And everything would be perfect too, except that I still don’t have my mom, and I still don’t have the courage to ask Kalinda for help with the woman in black, and I’m afraid that I’m actually insane.
But on the day that is my mother’s birthday, the house smells like spoiling bottles of rum, and I remember how my mother would buy me a gift on these days too, because she would say that she wanted to celebrate the best thing that’d ever happened to her.
I need Kalinda’s help. I know I have to find the courage to ask her.
I take in a deep breath, like I plan on sucking all the oxygen out of the air, and I let it out slowly again, same way God must have blown out through his mouth to create wind on the second day. “You can see it,” I tell her. I fiddle with the necklace she made me. It’s still cold to the touch, even so many weeks later. We’re sitting on her bed, the frame her daddy built a golden brown so we might as well be sitting on a throne together.
She doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but she looks at me curiously. “See what?”
“You can see the things no one else can see too.”
She squints her eyes at me.
“You know.” I lower my voice. “The spirits.”
Then, quick as a flash, she puts her hand over my mouth. It’s hot and tastes like salt. “Don’t say that,” she whispers, and almost sounds angry about it.
“So you can see,” I say against her hand. Relief washes through me—maybe I’m not so crazy after all.
“Would you be quiet?” She doesn’t say anything, so it’s just the two of us looking at each other, her fingers damp against my chin. When she decides she can trust me to speak again, she lowers her hand.
“I’ll only say this once, so pay attention,” she whispers. “They don’t like being spoken about. Speaking about the spirits is like calling their names, and once you call their names, they’ll have the freedom to follow you and torture you until the end of time.”
For a second, I don’t talk, I’m so relieved she can see the things I can too. If she can, then I’m not crazy—unless it’s just the two of us together that are. Or unless she’s playing the cruelest game of all.
I finally speak. “How’re we supposed to talk about them, then?” I whisper back.
“We don’t.” She sits straighter with a finality that I guess is supposed to be the period on our conversation, but I know I can’t give up, not that easily.
“But why not?”
“I said I was only going to tell you once.”
“Just because we’re scared of them?” I sit straighter too, to match her straightness, and she looks surprised by it. I must admit, I’m surprised by it too. Kalinda has always been the one in charge of this relationship. The one who does not need me as much as I need her. She must have realized this, for it’s a plain fact, right there for both of us to see. She doesn’t take advantage of it, but in the same way that a student knows less than a teacher, I’ve always followed her around and listened to her thoughts and tried my best to answer her questions. I’ve never sat with my back as straight as hers.
“If I’m right about this,” I say, “then they have my mom. And I want her back.”
Kalinda takes in a big breath, like she also plans on taking all the air that exists in this world into her lungs, then stops and let’s it all out again. “That’s an important reason enough, I cannot lie.”
I wait for her to speak again.
“Most days I still don’t even know if they’re real,” she says. “If they’re just in my head.”
“Then they’re just in both our heads, and we’re crazy together.”
“Well, I don’t know if our heads are real either.”
At first I don’t know what she means by that, but I don’t have much time to think on it anyway, because suddenly she stands from her bed and she tells me she’ll consider everything I’ve said and will come to me tomorrow morning in the courtyard at school, and really it isn’t until I’m walking out her house and down the road past the rusted cars and the men playing dominoes that I realize what she meant. She doesn’t know if our heads are real either because she doesn’t know if we’re real either. And the idea gets me to thinking, because it’s never occurred to me before, that we might not even really exist. That we’re the figment of someone’s imagination, some crazy person or maybe spirit or god that’s just dreamed up each and every single one of us. Maybe the woman in black is real, while I’m the one who doesn’t exist.
I wait for Kalinda in the shade of a barren mango tree in the courtyard, away from everyone else. No one has touched me or laughed at me or thrown rocks at me since Kalinda and I became Carolinda, and I know I should be grateful, but for some reason, that just makes me even angrier. They won’t throw rocks at Carolinda, but they will throw rocks at Caroline? That doesn’t feel very fair at all.
Kalinda comes walking, like she promised. She walks up the stairs and straight for me, and coming up on the steps behind her is the white woman in her dressing gown.
I grab Kalinda’s hand. “You can see her too,” I say.
“Yes,” Kalinda says.
“Who is she?” I ask.
“I don’t know, but she must have me mistaken for someone else. Someone she knew when she was alive. Or maybe she knows my ancestors. Or maybe I will meet her in the future.”
I frown in confusion. “In the future? But she’s dead—she can only be a ghost from the past.”
“No,” Kalinda says, “not necessarily. Time is something we’ve made up in our heads. Time isn’t real at all. The time before I was born, and all the days that I’m alive, and the time after I will die is all one in the same, Caroline. The spirits could be friends from the future or people from our past. Who knows? Maybe a spirit I see could even be me.”
I look back to the steps, and the woman has disappeared. “I’m not sure what to think about any of that,” I tell Kalinda. “I don’t want to think about spirits or ghosts at all. I just want to know where my mother is.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve thought about it,” she tells me, “and I will speak about them openly, but only because you need help finding your mother.”
I tell her that I’m most grateful. She asks me what it is that I want to know.
I ask Kalinda, “What do you know about ghosts?”
And she says, “More than I should.”
She tells me the house she lived in on Barbados, where her mother and seven other siblings currently live, was haunted, as most houses in the islands are, and she said her house had a dead little boy who liked to play too many games. He’d turn on the radio or turn up the dial on the oven so your dinner would be burned and he’d pinch your arm if you weren’t paying him enough attention. And then there was the ghost that haunted the library next to her school, a ghost that took no shape at all, wasn’t a man or a woman or a child, but was the overwhelming emotion of rage and fury and betrayal, and anyone who happened to walk through that emotion would come out ready to fight anyone and anything. She told me she walked through that spot one day, and she’d never been so angry before in her life.
“You’re surrounded by spirits,” I tell her.
“I always have been. I think it’s because they know I can see them. You can see them too.” When I nod, she asks, “But why do you need to know about them, to get your mother back?”
“There’s one spirit in particular. I don’t know; she could even be a demon. I’ve seen her all my life. One day, I fell off a boat, and she was waiting for me on the ocean floor. She doesn’t have a name, but I call her the woman in black, and since the day my mother left, she has been appearing to me more and more. She’s been following me up and down this island, and I think she must have something to do with my mother’s disappearance.”
Kalinda nods, listening. “It sounds like a classic haunting to me. But why is she haunting you?” she asks.
“I think that she’s taken my mom. Stolen her away, hidden her somewhere.”
�
�Why would she do something like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“And besides, she could have taken your mother and disappeared entirely, if it was just your mother that she wanted.”
“Maybe she wants to tease and taunt me, the way that boy did in your old house.” But even as I say it, I know that the woman in black would have no reason to do something like that to me. “Or maybe she knows something—maybe she wants to tell me something about my mother’s disappearance.”
Kalinda takes this into consideration, before she stands straighter. “I have something important to tell you, Caroline,” Kalinda says. “Please listen carefully. There’s a chance that this woman in black has nothing to do with your mother’s disappearance at all. There’s also a chance that she only wants to speak to you, like you’ve said, and wants to tell you where your mother can be found. And then there’s the chance that she’s stolen your mother away entirely. If it’s the last possibility, and the woman in black took your mother, then they’re in the spirit world.”
“The spirit world?”
“Yes, the spirit world,” Kalinda says again. “Where all the spirits go. Not very many people are taken there, but when they are, they see incredible things. Skies of flowers, and hills made of water, creatures you can’t even imagine. That’s what I hear. If your mom was taken by the spirits …” Kalinda starts, but doesn’t seem to plan on finishing. I wait until she takes a breath and opens her mouth again. “I don’t think you’ll get her back again.”
I don’t know what to say. What do I say to that, when the thought of seeing my mother again is the only thing that’s mattered—the one thing that’s given me a purpose in this world? “That’s a lie,” I say.
“It’s not a lie,” Kalinda says. She doesn’t look offended that I even suggested it. “Once they take you, they don’t let go. You’ll be trapped in the spirit world if you go there to find her.”
“But it’s possible to get there without the spirits taking you?”
“You didn’t hear me,” she says. “It’ll be impossible to get out again.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I say, and it’s the truth. If I’m trapped there and my mother is trapped there too, then that just means I have my mom. Where we are doesn’t matter—not coming back to Water Island or Saint Thomas doesn’t matter. I can see a flinch of hurt on Kalinda’s face, though, which turns into a stony anger just a split second later, and I feel guilt twisting my insides. I feel guilty, because I know that it does matter. I would miss Kalinda. I would miss my father. I would even miss Miss Joe. But I can’t let that stop me. More than anyone else, I have missed my mother so much more, and it hurts how badly I want to see her again, how badly I want her to wrap her arms around me and tell me that everything will be fine, as long as we have each other.
And so I don’t apologize for implying that Kalinda doesn’t matter to me, because while it’s true that I would miss her terribly, it’s also true that I need my mother more. I ask, “How do I get to the spirit world?”
Kalinda looks ready to suck her teeth. I’ve never seen her so mad. But she takes a second before she says anything again. “You must remember, there’s a chance that the woman in black knows where your mother is, and is only trying to tell you the truth.”
“And there’s also a chance that she’s taken my mother.” And I feel, with all my heart, that this is exactly what has happened. Or perhaps this is what I want to have happened most of all. This would explain why my mother would leave me—this would explain that she hadn’t left me by choice.
I ask her again. “How do I get to the spirit world?”
“The eclipse,” she says. “The solar eclipse is the only time humans can leave this world for the spirits’. That’s when they become our shadows and we become theirs. You can switch with a spirit—let them into our world in your place.”
I look at Kalinda, who isn’t looking at me, and I want to ask her how she knows so much about this world and crossing over to be with the spirits, and spirits crossing over to ours, but then I get so scared at what her answer will be—that she knows this because this world wasn’t originally hers, and that the real Kalinda is now trapped on the other side—that I decide it’s best not to ask it at all.
Anyone listening to us would dismiss our conversation as child’s play. They would say that our imaginations have gotten the best of us. I feel that heartbeat of reality, the idea of saying these things out loud to anyone else, and realize how outlandish this all is—how insane, how impossible.
But I’m sharing these thoughts with Kalinda. Maybe this isn’t so insane after all.
“If you’re serious about this,” Kalinda says, “then you have to wait until the next eclipse.”
“When will that be?” I ask her.
“Three months and three days,” she says with a certainty that makes me wonder why she would know this, how she would know this, unless she was a regular visitor of the spirit world herself.
Three months and three days. She might as well have told me eternity.
“But this is good,” she quickly adds, “because now you can have time to think about whether you really want to do this.”
“I really want to do this.”
“Then,” she tries again, “you can have time to prepare. Make sure you’re ready.”
I don’t know what I have to prepare for in the spirit world, but I already know I’m ready. I’ve been ready to see my mother again since the last time I saw her, before that morning when I woke up and couldn’t find her, that night which didn’t seem special at all, where she was sitting in the living room with her feet up on the center table, reading a book that I can’t even remember the title of, with me sitting next to her, stretching my feet out to rest them on the table too, even though my legs were too short for me to sit comfortably.
“I’m ready” is all I say on that. Kalinda must believe me, because she only nods.
As I walk home, I think more about Kalinda’s anger. I would be angry too if she told me she was leaving this world for another that may or may not exist, so flippantly and easily, like I didn’t really matter to her at all. Of course she matters to me. She’s the first friend I’ve ever had. The one person who’s made me feel like I deserve to be alive. I love her.
I decide that since she’s helping me find my mom, I should at least tell her the truth. She deserves to know that she’s loved by someone. It isn’t fair, to keep such a large secret away from her. But telling her—saying the words out loud … I don’t think that’s something I can do.
I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind before in my life. That’s what feels worse than anything else. Silencing myself, when I’ve so often fought to be heard against people like Missus Wilhelmina and Anise Fowler and her hyenas. They aren’t telling me to shut up now. I’m telling myself. I’m a traitor to my own voice.
I lay on my bed, on my back, with my arms spread like I’m on the cross, staring at the cracks in my ceiling. Those cracks have been made from the earthquakes this island has. There are hundreds of earthquakes every day—that’s what my mom told me—but we can’t feel them all, because they’re so small. But those earthquakes send cracks up through the dirt and into the concrete. I watch those cracks now, watch them good, like I’m daring them to crumble this house on top of me and bury me alive.
The cracks don’t dare to do any such thing. I roll onto my stomach and pick up the purple journal that’s been resting at my bedside since the night I threw it like I meant to throw it out of this world and into another. Pick it up and stare at the blank paper, and as I stare, words start falling across the paper.
It’s not a letter to my ma at all. It’s a letter to Kalinda. And it’s telling her the things I’m too afraid to say out loud. It says:
I love you, Kalinda, and I wish that we could one day be married and live together for the rest of our lives. I would love to wake up and see you in the morning, and lie down for bed at night and have you be the last t
hing I see before I close my eyes. You have brought me joy, and I thank you for that, and I wish that I could continue to feel this joy every day for the rest of my life. I know that we could not live as husband and wife, but that wouldn’t matter, because I would be with you, and you would be with me too. It’s painful that I cannot have this. I wish I could have both this and my mother, and I wish I did not have to choose, but I do have to choose, and I do have to choose my mother, because she is my mother. But if I didn’t have to choose, I would hope that we could live like this, two people in love with each other, and that you could feel the same way about me too. The possibility that you could feel the same way gives me an unending hope. Leaving this island will be the second most painful day of my entire life, the first most painful day being when I woke up to find that my mother had gone. I don’t want to say good-bye to you. I’ve never dreaded anything more. I love you a thousand times, and a thousand times more.
That is what the letter says, and what a thing to say too—but I know they’re words that can never leave my mouth. But this letter …
I take the journal and wrap it carefully in the best wrapping paper I can find, in the bedroom with the Christmas decorations and my mother’s collection of cards. The white wrapping paper has a golden trim, and my mom would use this for Easter presents. I fold the corners of the paper around the journal just the way my mother taught me, and I hide the gift in a pocket in my bag.
Early the next morning, I end up being the first one in my classroom, breeze making goose bumps pop up all over my skin. I take out the journal and slip it right into the hollow of Kalinda’s desk, next to her collection of erasers and used staples. Then I sit at my desk and wait.
I might as well be waiting for the death squad, I’m so scared. My hands won’t stop shaking, so I hide them in my lap. I almost go to Kalinda’s desk to take the present back three times. But then Marie Antoinette and another of Anise Fowler’s friends come into the room, and I know that if they see me taking the present, they’ll only accuse me of stealing something that belongs to Kalinda, and there would be a big drama I could do nothing about, and they would give the gift back to Kalinda anyway, and nothing would have changed, so I might as well leave it exactly where it is.
Hurricane Child Page 7