Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel

by Tiphanie Yanique

Jacob took off all his clothes and dropped onto his cot as if he were a felled tree. “We’ll do it tomorrow. I swear on my mother we’ll do it tomorrow.”

  Ronnie pulled out his softened picture of Anette. He sat beside Jacob. “Look here, Jay. I’m swearing on her.”

  Now Jacob held out his hand and Ronnie relinquished the photo to him easily. Anette was looking out as though she were reading his mind. “Can she cook?” Jacob asked.

  “She can’t boil water.”

  Jacob smiled and pressed his sweaty thumb into Anette’s neck. When he passed the picture back, there was a slight discoloration on the photo, as though Anette had become hot around the collar.

  That night Jacob lay in his spare cot of a bed in just his socks, while the other men went to the shack to eat rubber in silence. Even Spice Grenada ate, not caring about contamination. Ronnie had sworn on his own lovely wife and Jacob had sworn on his mother. But were they brave enough? Were they soldiers after all? Jacob stayed behind and thought of his mother and of the mama at the restaurant. He thought of the waitress and he thought of all the New Orleanian and Virgin Islands women who didn’t know him. Didn’t know his potential, his worth. In his dreams that night Ronnie’s wife appeared before him in a red dress, wet as though she had been swimming. I know you, she said. He stood before her and felt his very teeth begin to crumble. He opened his mouth and they fell at her feet like seashells.

  —

  Jacob fasted all the next day, as if he were holding his breath. They were underwater after all, fighting for their piece of air. After spitting out pus, his tooth had stopped hurting but it retained a soft pink color so that he did not smile broadly until years later when his dentist brother bleached it white and Jacob’s soul shrunk to a normal man’s size. But that whole day in New Orleans everyone stayed away from him. The news got around the West Indians quickly. The American officers sniffed the air but could not locate the source of the new stench of blood. They watched their island boys. But no one would have suspected young college-graduated McKenzie of doing wrong. He was lighter-skinned and polite. He could babble island to the boys and yank American to the officers. No one would have thought he would sneak into the armory and carry three rifles out. This felt like a real war now. They would be real Americans, finally.

  —

  The three of them now made their own way into town. Jacob prayed Hail Marys in his head. He was a McKenzie and all McKenzies were Catholic, even though his mother had never allowed him into the cathedral. But children will have their rebellions. For this battle in New Orleans Jacob had sworn on his mother. Now he prayed to Mother Mary.

  Smalls and Grenada walked and nodded at each other intermittently. A silent encouragement. Jacob had not explained the mission. Jacob did not know the mission. He went on intuition. And he would do this for everything until his mother rose like a wave to knock him down.

  When they walked down the street, the stares were different now. Some bowed at them. The tall guns over their shoulders meant they were keeping the peace. Protecting everyone from the evil Nazis and the lunatic Japs. An Anglo husband whispered deep into his wife’s ear as the men crossed the street: “They giving the niggers guns now? They’ll be using them against us, you know.” The woman, who was a passing octoroon herself, giggled at her husband’s silliness.

  This time they noticed the sign outside of Mama’s. It was black with bright white letters. Anyone could read it, even in the dark. How could they have walked in and sat down and not noticed it before? NO COLOREDS ALLOWED. They were the coloreds. But they walked in again, the rifles stiff at their sides, and they sat down with the rifles between their legs and the muzzles to the ceiling. “Mama,” Jacob called to the heavy woman behind the counter who was picking her teeth with her fingernails. He spoke tenderly as though he were talking to his own mother. “We made an order, Mama.” He felt his soul glow amber and expand. “We come to get what we ordered.”

  Spice tapped the butt of his rifle on the floor three times and like a spell the food appeared. Every single thing on the menu was put before them by the same graying green waitress. She didn’t smile or look pretty anymore. She didn’t look at them at all. The plates crowded the table. Spice licked the bread of the prawn poor boys. Ronnie chewed on chicken legs and spat out mush into napkins. Jacob gargled with the liquor—letting it slosh around his mouth, cleansing that tooth, before releasing it back into the mugs. Not one of them could eat. All three massaged their rifles and looked into one another’s sinking eyes.

  —

  Five weeks in the stockade for each of them. They’d disturbed the peace; they’d stolen guns. They were lucky they hadn’t been given years in prison. After his time, Spice Grenada was deported back to his navel string island of Grenada, where he reclaimed his birth name, Michael Worthingham V, and joined the Grenada Revolution.

  For their American Caribbean Negroes, the Army followed up stockade time for McKenzie and Smalls with some sessions of reason and reform for the entirety of Port Companies 872, 873, 874, and 875, just in case. They brought in the Olympian who had raced in Germany and won and won, and had then been hired by the American government to lecture the darker soldiers.

  “I understand your frustration,” the gold-medaled hero had said to the West Indians. “But this is the way America is. You do a service for your fellow countrymen by fighting for your country. Don’t make waves for the U S of A. You show them that you are . . .” But the hero hadn’t finished. Because these men who were dark like he was didn’t understand bowing and smiling and surviving. They screamed out, “Ass licker,” “No-souled,” “Slave-minded.” But Jacob had sat there quietly, wondering what really was happening.

  Jacob was still brave enough to be aware of his own fear. And Jacob was afraid that his world, the one that belonged to him, the one where he was handsome and loved and a future doctor and piano player, was being smiled and bowed away. So while the others jeered, Jacob stood up and threw his shiny black boot onto the stage, smacking his country’s great Negro Olympian in the head. Just so.

  After that incident, they split the West Indians up. There never was a West Indian company again. Ronnie was allowed to stay in Creole country because everyone knew that on his own he wasn’t much harm.

  But after the boot smacking, Jacob had been put in solitary for two solid weeks, where he had to keep his hands on his own face to know that he still existed. Then they’d sent him to Sand Island in Hawai’i, to be killed by Japs he figured. Sand Island for our sandman was just another kind of jail, for on that island all his dreams were of St. Thomas beaches and shells and girls in stewed-cherry dresses.

  When the war was over, Ronnie was demobed to Puerto Rico with a batch of Puerto Ricans, where he drank rum with them as though they were brethren and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” like any American. A tropical storm blew through and so for more than a week he and some other St. Thomians kept the party going while their boat to St. Thomas bobbed on the P.R. dock.

  But as soon as the second bomb fell, Jacob had been given his demob and was sent home early on an ocean liner shipping supplies and a few St. Croix soldiers. “We docking first in St. Thomas,” one of them said. “Imagine, we part of the same U.S. Virgin Islands but I ain never been to St. Thomas before. It sweet?” Jacob had nodded. “Too sweet,” he’d responded, but he didn’t lime with those boys. He found out that the war was over while lying on his cot feeling the Caribbean Sea already beneath the boat. He went among the commotion and celebration of his fellow soldiers, his fellow Virgin Islanders, but he couldn’t bring himself to raise a glass with them. Jacob Esau thought only about arriving to his mother island and to his mother. He thought about going to medical school. His thoughts were incomplete.

  40.

  St. Thomas was such a strange place now. The island was not the same, and its native sons returning would not make it the same again. The owner of Eeona’s flat had uprooted Eeona’s back garden to make room for a pavement so the neighbor woman from
Jost Van Dyke could park her car. This woman not only owned and drove her own car nowadays, but also had her own business—a restaurant on the waterfront.

  There were still some known Savan families living up on Frenchman Hill, but as one traveled down the hill, the area became less familiar. Eeona really didn’t know her neighbors now, who were mostly British Virgin Islanders passing through the window from Tortola or Jost Van Dyke for work. Most of them rented the flats in ninety-day shifts, as the law allowed. They worked all the new jobs that had been discovered. Bartender. Waitress. Cook. Chambermaid in the hotel. Calypso singer at the airport. Welcome to the island work.

  Eeona was still seeking her way out and up. She knew now that she must go where no one would know her history, her losses, and her transgressions. No Anette. No Mr. Barry. No Villa by the Sea and its ghosts just there in Frenchtown. It seemed clear New York City would make sense. With the war ending, the big city would need citizens of class such as she to help revitalize. Besides, Savan was becoming a place where a lady of class should not live—especially if she lived alone. Whereas before there was only Lettisome’s Corner Grocery, there were now three small shops. They all stayed open past dark and sold cigarettes by the pack. Eeona would quit Mr. Barry. She would sell Nelson the donkey, not to buy a car after all, but to buy passage. She would take out the money she had been saving in the St. Thomas Bank. But first she needed to plan for what she would do in New York. She was not going to arrive with dreams and no way to reach them. She’d thought it all through—not like Mama who’d sailed on a whim.

  Freedom was not the same as loneliness. No, it was not. It was not. Eeona had a strategy for her freedom. One that would take her to the people she was meant to be among. She carried a tiny coconut tart to the Jost Van Dyke lady restaurateur. This was the same woman who had nursed Anette to health from the Spanish influenza so many years before, and she still went out of her way to regularly wish Eeona a good morning. She seemed to have some class and intelligence about her. Jost Van Dyke was one of the British Virgin Islands after all. Eeona was offered tea and then she and this woman spoke at length about the Stemme family, among others. Stemme was still a known Anegada name and Antoinette Stemme was still known as a native daughter of the soil—bless her soul and rest her in her grave. When Eeona’s talk turned to business, the restaurateur offered her some hours cooking or waiting tables at her restaurant. But then Eeona let her hair down and the BVI woman understood how valuable Eeona could be. “I been thinking,” started the woman, “about setting up rooms on the top floor. Too much work for me alone. I’ll need an assistant manager.”

  Even though Eeona was quitting him, she managed a reference letter out of Mr. Barry—one she would take to America. Then she walked out of the Hospitality Lounge and straightaway began working at the restaurant that also let rooms. She was so lovely to look at, walking among the tables or sitting up in the office going over the bills. She made people hungry, so the restaurant business boomed. And she made people horny, so the rooms boomed louder.

  As Eeona gathered her letters and her money and gained her experience, she knew that Anette was fine. She knew that she would never leave Anette if her sister needed her. So Eeona told herself.

  But come now, the signs were quite clear. Mrs. Smalls would stop Eeona in the street to whine about Anette running out to the grocery at eight or even nine o’clock, leaving little Ronalda behind. Couldn’t one wait until morning to buy a tin of condensed milk? When Anette came to visit with little Ronalda, Eeona saw that Anette now admired her mirror. Eeona of all people should have known the sin. And then just before Eeona was due to heave off, there was Esau McKenzie’s image there in the newspaper, like a warning. But Eeona ignored all that as best she could. Had to.

  Besides, Eeona told herself, Anette had a baby now to take care of. Eeona did not. Anette had a husband to take care of her. Eeona did not. Never mind that Eeona had chosen against marriage and the children it could bring. Or, at least, she believed she had chosen.

  Eeona had been the assistant manager for two months when the first ship with the soldier boys docked in. That ship was the very one that would turn and take her away. In the meantime, she was learning the new work. When she arrived in New York, there wouldn’t be a job she couldn’t hold. All she needed was one job, any ladylike job, her beauty would do the rest. She would lie about her age if she had to. She would call herself Creole or Portuguese if she must. Whatever it took to find her way back to her deserved fineness. Watching out for her siblings was no longer Eeona’s concern.

  41.

  Red was not a color Anette wore often, given her own disdained red hair, which she hid by lathering it with black dye. But red had worked well for her and Ronnie before. Made him make a baby. It was a “Look at me” color. A color that made the newly arrived down-island men look a little longer at the St. Thomian girls walking by. So Anette wore her one red dress when she went to meet Ronnie. She wanted to be like a lighthouse above the sea of all the other waiting people.

  Anette, with Ronalda hoisted on her hip, passed by her sister’s apartment to let Eeona know that she was heading to the ship of soldiers. “I going to my love. But I going pass him here first, if you don’t mind. Drop Ronalda while we have a bit of husband-wife time.” Eeona noted that Anette’s hair was coppery, glowing almost. Perhaps she needed more dye.

  With Anette and half of St. Thomas down at the docks, Eeona walked quickly down Main Street and sold the earrings out of her ears to a jeweler whom she did not know. The jeweler’s fingers were moist as he leaned over to press her earlobes between his thumb and forefinger. “Thank you,” he said, and passed her twice the money she was asking. “You are an angel, aren’t you?”

  “You are mistaken,” Eeona replied. “I am a Bradshaw.” She snapped her purse shut and walked out into the street. She stood there for a moment and breathed.

  Anette’s husband was coming home. Now Eeona was finally going. She would start a business in New York, conceivably. She would make her hats and shawls and lace doilies; she would manage her own hospitality lounge or perhaps a rooming hall for ladies. Perhaps she could claim her father was a rich general, dead in the war. Anything at all until a man with a nice last name walked in. Rockefeller. Carnegie. Ford. A railroad man, perhaps. It had to be good if it was going to replace Bradshaw.

  Eeona had bought her ticket for the ocean liner with her pay from the restaurant. She was leaving in three weeks. Eeona stood on Water Front and saw the very vessel easing into the other side of the bay. Anette was there with a clutch of other wives and mothers and half of the island waiting for this first batch of soldiers to disembark. Eeona stood and watched until the huge boat seemed moored, then she turned back to Savan to sew the last pieces of Mama’s lace gloves into baby underpants for Ronalda. She would wait for her sister and the baby and the husband this one last time.

  —

  But when Anette returned from the dock, there was Ronalda but no Ronald. Eeona was only a little concerned. Perhaps it was the wrong ship. Perhaps this one was full of medics and medicines or produce or even bones. Eeona did not put down the pieces of lace that were no longer Antoinette’s gloves. She was almost finished.

  Anette held Ronalda with the baby’s face to her shoulder. She leaned into Eeona and shielded the child as though from a secret. “Eeona, boats been doing me wrong since I born. Now this boat have me divorcing Ronald.”

  Eeona’s teeth clamped down hard inside the privacy of her mouth. She waited a few seconds before releasing her jaw. “You shall do no such thing.”

  “Watch me.”

  Eeona fastened a thimble to her index finger and did not look at her sister. “What has happened, Anette?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Is your husband not on this ship? Have you no patience?”

  Anette turned from Eeona to lower Ronalda down on the bed. The child was awake now but had not made a sound. Her eyes were open and staring at her mother.

 
“Eeona, you was right. I ain love that man. I never did.”

  “That is a very selfish reason to leave him.”

  “Well.” She walked across the room, her hips now with an unmatronly sway. “It was the right ship, but Ronald wasn’t on it.”

  Eeona still didn’t look up from her sewing. “You are a Bradshaw. You are not a loose woman who becomes a divorcée simply because her husband is daft enough to miss his ship home.” She bit the end of her thread. “You will end up an old maid, Anette. You will end up alone.” She offered her sister the lace. Anette took the gift cautiously, as though Eeona had just presented her with a riddle.

  “Eeona. I don’t know what game you playing, but I won’t stay with a man because I’m afraid. You have your beauty. I only have my sense of things. And I sense that my man was on that ship, Eeona. The problem is that Ronnie was not on the ship.”

  Now Eeona found Anette’s gaze. “Little sister, you have no idea how foolish the women in our family have been over men and ships.”

  Then Ronalda made a sound as though she was deciding whether or not to cry. Anette gripped the lace diaper cover, as though it was a rag to ring out her frustration. She couldn’t make this decision holding Ronald’s baby.

  “I’ll be back just now,” Anette said. Then she rushed out of the flat. She left her sister and her daughter there to each other.

  42.

  History records that, despite everything, Jacob Esau McKenzie was the first one off the big boat. He was the first returning soldier to shake Governor de Castro’s hand. It was in the papers. There was proof. He was the hero at the Grand Hotel ball held in the men’s honor.

  But there really wasn’t anything grand about being the first; if the newspapers really knew, they wouldn’t have said “hero.” His had been a dishonorable discharge, after all. He was the first off only because he couldn’t wait to eat from his mother’s hand. He’d been in solitary and he’d been on Sand Island. He was most afraid that St. Thomas wouldn’t be real. The boat, which was also for luxurious island-hopping, now did its patriotic part. But it didn’t dock up fast enough. Its hulking body slid and bounced against the dock, kissing the island tentatively. Men who had saved each other’s lives, men who had cried into each other’s laps, now pushed and bit at each other before the door was opened and the plank was lowered. Jacob had pushed the hardest. He had broken through with all the people there watching. He had taken off his Army cap and kissed the ground as if it were a lover or maybe as if it were a thought-dead mother. And he had stayed there, his mouth to the ground as though to a woman, until the governor came up to him, bent down, and said, “Son, I admire your passion but this is indecent,” and Jacob had risen slowly and shaken the governor’s hand for the pictures.