Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel

by Tiphanie Yanique

  Because gas scarce since the hurricane, I walking. But I still get lost in Frenchtown, because I ain never spend even a minute in this place since I walk out of it thirty-odd years ago. Never gone there to buy fish. Never visit a friend there. Never even study a ball game they does have in Frenchtown field. But now I walking back in it, like backward into childhood. I opening my eye big to see if I recognize anything, to see if I get a memory feeling. But that house we used to live in was big. Like a abby or a mansion, and it was down a long dark dirt road. And nothing I seeing here seem like that. So maybe Eeona tell the truth. That it get break down or burn down or whatever. I there in Frenchtown and I wondering if I belong. But I going feel like a jackass asking somebody where my old house is. So instead, I ask a Frenchy fellow for the restaurant. The man suck he teeth but give me precise directions. “If you looking work,” he say. “They hiring, but not island people like you and me.”

  The restaurant was called Hibiscus Hotel. I, for one, had never heard of it. A stupid name, you hear, but that’s what Americans always doing. Naming things after island things that don’t make no sense. Who want a hotel that sound like it fill with hibiscus? That’s the kind of flower close up and dead when nighttime come. That’s what you want people thinking when they fall asleep? But Hibiscus Hotel wasn’t make for we. Is one of those places only the white people used to go before the storm. But afterward it come a place that any well-off people go because the left-behind white people alone couldn’t fill it.

  Watch me. I wear a red dress. Not the one I wear to that foolish moviemaking so long ago. That one done gone. But red always make me feel strong around Jacob. Is true that I want Jacob to desire me, but is really that I want to be toughlike and in control. Is a witch thing.

  When I make a turn by the bay, I see the restaurant that must have been a great house back in slavery days. I start walking up the road and is only then I realize that by walking I feeling stupidee in this too-nice dress, walking on this crumbly old road. But then I hold my back stiff, like I does see my sister do, and that alone make me feel pride enough to keep walking, even when I see the tall sandman there at the steps waiting for me like is our house and I coming home to he.

  He reach he hand to help and we walk up the steps. Jacob press against me as he guide me by the elbow. He always been like that. A stray hair in my face, he never fail to finger it away. My bra strap showing? He never let that opportunity pass. Franky would just say, “Anette, your blouse.” Leave the adjustment to me. Ronnie? He would have look away, too polite to stake any claim.

  Now, when we there at the table, I ain realize at first that Jacob for real pulling out the chair for me. This is something Franky ain never do for me because Franky ain been trained that way. But it feel correct and I feel like I could be Jacob wife, maybe. And then a more funny feeling, I feel like I is Jacob wife. As though it been me and he all this time.

  It have a single red rose standing at attention in a glass vial. It have three menus and two of them was there in front of him. He open the skinny one as though this wasn’t meant to be a meeting. An important meeting about our daughter. Beneath the table he reach his hand to my knee. “The wine selection here is the best on the island,” he say.

  So. He know the place. And he know the wine. And this place have actual wine, despite people on island who don’t have actual water. Imagine.

  “You grew up around here,” he say, as though he feeling my critical feeling.

  “Not so,” I say. “Just born here. We had a house. A villa. Gone, I guess.”

  When the waiter come, Jacob order a wine with a fancy French name. Then he ask the waiter if he know about any villas around here.

  “No, sir. I’m from Connecticut.” Then the waiter bow like he is a squire and we in a castle. Then he run ’way.

  Jacob now slide the rose out from the vase. He reach across the earth of the table and fasten it behind my ear. “A flower for you,” he say. And I wondering if it had been a good idea to wear a red dress after all. It working too good, but I ain sure if it making me strong or weak. “I wanted to bring flowers the other night when I came for Eve,” he say. “But I just didn’t think it would have been correct, given . . .” But he didn’t say given what. He left it there.

  I try to think now on Franky, because that’s the correct thing to do. I think on how I tell Franky I going to the doctor to talk about Youme, and Franky look at me with his face reflecting this red dress and he just nod and say, “Don’t stay long.” And I nod back. And then when I turn to leave I feel he eyes in my back like teeth.

  But here I is. Not in no doctor office. The office mash up in the hurricane, so Jacob say. But I ain tell Franky that. Besides doctor office have bed and thing for patients to lie down on and door that close for privacy. If Franky knew the whole story, he would rather we here then there any which way. Now I watch Jacob sniff he glass of wine and slosh it around on he tongue before allowing the waiter to pour a little into my glass. Jacob raise his glass to chink mine, but instead of saying “Toast,” like I know is the proper thing to do when you raise a wineglass, he say, “To family.” And we stare at each other like our eyes have a cord tight between them.

  And now I remember Jacob lowering his mouth and nose to me, like I was a flower. But before I could keep going on that thinking—“Good evening!” Is a white man with his face flush like he just come from doing hard work. “I’m the owner of Hibiscus. I hear you’ve been asking about our history.” Which we hadn’t. And now I wonder if we do something wrong by harassing the know-nothing waiter. “This wonderful property was indeed a villa. We’ve gotten so many questions about that since the storm. No one ever asked before. Yes, well. When we bought this, it was called Villa Antoinette. Yes! A fine lady in her time. So I’m told. Before that, it was called Villa by the Sea. We almost returned to that name. But the locals, you know, the Frenchies, they said that would bring a jumbie to haunt us! I don’t believe in those things. But I do respect local customs. We’ve even retained some of the original staff. The groundskeeper is authentic. To be honest with you, my friends, the groundskeeper came with the place. He refused to leave. A kind of loyalty . . .”

  All this the man was saying as me and Jacob there staring at him. “Excuse me,” I say, before he could keep on going. The man pause, but I don’t say nothing else. So he just look at we and then say, “Well, yes. I’ll send the server right over.”

  When he skip away, I stay quiet.

  Jacob look at me and smile, something gentle and worried. “Villa Antoinette,” he say like it just a pretty name. “Like Villa Anette. Imagine if this was your villa . . .” But just then the waiter come again. He ain have no pad and paper in his hand. But he start pouring the specials over us in detailed detail. Garnish with basil, he say. Over a bed of baby spinach, he say. My mind can’t focus. I don’t want to look up from this table. I don’t want to look around. I mean, really, Jesus? Give me a break. My daughter ill. There been a hurricane. Is only so much a woman want to suffer at once.

  I take a few sips of wine, a thing I don’t drink ever, because I know. I know what going on. This my house. This the house I born in. This the place I supposed to belong. It ain burn down. It ain get wash away.

  “What are you having, Nettie?” Jacob ask me.

  And nobody don’t call me that. Nobody but him. Is a kind of voodoo he putting on me and I don’t have strength to do magic back on him. I feel tears behind my face. I would really be good with just some conch in butter sauce, but that ain on the menu. Jacob order some fancy fish pan crust or pot crust or something. So I say, “Same,” because I can’t say more. But before the food could come, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom.

  I don’t have to pee or replenish my lipstick. I just want a minute to arrange myself into a proper married lady, because it feeling like I forgetting who wife I really is and what life this really is. Because I feeling scared and sad and sexy and a whole heap of s word and it all mix up like I was meant to belong to
this place and maybe if that was so, maybe I would never have almost get send to a orphanage and end up nearly dead and then marry Ronnie and Jacob mother would not have protest about he marrying a poor divorcée from Savan and Jacob would have married me and maybe I would know how to spit my wine back in a glass and make a proper toast and then nobody would ever tell me to get off a beach anywhere on this island and then maybe my life would have been something simple and sweet. I now walking away from Jacob and I have a feeling like my chest steady filling with dirt.

  I walk to the restrooms up a towering staircase. I trying not to look at anything else. I can’t deal with anything else. At the top there a room of couches and a rocking chair in the corner, a huge orchid display on the center table that I can’t miss even though I ain looking. The room open and welcoming like a mouth. And there is nothing at all familiar about it. Good. I settle a little. Maybe the white man wrong. What he know about we island? Nothing. The restrooms down two corridors, like tonsils. And there is a huge balcony spreading out toward the sea behind some lock-up glass doors with MEMBERS AND GUESTS ONLY write in large fanciness. It have tables and chairs out there, made of wrought iron. I need to sit down.

  I go to one of the couches and that’s when I see the old yellow-gray-hair man with thick yellow-brown skin. He hanging on his old broom like he just taking a rest from sweeping. He a Frenchtown man, but he seem familiar and I ’fraid of that familiarity. I feeling a bad way again, like I getting swallow up. But he just gesticulate with his chin toward the picture on the wall of a young man hauling in a fishing boat. “That’s me,” he say as if I had ask he something. Is then I see that the whole wall have pictures.

  “Hmmm,” is all I say. Go away, is what I thinking. Then a woman’s heels click-click behind us, the sound disappearing down the restroom hallway like going down a hard throat.

  “That’s me, just coming in at dawn, fishing since four a.m.” He point the handle end of his broom from the picture to the real ocean beyond the Members and Guests balcony. “Same place you in now.” He look at me square like is only now he realize he ain been talking to he self. “I’m Hippolyte Lammartine. You call me Mr. Lyte. That there is Madame Antoinette Stemme Bradshaw.” He point to a picture. “You don’t know that story?”

  Of course I motherscunting know. She the milky picture Eeona insist I hang up in my living room. Though the picture I have ain look like the picture on this here wall. The one in me and Franky house is of young and lovely Antoinette, sitting with her back straight in a long skirt beside our father. He handsome as can be. But the picture I seeing here is of a woman a little older. Standing next to she is a girl so beautiful that even I know she must be a soucouyant. In this Antoinette lap is a baby, sitting like a little ugly dollie. Rounding the baby’s face is a bonnet with brocade so elaborate it want to be a sunflower. The ugly baby look back at me from the picture like it can’t believe what it seeing.

  “I’m a history teacher,” I say, clear like I teaching even now. “I know all the stories.” But I feeling the baby staring at my face. Now I get the feeling like when you hot and you drink cold water. You feel the thing spread in you.

  “People lived where you standing,” said Mr. Lyte.

  “I know that already,” I say. But what I really want to say is “Shut your ass.” I have other things going on just now. I can’t do this. Christ, who send me to Frenchtown? I avoid this place all my life. Is Jacob fault. Is this thing with me and Jacob. It ain right.

  “I ain talking about the tourist or the hotel owners.” Mr. Lyte cinch his face into a crease. His eyes narrow. “I talking ’bout the people who this place belong to long ago.”

  “It ain my business,” I say. Though I know I lying.

  But the old Frenchy man breathe heavy and sit down in the old-old rocking chair. Is then I wonder if I know him. If he know me? From when I was little? The rocking chair have intricate swirls that mimic lace. Is the kind of rocker I could tell ain need a cushion to be comfortable. He let it rock. He begin to tell his tale. I can’t walk away just then. Even if I want to. But you know the truth. I ain want to. Despite my fraidy-fraidy self, I want to know. This is my history and is a historian I is, after all.

  He point to the too-pretty girl in the picture. “He Own Her. That’s the elder daughter. He Own Her because the father hold the girl first. And the father leave the mother right there after she give birth and take the girl romping all about before she even get her first milk. He clean she when she pass her first stool. No father in the world ever do that before, so of course the girl going have a problem, of course she going have something different about she. You get my meaning? He ask too much of the girl. He Own Her turn out witchy.”

  Mr. Lyte rest his broom to the wood floor like putting a beloved to bed. When I catch myself, I realize I want to lie down, too. “He Own Her, hey?” I pluck a piece of petal and rub it between my fingers. It become smooth and oily. And it come to me like my own words make it so: He Own Her. Eeona.

  Mr. Lyte just keep flowing. “They say she still alive and she still amazing beautiful. She still have hair like the ocean. Papa and daughter would sneak to he ship at night. Swim naked in the ocean.” Lyte point to a picture of the sea. “So the girl grow up. And she a witch already. Even she red baby sister is something. The baby learn how to swim before it could even eat proper food. I was there. I know for certain.”

  I put my hand to my hair. I been painting it black since before Ronalda born. And swim? But Jacob teach me how to swim. But then Mr. Lyte say something that make me forget myself.

  “You see where the Inner Wheel does have brunch meetings now.” He point to the balcony with his lips. “The Papa and eldest child used to go there and make glowing love like angels, though this ain holy at all.” He sucked his teeth. “If your daughter lovely, you should know it, so you can fend off bad man, but you ain supposed to be the bad man—”

  “Wait, wait, wait, wait,” I say because I can’t say more. “Wait a frigging minute.”

  “—but Bradshaw fighting that feeling and so decide to get a side thing.”

  “I ain want to hear this foolishness at all.”

  “But you must. Because Captain Bradshaw and he side woman make a boy child that look like a handful of sand. He name Jacob Esau. He passing for McKenzie.” Mr. Lyte nod gravely like he know he telling me something that is the worse, really the worserest, thing he could.

  Now see me. A fist of orchid petals bleeding in my hands. I raise back my hand and swing at the man to slice open he lip and shut he scunt up. He old but he sway away and then hold my hands with a gentle grip. “But wait. I just catch who you is. Anette Bradshaw, I know you from small.”

  Lyte release my wrists and I stay there like I roped in. Captain Bradshaw is my father. Like this story hook me. Same Bradshaw is Jacob Esau father. And I know is just now I going to get haul into where I can’t breathe. Jacob Esau is Jacob.

  But Mr. Lyte give me a calm look, like he reassuring me. “Sorry, child. But that’s the story. We who from here need to know, even if it ain nice.”

  I stand. Finally, I move. I breathing heavy-heavy, like I fighting for the air. That’s how it feel inside. I open my hand and let the petals fall silently to the ground, the mess of their guts sticking to my palms. My life just get ruin. Everything I love just get make a sin. Something coming like a wave and is to drown me this time.

  91.

  ANETTE

  When I leave that Hibiscus Hotel I ain even stop to alert the sandman. I run out like I on fire. In school they used to say you could chant the Twenty-third Psalm when you was afraid. But what about when the fear-thing is a life-love with a sand-colored man sitting downstairs waiting for you to come eat fancy food? But what about when the fear-thing is inside you? So all I doing when I stumbling out of Frenchtown is saying what I remember of that psalm again and again. “Our ocean runs over. Though I walk through the valley and the waters, I fear nothing. You comfort me. You prepare me. Only beauty shall foll
ow me.” I running and hugging myself, my own arms like they trying to carry me away.

  Just so praying I find myself all the long way home to the house that Franky build.

  When I reach, I jump to the phone like it a child crying. I call my sister. The phone working even though we still don’t have electricity. I want to ask my sister about what I just hear. I want Eeona to tell me what is true. I want to ask what to do with Eve Youme, because I know Eeona know something more than she letting on. Is she first tell me Jacob was Esau. I want to ask what to do with myself. I know Eeona ain want to talk, I called umpteen times already, but I going to force a conversation tonight.

  I get Eeona housekeeper on the phone.

  “Mada left, miss.”

  “What you mean mother left?”

  “She gone.”

  “What you mean ‘gone’?”

  “I mean that Mada Eeona ain here at all.”

  “When mother coming back?”

  “I don’t know, miss. She ain pack. And usually it does take she days to pack even if she just going by you in St. Thomas.”

  “Well, how you know she gone, then? Call out. She must be there. I can’t take this stupidness now. Tell she is a emergency.”

  “Well, she leave a note. I have it here. It saying she ain coming back soon. Actually, miss, I hate to tell you over the phone, but it saying she ain coming back for a long time.”

  “It say that?”

  “Not exactly, miss. It say, ‘I am more wild than Mama.’ That’s what it say.”

  “What kind of stupidness? It ain she they does call mother? Who mama she talking about?”