Spanish!

  I frame the picture Steve took of me with my hair messed up from the breeze and glue the shark’s tooth in the corner of the frame. In the photo I’ve taken my glasses off; my dreamy-eyed look is really a nearsighted blurriness. Beth and I go to her home again at Easter, but it’s a brief holiday so our time with the boys is short. On our last day together, Steve and I go again to the beach and snuggle against a dune. Steve is hardly breathing now, he trembles against my skin and we lie like that, not even kissing, our faces close enough to feel each other’s jagged breaths in, out, in, out. He doesn’t try to French kiss me this time.

  After I’ve returned to school, Steve writes me every week, and then there’s a two-week gap. When the next letter comes, he writes how his grades are getting better, that he’s buying his uncle’s ’57 Ford for only $400. The last paragraph starts: Do you remember Helen, the girl I was talking to at the red light at Easter? Well, today she asked me to take her to the prom, but I told her I was going steady. She’s a good friend but that’s all. He ends the letter by telling me he misses me.

  Of course other girls want to date Steve. Who is Helen, anyway? I don’t remember her except as a honk and hello from a blonde in a car at a stoplight. I wasn’t paying attention. I don’t know how to respond to his letter. The next day, John, a shy boy from my biology class, asks me to our spring dance. I don’t know what to do but finally I say yes. That night I sit down to write Steve, tearing up draft after draft, until I finally write that he should go to his prom if he wants to, and that I’ve accepted an invitation to a dance myself—but that it’s not a real date either. I don’t tell him John is six foot two and nice looking in a gangly sort of way, except when he’s on the basketball court, when he shoots balls into the basket like a magician. Steve writes back and says he went fishing on prom weekend, but that he might take Helen to a movie one of these days, and hopes I had fun at my dance. The last day before I leave school for the summer, I get a postcard of a Gulf Coast beach with a pier in the foreground and sand dunes off to the right, just like when we were together. In blue ink, a heart and an arrow point to one of the dunes. Steve writes: Be a good girl and behave yourself this summer. See you later, unless either one of us begins dating someone else, ha ha! Hasta luego. Love, Esteban.

  My stomach tightens up, even though it makes sense that he’ll probably begin dating. It’s not like we’re in the same town, and besides, we’ll never be together during the summertime since that’s when I go home to Miches, which is also where I’ll be after I graduate. I pack the postcard in my suitcase anyway. It does say “Love,” after all. Something to remember him by.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Miches Summer

  The plane flies low over the Caribbean and circles the rocky shoreline. I strain against the cold glass as my eyes feed on the bright turquoise water with its patches of white lace where coral reefs rise up to shatter the surface. The plane dips and we surprise a field of cows when we land with a series of jolts and thumps. Passengers applaud and whistle, thanking Dios and the Virgen Altagracia for a safe landing, as if the pilot didn’t have anything to do with our survival. The woman in the seat next to me packs up her rosary beads; I think she prayed all the way from Miami.

  The plane door opens and thick tropical air swirls in, heavy with an aroma of hot tarmac, engine fuel, and salt breeze. I sniff the familiar scents and it’s like the months in Florida never happened at all. School, Beth, even Steve seem like parts of a dream stuffed into my suitcase, packed away for now. My heart thumps and there’s Daddy waving and I can’t believe it but I’m glad to see him—well, just a little anyway. Clouds of cigarette smoke mingle with perfume and burned coffee from the cafecito stand. The line for foreigners entering the country is very short. Armed soldiers patrol the airport, toting machine guns on straps. Mama’s hair is now getting white. She and Daddy strain against the metal fence that separates visitors from passengers. They both look beaten down, like prisoners. I gulp and lunge through the door to Daddy’s embrace. He’s all ribs and bones, his skin tobacco-brown and wrinkled. His heart is beating fast as I bury my face against his neck. Mama’s hair is limp with sweat and her shoulders curve inward as if she’s been holding off an enemy for a long time but has now given up the fight.

  Daddy pulls back and wipes his eyes, then straightens up, taking charge. He lights a cigarette and coughs, a scraping, ugly sound. “Okay then, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  The young guard at the gate asks for our papers. “I live here,” Daddy says. The guard cocks his head and motions to another man, who rises slowly, as if this is an imposition. How long? “Casi veinte años.” Almost twenty years.

  The guards look at each other and shrug. One of them asks Daddy for a smoke. Our driver, waiting at the curb, opens the car door and whistles to get the guards’ attention. “Oye, hombre,”—Listen, man—“what’s the problem here?”

  “Nada, nada.” It’s nothing. He lets us go after extracting two cigarettes from the wrinkled pack that Daddy offers. We swing out into the roadway. Daddy holds a match to another cigarette and inhales deeply. Mama reaches out and touches my shoulder like she can’t believe I’m here, can’t believe that I didn’t disappear like Berta. She’s saying “my precious baby” over and over again, and I kiss her damp cheek with its etching of worry lines. I sink my face against her hair, wishing I could smooth her anxiety away.

  I ask how things are in the capital. Mama lowers her voice as if we’re still in the Trujillo years and says it’s too soon to tell but there are rumors of a golpe, a coup. I guess that explains the armed guards.

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about, darling.” She pats my hand. “Let’s not talk about that.”

  “We’ll just sit tight, as always,” Daddy says. He lights another cigarette and takes a couple of deep drags. I fall asleep in the car for a while with my head against Mama’s shoulder. She shakes me awake to see the lights of Miches spread out below like a tattered shawl spun of gold, pocked by black holes. As we pass the town square by the church, I look for familiar faces, but the streets are empty. It’s suppertime. Charcoal fires hint of roasting meat and boiling stews. We dodge a sleeping dog and a flock of pigeons and then we’re home. Once inside, Casalata looks tiny. I’m a giant in my bedroom, Alice in Wonderland falling down some strange hole that’s all shrunken, foreign and familiar at the same time. Berta’s bed is being used for storage now. A row of cardboard boxes perch on her mattress, carefully labeled—finca business, accounting records. I’m suddenly near tears. I should be used to having this room all to myself by now, but I still want to keep Berta’s space ready for her, bed made and mosquito netting ready to protect her from stinging insects.

  The sky turns black outside and begins to hum with small night sounds as I unpack. Daddy says “Come sit with us on the porch,” so I do. My stomach tightens up in the old way at the sight of the rum bottle. Just like that, it’s like I never left, and now Casalata expands and I get smaller and smaller. I will myself to breathe in, out, in like Beth ta
ught me when I said I didn’t know what it meant to relax.

  The next morning my friends descend on me like a flock of bright parrots, pecking me with sweet kisses until my head spins with joy. They shower me with the latest gossip, and they all want to know if I have an American boyfriend. I say “sort of” and tell them all about Steve and how in America we can go on dates alone with boys. “Ay,” Matilde sighs. “If only we could.”

  We make plans for a fiesta at Maria Antonia’s bar that night. A new boy joins us, a university student visiting from Santo Domingo. I remember Luís vaguely; he was a few years older than me and used to try to court Berta but Daddy of course wouldn’t allow it. As he walks over to the table, I suddenly forget about Steve. Luís is now quite grown up, his eyes dark and intense. He stares at me.

  “Mírate,” he says. Look at you. Then he sits, still staring. He’s almost as tall as Daddy, over six feet, I guess. My stomach grips as if I’m on a roller coaster about to plunge into a free-fall. I give a quick look, almost afraid to be hit by the electric tingling that happens when our eyes meet. I never felt like this with Steve, even if he was the first and only boy I’ve kissed. It’s as if my body just woke up for the first time.