HELPER12

by Jack Blaine

  Now, the sun is setting over the ocean. There’s a squiggly orange line wavering on the water, from the big red ball of sun all the way to our beach. I rock Jobee on my lap in our rocking chair. The breeze is pleasant tonight, pleasant enough to brave the still-unscreened porch.

  Jobee is almost asleep. He’s had a long day today, playing in the sand with Nyna’s little girls, while I sketched them. He learned three new words: kannua, which means spider, muna, which means fool, and hain, which means scratch. I learned them with him. I think he has an easier time of it. Nyna laughed and laughed at my first attempts to pronounce them.

  I am learning so much from Nyna. She’s taught me how to cook the different fish that Thomas brings home, and how to gather the strange fruit that grows on the trees here. She says she will teach me to play the flute soon. She and Luni live three dunes over from us. We often have dinners together, and the men spend hours planning their next fishing trip.

  She has an easy way with her girls; she doesn’t fret if they fall down, and she doesn’t try to pick them up right away. She lets them cry a bit. When she does pick them up, she kisses them all over their faces and twirls them fast around, until they bubble over with laughter. Gavi mingo, gavi mai, she says.

  Her girls aren’t afraid. They aren’t afraid to try news things, or to fail at trying them. They know that Nyna will always be there, to twirl them around, and kiss their faces. I started it with Jobee today, and he was so surprised the first time I let him cry when he fell. He kept pointing to where he had scraped his knee, and screaming. I started to go to him, but Nyna put her hand on my arm.

  “Gavi mingo,” she said, shaking her head. “He need to . . . feel the fall.”

  One of Nyna’s girls went to him, and sat down next to him. She touched his knee and said the word hain. She said it so softly as if to tell him that as long as he knew what the scratch was, he would be fine.

  “Hain,” she said, touching his knee, “hain.” He watched her with big eyes, until Nyna’s other girl ran up, and pointed to her own scratched knee, and shouted hain! Then Jobee smiled, the biggest, brightest smile. He pointed to his knee and said the word. He pointed to her knee and said the word. I was convinced he thought hain meant knee, until he pointed to his elbow, where he had scratched himself yesterday.

  Nyna watched with me.

  “Now,” she said, “gavi mai.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t understand.”

  “Gavi mingo, gavi mai.” She squinted, trying to find the right words to translate for me. “He need to feel the fall, and then, he need to feel the flight.”

  “Feel the flight? What’s that, Nyna?”

  “It’s the love.” She brings her hands to her chest and then throws them up, spreading her arms out wide, as though she is embracing the whole world. “Gavi mai! It’s the love, and the freedom. It’s the flight!” She laughed. “You go to him now!”

  And so I went to Jobee, and picked him up and twirled him round, and kissed him all over his face. I don’t know why I did it, exactly, but he loved it.

  I see the lights of Thomas’s boat, coming in from the sea. He went out to check the crab pots, to see if we have any dinner. I rise, and carry sleepy Jobee in to his crib. He stirs just a little, but by the time I have him undressed and under his insect netting, he’s dreaming. I stop in the kitchen—if you can call our little cook stove and counter a kitchen—on the way back out to the porch, and gather a bottle of wine and some glasses.

  Thomas has already lit the fire under the outdoor boiler. I watch him dispatch the crabs with a pointed tool—he won’t let them die in the hot water—he says it’s too cruel. I agree with him, and when the men tease him I make a big show of kissing him, and tell them that’s what kindness can get you. They stop teasing him pretty quick.

  “Looks like a good catch,” I say, pouring him a glass of wine.

  “It is.” He grins, coming up onto the porch to have a sip. “It’s a very good catch.” He slaps my behind lightly, then kisses me.

  “Muna,” I say.

  “Do I want to know what that means?”

  “The usual,” I say.

  He smiles. “Jobee asleep?”

  I nod.

  He sets his glass down and drops off the porch to check the water. It’s not quite ready yet.

  “Come on down here with me, Benna.”

  I bring both glasses, and we stand together by the glowing fire, watching the very last of the sun fall into the ocean. Soon, we’ll eat our fresh crab, and drink a little more wine and then we’ll walk, arm in arm, into our little beach hut. And we’ll lie together in our big bed, and watch the stars from our skylight.

  On one of our first nights here, Thomas turned to me in that bed, and he asked me if I was happy. I didn’t know the answer, then. I knew I loved Thomas, and Jobee, but I didn’t know what happiness felt like, not really.

  The strains of Nyna’s evening flute drift over the dunes to our ears. Thomas takes my glass and sets it on the porch with his, slides his arm around my waist, and kisses me. Then he twirls me around, in a slow, gentle dance. And I rest my head on his shoulder, to hide the tears that slip down my cheeks. And I smile. I am happy. My life before this was spent feeling the fall, over and over again. But now, here, in Thomas’s arms, I can finally feel the flight.