Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel

by Tiphanie Yanique

  Where was the story? The same place as the letters to Anette. Not in the attic, for there are no attics in the houses here. Not in the bottom drawer, because there are no sets of drawers in the octagon house. He did what buccaneers had done a generation before. Used the mother earth as a safety deposit. Buried all the writing like treasure. But as they were not in a chest or a sealed jar, the leaves of paper would disintegrate and become part of the earth and then the earth would erode and sift into the sea. Kweku didn’t intend to kill the story. He wanted it to live. But he wanted it only for himself. He didn’t realize that one does not allow for the other.

  For Eeona, the impact was erosive. She stopped with the story writing. She didn’t sew or stitch or make hats of palm leaves. She eased into this new lack of control. This must be the longed-for freedom. She began to live inside her episodes. Walking the house as if she were on a pilgrimage. She let the cobwebs collect, though the spiders never appeared to claim their creations. She picked bay leaves and avocado pears. The grounds were a kind of Eden that way. “This is what I wanted,” she explained to the listening walls. She knew she could escape so easily. She could jump into the cistern and drown. She could tip over the balcony and drown. She could walk into the sea and keep walking until she drowned. And wasn’t that the greatest freedom?

  With the child in her, Eeona would never be a child again. Kweku was not her father. Her father was dead. The child in her was not yet a child and so not worth staying alive for. Drown. But then Eeona finally felt the baby inside her swim. Clearly a stroke, not gas or one’s mind getting the best of one. There was a living thing splashing inside her. Yes, yes. Of course she wanted this. She must double her efforts. Work on her beauty. Convince Prideux that loving her for all his life was the thing he needed. That was the story she wanted in the end. She was an adult now and could see that even freedom came with its own binds.

  With this clarity came renewed thoughts of little sister Anette, and how Anette was newly unwed and might yet find herself faced with the danger that was Esau. It was Eeona’s first conscientious moment in months. And she resented it completely.

  But that very night Kweku lowered his mouth to her, because he was the worst kind of man, the kind who knows just what a woman wants and uses it against her. He whispered into her silver, “You’re my diamond little girl.” She felt his words vibrate on her as if she were a wind instrument and he were playing her into the horizon. And who would not want to be wanted this way? Besides, it was a sign that her efforts were having an effect. And so it was easy to forget about a sister in need of being unfreed.

  Kweku held Eeona in the bed as though she were his skin. She hadn’t felt so loved and so drowned since she was a girl. In the morning her beauty flooded the room.

  54.

  ANETTE

  Eeona gone for months now. It ain that I forget about she. Is just that I been an orphan all my life. I always getting left. Eeona been wanting to leave. I figure her time just come. Yes, I worry that she ain write and I even worry that maybe she dead, but I ain really worry ’bout she at all. Eeona good. She take care of she self always. Even if she there in heaven, she likely seducing St. Peter and running the heavenly show. Besides, I now have Jacob. He done tell me that he ain never going to leave me. And I believe he.

  You see, is a perfect time to be alive. In the middle of the century, in safety. No apocalypse. Two great wars behind, plenty smaller wars ahead. But in these islands—not quite American, not all Caribbean—we living in the eye of the storm and know only the peace. I leave Ronalda with Ronnie mother and I lie, tell she I gone looking extra work to help pay the rent. But I gone gallivanting.

  The car we was in had not a door. The roads was loosely paved—mostly gravel and pound-up dust. Me and Jay in the backseat. A group of we driving up to the Muhlenfeldt Point lighthouse. Trying to lime there for the view. Dirt and rocks was flying all around us. The turns spring out of nowhere at all and on every bend we almost fly out.

  Gertie and some American fellow in the front. The American is our ticket to the lighthouse, since me and Gertie have try to get there before but get runaway by a military Yankee. This American fellow say he know the lighthouse keeper and could get us to the lighthouse and even inside the lighthouse, where we could watch the sea. Gertie ain have a regular beau but her American man seem like he like a little lick of the tar brush. Now he shifting gears as if he know what he doing. “Americans know how to drive,” he keep saying loud-loud. Every few minutes the car seem to go faster than before. It like a Carnival ride.

  In the backseat with Jacob, I holding on to him as my stomach tighten and my mouth open wide. Damn it to hell, I felt like braying, like that awful donkey that we don’t have no more. But my noises just fly back in my mouth with the speeding air. The piece of trash car careening about.

  Jacob focus on guarding me. He arms all about my shoulders and legs as if he alone could have protect me from flying through the space that should have held a windshield. That how he was then. Always touching and protecting. Always claiming me hard.

  The gravel kicking up. Clanking into the bottom of the car. Slapping my calves when it force its way through the holes; flying at us in a steam of dust. I close my eyes but that make my stomach sway. We come to a big ditch and the American fellow ain brake but instead shift and shift and slam right in and out of the dip. Woy! The fellow go flying into the hood of the junkyard Dodge; not onto the hood because his elbows and head was forced through the holes. His legs jut back into the seats and one of his ankles crash onto my shoulder, knocking hard against my head. Through a fresh rip in his pants, I stared right into the poor boy’s exposed white backside.

  Gertie start up a screaming of the man name, “Ham! Hamilton! Ham!” and it sound like she demanding food. But the American fellow just there laughing. Laughing! I crawl out from beneath him as my man guide me away. “Let’s get from here,” Jacob say. “That fellow is drunk.” Gertie look up to the sky and suck she teeth.

  “We can’t just leave,” I protest. “We ain even reach the lighthouse.”

  Jacob argue back. “You shouldn’t be dealing with any rough driving. Is too much for you.” He put his palm on the small of my back. I know what that is. Is something he does do when other man is around. Is an announcement. Like to prove that I is his. Now there don’t have no man around who care to notice. And so I know his hand on me is secret speak. I have you, it saying. You go where I go.

  That work on me like a charm, but I still digging my nails into Jacob wrist so he could know I ain happy with his direction.

  “Nettie,” he say, when he guide me a bit away. He always call me that. “You must take care.”

  “I ain a doll, Jay,” I say, even though I loving the way he talking, like he going to take care of me. “I ain a baby.”

  “Yes, yes, you is.” I see his chest rise up. He make it sound like I precious. I turn to Gertie and she wave me away. She going to stay with the American. Ham now standing on his own and leaning against the car, smoking a cig and chuckling like he ain almost dead. So I let my man walk me back down the way until we see a car and hitch a ride.

  Jacob only take me halfway down the street to Ronnie’s door because I ain ready for Ronnie’s mother talk or anybody’s talk. When I pick up Ronalda, her baby eyes them big like the saucers and have bowls beneath. Is like she been awake looking for me all day without a bit of shut-eye.

  For the most part, I been paying for the flat in Savan on my own. But Jacob helping a little. He stay with me sometimes, but with his mother more often. We waiting to wed. I waiting to see if Eeona returning. And he waiting for his mother to come around, because it turn out that Rebekah don’t like me just by the sound of my name. I know is ’cause I a divorcée. Them McKenzies was big Catholics, my child. Knights of Columbus. Catholic Daughters. The whole horse and carriage. I ain what no McKenzies thinking for one of their own.

  But is okay. It only been a few months. Jacob and me, we know we for each other.
We don’t have to rush-rush and ruin the thing. When time come, our love going to be clear like water for all to see.

  I put Ronalda to bed and I lay there beside her. Sometimes when Jacob don’t sleep over, he does come to my window and push his hands in my hair. That night I dream of fish and then newborn lizards. I wake up in the twilight, not to Jacob hands on me, but to the knowledge that I pregnant again. And there, in the moonlight, like something staking its claim, is my belly rounded. Claimed overnight, like the Europeans pulling to this shore of peaceful Arawaks. As if Jacob saying “Yes, yes, you is” make it so.

  I still breast-feeding Ronalda and is Ronnie mother she self tell me that that suppose to prevent pregnancy. So I know that who inside me must be powerful. I had make this sandman fall in love with me by speaking some bolero words at a dance, now he give us a baby by saying so.

  The rest of the night I toss between dreams and I deep in the feeling of arrival. Something coming. But the feeling don’t seem like seven or eight months. It feeling like just now. Like I more pregnant than I even looking. In the morning I look to get out of the bed and figure out what the ass I going to do now that we have a baby coming too soon to make it look decent. But there in the bed beside me is the thing that now arrive and is my very sister. Motherscunt!

  I start breathing short and heavy because I just know that this is my dead sister lying in bed, haunting me for not staying married and respectable as she had command. But then this Eeona open she eyes and I scream. She jump on me like a witch on a broom and say, “You will wake the child.” And even though I know she meaning Ronalda, who scrunch up like a worm at our feet, it come as if Eeona mean the one in my belly, too.

  When she release her palm from my mouth, I pounce away and go stand by where Ronalda sleeping. Ready to grab up the child and scrape out. “You real?” I ask my sister or the ghost of my sister.

  “I do believe so.”

  55.

  EEONA

  I never could bring myself to tell my sister the true story, but I shall deliver it here and now.

  For many months I did not leave the house without Monsieur Prideux. Everything I did, I did with him. If you were there, you would have understood. Freedom City, it was called. It was quite lush and lovely. The house he lived in was grand and overlooked the ocean. It was difficult not to be in love and therefore desperate. One evening we were returning from a scenic drive when I leaned across the front seat and beseeched my Prideux. “Let us go to the beach,” I asked, for that was one thing we had never done. He shook his head as though he was scolding me. “It’s too late, my baby. The no-see-ums will get you.” Still, I believed the beach would be the place where I would finally win him over. The beach had convinced even Louis Moreau to propose.

  The blue air of dusk surrounded the car. The wind was gathering in the darkening clouds. It would rain presently. One could hear chimes dancing loudly. The music was uncoordinated, as were the thoughts in my mind.

  By the time Monsieur Prideux parked the silver Chevy at our door, the sky was a deep blue. I was feeling a sense of freedom, as our drives through the country were wont to make me feel. I felt what was inside of me. St. Croix was so like Anegada, flatter than St. Thomas. Made of coral. Sitting there on the Anegada Passage. I wanted the beach. I must have the beach.

  I went into our great house and put on a pair of my man’s rubbers and changed from this leaf-green dress he had bought me just for drives, into the blue dress I wore when I walked onto the seaplane that first day. It fit tight around the bust and barely fit around the belly. I announced that I was going for a walk to the beach with or without him. I had not been so bold since I first arrived.

  “There ain no streetlamps and it getting dark. You can’t go.”

  “I am going.” I decided this in the same manner in which I had decided to board the seaplane so many months earlier. I had secrets from him. One such secret was that for weeks I had been attempting to lay a plan for myself, but my confusion was such that there were fish swimming in my mind. I had hoped that my maternal condition would hasten my Prideux’s commitment, but this had not yet been the case. If I went to the water at night, perhaps my mind would clear and I would discern my options. More important, if I ventured out, he would grow scared of my not returning. Perhaps my leaving, even for a short time, would convince him of me.

  “Eeona, girl. No one’s going to watch for you when you walking.”

  I carried a lit kerosene lamp when I departed. I felt safe as I began down the driveway. I had to walk through the bougainvillea bush to get around the latched gate built to keep out cars. Why was there this gate? Someone could easily sneak in and steal anything we had. Though I knew even then that there was not much that we had. Still, they might take my honour. They might kill my man. They might burn our house to ashes. They might throw us over the ledge to drown in the sea.

  As I walked farther, it grew dark quite quickly. I could hear the conversation of a father and a young daughter. The familiar sounds were floating from a house just above. They spoke with proper American inflections. The sound of their laughing pooled in my head.

  I began to see that what I was doing was quite nonsensical. Prideux was right, no one else was walking. It had been months since I had set out on my own and here I was doing so at night on an island that I did not truly know. A vehicle raced by with headlights on. I pressed myself against the side of the hill. It was a flashy car and the driver honked his horn in surprise at me. There was an American woman in the passenger’s seat. With great speed, she stuck out her manicured middle finger. These Continentals coming to our islands have turned out to be so uncouth.

  As soon as that car disappeared, I felt very alone. I felt then that Prideux should have lashed me to his chair and prevented me from leaving. I was losing my mind, like it was said always threatened Mama. I had already been gone for half an hour or more. He should have come just then with the car. He should have been worried.

  As the road curved, I saw the water.

  It would not be like the bays of St. Thomas. On St. Croix the shore will be narrow. The sand will have chunks of seashells in it. The water will have slivers of seaweed. From where I was standing, the waves looked frozen. The bay seemed dangerous and distant.

  I remembered night swimming with my father. We would strip off our clothes and dive into the cold dark water. Our bodies would light up with the shining phosphorescence that swam around us and The Homecoming in reverence.

  “I curse you,” I now said out loud, though I did not know to whom I said it.

  I thought about my sister and wondered if perhaps she had found her way back to her husband. It seemed like years ago that I had gone to return my ticket and instead found myself heading here, to Freedom City.

  I turned down the long road leading to the beach. The lamp in my hand was dimming. It was vital that I show Prideux that I could be worthy of nighttime beaches. It was vital that I show myself. I am Eeona Bradshaw and men have always thought me to be more than worthy. I am the daughter of a captain and I can swim and dive and direct a boat out to sea.

  I walked all the long way to the bay. When I arrived, the air at the ocean was cool. The sand waved like water under my feet. The moon was out in a sliver. The sound was just the waves and my feet moving towards them. I took off all my clothes slowly and elegantly. Maybe Prideux could see me from the house. I left my clothes on the sand. I stood at the lip of the ocean as the waves covered my feet. The water was quite frigid, but I walked into it anyway. I swam naked in the ocean as I had done with my father. The water felt as if it were a man claiming me. Beneath the water, the silver of myself was glittering like a jewel. I tended to it like any lady would her diamonds.

  When I was relieved, I ran out into the cold air. I hugged my belly with one hand and my breasts with the other. I stood at the water’s edge and it began to rain. I sensed that I had called the rain. I found my clothes and dressed quickly. I held the lamp before me and I walked all the long way
back to the gate of our large empty house.

  I was myself again. I only needed that small escape. Now I will add my touch to our home. I must sew curtains. I must purchase us some decent pans for cooking. I do not need his proposal. I will venture into the city and see to our marriage ceremony myself.

  There was my Prideux with a candle at the doorway.

  “I was worried. I was coming to find you,” he said. “Where did you go for so long?”

  “I went to the beach,” I will say. “I swam naked in the ocean lights.” He will look at me as though I were some mythical creature who did what she wanted.

  —

  My dear. That is not what really happened. That was all just a story I told myself.

  —

  What really happened is that I went to the water’s edge, but I did not even take off my shoes. I did not expose my private diamonds. I did not know myself in the water at all. I kept the failing lamp on the entire time. I was too afraid. I balanced the lamp in the sand so the light would ease out to mimic a full moon. The only sound was the ocean and the kerosene humming from the lamp. I walked to the water and splashed the coldness on my face. Then I retrieved the lamp. Prideux’s rubbers were too big for my feet and I slid back with each step. This made me feel more afraid, as though the ocean were holding on to me. It wanted to take me like it took my father.

  When I finally arrived back at the main road, I began to run. I ran harder than I have since childhood, for ladies do not run. I tripped in the large shoes. My lamp shone at wild angles ahead of me. There was a bit of rock. Here was a slice of tree. Everything ahead looked as splintered and as threatening as what I was leaving behind. I did not turn into a Duene or a soucouyant.

  When I reached the big black gate, I was just a woman. My ribs were bursting through my chest. I wondered if what was inside of me could feel my ribs. I wondered if what was inside of me could feel. I was wet with sweat. I lay down on the ground and stared at the weak moon.