All the Water I've Seen Is Running

by Elias Rodriques

  In time, when people died, the community continued those nine-nights celebrations, reminding one another that death began a homeward journey, an occasion for celebration.

  Des adjusts the rearview mirror, which creeks. I say, She’s asleep. You ain’t got to censor yourself.

  You think I speak different when she’s around? Des says. You must not know me.

  The cars ahead lurch forward. Des flicks his butt out the window.

  Do I believe in an afterlife? Des asks. I go to church with Egypt now and then.

  The metal-grate bridge rattles beneath us. The Intracoastal smells like a river approximating a swamp. Its steady-churning brackish waters shine gray.

  But do you believe in life after death? I ask.

  I don’t believe in heaven, he says. Don’t get me wrong. It’d be cool with me if I opened my eyes and was draped in some soft-ass white robes, but there ain’t never no niggas in them pictures. You telling me you can’t get into heaven if you got melanin?

  I’m saying though.

  Matter of fact, he says, I don’t want to go to no heaven with white folks anyway. I know all them racist rednecks ain’t supposed to get in, but how I’m supposed to know they ain’t make a mistake? I spend my whole damn life in Florida worrying every cracker’s a racist redneck and what? All a sudden I’m supposed to see the clouds and the wings and just forget all that?

  When my surviving ancestor became an elder, she and her descendants moved to August Town. There, she saw the preacher Alexander Bedward on the bank of the Hope with hundreds of other Jamaicans. Standing on a makeshift stage, he looked down on the crowd and told them their salvation had come. A new life awaited them in Africa.

  How would they get there? They would fly, he said. And how would they fly? They would drape a bedsheet around their shoulders like a cape and climb the breadfruit tree. They would pull themselves up by its branches, never stopping to pick its fruits because there were plenty where they were going. At the top, they would leap and when they did, God’s winds would carry them away from this island, across the ocean, and back home.

  A lone voice yelled out, You first. Others joined in. The crowd urged him on. Bedward, in turn, tied the corners of the starched-white bedsheet around his neck. Its ends settled by his calves. He turned to face his followers. The wind flared and caught his cape. The crowd cheered. Then Bedward grabbed hold of the lowest branch, jammed his foot against the bark and climbed. He disappeared into the tree’s green leaves. The followers in the back couldn’t see him. They screamed because they thought he had already left. Then, finally, he emerged atop the tree. The clamoring voices grew louder. Bedward watched the excitement stir them. He leapt. When he hit the ground, he broke his legs.

  Though she never tried to fly from a tree, my ancestor continued to believe in Bedward, according to Mom. Her story always ends there. I can’t picture Mom worshipping anything.

  We turn down John Anderson. On our right, the river flows until it disappears around the bend. On our left, trees shade the road from moonlight, hiding a long expanse of lawn running back to a house designed to look like a plantation.

  I think once you get to heaven, I say, you don’t worry about that stuff no more.

  Fuck that, Des says. I ain’t trying to forget all that. I’m trying to go to the all-Black heaven.

  The segregated heaven?

  Not segregated, he says. We just, you know, doing our own thing. My parents, their parents.

  All the way back to the slaves, I say.

  They started the joint. They died, went up, looked around, and was like, We ain’t having none of this shit.

  So they just grabbed the other Africans and said, Let’s dip?

  I lean as the car glides around a curve. The shrubbery grows tall and a breeze wafts through the window. I smell salt. When the last car in front of us turns onto the road, I see the ocean, lines of white foam rippling across its surface. A long slice of it glows silver in the moonlight.

  Exactly, he says. They grab their uncles and aunties and say, Let’s go somewhere we can dance.

  And they just Cupid Shuffle they asses out of there?

  Nigga, they Electric Slide, they Jook, they Twist, they Soulja Boy, they Nae Nae, they Jive, they Two-Step, they do it all. And they busting they guts while doing it.

  And the white folks watching like, What’s gotten into those niggers?

  Some cracker goes, Too much to drink.

  That crazy voodoo shit again.

  Howard, I done told you to stay away from the niggers when they got their chicken feet, Des says, laughing as we turn onto A1A. Beyond the railing lies a long stretch of sand. The angle of descent is shallow. Low tide. In the distance, I spot a sandbar.

  And then what? I ask.

  Well, you know we always late, Des says. So the young impatient dudes, they start dancing they asses out of there, drinking out of brown paper bags and laughing the whole way. Behind them, you know some of the girls is doing their hair. Other folks is gathering their belongings. Some of the uncles and aunties grabbing pots and flour and eggs like, You never know when we’re going to need these.

  Others grabbing drawings of their relatives like, You can’t leave these behind. Sonny looks so good in this picture. Got his kufi on straight and everything.

  And the little ones, you know, the ones big enough to walk alone but still little, they help the old ones. Hold they hands while they leaning on their walking sticks. Help them adjust the chains on they ankles so they don’t trip on the way out.

  My ancestor’s children moved to New Monklands. In the 1930s, a member of a new religion arrived and gathered a crowd in a house that the Myal men had visited. Surrounded by the men and women of Saint Thomas, he told them their savior had arrived. He was a descendant of the lost tribe of Israelites. Haile Selassie I, the Lion of Judah, was here to lead them to the Kingdom of God.

  When his sermon ended, Mom’s grandmother and the rest of the crowd left. Though she never joined the Rastas, she talked about those early days when the Bobo Dreads began appearing. She claimed they were crazy. Her husband, Mom’s grandfather, wasn’t so sure. Even though their beliefs said nothing about a Coolie like him, he defended the Rastas well into old age, long after Mom’s grandmother left for the States.

  Mom learned her grandfather believed in a different afterlife when the diabetes reached his foot and they cut it off. For weeks, Grandma stayed by his bedside in New Monklands until he healed enough to be alone. Then she returned to work. That day, my great-grandfather asked Mom to sit by his side. As she approached, she stared at the depression in the blanket where his foot used to be. My great-grandfather asked her to tell him what it looked like outside. She described the river, the guinea grass, and the goats. He asked about the lime tree. It looked the same.

  My great-grandfather asked Mom the same question every day until a month later, when he asked her to help him up. She grabbed his large hand and tried to tug him out of bed, but she couldn’t move him. He laughed and said, Not like that.

  He rolled onto his side, pulled his legs off the bed, and pushed himself upright. He motioned for his crutch and Mom passed it to him. He hunched over the wooden pole and hobbled to the doorway. The sun silhouetted his tall, broad figure when he turned around to say, You coming?

  Mom rushed to the door. He grabbed her shoulder to stop her, then held out his hand. Mom put hers in his palm. They walked along the thin dirt trail carved by decades of passersby, Mom’s feet landing where the pale grass encroached on the light-brown dust to make space for her grandfather. His crutch left an imprint the shape of a dog’s paw. At the lime tree, Mom held her grandfather’s hand as he lowered himself. Then he leaned against the rough bark in the shade of the lime tree.

  They repeated that routine every day for a long time. Mom sat with him through the afternoons as he told her about life on the plantation where he grew up and about the stories his parents told of India. After weeks of their ritual, Mom asked if he wanted
to go anywhere else. They could go to the river. He could put his foot in the water. He inhaled deeply and looked up at the tiny green pods beginning to blossom. He told her he liked it there. When he died, he wanted to come back as the lime tree.

  Mom’s grandfather held on for a few years longer. After he passed, Mom spent afternoons in the shade of that lime tree and thought of him. She was sad to leave it behind when they had to move, not because she thought he became the tree but because she worried she would forget him. She and he both wanted to stay close after death.

  You really think they’d stay up in the clouds? I ask Des. If it was me up there, I wouldn’t want nothing to do with none of that.

  Matter of fact, Des says, you right. They’d find them a patch of sky closer to the action. When the rain clouds roll in, they’d be all up in it, feeling the cool water, riding the wind. And when it’s clear, they can watch their kids and their kids’ kids.

  And their kids’ kids’ kids.

  And their kids too, Des says. Watching all the cane folk.

  To our right, the Flagler Beach pier extends out over the ocean. If this were a summer day, old men in bucket hats and their grandchildren would line the pier’s far reaches. Thin black fishing lines would extend down to the white froth beneath, bobbing in the waves. Tonight, less than a day after I hid in the bathroom with a man whose hands were callused with sand from the shore, it’s empty, only the moon looking down on it and us as we pass by.

  Over the music, Tupac asks if gangsters get to go to heaven, and if they do, will he finally, after his short life that sounds so long when he speaks, find peace? The light turns green. We pass the Lion, where Aubrey saved Des from a fight some time ago, and then the buildings stop. For a while, there’s only the beach, unoccupied lifeguard highchairs every hundred feet or so, watching the ocean battle the shore. Then the houses reappear, two floors in a county where most have one. Mercedes SUVs clutter the driveways, the new money that flooded the region before the housing crash, now blocks our view of the sea.

  And it goes on, Des says. It goes on. Heaven gets more packed. A big Black city with all your cousins and aunties.

  And all their cousins and aunties, I say.

  All their friends from when they was young.

  And every time someone dies, it gets bigger.

  It’s just like one big-ass wedding, man, Des says. First time you leave your body and you float up there, it’s like you stepping off the floor from your first dance. First thing you see is your parents. And they smiling and crying.

  Your drunk uncle’s cracking some mad inappropriate jokes.

  And he’s wilding out because he’s hitting on everything that moves, Des says. And then him and your folks is busy running around introducing you to your folks. And their folks.

  And their friends.

  And people you damn sure should’ve met a long time ago.

  And you blinking real fast because you know you ain’t supposed to cry but damn if your eyes ain’t burning.

  Damn if your nose ain’t running.

  And finally they introduce you to the slaves.

  You looking at these skinny, ribs showing, hollow cheekbone, chain around the ankle,

  Scraggly nappy gray-haired, ain’t had a haircut in about a hundred years,

  Grown folk. And you just looking at them shocked.

  You like, How you cut cane looking like that?

  How you carry cane on your back with them chicken legs?

  And you so shocked you don’t notice they smiling and laughing at you.

  But it’s all love.

  It’s all good.

  And they take you by the hand and show you all the brothers and sisters they made on the ship.

  The folks who ain’t make it.

  The ones they threw overboard.

  And they’re looking at you like you’re theirs.

  And, truth be told, you as much them as anybody else.

  Music starts again.

  Some shit everyone gets down to.

  Something like “September.”

  People start busting out moves you ain’t never seen.

  Same shit they used to dance they asses out of white heaven.

  And somehow, just from seeing them bounce, you got it too.

  They passed you the juice.

  And you moving like them, and y’all dance and laugh

  And drink and smoke

  And sing till everybody turns in. But you, you’re still buzzing. Electric running all up and down your skin.

  And you burning up so even the sweat on your forehead feels hot, I say. You need to chill. So you go to the nearest lookout and watch your kids leaving your funeral.

  Des lights a cigarette.

  That’s the kind of heaven I can get down with, he says. Don’t talk to me about that other shit.

  Des’s family is as Christian as my own. Grandma inherited her Christianity from her mother. When she moved to the States, she attended the same Baptist church in Flatbush that her mother did. Every Sunday, she saw Jamaicans that she thought she would never see again. What a blessing, they always said, to start new lives and rediscover each other.

  According to Mom, the same church hosted Uncle Junior’s funeral service. Grandma gave the eulogy. Before she reached the front, she was in tears. It was hard to bury anyone, she said, let alone a child. In his time on Earth, he lived to please the people around him. He made his siblings laugh, so they spoiled him. He did the same for his classmates, so they flocked to him. Whenever she saw him, people always surrounded him.

  As she spoke, her tears dried. At the end of her eulogy, she said that the Lord knew Junior made mistakes. But He sent His only son to live among the sinners and save them from themselves. He called Junior back to save him. This was not their loss, she finished, but heaven’s gain.

  Shortly thereafter, they laid Junior to rest. After the pallbearers carried him and the casket was lowered, people approached to say their last goodbyes. Grandma was the last to go. She laid a single flower down, but Mom says she didn’t cry. She knew her son was with the Lord.

  A green sign announces the distance to Saint Augustine and to Jacksonville.

  You ever hear the joke about Jacksonville? I ask Des. The one from back in segregation days? Where they put colored orphans in Jacksonville?

  Where? he asks.

  Jail.

  White folks crazy, man.

  Driving this stretch of A1A in the daytime, I always look for the sand-and-soil mixture at our sides. Strands of green, barely rooted down, flare when the wind passes by. They grow thicker the farther they get from the road as the land slopes downward to the Intracoastal. In the night, it’s so dark that I can’t see past A1A’s end, but I know they’re there, clinging to the patch between pavement and water.

  This my favorite part, I say. Could live my whole life out here.

  On our right, the houses begin to cluster together. In the distance, I see the bridge. Beneath is the inlet where the man-made river roils against the ocean. We curl around the gas station and onto a road that runs diagonal to A1A. We park on this empty road. On our right sits a row of glass-fronted houses whose porches overlook the water. Thin films of skim glisten even at night.

  Why you ask me about the afterlife? Des asks. You been dreaming about her?

  Des’s cheeks pull back to reveal his teeth in a sly grin.

  How you know? I ask.

  When Tati’s mom died, Des says, Egypt told me she kept dreaming about her. Had her wondering if there was ghosts in town. Figure that’s why she moved away.

  Des looks at the ocean in front of him. I do the same.

  What’d you dream? he asks.

  Man, you already know. Dreamt about Aubrey the night she died.

  Des rolls his window down and lights another cigarette.

  Felt so real, I thought she was there. Woke up clutching the sheets like I was holding her. And I’m half-asleep so I think it’s real for a moment. Then I come to and
she’s gone. Fall back asleep and dream about her again. And I wake up in the morning and stare at my ceiling and wonder for the first time in a long time if maybe there’s an afterlife.

  Mr. hardcore atheist? Des says. Mr. I’m going to shit on anybody who even mentions God?

  For a minute or two, I say, I wasn’t sure.

  Des exhales the smoke slowly. His breath is soft against the steady sound of waves clapping against the shore.

  This where I tell you some shit like she’ll live forever in your heart? Des asks. No, you a smart nigga. I’m supposed to tell you she’ll live forever in your brain? Just another wrinkle in that big old gray ball in your head?

  Don’t think I’d believe you if you did, I say, and then pause. You dream much?

  Do I dream? Des asks. Me? Nigga, I can’t sleep for the dreams.

  I have long hated dreaming, its interruption of rest. When I was younger, Mom, an atheist, said death was dreamless sleep. One night, after she put me to bed, I tried to picture it and saw a black screen. Nothing. But if I was picturing it, then it was something. Death had to be more nothing than that. As I tried to imagine a nothing that I was not imagining, my heart raced. I threw the covers off and ran to Mom’s room. She pulled me under her blanket and rocked me to dreamless sleep. After all the anxiety about what would happen to me after I died, sleeping that night provided a relief, a vision of death as uninterrupted rest.

  Want to go down? Des asks and then yawns.

  Des walks to the back, pops the trunk, and pulls out a bottle of whiskey.

  Egypt gone to sleep and you figure you can drink as much as you want?

  This for you, he says.

  Des holds the bottle by the neck and we walk to where a fence breaks in the middle. We step through it onto the bluff of rocks and hop down the large boulders, avoiding the loose ones and the broken glass. At the bottom, I take off my shoes and Des kicks off his sliders. The sand is grainy and thick with moisture. On our left, the inlet normally flows into the ocean, but tonight there’s a long stretch of sand covered by skim and pockmarked by tide pools left behind when the salt waves fled back out to sea. We walk toward the ocean along this flat stretch of beach. At high tide, this shore is the ocean’s floor.