Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel

by Tiphanie Yanique

  Then the limbo scene. Just as it was. All the leading woman thigh and thing showing, which had seem okay when she was just doing the limbo, but ain seem okay now that we seeing it so large up there. But they show it all, right up to her panty and when she wig catch fire on the limbo stick. Then a cut. A cut to the skirt of my dress, the very one I wearing self—waving in some wind. Not a body you know, just a piece of the dress. It make me feel uneasy, like my flapping flame dress was to blame for the hair on fire. Like the movie people was reading my mind. Then there is the whole scene with the woman stamping she wig and acting crazy, with a cut to my red, and then us dancers there gaping and curling into our men not thinking we acting, and then a cut to my dress flying about now in slow motion, a piece of my leg showing, then back to the leading man taking the woman in his arms and then a cut to my dress. And I in the theater wishing it would stop, wishing I hadn’t worn the stupid dress to the opening after all, knowing that the fire is my fault. And then back to the leading couple, though now . . . now they was naked! And all we could see was the man sweaty bumsie moving forward and forward and the woman oily legs coming from either side of him and moving like a broken machine. And flash back to my dress. And then a close-up on their faces all tonguey kissing, and then my dress, and then a solitary breast wobbling vigorous-vigorous—and then the pastor’s wife scream in the theater like she ’bout to dead. And all the people in the theater start to flood out.

  I crying. No tears. Just a sobbing thing, holding my belly and rubbing it. Me saying again and again: “My dress, my dress.” Now on the screen—groans of the two Americans just doing it for real as if we ain watching.

  We spill out into the street but can’t look at each other. This how we get put on the map in America? This me and my husband debut to the island and the nation? Is what they call pornographic. You hearing me.

  The governor issue a formal complaint to the studio on behalf of our Virgin Islands. His letter publish in the Virgin Islands Daily News. “The people were innocent,” he write. But the movie people ain even respond back. People quarrel up with the Gull Reef Club and finally the American club owner get his American lawyers to write in a note claiming no violation. “No one did anything against his or her will,” the club put in the paper. “There were no secrets. Not our fault no one had bothered to ask. Besides, those people were not in the sex scenes.”

  But ey, ey. What the hell he mean by “those people”? I was those people.

  But the Gull Reef Club make good money and they want the whole thing hush up. So they go back to paying us no mind at all.

  I often lay in bed thinking that we was so foolish to pappy show ourselves for them Continentals. I lay in bed beside Franky and I wonder if he going stay positive like he is. Or if he going to cool now. I would think how I shame for myself and I shame for my island and I even shame for my marriage. Sometimes while I there brooding, a shadow cross our window. I don’t think thief. I think Jacob. Think how with him there was no shame. Then I turn and see Franky in bed with me instead.

  A BELONGING

  76.

  But once the boy was born, the family of Mr. Franky and Mrs. Anette B. Joseph settled in and became a sort of something. There were three children now—the last was named Frank, like his father. He was never called Franky, but always just Frank and that was how they were differentiated.

  The Navy was lessening its presence on the island and so Franky was promoted to head keeper of the lighthouse, no assistant needed. He went to the point every day, cleaning the fixtures so they kept shining. Replacing the lights even if there wasn’t a need. If the rain was heavy, he might even stay the night there, watching for ships that never seemed to be in distress.

  He and Anette had never, not once, mentioned what had happened that day in the kitchen when she’d almost left him. He had come home the following night and fixed the door quietly. A few men walking by had offered to help, but Franky had only shaken his head. Then Franky had slid into the bed beside Anette and held her tightly, as if to say thank you. But he never said anything about it at all.

  Nor did they ever talk about the movie again. About how after the film came out Anette had come home, torn her clothes off, torn the poster from the wall, and pleaded that he swim into her. Again and again. Until he was sore and she was sore. And it had been like that for weeks until her belly bloomed and he began to worry that they’d hurt the baby.

  For years they lived with Ronnie always calling before he appeared and with Jacob not appearing at all.

  But Eve Youme’s father, Dr. Jacob E. McKenzie, did return to the island to practice as a lady’s doctor. Youme was no longer a baby when he came back again. Then she began regular visits to his apartment and then later his and his wife’s house. The wife was a sweet woman handpicked by Jacob’s mother. Papa Franky never drove Me there or anywhere close to her father. There was something about Jacob McKenzie that made Franky Joseph feel small. He noticed that Anette did not drive Youme out to her father’s either. Nor did Jacob himself come. A maid was sent to pick up the child. Franky was thankful for this careful avoidance.

  Eeona seemed to warm to the new family. Not only did she babysit, more than once she’d brought the children to work with her. Showing them off, it seemed. When she’d returned from her Freedom City episode, she had taken up a government job administering loans. She offered to help Franky with the money to build Anette’s house. Eeona wanted this marriage to stick. This wasn’t because she’d come around to liking Franky. That wasn’t her way. In exchange for helping them, Eeona asked that Franky help her choose a car to buy and teach her how to drive.

  77.

  Once upon a time, Eeona’s father had told her she’d never want for anything, and then he’d left her nothing. Moreau had promised to make the whole island of Anegada into something for her, but then he’d ran off to France. Kweku had planted a child in her womb, like building a house on a piece of land, but he hadn’t even been willing to promise her marriage. Even Liva Lovernkrandt had let her down. Eeona had been foolishly depending on men and women to take her and take her away. Now she would have her own car, her own captaincy. At the car dealership, she tried not to think of Kweku Prideux teasing when she’d asked for a carriage ride during her first minutes in Freedom City.

  “I think this one, Franklin.” Eeona gestured to the blue Datsun.

  The car salesman was the only car salesman on the island. He nodded and smiled now. He was selling the Datsun brand-new, though he’d been using it in the country to teach his son how to drive. He also smiled and nodded because there was the great Eeona Bradshaw walking before him. A nice-looking woman for true, he thought, and followed them closely as they inspected the vehicle so he could smell her. The car salesman was from Anguilla, though he had been on St. Thomas since he was a teenager. He’d heard about Eeona Bradshaw’s beauty. He’d only glimpsed her once before, when he’d gone to the Department of Finance to ask for a business loan. They didn’t keep her out front, for surely people would traipse in just to catch an eye of her. But he’d spied her walking from one room to another. He’d recognized her by her blue nun clothes it was said she always wore.

  Franky walked around the Datsun. “I don’t know, sis. You should get you a light-color car, something people could see you in, yes. In this dark blue you going get lost if you ever in the country at night. No one going be able to see you self.”

  “Well, that sounds lovely, Franklin. Why would I want to be seen if I was driving around at night? Clearly, I would be up to no good. Besides, blue is my color.”

  “Good for learning to drive on,” pitched in the salesman, who was standing too close beside Eeona.

  Franky patted the man on the back and smiled. “How you guess? I teaching my sister-in-law here how to drive.”

  “Salesmen know these things.”

  Eeona pursed her lips.

  The salesman watched her and thought, Yes, Eeona Bradshaw was very pretty, but there were whores on the island no
w who were just as beautiful.

  —

  Back at home, Franky joked about Eeona being invisible in the nighttime hills. Eeona, as she often did now, was joining them for dinner. Anette lifted little Frank to the sink to wash his hands, but looked hard at her sister.

  “For true, Eeona? All of invisible?”

  “Please, Anette. Use proper English.”

  Ronalda looked away with embarrassment—her mother had been scolded. Anette cleared her throat. “Is that how you wanted it, sister Eeona? Do you want to be invisible?”

  “Indeed.”

  “You always take the risks you never want me to take.” Anette didn’t say this with angst, she only said it like it was true.

  “That is what elder sisters are for, dear.”

  Youme was the middle child on her mother’s side, but would be the eldest on her father’s. “Auntie Eeona, you’ll be like a witch flying in the night.”

  Eeona pulled gently on Youme’s big wild hair. The child wasn’t yet beautiful, but Eeona could feel the possibilities. Now she leaned in to whisper to Eve Youme. Her soft breath sifted out like sand. “Me,” she said. “Me, we are witches.” Youme didn’t betray this secret by smiling. She only stood still to hear the whisper and feel her aunt’s breath on her ear.

  But the blue Datsun was never the thing it was supposed to be for Eeona.

  With Eeona in the passenger seat, Franky drove the car out to the golf course by Brewers Bay. A golf course was supposed to be Eeona’s in Anegada, now she would drive all over the golf course in St. Thomas. Like it was hers. She would mash it down with her wheels. She would destroy it to get her freedom.

  But actually, student drivers practiced on the golf course all the time. Indeed, a more private one would soon be laid in the countryside so tourists could hit their white balls with brown sticks in peace. There was talk of building a college on the current course site. Soon one might learn how to be a nurse without having to leave the island or get a teaching certificate without having to send away for the tests. For now, it was Eeona’s idea to use the golf course in order to learn how to drive. She sat in the passenger’s seat, resentful that this Franky Joseph had to teach her anything.

  The idea of Anette and Esau being romantic had been simply awful, but at least that Esau was of good stock—of course. But this Franky Joseph. A regular black man. Couldn’t Anette have done better?

  But Eeona needed this black man to teach her how to drive. She longed to be racing around the island in her fast car. She had her hair in a tight neat bun for the driving lesson but she already saw herself driving and letting it flow out of the window when it was just her alone. She didn’t care if she was too old now to have her hair flying.

  Franky was speaking. “See what I’m doing here? I turning to avoid this dip and I letting the steering wheel slide like so. Inch it, yes. Easy. Clutch, brake, then gas. Yes?” She looked so he wouldn’t keep yesing her. But really she was looking through him. She was seeing herself running alongside the beach that flanked them now on the left. Seeing herself like a beautiful animal with hair flying behind her. She was galloping. She was something to be feared. She loved herself most like that. She also hated herself most like that. But no matter, because she missed herself most like that.

  The car smoothed over the grass. Franky turned the engine off and stepped out. He walked around and opened the car door for Eeona. He didn’t do this chivalry for his own wife, but he knew he had to for his wife’s sister. This sister was a real harpy, but she was the woman who had raised his wife. He had to give her the respect of a mother-in-law. Besides, she was still pretty. Older than he was by far, but he did, sometimes, only sometimes, picture he was riding her when he made love to Anette. It wasn’t a betrayal or anything, not really. He loved his wife in a way he never knew a man could love anything that wasn’t God. But Eeona’s ocean hair and that mango-colored skin—well, there was still something of God in that, too. Even though the dryness around the eyes. Even though that bit of gray in the roots.

  Eeona walked around the car and eased her way into the driver’s seat. In the distance there was one white flag sticking out of a hole. It waved at Eeona and she decided she would aim for it. Crush it. But behind the wheel she seemed small and frail, like this machine would move her instead of the other way around. She furrowed her brow and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. There was not a sound. Not even a vexed skittering.

  “Pump the gas,” said Franky calmly, as if nothing out of the ordinary at all was happening. “A car is like a woman, yes. You have to be gentle with her.” He realized that that might not be the right metaphor for a woman driver, but then again. He’d been suspicious of Eeona. She’d never married after all, and as far as he knew, she’d never even been with a man. Perhaps she was one of those women who preferred women. “I taught Anette how to drive,” he said now. “I’ll teach Ronalda and Me and Frank, yes. Everyone thinks it’s impossible at first. But remember it’s like a woman. It can be moved.” He could tell from her face that this wasn’t, after all, the best thing to say. His metaphors were scarce.

  “No,” she replied. “What you are saying is not true.” It wasn’t clear what she meant. She tried again anyhow. Still nothing. Franky got out and walked around. He opened the door for her and let her out and then he sat in the driver’s seat and turned the car on easily.

  “We going practice turning on later,” he said. Then he scooted over to the passenger’s seat for her to take over. When she sat down, the car rumbled. She jerked at the wheel and the engine cut. He went back around and went through the same motions of turning the car on for her again. She sat down again in the driver’s seat. “The pedal, the clutch,” he said. “Soft-soft, yes-yes.”

  Eeona rested her foot on the one he said was the go and eased off the one he called the clutch. The car shut off.

  But Franky had been thinking of metaphors. “A car is a like a ship,” he said. “You have to ride it easy over the waves.” He looked at Eeona for approval.

  “I understand,” she said, staring out of the windshield and studying that white flag, the solitary stander on the green.

  “Yes, now try again. Gentle over the waves. Your Papa was a boatman, you’ll know like instinct how this is to be done.”

  “I know that I will never drive this car.”

  And she never did. The car never started for her. It never went for her. They tried again and again. They tried for days. Anette got into the Datsun and took it for a spin to the market. Even Ronalda, a child, could at least get it to start.

  The last mode of transport that Eeona had been able to direct was a stubborn burro named Nelson. No, she had not won out over the golf course. She had not outwon Kweku, a car driver who’d made her his powerless passenger. Some people would have taken this to mean they were destined to be pedestrian. Or destined to stay and be still and not wander, not be free. Given all the failures, Eeona would be forgiven for giving up.

  But Eeona is not some people.

  78.

  The house Franky built was on the lower part of Garden Street. But it was still in the prime area. Right there on Bred Gade step street. Not too far from the Crystal Palace and Villa Fairview. If you just walked to the top of the step street, you could have the high-class view Eeona would have killed to cling to. It was only a short walk from the Anglican church. When the house was finally built, Anette, full of her married respectability and her position as history teacher at the Anglican school, had the priest come and bless it. This wasn’t her mother’s actually Anglican Anglican priest, but an American Anglican who laughed loudly and spoke quietly of ordaining women.

  The day of the blessing was the last time anyone on island ever ate sea turtle, as the Americans had begun a conservation effort. Gertie’s engagement ring stood on her finger like a lighthouse, and, indeed, the man who had put it on her finger was the selfsame American who’d drunkenly driven her almost to the lighthouse so long ago. Hamilton chatted with the
priest as if they were kin back on the Continent.

  During the blessing, Eeona, who still lived in Savan, stood beside the priest with her body tight and straight. The priest, who was married, took a small step away from her when he bowed his head.

  Eeona didn’t notice. She was caught in considering that she had finally done her duty—overdone it, actually. Little sister Anette now had a house and some land. Anette had even resisted Esau in the end. Eeona’s freedom time must now, certainly, be coming. Either that or it would never come. So Eeona made no one privy to her thinking this time. Already she had taken a boat over to the island of St. John, where she’d quietly eyed some land.

  But this day of the blessing Franky unveiled his final domestic gift. It came in a box and it was heavy. He hauled it up the step street himself, from where it had been hiding in the back of his truck. He perspired in his suit as he heaved the box, for a home blessing was a suit occasion. Anette smiled and smiled and could not, despite her powers, figure out what this arrival could be. The children gaped just because it was a heavy box, though they could never have guessed what it was either.

  Hamilton whispered into Gertie’s ear knowingly. Gertie’s face opened with surprise.

  Eeona knew, as women who can make others worship them always know, that in the box was something that would gain as much attention as she ever had. It was something as dangerous as she had ever been. Franky rested the box down in front of the priest, took out his pocketknife, and sliced it open.