The New Moon's Arms

by Nalo Hopkinson

  Gene studiously poured ketchup on his fries in a spiral pattern. “Kiss and make up?”

  I nodded. “I guess. But sometimes she would stay out overnight instead.”

  He put the ketchup bottle down and looked at me. “A whole night?”

  On the television, the music programme ended. Time for the news. Good. Now I would be able to hear myself think.

  “Yeah,” I said, “a whole night. She would row over to the big island, stay with relatives. Sometimes two nights, till her anger blow over. Gene, what if you find out that he killed her in truth?”

  His face crumpled. “I don’t even want to think about that. I want him to be the hero in my mind, you know? The man who made the world make sense for me.” He was silent for a bit. “But the truth is, if we find out he was guilty, nobody know but you and me.”

  I sputtered on my Shampa. He said it so calmly.

  “But we couldn’t do that!” I said. “We would have to let the authorities know!”

  Some of the spark came back. “Sweetheart, I am the authorities.”

  “Not you one! Not all by yourself!” My heart was thumping at that “sweetheart,” but this was more important.

  Gene gave me a long, measuring look. “You something else, you know that?” He sounded bemused. “You cuss like a sailor, you have a temper like a crocodile, but you more honest than any judge I know.”

  My face was heating up. “That not any virtue to speak of. The honesty, I mean. Only backtracking. I do it because my first impulse is to lie.”

  “How you mean?”

  “You ever try being a nineteen-year-old single mother in this country?”

  “Nah, man. Maybe when I retire.”

  I threw a serviette at him. He laughed.

  “Serious, though,” I said. “A teenager on her own with a three-year-old on her hip, and no baby father in sight. Try renting an apartment. Getting a fucking bank account.”

  He shrugged. “All legal. Nothing to prevent you.”

  “Man, you know better than that. Or is what kind of officer of the law you are?” I was waving my Shampa bottle around in the air to make my point. I kissed my teeth, put down my bottle. “Nineteen is in between. You can’t drink booze yet, but you old enough to have a child walking and talking. Try to get a driver’s licence, they either want to know where your husband or where your parents. And when you can’t produce either, you going to wait till you drop while they check every friggin piece of i.d. you have, and call your job, and verify your signature. You ever try waiting in a bank line-up with a three-year-old?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. I can match you there.”

  I realised I didn’t know plenty about him. Cool breeze; he would get his grilling later. “People have a way to judge you. That’s all I’m saying.” Remembering those times was making me grumpy.

  “True that. But what it have to do with being honest?”

  For a second, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I remembered. “Oh. That. Sorry. Forgetful nowadays. I just mean that I got good at lying. I would tell people my husband working in foreign. Or that Auntie Pearl was my mother. Sometimes I even pretended that Ifeoma was my little sister.”

  Sometimes I would pretend I wasn’t Ifeoma’s mother.

  I managed to keep talking. “But then my conscience would start pronging me,” I told him. “And I would take back the lie, but sometimes people will get on so bad when they find out you tricked them that it would have been better to just leave them ignorant. So now I try to tell the truth right off the bat. Stand tall, look people in the eye, and tell them about me. If they going to make trouble for me because of it, best I find out one time, so I don’t have nothing more to do with them.” But my little girl had heard me telling people that she wasn’t mine.

  “And how you figure that’s not a virtue?”

  I gave an embarrassed laugh. “Because sometimes I still tell a lie, and have to take it back afterwards.”

  He wasn’t paying attention. He was looking at the television. I turned to see what was so absorbing. The announcer was saying:

  “…race heated up this morning, when prime minister Garth Johnson and minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Affairs Guinevere Poon announced the date of the ribbon-cutting ceremony to officially open the new Gilmor Saline, Incorporated, plant that has recently been completed on the island of Dolorosse.

  “Last year, reduced restrictions on foreign investment in Cayaba made it possible for the Johnson government to lease the small island of Dolorosse to Gilmor Saline. The U.S.-based company, which has operated a salt production factory on the main island of Cayaba since 1955, has created artificial salt ponds and constructed a second factory on the southwest coast of Dolorosse.”

  The shot cut to Johnson at his press conference. He was saying:

  “Cayaba citizens deserve a high-quality standard of living—”

  “Damn right!” a woman from another table burst out. The woman with her shushed her.

  “—to provide well for their families. That has been and will always be my priority for this country. For more than five decades, Gilmor Saline has been a key partner with the government of Cayaba, providing employment for a significant proportion of the Cayaba population. This new venture

  between us is a tangible demonstration of the exemplary cooperation that exists between Cayaba and Gilmor Saline.”

  “As part of the agreement between Gilmor Saline and the Cayaba government,” said the announcer, “the corporation will provide three new, state-of-the-art waterbuses to increase service on the ferry route, and is currently building towers and installing antennae on Dolorosse to boost cell phone reception for Dolorosse residents.”

  “That’s the part I like,” I told Gene.

  “Opposition leader Caroline Sookdeo-Grant was on hand for comment. She applauded the increased employment that the second plant has brought and congratulated the prime minister in that regard. She also joked about the apparently strategic timing of the ceremony, which will take place just three days before the upcoming election. But speaking on a more serious note, Mrs. Sookdeo-Grant also had a caution for the prime minister.”

  Now we were seeing Sookdeo-Grant at the press conference, with the noise and bustle of people milling around her. She said: “Cayaba should be moving very carefully in any dealings we make with foreign multinationals or accepting more foreign aid. The FFWD demands that we reduce trade restrictions as a condition of lending us money. This allows foreign multinationals such as Gilmor Saline to grow unchecked in our country, forcing small farmers out of business. What will happen to the independent small salt farms on Dolorosse and the other islands? Will they be priced out of business? Forced to seek work in the Gilmor Saline factory for minimum wage?”

  “Tell them!” shouted an old East Indian man sitting alone with the paper and a Banks beer.

  “Mr. Ramlal, hush, nuh?” said Kevin Smalley’s wife from over by the cash register. She pointed at the television. “Listen.”

  The announcer was saying, “Mrs. Sookdeo-Grant says that should her party win the upcoming elections, it intends to implement programmes to foster small business growth.”

  The din in the restaurant got worse as people began to argue.

  “And in other news…”

  Gene still watching the blasted television. “Like that tv have you hypnotized,” I said. He just pointed at it with his chin.

  “Opposition party leader Mrs. Caroline Sookdeo-Grant paid a visit today to a remarkable woman.”

  Crap. It was me on the television, looking stunned and shaking Sookdeo-Grant’s hand.

  Gene said, “You know, I just had a feeling you were a remarkable woman.”

  “…leapt into the rough seas off Dolorosse on Sunday, to save the life of a little boy in the water.”

  In the restaurant, a woman called out, “Look her there!” She was pointing at me.

  The announcer said, “Mrs. Lambkin, a recent widow, had buried her husband on
ly the day before…”

  I put my head in my hands. From inside my handbag, my cell phone started ringing.

  ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE. Six. Today Alexander Tremaine counted six monk seals in the Zooquarium where five were supposed to be. But Crab Cake was not one of them. She was missing. Alexander closed his eyes. She would be back in a few days. They always were.

  And the hell with the incident report. Management had never responded to a single one of them.

  Alexander made a note to get in extra seal chow. Heaven only knew how many seals would be in the enclosure tomorrow.

  “WOI.” Hector threw down the sandpaper and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. He was sitting on an upturned bucket in the back yard, fixing up the tricycle like he’d promised. “I just need to tighten up that back wheel now, and put on a coat of paint.” He was sweating in the hot sun.

  “I really appreciate your doing this, you know?” I poured him a glass of pineapple juice from the frosty jug I’d brought out, with plenty ice cubes. He pushed the container of fried ripe plantain that he’d brought with him closer to me.

  “Don’t mention it. It’s a good thing for Agway to have.”

  Hector was being friendly enough, but a little cool. Hadn’t been smart of me, going off on Michael and Orso like that with Hector to witness it. I was working hard to regain lost ground.

  Agway brought his sippy cup back for more. Without the sea to cool him off, the heat was making him weary and fractious. I’d put a blanket down for him just inside the kitchen door where he’d be in the shade but I could still keep an eye on him. I tried again to offer him some plantain, but he pushed my hand away. He had his own snack.

  Hector sucked down about half his glass one time and helped himself to some fried plantain. He opened up the paint can and got back to work.

  I munched on some of the plantain slices myself. A flock of spoonbills flew over us. Hector watched them. “They kinda pale,” he said.

  “Those must be the ones from the lagoon. No shrimp there to make them pink.”

  Hector shook his head. “You impress me.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Plenty people wouldn’t know that it’s shrimp that gives the roseate spoonbill its colour.”

  “Stanley knows.”

  “I not surprised. They say the fruit don’t fall far from the tree. Ifeoma has a mind like yours, too.”

  “Ife? Yes, she’s pretty smart. And curious. Just flighty-flighty.”

  “Very smart. And pretty. Cayaba is something else, you know? Everywhere you turn, something else precious and rare.” Not looking at me, he smiled. Lawdamercy. This time, the heat I was feeling wasn’t from no hot flash.

  He glanced inside the kitchen, and his face took on an expression somewhere between horror and disgust. “Calamity, what is that child eating?”

  “His afternoon snack. Shrimps.” Tailor-sat on the kitchen floor with his bowl, Agway was happily tearing each shrimp out of its cuticle shell with his teeth, chewing it down, and swallowing the yellow matter out of the head. He had a growing pile of empty shrimp shells on the floor beside him.

  “He eating them raw?”

  “Apparently he likes them like that.”

  “Well, best he eat his fill now,” he said. “The day might come soon that you have to watch how much fish you eat from Cayaba waters.”

  “Why?”

  He pursed his lips like he was trying to make up his mind about something. “You could keep a secret?” he asked.

  “Man, you asking a Yaban if they know how to be close-mouthed? This whole country would collapse if people didn’t mind whose business they talk.”

  Ruefully, he said, “So I coming to find out. All right. You know I’m trying to figure out how Mediterranean monk seals come to be here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not the only thing I’m doing. You shouldn’t tell anyone, you understand? There might not even be a problem. Don’t want to frighten people before we know for sure.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Just blasted well tell me, nuh?”

  “I’m spying on Gilmor Saline.”

  “You kidding!”

  “No lie.”

  “Why?”

  “They might be dumping their bittern illegally.”

  “Their what?”

  “Bittern. That’s what get leave behind when you manufacture salt. Every pound of salt give you a pound of bittern. And bittern in high levels is toxic. Gilmor Saline supposed to dilute it three hundred to one with water and pipe it way out to sea. We think they releasing it strong just so into the waters around Cayaba.”

  “Oh, shit.” The water the sea people lived in. I took Agway’s bowl from him, though he’d already finished the shrimps and had curled up on his blanket to nap. “I should make him vomit them up?” I remembered the sound little Ife had made when I put my finger down her throat.

  “Nah, man. Would take plenty plenty bittern to make him sick. It’s edible in reasonable amounts. It’s what they use to make tofu.”

  “Thank heaven for that.” I put the shells into a plastic bag and threw them in the garbage.

  “Mightn’t be anything to worry about,” Hector said. “In fact, the salt plant is good for wading birds; they eat the brine shrimp and so on you find in some of the evaporation ponds. But Gilmor can’t pump toxic levels of bittern too close to shore. You know the fishermen been complaining from since that the fish getting scarce? Your Fisheries Department been checking it out, and it’s true. Thirty percent reduction in some stocks.”

  “Shit. You find out whether they dumping it for true?”

  He shook his head, frowning. “Composition of the water around Cayaba is normal one day, and too high in bittern the next. The outlet pipes from both processing plants lead to deep water like they supposed to. But still the fish stocks going down. I been trying to find out if it’s affecting the seals. And I can’t get a good count on the blasted things to save my life! Different numbers every three days. Making me crazy! Nothing wrong with my instruments. I using the same procedure I use every time. Worked in Turkey, worked in Hawai’i. It’s just a simple census! Should be easy!”

  He took off his t-shirt and mopped his brow with it. He had the kind of tubby barrel-body I liked in a man. And skin that made you want to lick it. I poured him some more pine drink. “I don’t know much about you,” I told him. “You have a poor, long-suffering wife waiting on dry land for you while you spend your nights out on the water watching the seals?”

  He glanced at me, kept painting. “No wife,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “Or girlfriend either.”

  “Oh.”

  “My ex-wife remarried last year. I guess she got over me faster than I got over her.”

  “Oh!” Nothing to worry about, then. I poured myself some drink, shifted over a little closer to him. Was I even his type? Was I coming on like some of them old women trying to pose as twenty-one? Damn; this used to be so much easier.

  He looked into my eyes. Hah. Bet you I knew what that sultry gaze meant. We were playing on my court now. He said, “You not easy to figure out, you know.”

  “Lady has to keep some mystery about herself.”

  “I see the side of you that’s smart, and generous, and funny. The side that could sing ‘Jane and Louisa’ together with a stranger, just to keep a scared little boy from being more scared.”

  I sketched a mock bow from the waist up. “Thank you, sir. I do my best.”

  “Well, don’t dig nothin’, but you have kind of an ugly side too, you know.”

  But wait. “How you mean?”

  “Well, the way you talked to Michael and Orso.”

  Play it light, Calamity. “Oh, that!” I said with a guilty giggle. “I really went overboard, nuh true?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hormones,” I said. “You know how it is with women sometimes.” Let him think I meant my period.

  He didn’t look up from his painting. “
Those were some rahtid hormones.”

  Chuh. Man barely out of little boy short pants, and he scolding me? Second wrong note he had hit. Three strikes and you out, Mister. All right; for that behind, I’d give him four strikes. “Hector, I can’t tell you how sorry I am I subjected you to such a scene.”

  “Not just me. All of us.”

  Watch it, son. You easing towards number four. “Yeah. And now I’m just embarrassed, you know?” Coy it up, warm him up. “Sometimes I’m not so very smart after all.”

  He nodded! The bastard man nodded! “You been really nice to me, Calamity. Inviting me to visit, introducing me to your family. I would like for you and me to be friends.”

  “Mm-hmm…”

  He looked unhappy. “So I need to speak plain,” he said.

  I had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Go on.”

  “You see,” he said, “this thing not joke in the Caribbean. I learned the hard way to keep my distance from people who have a problem with me being bisexual.”

  It’s like somebody threw cold water on me. I froze right where I sat. “What?”

  He gave a regretful shrug. “When I heard how you talked to Orso and Michael the other day—”

  “You’re gay? Just like Michael?”

  He looked perplexed. “You really didn’t understand the joke the rest of us were making the other day? I like men and women. Mary and Joseph. True a little bit more Mary than Joseph nowadays, though that have a way to change.”

  Stupid, stupid, Calamity. Shame. I blurted out, “And I just ate from the same dish as you?”

  And for the first time, I saw Hector Goonan get angry. He jammed the lid back onto the paint, hammered it on with the handle of the brush. He slammed the lid back onto the container that the fried plantain had been in. “Let me just take this back with me then, since my contaminated lips touched it.”

  I stood up. “I don’t know why you getting on so bad,” I said, my voice trembling with fury. “It’s not you who got lied to.”

  His hands were shaking as he put away his tools. “I never lied to you. Who have ears to hear will hear. I said it right in front of you only a few days ago.”

  “And how I was supposed to understand that two-faced chat the four of you were doing?” I hated the tears running down my face, hated the weakness they showed.