Big Island, Small

by Maureen St. Clair

  “You want to fill your bucket in here my friend?”

  Behind his house a water tank. And then, “Why you looking like someone dead? Someone dead? Come nah fix that pretty face and come have a cold drink while I fill up those bottles.” Mr. Robbie calling me in his mixed up Yankee/dialect.

  The first time I hear his voice it feels cool and soft like ice cream, “You the prettiest thing walking down the Bay this morning.” His voice like those voices on TV, those fathers who run behind their kids as they push them off pedalling bicycles for the first time, fathers hugging up their girls and boys, fathers in bed with storybooks perched on their stretched-out legs, kids on each side.

  I never understood why Mr. Robbie stayed when his wife and kids left him to go back to the land of their origin, Big Island. There was a time when I thought he chose to stay on Small Island because of me, maybe he thought I was nicer, prettier than his mixed-up race kids and his wife, who everyone knew bossed him around like he was the woman and she the man. He must have been in his forties. I remember him before his wife and daughters left. I remember him as the beloved doctor in Town, the one everyone flocked to instead of the local doctors. Mr. Jessamy often said, “We Small Island people trust people from away more than we trust ourselves.”

  I ducked into the narrow path between his croton and bamboo fence. I glanced around to see if anyone was looking. Mr. Robbie said he would wash out the Coke stain that splashed a tiny map of Africa on my school uniform. I knew if I arrived home with a stain on my dress Ma Tay would want to know where it came from and that would lead to a whole set of questions and lies and I hated lying. Mr. Robbie said I better take my dress and shirt off so he could scrub out the stain. He said he didn’t mind. He missed washing his daughter’s clothes. I found this hard to believe because I never knew any man to wash clothes. While slipping out of my dress I felt embarrassed for stupid old Mr. Robbie for having to wash clothes like a woman. Perhaps this is why his wife left him I thought.

  “You might as well take off your school shirt ’cause look it stained too.” Mr. Robbie snapped, “Come nah let’s do this fast before we lose the sun and your people wondering where you are!” The crack snap of his voice made me jump out of my uniform and shirt, leaving my arms wrapped tight around my vest. He moved to the sink and reached for the blue soap. He poured a small amount of water on the stain and rubbed the soap with the same ease I watched countless women do. He was careful not to wet the whole dress just the stain. He did the same for the shirt. He hung them out the back window where the sun hit the hardest. “That should take ten minutes tops.” He planted himself on the bench beside me. “You have breasts already girl. You beautiful for real.”

  I couldn’t stop the warmth moving from my toes to my belly.

  “How you get so beautiful so fast? Most girls your age don’t start to find their beauty until they’re older. But not you man, you pretty all the way through.” He touched me on the side of the cheek, the warmth travelling into the corners of my knees.

  Nobody told me about these feelings, the ones settling soft between my legs. Once when I was living with Thompson he told me to go wash myself. He said, “Go bathe nah! I can smell you from here. You need to soap up your salt fish when you bathe.” I didn’t know what he was talking about until I saw him watching below my belly and I connected this with the sweet salty fragrance I loved to smell on my fingers after touching myself. I hated when Thompson’s lady friend boiled the cod before making fishcakes. The smell made me feel sick. Ma Tay chipped up the salt fish after soaking it overnight. She never boiled it. I washed with more soap than needed that morning trying to wash away the nasty smell of boiled cod between my legs.

  The same day Mr. Robbie washed the Coke stain out of my school dress he tried to touch me there. I closed my legs tight and kept sipping my drink. He rubbed his hand up and down my legs saying I had the nicest brown skin, brown like the chocolates from the fancy shop in Town. “I bet they taste like chocolate too.” That’s when he kissed me.

  I told him I had to go and jumped up.

  He gathered my clothes from the window. I put them on like I was late for school and walked out the door. I was sure his neighbour up the hill saw me.

  Mikey found me a few weeks later. “Mikey he didn’t do me nothing I swear.” But I could still feel his cracked burnt lips brushing the surface of my cheek, his scratchy uneven palms sliding up my legs. “I swear Mikey he just give me a Coke.”

  Mikey looked at me like he was looking into the pit of a latrine. We walked the back road home knowing there was bound to be someone somewhere watching. After being found by Mikey it felt like people were talking about me but nobody was saying anything. Mikey watched me funny like there was a strange smell in the air. I washed between my legs twice, sometimes three times a day. Ma Tay said there must be a mouse in the house licking up the soap because she couldn’t understand how it shrank so fast.

  I wish I could say I never went back to Mr. Robbie’s, but I can’t because I did. After a week of silence from Mikey I went back. I stuck to the side of the old mango tree bordering the back road and peeped into the yard while walking past. I caught a glimpse of windows and a door boarded with sheets of ply. A week later Ma Tay told me I was going to meet my mother in the big world.

  The water spills over my shoes and reaches up through the sand underneath where I sit. I spring up when a next small wave threatens to soak my jeans and sneakers. My teeth clacking, my hands and feet waving and stomping trying to get warmth back into my limbs. The clouds swallow up the possibility of moon or starlight. I pace in the clear spaces farther up, bordering rocks and marshland. My hands and arms exhausted from slapping rhythms into stones warding off bears. My heart beating faster than the stones. My throat burning from swallowing the acid in my stomach. I stand up and start singing. I sing first the Jesus songs I learned from primary school then old reggae Sunday tunes then I hum the bald-headed Rasta woman’s renditions of “Throw Down Your Arms” and “Downpressor Man” — where you going to run to but I know he run already and I know I’m still running.

  I make noise that breaks through the night sounding like an animal, a dog at the end of a rope howling for freedom. I sob into the dark morning waiting for the light to rise.

  JUDITH

  SOLA CLIMBING BEACH STAIRS, stumbling over shoes untied, socks in hand, ashen skin and eyes like she never sleep in years. I jump up and spill my tea, “Where were you? You out the whole night? On the beach?”

  “Not intentionally,” she say.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I walked until the sun disappeared without realizing I was way beyond the rocks and there was no way I was going to make my way back in that kind of darkness.”

  She shaking. I grab sleeping bag from couch and wrap it around she. I go for my wool socks and pull the rocking chair from the cabin and place where sun about to touch. I give she my tea.

  “Why’d you kiss me?” she say.

  Just like that. She spend whole night alone in the dark on the beach and she come up and ask me why I kiss she. Elbows resting on she legs, mug between hands. She look to the water. I hear she breath on the inhale. I become an unexpected silence. A pause that never go anywhere till she take the last sip of she tea and walk inside.

  “Sola,” I say.

  But once again she gone. She gone into the bedroom and she shut the door not with a bang but with a quiet resignation.

  I don’t know why I think Sola come home ’cause I up a good part of the night and she never come home. I think maybe she sitting somewhere close outside waiting till I sleep. I can’t believe she on the beach the whole night, out on the sea shore trapped by darkness. If I knew I’d be on the shoreline with a light looking for she. But instead I in my head thinking about Mom and the accident, stories I never knew, stories Margaret tell me the past couple nights. I wish I could follow Sola into the house, into the
bedroom and say why I kiss she but I can’t ’cause I don’t know. I just know I kiss she and it felt nice.

  Sola in bed for the rest of the morning while I rocking with the morning coolness, the spring sun disappear behind clouds then bust out in all its glory. I rock back and forth, back and forth, back and forth thinking about Sola’s question. I wish I say ’cause you Small Island and I want Small Island to love me; I wish I say ’cause I lonely, lonely for home, for Mom, for love; I wish I say she Melina on the back step, Melina who went to school without she tie in solidarity for me; I wish I say she Drey and we kissing up against that boat; I wish I say I desperate for Small Island to kiss me, to love, accept, affirm, acknowledge me. I wish I say, “I kissed you ’cause I love you.” The rocking chair get lighter and lighter as I rock and think these thoughts. I think of Mom, Margaret’s stories of Mom longing, longing for more. Why not? Why not long for love from those around you?

  I start to talk to Sola in my head. “Why you take off so fast? Why you run away? I thinking I disgust you with my Big Island ways. That’s what people say I more Big than Small and I think you thinking the same.”

  “Sola.” I rock she name back and forth and talk even though she sleeping inside. There always a sadness to you. Why? Why do I ignore the hurt I see in you? Why I fraid to confront? Why I fraid of you? ’Cause you damn hard sometimes. You expecting more than what I am. You not curious. You critical. I think if I ignore your moods, your angry silences they’ll just go away. But then they appear suddenly like a Small Island downpour.

  “I long for more,” I say. Not sure what that means. An intimacy perhaps of sisters. Maybe the kind of relationship Mom and I have before she die. We good friends before she die. I tell Sola Mom die while looking up at the morning moon while begging Aunt Rachel to look up too, to catch the same moon brilliance Mom see. I tell Sola all this while she sleeping and I on the veranda rocking, telling she my thoughts from out here.

  And now I in my head imagining Mom just before vehicle hit. “Look Rachel.” By the time Aunt Rachel catch a glimpse of that moon she must have drift slightly onto the next side of the road. The man coming toward them maybe late for a meeting. Maybe this the reason he driving so fast. Or maybe sun slam into he face and he drift too. Mom get the full blow. I wonder often if she know what coming. If she know she taking she last breath. I wonder about she last words. I ask Sola while rocking if she know “shit” is the most common word spoken before a sudden death. I read this once I tell Sola. “Do you think Mom yell ‘shit’ before she die?”

  I move the rocking chair into the shaded part of the veranda and continue talking to Sola. “I fall to the kitchen floor when I hear Mom’s name at the front door. Pauline Bishop-Johns. I can smell the clementine orange I let fall into my lap while I sit and hear the police at the door. ‘Pauline Bishop-Johns died on impact and Rachel Bishop was taken to the general hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.’ At first I don’t recognize names. I never hear Mom’s full name before. I only know she as Ms. Pauline or Mrs. Johns or Ms. Fabian or Judith’s mommy. And then I hear slap of the screen door, Grandpa thanking police and a wail burst from Grandma like the slow squeal of our dog, Tabanka, who eat poison.”

  I tell Sola I walk up stairs cursing police. “He lie. He lie. He lie,” rip through my head. But then Grandma wailing again. And Grandpa saying, “No. No. No.” And then the creak of stairs. And now I’m on the bathroom floor, still saying the man lie. He lie. Why he lie so? And Grandpa at the bathroom door calling my name.

  A neighbour drive us to hospital where we hear the news again but this time from a doctor, one dead and the other in stable condition. I beg my grandparents to let me see Aunt Rachel. I convince Mom alive and Aunt Rachel dead. But when the nurse let me look into the dark room, there’s Aunt Rachel, eyes closed, stomach rising, falling. No sign of Pauline Bishop-Johns. No sign of Mom.

  Next day Grandpa call Fabian. He tell him simple, “Pauline is gone, Fabian. She was killed in a car accident yesterday.”

  I at the kitchen table, hands folded staring into a bowl of grapes. Grandma still in bed. Grandpa on the phone repeating himself, “She was killed in a car accident. I am sorry Fabian. She’s gone.”

  My lips on my hands hearing Fabian on the other end yelling, “Where’s Judith?”

  “She’s here. She’s okay,” Grandpa say. And hand me the phone.

  “Judith? Where’s your mother?”

  Silence.

  “Judith? Where’s your mother?”

  Silence like syrup sticking to tabletops.

  “Judith? What happen to you? Put your mother on the phone girl. Now.”

  “She dead. She dead Daddy. She dead. Mommy dead. She not here. She dead.”

  “Please Judith put your mother on the phone.”

  Tears spilling gushing through my fingers, phone slipping from my hand.

  Grandpa take the phone, ask Fabian if he can come. If he can book his ticket today and come. Telling Fabian they going to have a ceremony here. They want him to come.

  I tell Sola I imagine Fabian, putting down the phone and going outside to tie out the goats like he do every day. But then I also see him sitting on the bed; he don’t tie the goat out, he don’t make cocoa tea, he don’t mix the flour to make bakes or chip up the salt fish. He sit on the bed and weep. I know he weep ’cause I see him weeks after our own accident when he think he almost kill me. I imagine Fabian crying til he Rasta brethren walk into the house and find him on the edge of the bed, making the kinda water that slide down window panes, fast and chaotic.

  I tell Sola the whole story while she sleep. And then I get up, grab my backpack and jump on an old bike I find in the shed. I hear Sola getting up. I want to go before she see me. My plan is to find paint and start painting the house like Aunt Rachel suggest. I need to do something. Anything.

  SOLA

  “WHY’D YOU KISS ME?” I ask.

  Once I am in the rocking chair with Judith’s tea in my hands, the sleeping bag around my shoulders and Judith standing slightly behind leaning up against the window, “Why’d you kiss me?” drops out of my mouth like I am spitting out a grapefruit seed. I surprise myself as much as her. I centre my breathing to meet her silence. I force each mouthful of tea while listening to the volume of my swallows and my breath get louder. I feel embarrassed by the bodily noises coming only from me.

  From Judith nothing. She must be holding her breath tight inside her chest, willing herself not to breathe because I don’t hear anything, not even the whistle of air through nose. Spit travelling down the back of my throat, breath mixed with the whoosh of sea line, an occasional seagull brushing the sky. I push myself from the chair and go into the bedroom. She calls after me but I close the door between us and sleep.

  When I come out of the bedroom, Margaret, the neighbour, is in the rocking chair on the veranda watching Judith get on an old bike leaning up against the shed. She introduces herself as we watch Judith pedal up the road. Margaret says Judith is going to get paint for the house. Then she goes on and on about how difficult relationships can be. And how the world needs us all just to sit down and talk to one another. And that’s what she does, talk. I don’t hear much because I am still in my head over the unexpected question and my night on the sand. I hear bits and pieces about Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, Hutu and the Tutsis, US and everybody else. She talks and talks and it is difficult to keep up, especially with my mind on Judith and the question I never meant to ask. Why’d you kiss me?

  I eventually excuse myself and go back to bed with shame and tiredness knotted up inside. I awake a few hours later with the rev of an engine outside the window and there is Margaret on the back of a four wheeler calling Judith first and then calling, “Judith’s friend.” She forgot my name.

  I go out and there is Margaret in a peach paisley smock with white and purple flowers poking out her pocket. She is holding her right
shoulder with her left hand and is leaning forward, her right arm around the driver’s waist. The young man driving the four wheeler is Tom, a neighbour from up the highway. He tells me he found Margaret crawling from the ditch by the side of the road. Margaret says she wasn’t crawling, she was lifting herself up. Tom says he wanted to go home and get his Dad but Margaret insisted she could ride behind him. Margaret is asking if I can help. She is grinding her teeth. She says to meet them at her house. I jog behind. Tom and I help her off the four wheeler, up the stairs and into the quilt-covered chair by the window. Margaret tells Tom to go into her wallet on the table and take a twenty. Tom says his dad would kill him if he took money for helping Margaret. And Margaret says, “Then don’t tell him.”

  Margaret explains she went up the road to pick blue-eyed grass and daisies after I went back to bed. She says she spotted the flowers a few days ago while walking. Then she tells me she saw the bear. She says she saw the bear while picking the flowers. Margaret tells me not to look so surprised that there are black bears everywhere. I feel my eyes widen. “It came out of the trees,” she says, “on the same side of the highway but lower down. The bear raised its head, sniffed the air, then turned and looked directly into my eyes.” Margaret says it was like she and the bear had some kind of special moment. I’m surprised the bear didn’t wink at her too. Then she says the bear crossed the highway and strolled back into the bush.

  Margaret walked farther on to the highway to watch the bear disappear. She didn’t hear the vehicle come up the hill, didn’t see or feel it until the rear view mirror gripped the side of her shoulder and pitched her onto the ground. The car slowed down but when the driver realized Margaret got up, he sped away. He didn’t see when she stumbled backwards and fell into the ditch. She lay there for a while before trying to get back up. Cars zoomed by but nobody noticed Margaret. She says she never let those flowers drop and then she asks me to get a vase and water. Margaret managed to climb out and get back up onto the road. And that’s when Tom saw her.