Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel

by Tiphanie Yanique

  Now Jacob gulped his rum and put the glass down loudly on the table. “Ronnie, you soft in the head? The man marry your wife and you had a drink with him?”

  Ronald sucked his teeth and poured more rum. “But Jacob, you make a baby with my wife and I here drinking with you.”

  Jacob nodded. In his chest there was a swelling of humility and a tightening of pride and the sweetness of the rum. “Just don’t tell me no more about what the new husband does do. Or what he look like. Or about he character. I just here to make Anette marry me.”

  “So you ready for marrying now?”

  Jacob shook his head. His hair was knotted into little nappies. His clothes were wrinkled. His eyes were bloodshot. “I just ain ready to see her married to someone else.” His eyes started to water, but then he stood up quickly and walked out of the door. He left his bag and his scarf and winter coat on Ronnie’s bachelor couch. His rum glass empty on the coffee table.

  Finally, Jacob went to his mother’s house. He knew his mother wouldn’t be home at this time. She’d be in the market selling her mesple and limes and spellbinding teas. He didn’t want her to see him, for fear she would spin an obeah that would keep Anette and him apart for life. But Saul might be home and might be able to help.

  Jacob opened the door and saw no one. He looked in the two other rooms—the boys’ room and his mother’s room. No one. The piano had been moved to the center of the hall. The sofa had been raised on concrete blocks and sat in front of the piano keys as the piano bench. Jacob sank down into the sofa.

  He didn’t really play something. He just played anything. Harmonies of this, melodies of that, humming something different, stamping his foot to his nodding head. To him, it sounded like American blues music. To those walking by the house, it sounded haunted.

  Jacob played, feeling the sweat gathering underneath his thighs and the tears running down his face. He was melting. The music slow and dirty. No neatness like a love letter, nor like “I do.” It was messy, like “I’m giving up on medical school and manhood,” like “I know I’m late but I’m here now.” Messy with Anette’s two daughters and now a new husband. But Jacob didn’t actually hear any of that, though that was what he was playing. He only heard his fingers on the piano keys and his foot stamping on the piano pedals and his own mouth bawling. He only heard himself. So when his brother entered, early plans for a new housing development under his arm, Jacob didn’t see.

  Saul heard the music and began dancing around the room to a beat that was not of the music. When Jacob heard a man’s steps, he turned his face and he stopped playing. A childhood memory of a man with sea-gray eyes dancing with him in that very spot pulled in before Jacob’s watery eyes and then receded. He wiped his face with the back of his hand.

  “I come for Anette,” said Jacob to his brother.

  Saul stilled. “I know.”

  “You must give her a message for me.”

  Saul fixed his face as if he were receiving a disease. “I ain want no part of this. Mama will maim we both.”

  “Just help me, nuh.”

  “All right, Jacob. I going handle this thing just now.”

  “Why not now-now?”

  Saul looked at this brother. They had shared a bed growing up, but they did not often express affection. It was not the McKenzie way. Now Saul walked up to Jacob and touched his streaked face.

  70.

  Anette smiled tightly and pretended she didn’t know why Saul had come. She knew; she had a sense for knowing when someone was coming. But it was an awful knowing, for it was all too late. Here was a magic that had turned out useless because someone didn’t always come when you wanted. But she knew Saul was coming and she knew Jacob would follow. In the living room Saul spoke to her about their other former classmates and the children—Eve Youme, after all, was his niece.

  “Beautiful girls,” he commented, without looking at them.

  “Get your uncle Saul some guavaberry rum,” Anette directed her daughters. They had half a decanter that Eeona made for selling during the season. Ronalda went for the little glass, but her sister didn’t follow. Eve Youme, still a toddler, refused to waddle out of the room. There was something off about her even then. Saul looked hard at Eve Youme, who looked calmly back at him. Finally, he gave up hoping for privacy. When Ronalda returned with the glass of rum, he took only the napkin from her. He pulled a fine ink pen from his pocket and scribbled his message. Then he took his leave. Ronalda saw the door close gently as she stood beside her sister with the guavaberry she was too young to drink, the fumes of it rising into her face.

  Anette didn’t open the note then. Not with Ronalda standing there with a glass of rum in her hand. Not with Youme staring at her as if she were reading Anette’s mind—the child’s hair snaking around her head.

  Anette went to her closet for her outing hat and saw her red movie dress. She gripped the fabric in her fist, as though demanding something of it. Then she smoothed it out with a forced calm and went to brush her hair. She left the house, and left the girls, to go read the napkin.

  With her mother gone, Ronalda was in charge. Instead of pouring the guavaberry rum back into its decanter, Ronalda sipped it slowly, then poured some more for her sister.

  Anette walked for a long time. Her heels clicking. She was a proper married woman again. The movie starring her and Franky was coming out in just a few weeks. And then there was the other thing—the child within her, who would be coming within the year.

  How far did Anette need to get from their apartment before it stopped being betrayal? She walked toward the harbor, where there were boats unloading and a few white sailors smoking cigarettes. There was even a large passenger ship docked. In the middle of the harbor was Water Island, where she had danced with her now husband Franky at the Gull Reef Club with the movie cameras filming. She stopped on a bench on the newly paved Water Front. This place had all been sand and rock, and now it was concrete, and cars could park here, and sailors and tourists could walk here, and women could sit here to contemplate infidelity.

  Meet him by Lindbergh Bay at dusk. He say bring baby Eve and only whatever else you need for Stateside.

  Anette was still young. Still Julie mango juicy and still knowing it. But she also knew that her grown-up life was finally beginning. Not this back-and-forth, running-behind-some-man, driving-in-a-car-without-doors life. But a real life with a house and children, and a husband whose mother did not obeah his life. Anette was now teaching history and she’d been taking classes through the mail. Getting her bachelor’s so she could get the higher pay and prestige it would afford her. She wanted to be a real woman, finally. How ironic that now she would be the Bradshaw running away and ending up in America.

  The sun was bright and hot, but there was a smooth trade wind cooling her neck. The world seemed to be open and opening. Anette looked out at the ocean. She looked past Water Island and didn’t think of the movie. She thought instead of the man and woman who had thought she was a chambermaid. She looked out at the possibility of the horizon. The dusk was arriving.

  She shouldn’t have looked that way. She should have looked back at the cars or the people or the buildings. But instead she faced the sea. The sun was reddening the sky. The sea air was filling her. This moving and big and overwhelming blue sea. This active and passionate and relenting blue sea. And she thought of the first man she had really loved. The way they knew each other’s bodies, even in the dark—like they were aboriginal to each other. How even without a wedding ring she had still felt like Jacob’s own. And when she was screaming and pushing out their child, he was screaming, too. His face right beside hers. Until the midwife threatened to kick him out, saying this was not how fathers were supposed to act. He’d pushed the midwife aside and held Eve Youme’s flaming head when it arrived. Like the doctor he would be. How he loved Anette as if she were something worthy of nighttime beaches. How they made love there at night. How they did things that she knew she should be ashamed of. How he
said she was so strong that her little body could make him kneel. How she rubbed the gum of his aching tooth and made the pain go away. How he pushed his fingers through her hair and massaged the roots, telling her he could feel the red. How he touched her like he owned her. And how she had felt more belonging with him than she had her whole life. Being with him was being claimed. She had been a fool not to wait for him.

  But now she was married. Now her husband cooked for her and drove her around in his green Cadillac and took her dancing and took care of Ronalda and Youme as if they were his own. But Franky did not feel like kin, despite the marriage that said so. That was Jacob.

  Anette walked back home to get ready. She wanted to belong. She was going with Jacob.

  Jacob had not asked Anette to bring Ronalda. He had only asked for Eve. So for now Anette would have to leave Ronalda with her sister. It would be for the best. At least until they settled. Anette didn’t think about what she knew. That Ronalda would not do well with Eeona. Or that there was another baby on the way and that the baby was Franky’s.

  Anette passed no less than six film posters featuring her and Franky. She was determined not to see the posters at all. People called out to her, famous Mrs. Joseph, and she responded out of courtesy. But she kept her mind tight. Thinking on nothing but her future beautiful life. Her heels clicked on the pavement. She needed to hurry. Hurry.

  71.

  Jacob waited at the beach. Beneath the sea grape tree that she and he had shared on that night he had first made love to her. But it had not just been them; Ronalda had also been there. He breathed and tried to remember that night, but he tried not to think on Ronalda. He could not bring her with them now. He could manage his tiny rent with Anette; it would be a struggle with Eve, but he could handle no more. Not money-wise or mind-wise. Ronalda was his old friend Ronnie’s child, anyway.

  He thought of Anette and the ocean; he thought of them as the same frightening, enticing thing. Behind him was an army of coconut trees. There was the thump every now and then of a coconut hitting the ground. He didn’t turn away from the waves for that noise. He would only turn for the hushed movement of the sand. For the swish of a leaf. He wanted her to come up on him. He wanted her to touch him before he saw her. He wanted it that beautiful. He wanted to just sink back into her chest, her arms circling him. He wanted her to keep him and his soul together. He wanted them to begin again, both looking out at this sea.

  This is not how it happened.

  72.

  Anette opened the door to her and Franky’s apartment. Her husband, the man with a sense of timing, was home early from cleaning the lighthouse. Anette heard him banging around the pots. She smelled onions and garlic and hot canola oil. She entered the kitchen and there was his bare dark back facing her. He was leaning into a pot and stirring it, then stretching to a cupboard to find a spice. “Franky,” she said.

  “Greetings, Mrs. Joseph.” He turned to look at her, his screaming green eyes, and offered a wooden spoon filled with sauce.

  Anette shook her head and stepped back. “Franky, we have to talk.”

  “I know we do. I come home early because I have something for you. But the girls sleeping like they dead, yes. And you ain here.” He spooned the sauce into his own mouth before rinsing it off in the sink and drying it cleanly on a kitchen towel. Anette just stared at him. This was a good man, she thought. A good family man. “Anette, you okay? You looking . . .” He stepped toward her.

  She had always been a small woman. Short and thin and tart. She held up her free hand to stop him now, her purse dangling from her wrist. He was thick and muscled, but he stopped for her. “Franky, what would you do if I left you?” Franky’s upper body shot back as if he had been hit. Slowly, he returned himself back to an upright position. Without a word, without a curl of his lip, he turned back to his cooking. For a long few seconds, for almost a minute, Anette knew it was going to be okay. She had made a mistake rushing into this marriage. She’d done it out of necessity and not out of love. And love was, she knew now, the only true necessity. Franky would be fine. He deserved a woman who loved him wholly. There he was cooking, after all. There he was, moving on—in his own gentle way.

  Anette watched his strong back but was already thinking about the things she needed to pack. She thought of Jacob and knew he was at the beach already. Waiting for her. Anette lifted her heel slowly, but it was then that she realized the food was burning. She let her heel drop with a click. And then like a switch, Franky was turned on. She saw his hand in slow motion . . . and then pots were flying and hot oil was splattering across the walls and glasses were breaking and he was a hurricane crashing into her shore. And he was howling and cursing and spinning and kicking, and all she could understand was “I here” and “I been waiting for you all these years” and “I building a house for you.” “I ain going nowhere.” He stormed past her, pulled open the front door, and slammed it, leaving it swaying on its hinges before it crashed onto the front steps. Anette stood there in their kitchen. Onion skins settled quietly to the ground.

  But it was a simple act of Franky’s impeccable timing. Because after Franky roared out, Anette hurried to the room to pack her and Youme’s things. Hurried before she came to her senses. But there it was. Hanging in their room like a piece of art. The thing Franky had come home early to give to her. The poster of them in the movie. Framed and all. Above their bed. An American movie, realer than a wedding ring. It was only a matter of timing, not of love, but it was life.

  73.

  Jacob’s second message came the very next morning. It was stuck in the unhinged door that had been propped up into the doorway for the night. Anyone could have seen Jacob wedge it there. Franky could have come home from wherever he had been all night and read it. But Jacob’s note was so small, metaphorically and in reality, beside the picture that now hung above the bed. Jacob’s note was so small and Jacob was so late. Anette plucked the note from the door and knew she was watched even as she read it deep inside the apartment, on her and her husband’s bed, beneath the picture that sealed her to Franky. She was aware of the infidelity. Anegando en mis llanto, she thought, and then did. Afterward, she burnt the note over the stove.

  74.

  Jacob was in Puerto Rico that evening. He slept in the San Juan airport, waiting for any flight to the States to take him away. Away from the memory of Anette at dawn, pushing her unhinged door aside. He’d watched her as she peeled his note from the door in her bare feet. He watched as she turned without looking around, without even looking for him kneeling there in the street, the note in her hand loosely like she might only be carrying it to the garbage bin.

  When Jacob Esau McKenzie returned to medical school in America, he seemed perfectly normal. No one thought much of anything could have happened to him. But he did two Anette-driven things. First he snapped the rubber band wedding ring off his finger. Then he changed his specialization from pediatrics to gynecology. From children to women. He would put his hands into other women and dig for Anette.

  But remember that Jacob was not the only thing to come. The second thing was the movie. Girls Are for Loving.

  75.

  ANETTE

  That Girls Are for Loving movie was meant to make us us. To make us real. Franky and me make it to the advertising poster. That poster was a magic. It was a sign. Forget about Johnny-come-late Jacob. Because there was me and Franky. Like we belonging to each other. So proper a couple that we make it to the poster. Jacob and me, we was never a proper thing outside of our own hearts. Never proper to anybody else at all.

  That movie make me and Franky seem real-real. Jacob so far away, seem fake. Then Jacob come, begging me back, and is only me know that I have a baby in my belly. And the baby is Franky own. But a child, like a poster or a movie, is a thing for all to see. A child is a real belonging. Nothing you can do about it. And I know that Franky going to claim all my children. I can’t say the same for Jacob. Stupid-ass Jacob. My stupid-ass Jacob. But forg
et he. Forget he. Forget he.

  Now listen. Before the baby born, Girls Are for Loving arrive in St. Thomas. Crucians seaplane in from St. Croix and Johnians ferry from St. John. It ain just about me and Franky. It about all of we. Tourism gearing up over here and even people from Tortola and Anegada regularly passing through the window to come work. This movie was going to make us the finest piece of land in the region. A place of culture. Worthy of Hollywood.

  The line long for the theater. Yes, we had a real indoor Apollo Theater own by a nice Puerto Rican man. We had nice things, then. Our own hotels, banks, cinema. Besides all the people, it was a very regular movie evening in every other way. No one had priority seating or anything. But me and Franky still feel like we is big celebrities—not just extras.

  Even though I pushing out of it, I still wore the dupioni dress. But I wear modest flats this time and a little jacket to keep off the night dew and protect the plumpness of my baby belly. And I ain shame. In the dress, everybody recognize me walking in. I get smiles and nods. Inside, Franky hold me close. It feel like the whole thing is for we alone.

  The cinema man yell to quiet down and the light go soft and the movie crackle on and is no waiting. Our scene is the opening scene! See us dancing and shuffling smooth calypso style, seven-step, two-step, dipping and all. There was the Pick-up Men looking happy enough. And there was all of we sure looking good, my girl. Close in on Franky and me and my red and yellow dress. My husband up there looking so handsome. My husband! I is his wife. Imagine. I feel scared and excited like I about to win a prize. I watching Franky spin me first nice and slow and then fast so my dress fly a little. I squeeze his leg in the theater darkness. His leg tense under my fingers and I feel powerful. I watch the screen and see all of we becoming real. Seeing my marriage, this marriage, becoming a real wonderful thing that even the Americans can see and know. I ain thinking of Jacob McKenzie at all.