Drey confirm a few days later. He coming for a visit. He say he don’t know when the next time he’ll be able to take holiday ’cause he predicting another contract in April with the tree nursery and he say that will take him till September and in September he hope one of the secondary or primary schools will call. Drey say ever since he small he want to teach.
I book his ticket. In my head I find myself softening toward Sola. I don’t know why she never call. I could call too but I don’t. I think maybe I just too much for she. Sola have exams and she don’t need me calling, texting, messaging, distracting.
I think of Dolma’s invite and show up a week later. I show up on the first day of snow. Snow heaving from sky in slow motion. First time I experience snow when Hurricane Ivan rip through Small Island causing Mom, Fabian and me to stay where we were, on Big Island. We miss the hurricane. We at the airport when all flights cancelled to Small Island. We the lucky ones, only our roof come off. Fabian find it on top the hill behind the house. Majority houses in the Village fall down. Right down to the ground. Ninety-five percent of the island fall: churches, hospitals, schools, even the prison fall down. We hear stories of prisoners running for safety when the first piece of roof come off. When radio work again we hear they make announcement telling prisoners to stay where they are till prison build back. When they ready for them radio call them back. Prisoners come back easy. They say the men come back ’cause they tired lining up for food and water.
I hear in Town you could hear, “Yo yo yo yo!” like fireworks popping in the night. Youth men calling each other when opportunities arise. People walking away with a whole set of free stuff from buildings split wide open. We hear it not just the youth men either. A whole set of people grabbing. Mom saying to Fabian, “If we were there maybe we’d be grabbing too. That’s what fear does, makes you do things you might not ordinarily do.”
Fabian give her one big, “We? You sure Pauline?”
Fabian stay another ten days on Big Island waiting for Small Island airport to re-open. Mom and me stay behind. “What sense does it make,” Fabian tell Mom, “You’d just be taking up space in the shelter and food from the line. Your sister already say you can stay here.”
Fabian go back to build back our roof, secure what belongings remain in the house and help rebuild community. We stay in the small cabin Mom given by a friend long time ago. I never hear of anyone giving someone a house as a gift but that’s what Mom say when we stay there after the hurricane hit. I remember wanting to meet this rich woman who give she friends houses for presents. I recently find a picture of Aunt Rachel, Mom and the woman who gift the house to Mom. I show Aunt Rachel and she spit out she name, Margaret, like she spitting a stone she find stuck in she tooth. Aunt Rachel say Mom tried to give the cabin back but Margaret won’t take it. Aunt Rachel don’t say much more.
The house a two-room cabin with a woodstove in the middle of the kitchen. The bedroom cold but the mountain of blankets and quilts on each bed and the extras on shelves give a feeling of warmth. The cabin sit high on a hill where seagulls fly eye level and whales roll across the horizon sometimes. The first morning after dropping Fabian at the airport, I wake up to Mom shouting, “Judith wake up. Judith come quick!”
I fly from bed to find Mom on the edge of the veranda pointing to the sea, “Look Judith, whales. Look two of them. You see them?”
Two massive steel-grey bodies roll through the water, disappear and then ripple up and over again. Two slow-moving arches. Mom quiet like she praying. The next day snow. People say in all their lives they never see snow fall so early. Even though it didn’t last it still come down and get me thinking about whales travelling north to south, make me think about whales journeying into mad tropical storms.
I think about bringing Sola to the cabin.
Snow keep flying through the air while I walk and think about Mom. I almost miss Sola’s street ’cause the whole world buried in snow and me alone moving through empty streets the eve after Christmas. I have to shade my eyes to look up make sure I going the right way. While knocking on the apartment door a miniature flurry fall from my shoulders and arms.
Dolma open the door and say, “Judith, what you doing walking around in a snowstorm? You mad or what? Sola. Look who bringing us a piece of the storm?”
Sola stand at her bedroom door watching me peel my jacket and flick off my boots, another layer of snow soak up the hallway.
“That’s okay girl. That’s just snow. It’ll dry,” Dolma say.
I watch from the corner of my eye Sola step back into she room.
“Sola where you? Look Judith here,” Dolma say.
“I hear you,” she say.
“Hey,” I say with a smile, hoping “hey” and a smile erase the long stretch of time between us, the phone call about Jared, the vex thoughts I having ’cause she not checking to see if I’m ok over the past weeks. When my mind settle I feel a familiar ache in my throat, then ache run down the sides of my legs lined with old and new bruises.
“I wanted to call you but exams had me tied up,” Sola say. She shuts the bedroom door behind us, settling on a stool while I sit on she bed.
“Whatever. No worries,” I say in a not-so-believable tone. “So what say? Still have headaches? Did you tell Dolma or Shy about the concussion?”
She laugh.
“What so funny?”
“If I told Dolma, she’d send an ambulance for me.”
“What about the headaches?”
“They come and go. If I stand up too fast all I want to do is sit back down. I’m thinking maybe the knock might be the reason I screwed up my exams. What about yours?”
“Mine? They okay.” I bend down to pull up my wool socks. I pull them over my pant hem.
“Just okay? You think you passed all of them?”
“Don’t know.”
“Why you acting all strange?”
“I quit.”
“Right.”
I pull the socks up again.
“You really quit?”
“Yes, I really quit and keep your voice down. I haven’t told anyone.”
Then Sola go on and on about why the ass I quit school and how she don’t understand ’cause she know I on Big Island just for that purpose. She still don’t understand I only on Big Island ’cause everyone expecting something from me, something I don’t even want. She then asking me what I want and I trying to tell she but she not listening. I try and make a joke, tell she I want to go home so I can make babies and keep house for a man but she not laughing. And then when I try and be serious and say I want to start some kind of small business, plant a garden, try my hand at making some kind of craft she just watch me and start to preach some more, telling me I need to focus more, that I too easy to quit when things get hard, that I need to apply myself, make up my mind and just push through. She say, not everything easy. Then she ask if I don’t remember the girl from Afghanistan who get a bullet in she head for fighting for the rights of girls to go to school. As if this has anything to do with me. I don’t say anything. I just listen. When she through we sit in silence. I can feel the bruises bubbling on my thighs, feel my throat tightening, feel a dull throb in my head.
Outside in the living room Dolma put on some Christmas soca and we hear she voice reaching from under the door singing, “Santa looking for a wife. Santa looking for a wife. Santa looking for a wife from the small islands.” Then we hear over the music Dolma say, “What Sola, you keeping Judith all for yourself? We have a whole set of food left over and a whole fridge full of sorrel, ginger beer and malt. Judith you want mauby? Shy where is you? Why everyone hiding in separate rooms? It’s the holidays.”
Sola and I look at each other and laugh. Sola tell me to go ahead. Before I leave she room I see she reach for the Advil, shake two out and swallow them dry.
When I walk into the living room Dolma sitting with
a bowl of food balancing on she knees asking someone to strain the ginger beer and get she a glass of sorrel. I see Shy step out of his room too, he telling Dolma to change the music and put some nice holiday reggae on. He smiling at me while telling me to try some black cake and a glass of sorrel. I inhale the Christmas vibe with Sola, Shy and Dolma. I know when I leave them I’ll feel the same kind of loneliness I feel since all the shit happen with Jared. But then I think of Drey and know he coming in a month. I also ask Sola if she’ll come with me to the cabin before she leave for school and she say yes.
SOLA
I AGREE TO GO with Judith to her mother’s cabin for the day. We go on a Saturday, a day when bitter cold twists itself around trees frozen still, mailboxes carry hard-coated snow on their rectangular heads, houses peep behind thick icicle lashes and an azure blue sky gives an illusion of warmth. Judith shows up at 8:00 in the morning just like she said. By the time we leave the city the sun is igniting tiny glittering jewels spread across farmers’ fields. Judith says she doesn’t mind the cold, even though the scar on her face says otherwise. The scar turns red, then purple. I can see where the stitches crisscross like bird prints on snow.
I never did tell her I was at the hospital the same day she was. After she left that weekend I forgot and then the whole ordeal with Jared and me taking time to steady myself so I could write exams. I don’t feel much like talking. And Judith should be concentrating on the road, not listening to me tell her I saw her before she saw me in this world. I never knew Judith could drive. She says she learned on Small Island. Her father taught her. When she spins onto the highway, she says it’s her first time driving on one.
“Damn Judith slow down.”
“The road is clear. No one’s around.”
“Just take your time. We have the whole day.”
“Aunt Rachel say the only way to drive on highway is non-apologetically.”
“Well who do you feel you have to not apologize to?” I give up. She is in one kind of happy mood. Like dropping out of school is a reason to rejoice. And who am I to bust up her good mood when all I feel is cold, tired, still pissed at the exams and fearful of the bad feelings that keep appearing out of nowhere, squeezing my lungs and making me feel like I’m having a heart attack. I went to see the doctor and she said it sounded like I was experiencing anxiety. Panic attacks. She asked if I had any trauma in my life. I didn’t consider a knock to the head trauma so I didn’t tell her about the concussion. She recommended anti-depressants. I threw the prescription away. I’m already taking way too many Advil.
We arrive an hour and a half later. Off the old highway we pull onto a narrow country road and continue for about a kilometre. Tires squelch and crunch on hard-packed tracks from vehicles that must have passed earlier after the road was plowed. We stop where the road ends and where the sea spreads thick and slow moving. Judith is right, the cabin looks like it is balancing, floating on top the sea. Judith tells me to stay in the car until she starts the fire. I’ve been on Big Island longer than her and she wants me to stay in the car. I tell her to stop showing off and she laughs.
She points to a pair of snowshoes hanging on the wall and says we are going onto the fields with those. I say she is mad. I say I am staying put in front of the fire she just made. But just like the roller coaster she pleads and I follow. I follow her down the hill with those stupid shoes strapped to my boots leaving behind strange chaotic tracks and a fire just getting warm. Judith says she’s only snow-shoed once before when she was small. She says it’s easy, just walk she says don’t think just walk one foot then the next foot. Looks like she’s been carrying those webbed baskets on her feet for a lifetime, trudging forward. I am surprised I keep up with her.
Before leaving the house, Judith pulls from the shelves a pile of Aunt Rachel’s sweaters. “This colour is you,” she says, throwing me a bright-orange turtleneck. “And what about this?” She tosses me a buttery-yellow down vest. “Put them both on.” Judith’s fingers on my neck pulling up the collar. The back of her hand resting on my skin. She says I feel warm. Her hand goes to my cheek and then my forehead. A soft tingling up my spine. “Nutmeg eyes,” she says.
I breathe deep the pleasure of her hands, her words. I know she has no intention but I want her to kiss me again. I want something other than what we have. I want something more.
We step out into the cold, both of us cocooned in layers, into the rural winter morning, quiet with the exception of the wind whistling and the sea below whispering in loud hushed ripples. We carry our snowshoes under each arm and walk up the road a bit until we come to an opening to the field. We put on our shoes without unravelling our tightly wrapped mouths. Judith helps me in silence. I get the hang of walking with webbed feet easily and relax into the steady crunch and pop of snow beneath my feet. I let my scarf fall from my mouth and inhale a gulp of sea and wind. The cold, a sharp sting through my nose and throat, and I feel it swirl around my heart; a heart feeling steady and calm on this day. I don’t know why I choose that moment to ask her about Jared but I do. I ask her if she is still seeing him. And she says, “So you think I mad Sola? You think I’d call you and say I think the man rape me and then keep seeing him?” She says she doesn’t want to talk about it. But I keep on.
“So how do you think the man raped you?” I ask, hearing judgment drop from my mouth.
“Watch Sola didn’t I say I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I am just trying to understand.”
“Well that don’t sound like you trying to understand that sound like you understand already. And why you trying now?”
My mind walks backwards to the night she called. The night before I caught the first full-on spell that had me gulping air faster than I could breathe, had me walking up and down the exam halls begging for a rewrite, afraid when the next one might take me. I don’t tell Judith any of this. Instead I say, “Okay Judith.” And listen to the pop of the snow as our feet bust through the hard-packed field.
Judith says she wants to go back to the cabin just when I am getting warmed up underneath all those layers, getting used to the sting of cold on my cheeks, the stillness of blue sky and crunch, crunch, crunch of our webbed feet marching. She’s turning around and as always there I am following. Judith’s silence busting into the stillness like the steely grey sea below.
By the woodstove, her mood makes another turn, like she is thinking of ways to recover the lightness. “Drey coming,” she says.
“What?”
“Drey coming end of February.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I asked him to.”
“February? Why?”
She watches me like I should know. But I don’t. And I don’t think she knows either.
We drive home in a silence thicker than the snow piling up on the sides of the road until the car starts to swerve and then skate across the highway. In the middle of thick silence is my voice, “Judith slow down.”
She tries with her foot flat down on the brakes but this makes us spin and twirl into the middle of the damn highway and me yelling “fuck.” By the time the car swings into its last slow stop we are completely off the highway and on the opposite side. The front end of the car faces the few oncoming vehicles. Horns blowing and no one stopping. When I look over at Judith, she’s got her forehead on the steering wheel bawling.
“Judith,” I say. “We’re okay. We’re still alive girl.”
But she keeps sobbing and wiping her nose with a lime-green mitten she found in between the seats. She sits a while trying to control her tears and there I am pleading for her to start the car and get onto the right side of the highway. It takes a few turns of the ignition before the car clicks into movement. Judith is still unable to control her sobs.
I say, “Let’s go man there is nothing coming just pull out and swing back. The road is clear. You’re okay.” If I knew how to drive I would pu
ll her out of the driver’s seat and lead her to the passenger’s side. But I’ve never had an interest in driving even when Shy begged me to learn.
Judith pulls the car forward and swings slowly around. When we are back in the right direction she is still wiping her face with the damn mitten.
“Judith it’s okay,” I keep saying. “What happened to you? We’re fine. Pull over at the next gas station. We can get a tea.”
But she just keeps driving and crying until she drops me home.
JUDITH
THE DAY AT THE cabin with Sola was a bomb. And not the good kinda bomb, like “you the bomb” we use back home to describe someone when they real in control of a situation. Not that kinda bomb. I talking the bomb that mash up everything.
My original plan to hang with Sola much simpler and stress free than what happen. I envision quiet and cool, heading out onto fields with our snowshoes, then hanging by the fire. I hope to share memories of Mom, share more of my life back on Small Island while we warm ourselves. I imagine Sola and I coming back to the cabin eating the bakes Sola bring and making cocoa tea. I imagine this the perfect place to tell Sola what happen to Mom. I want to show Sola Mom’s place. She space. I want Sola to feel Mom just by being there. I want to say, “Sola look right here that’s Pauline’s art,” and show she the spirit masks Mom brought to Big Island. “And look over there Sola on the wall by the bathroom, a woman dancing, white dress, leg in the air, arms stretched to the sky. And over there a large calabash with stones and sea glass and tiny pieces of folded paper with one-word prayers. Silence. Wonder. Practice. Justice. Empathy. Love. Compassion. Illusion.” I hadn’t unfolded and folded those since I was a kid.
But before any of this happen, Sola ask me about Jared. We in the middle of a field being whipped by cold. My forehead burning like I eat too much ice too fast. My eyelashes frozen. I fraid to blink. But then how else to keep out the wind. I tuck my head into my chest and zip my jacket so my mouth cover and I can feel tiny spurts of warm air. This is no-joke weather. Living in this place like living in a goddamn freezer but worse ’cause there no wind in a freezer. Why would anyone want to live here? It was under these circumstances Sola ask me a question that make me unravel the small piece of heat I create with my scarf so I can listen to she ask if I still seeing Jared. I can’t fucking believe I expose my ears, my mouth, my neck, to hear and respond to such stupidness.
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