Fingerprints of Previous Owners

by Rebecca Entel

  Eventually even Uncle Q was there, holding the arm of his sister: my mother. I could tell he’d brought her, not the other way around.

  Even some kids. Bayard’s two, but also Angelina—Lem’s baby sister, Miss Minnie’s grandbaby—who never missed a day of school. Some of the teenagers, Nelson and Serena and some others, hanging by their parents’ or grans’ sides for a change more than by one another.

  Almost all the maids, who were supposed to be at work at the resort: all stepping toward the bench. Lem was there; Lem, who might never speak to me again, and I wouldn’t blame him. Might never know if he was the one scratched that sign. I had no idea what he thought about anything that’d gone on at the resort, after all. Too busy roping him into everything that got me fired, without a word about it between us.

  Even Lionel. Wondered if he’d tried to pick me up for another landfill run that morning, what the guys behind the fence had told him—about me or about Jasmine Manion.

  And even Andre. He was standing around the corner where maybe he thought neither Mother nor I could see him or catch the scent of Troy’s cologne. Made the blankness of my father and brother more solid in the air.

  Everyone standing around, looking like the whole wide archipelago—our outer islands and foreign countries spit farther around us, too—huddling in just a little closer to one another. We all stared at the bench found in the stones. Maybe we were all expecting the security line to make them scatter again, float away like they hadn’t shown up for the bench, for something. Or make us scatter. But security was still as trees. Looking a little nervous, though. Trees, but trees in wind that was picking up.

  When I’d first started going inland, everyone had started to seem like ghosts of glass, treading the earth with iron feet. The past the iron. Now they all grew solid in front of me. Glass burnished by the sun. I stepped closer to the folks nearer my age. Andre still keeping his distance—and Hebbie closer to him—so I could breathe in that crowd, didn’t have to worry his voice could reach me from where he was planted. Or worry that he’d approach Mother and make it all worse.

  Then the older folks started hunching together a little bit. Mother on the edge of this oval of elders. Their mouths near one another’s ears, their chins nodding just the tiniest bit. All mouths that at one time or another had held Dad’s hands. Been healed by him so they could talk another day. The rest of us waited, silently, for the elders.

  Miss Minnie stepped out of the crowd. She approached us and gently removed Christine’s sunglasses. Christine had a black eye like purple marker scribbled under her left eye. No one seemed surprised but me. On her cheekbone I could see half the resort’s sunset logo, backward, in a searing maroon. Heard myself gasp. Miss Minnie slid her hand gently along the side of Christine’s face, keeping away from the bruising. Seemed too late now to see about.

  Miss Minnie said she didn’t know where this pile of stones came from, maybe they gathered themselves of their own free will, and I didn’t say anything. But maybe it was time, she said.

  “Yes, it’s time,” she said, looking first back at the huddle of elders and then at the rest of us and then at the line of resort staff alongside. Talking to us all, in our turn. “No use pretending we don’t see these stones or where they came from.”

  Then she walked out in front of all of us, eyes on the staff staring us down. And she sat. Just like in the silent pictures that had played through my head of Warrant, Betta, Joon, Mort, Tildy on their bench. But not silent anymore. Because then Miss Minnie told us the first story.

  Bench Story No. 1: Miss Minnie Eldon

  Times come round when you have to sit and to speak, whether you want to or not. Who would’ve known today—a typical sunny January day—would be one of those rare times to do so? But seems to be.

  I tell you this—all of you close enough to hear my voice, no matter you my people or people come to this island to work at the resort. I tell you this: I am nearing eighty-two years old, and I never would have thought I’d be able to say the same thing about this island that my mother and father said about it and my grandmother and grandfather said about it. We are in one of very few countries in the Caribbean, in this our little pocket of the world—our island and the capital and the handful of other outer islands in our little country afloat in the sea—that the U.S. never came in to occupy for any reason. Never sent military to. My grandparents would never have believed we’d stretch our luck this far! Just keep stretching it like the last hunk of taffy in a child’s hands! Sometimes sitting by the shore, waiting to sell at the Straw Market, I hear all the fore-parents’ unbelieving laughter in the sound of the water looping over the rocks. Used to talk about it being so with my late husband, more times than you’d believe we could talk one thing. Couldn’t stop my tongue even with kids around—Daphanie and Horace’s Troy doing odd jobs for me around the house when he was that young and skinny boy, big smile but most days inside a cloud of sad. My husband would hush me not to talk about such things around such young ones, but I was just so incredulous. Couldn’t help but keep asking him, You believe it? Still?

  And so you wonder, back when the resort was built, when an American company came down to poke around and not tell anyone what they were thinking of doing—you wonder why we got a little itch in our eye to examine closely what you were doing, and you have to understand this itch, and you have to understand why when you take our kids’ bags at the gate after a day’s work and say you’re making sure they haven’t stolen anything, we look right back at you and wonder what your hands are really doing inside there. You wonder why we surprised and not surprised when a girl comes home from work with bruises or scrapes.

  You wonder why we keep tight locks on the stories of our own isle, inland, town—wherever you or your guests come round.

  But coming home with something like a brand—like what Christine has here from that damned captain’s ring—well now, that is just too much.

  That is all. That is all I am going to tell you, even though I am an old woman who has seen a lot, a whole lot in my time, and I could tell you things that you will never see on your own. But that is all I am going to say. Going to not speak more because still up to me whether to do so or not. Patrice, we know you’ve got plenty to tell about this here resort. But even if you want to keep quieter like me, can you come help an old woman stand back up after sitting and speaking here on these stones?

  After helping Miss Minnie, Miss Patrice stood by the stones, looking out at all of us. “I can understand why Miss Minnie holds her tongue about so much. But it seems fitting for me to let mine loose, give some context for this here resort and the many predicaments we find ourselves in here together.”

  She sat down on those stones herself and told the story of That Storm we all thought we knew backward and forward. But I’d never heard about the resort staff coming in her store to pick up some things when their delivery boat had been delayed, and saying she shouldn’t have been living so near the shore, tempting the winds. Never heard the description of lowering her babies out the window, not the way she told it.

  Bench Story No. 2: Miss Patrice Lightbourne

  ...I scooted a chair up by the window for the smaller children to climb up on, all of them wrapped up in some tarps like little squishy jellyfish, and got them lowered down. I had to put one arm under my belly and use the other hand to lower them by one arm, with my oldest boy, Frank, out there first, helping each of his siblings down. Then I looked at that chair and looked up at the roof as if I could see the sky and heaven, asking whether I was actually going to be able to do this with my belly the size of a washtub. They say you don’t remember pain, but I do remember when I fell out the other side of the window because I had no balance, nor room to move, and the kids all too small to try to catch me or help lower me down. And then I crawled on my hands and knees, with all the children in front of me—made them go first even though they were scared so I could keep counting all four of them were there—and, thank the Lord, as we went I
couldn’t see my brother’s wife because of the rain, but I heard her voice coming down the hill, and once she got to us I knew she’d make sure we got to their house OK. And we did.

  You know there was no phone then, during That Storm, at my house or at my brother’s, and not at anyone’s house for a while after the hurricane, so my husband didn’t even know we were OK for almost a week. Unless I’m remembering wrong and it was more than a week, much more. And all the while had to imagine him out there in the capital counting the days of not knowing. I can’t now remember how long, because, well, you know, maybe you can’t always remember the pain!

  Murmurs of assent traveled through the crowd like a breeze. Miss Patrice nodded at each of us hovering near before she got up and returned to where she’d been standing. At Mr. Harper’s request, Della pushed his wheelchair over the gravel to the bench next, and when he asked, several folks were willing to come near those stones in order to help him on from his chair. He told the story of his leg: how it happened, for those who knew the story and especially for those who didn’t. The way the stones—and the resort—reshaped his whole life. The airlift he’d waited and waited for.

  When he was finished storytelling, a cluster of folks stepped up to help him back in his chair. Della waving them away when they told her she was next. When the others had accepted her waving and stepped away along with her, Bayard stayed and sat down to talk about his students witnessing the boat arrivals and coming to him with their questions. I could see Hebbie and some others cringing at the thought of kids seeing us out there in our nonsense sheets, entertaining for pennies. Just like I had when I’d first heard about them seeing in the resort. And Bayard had plenty more to say about it.

  Bench Story No. 4: Bayard Tournquest

  ...kept thinking maybe we did our students a disservice, not talking openly about the inland plantation and the layers of trauma on this oval and the relation of the resort to how we think about all this island’s skeletons.

  When I first started teaching, we discussed it once in a while, just a little, among the teachers. How to talk about the past? Should we take the kids inland? Everyone was against it. Even though Miss Daphanie wasn’t teaching anymore, they’d remember what she’d said about it: Like looking at the sun. It’s there, but...

  Most teachers just wanted us to count how many hours we had with these kids before they went out into the big world and how we could prioritize what we should spend time on. And, yes, there’s this part of me doesn’t want to talk about my fore-parents enslaved and how they got here. And doesn’t want to talk about way back when, that there was actually a native people here we know so little of because there’s not a soul left to remember, to speak about them.

  And all the teachers agreed: talk of or not—it’s in their bones.

  When these students came to me with their questions—well, what these students are really coming to me with is the simple question of why people in the world proceed as though the things we know are not known. Don’t guess we’ll get an answer to that question today or any time soon, though, will we?

  Bayard motioned for his brother, Garrett, to step forward to the bench, but Garrett held still with his hand waving no in the air like his wife had. Della put her hand on his back.

  From where he stood, he told us: “Been sitting here listening to all of you, kin and might-as-well-be. And I feel uneasy, just going to say it, with all this talking. Mighty uneasy. In front of them by the gate. Watching, hearing. Miss Minnie understands what I’m thinking, I would say, holding her tongue on how much life she has to share. You can hold your tongue if that’s what you choose to do. OK for the kids to learn that, too, I think. And sometimes got to in open company. Keep to your own. My life is full of joy, no matter what anyone thinks about it or about the problems of this isle. My life is full of joy. No need to say more.”

  While he was speaking, Miss Wayida Callaghan, the minister’s wife, had seated herself on the bench. I didn’t know much at all about the Callaghans other than the hazy story from my childhood: Miss Philene’s Jimmy beaten and left to bleed up by the ruins and then one fewer minister on this oval. Had never even heard Miss Wayida’s voice for more than a few words at a time or from her distant singing. The hush deepened, none of us quite knowing what to do with her other than listen.

  “With respect for those who choose not to speak. But I guess my speaking couldn’t make much of a difference in what all of you think of me,” she began.

  Bench Story No. 5: Miss Wayida Callaghan

  I, too, struggled plenty: many years with my husband trying to set up his church and a couple of kids with us when we moved here from Flat Island and then a couple more once we were set on staying here. I know how you all looked at us then, coming in from elsewhere and setting up our church when you already had your own, but that was our job, to spread the Word around this country on all its islands, and we knew there were plenty of people here didn’t go to the standing church anymore. So we picked up and came here to share our church with those who were looking and show it to those who didn’t know they were looking and build it for those who weren’t looking but someday, sometime, might be looking.

  Point all you want, some of you know very well that you came to us when you needed your dead churched and you couldn’t do it yourself. Or when your local church couldn’t secure any more grave plots for you, and you didn’t want to just put them to rest by your home. You know we set up the dead, worked with the funereal committee to help them travel to their resting places, some finding their place up the little path behind our church.

  No one really wants me dealing with their dead or even their sick after what happened, but I still run that Sunday service myself, even when it’s only me and Miss Minnie. Even most times when it’s only me. I sit and look at that gorgeous altar we built with those windows behind it: a view of the sea like God put it there just for us to enjoy. And He has seen fit to bolster up those windows and that altar and that little apartment we lived in—I live in—on the back side of the building through every storm that has come since we set foot here. My children are gone now, off to other islands or to the States. But that building we put our faith in and made a monument to our faith—in Him and in all of you—still stands intact as the day my husband put in the final nail. In spite of everything that was done, that had happened. In spite of the circumstances that lead us to sit here, my brothers and sisters, on a pile of rocks by a parking lot, to talk ourselves to a higher place.

  For that’s what we’re all trying to do, each one of us, isn’t it? Whoever built this bench here, makeshift as it is, I believe was touched by the Lord. Because the Lord loves a makeshift kind of life the most: each one of us doing the best we can with whatever pile of rocks we can get our hands on. That’s all. That’s all we can do. And Miss Minnie and others of you who have sometimes thought about coming on a Sunday—even with the ghost of the boy haunting our church—I know you know of what I speak about.

  All of you have heard about my husband. You all knew him as a minister for years—whether you joined his flock or not, he saw you as a part of it. And you all know the shadow that has formed out of the gossip about what he did fifteen years past that has overtaken the man himself, the memory of the man. All of you from the resort who are not from around here, have you ever heard a story about a murder taking place on this island? A minister bringing about the death of a congregant’s boy? About a man beating a teenager, then leaving him to bleed and get lost, alone? Up on the inland? Of course you have. But meaning, of course, that you heard such a story of that murder on the inland after you heard the murder stories of Columbus and after you heard the murderous stories of slavery, of course. All the deaths up in that death place, with its demons that can take over a decent man. That bloody demon, slavery itself, that overtook my husband when a boy didn’t understand he should run—he refused to run!—from that demon’s cradle of a place. I think we all know that particular demon, even if we don’t care to say its
name. A demon doesn’t go running just because you don’t greet it.

  My husband was the sort of man who was watchful for that demon’s approach with both eyes and glasses on, patrolled for it. Stood by the window and, when he saw teenaged boys going too far up the path—and off the path into the brush—to create mischief, went after them to tell them whose arms they were stepping into up there. Got all of them ’cept one to turn the other way, then he and that one, Jimmy Cruffey, met the demon face-on. Jimmy Cruffey—yes, Cruffey still the name, my Lord.

  They took my husband off to the capital since the law here doesn’t really deal with these kinds of cases. He has disappeared from my life as he has disappeared from all of yours. Though at times, I admit, I wrote him letters. For different purposes, but mainly some feeling that no one in the world was thinking of him but me. Maybe not even the Lord. My husband a ghost in matter of fact, too.

  And where did all of that take place? It happened inland. You may have heard when folks dare mention all the details. When it all went down, and we knew it had happened on the inland, when I knew, or accepted, that it did happen: I had this thought I never told anyone before, not in all the many years since it happened. Years more than a decade now. But I will tell this thought now, because maybe it helps explain some things that I with my limits can’t explain about His ways. And even with all the things other folks have been testifying to, and testifying to well in many cases, yes, even with all that—it hasn’t really been explained to outsiders. Or to us.

  My thought: There’s a new ghost up there. There’s different blood up there now.