Land of Love and Drowning

by Tiphanie Yanique

  With the Coast Guard there now, the tourists moved slowly, hoping that if they gathered their towels and sunscreen bit by bit that no one would notice them.

  And no one noticed them at all. Because something else was happening not bit by bit. A girl who had slipped out of the protesting crowd was rushing toward the water. She was doing a swim-in, even though a lime-in is what they had planned. But still, this girl was right. To be able to go back and forth from water to land as you pleased, that was the thing. The back and forth was the beach. The girl was fully clothed, with strange pants ringing at her feet, but her hair was swimming behind her like an impossible school of barracuda. Though she was running to the water, it seemed as though she were running in every direction. She kicked off her sneakers just before streaming into the sea.

  Her beauty was so disturbing, so unusual, and so unfair that even the protesters lowered their voices. Even the police now policing the water slacked their arms and saw her slip through them like a fish. And then she was lifting her T-shirt off and flinging it to the surf and charging the ocean like a reverse Athena. Sprouting inwardly back to her creator. So many, many metaphors.

  Eve Youme had not meant to expose herself. Perhaps she was coming into her gift. Perhaps she was out of her mind, having her own episode. We old wives can’t say for sure. Because when the T-shirt was raked off, so went the bathing suit top that had been underneath, and Jesus Lord, what pillowy wonders her breasts were. As Eve Youme dived under, every single person on the beach was filled with an ancient urge. They all flooded after her.

  For a full minute everyone, tourists and natives and locals and Coast Guardsmen and even the ones who just before swore they couldn’t swim, now splashed like they were children. Like it was a pure bacchanal. Like it was Carnival Sunday and we were all one at the last lap. Everyone swimming. A miracle.

  Finally, the Coast Guardsmen, finding themselves unexpectedly steeping with the others, regained their composure and swam after the protesters, dragging them splashing out of the water. Eve Youme resurfaced far out by a buoy. A young hero Guardsman stroked out to her; she waited until he was close and then began thrashing and screaming like a banshee.

  In handcuffs on the shore, young Frank was dripping. He saw his sister being reeled out of the water and was glad he had convinced her to come. “Me!” he shouted at her, so she would know she was supported. “Me!” her brother said, until she found his face and locked on his eyes for assurance. Then a thought came over Frank in a singular way that it had not when he had simply joined the others in the dash toward her and the sea: His sister was stunning. Frank had seen breasts before; his popularity at school had afforded him the privilege. But his sister, Lord Jesus. Frank allowed the police officer to turn his face away.

  When Eve Youme was being hauled out of the water by the Guardsman, she looked like something of the sea. The young Guardsman had not taken off his own shirt to cover her, as he should have. Oh, she was something beautiful and magical that belonged to another world or maybe to this very world in all its magic. The Guardsman, though he was supposed to be protecting the tourists from her, held on to Youme as though she were his woman, his sunburned hand gripping her high on the waist, right below the breasts. Everyone watched as her body was revealed. Everyone waited for the fish tail. Her legs appeared but her jeans, wet and heavy, flared at the bottom like fins. She did not hold her arms over her breasts to hide them. The photographer from the Daily News remembered his vocation and put the camera to his face. With all that blinding beauty, no one had bothered to study her feet, shielded as they were in the newfangled pants. But wasn’t it strange how afterward her footprints seemed to be sending her in opposite directions? Backward, forward. But then again, there were many footprints, who is to say for sure which were hers.

  The young Guardsman continued to hold Youme tight. “I’m sorry, it’s just my job. I’m not from around here, but I’m on your side, Me. That’s your name, right? Please forgive me, Me. It’s just my job.” He sank this into her neck like a lover’s whisper.

  A group of older Guardsmen who had stayed behind in their officious whites and watched through binoculars, now dinghied to the shore. One of them ran forward, his shoes slipping in the sand. He unbuttoned his shirt. He stood before Eve Youme and the brave blond Guardsman. “Seaman, get your hands off my daughter.” Youme allowed Papa Franky to slip her hands into his gleaming shirt. After a moment, Franky also took off his shoes and pushed her feet into them. She allowed his stumbling fingers to tie the laces and button her in. And forever after, he never allowed himself to consider what he had seen.

  “Let Me go!” someone shouted. And then the others began to shout, “Let Me go! Let me go!” And there was no difference.

  Keeper Joseph—Papa Franky—released her, now clothed and shod, to the people. And she slip-walked, the shoes too big, to the crowd of protesters who were corralled in a big bunch in a corner of Honeymoon Beach. They cheered for her and made way, like a school of fish, simply opening and closing as one body to accept their own. She was more than a hero now. She was a thing to drown for.

  “What’s your full name?” shouted the reporter. But no one was hearing. And so in the paper her name was recorded as her brother had declared it. And that is how everyone would remember: Me save the protest. Me worth fighting for. Me is a beauty.

  The people were corralled on the sand, but the officials hadn’t taken Markie’s ukelele and he was inventing songs on the spot. “St. Thomas people crazy ’bout the bay! We going dance and sing until Me have the way!”

  It wasn’t clear to the Coast Guard or to the Gull Reef Club management what to do with the people now. The idea was to get them off the beach. Was it better to hold them on the sand until they could each be handcuffed or send them back to their boats in the water and handcuff them then? They had to get back to St. Thomas to be taken to jail or questioned or what have you. Now what was needed was that they get off the beach. As long as they were on the beach, they were successful. But what was the beach? The land or the sea?

  “I’m sorry, Me!” called the young handsome Guardsman to Eve Youme, as he stepped her from the dock to one of the Coast Guard ships. Franky, standing apart, sighed as this man lifted the plank, trapping her and the others.

  We people were held on the Coast Guard ships, where we all chatted like it was Food Fair day, just with no food, or like on Transfer Day so many years ago, which most of us could not recall because we’d not yet been born then. Only the organizers, who stood to give up themselves, were arrested. The others were docked at the waterfront and set free. It had been a little scary and a little thrilling and a little magical, but it had been successful and it had been entirely real.

  94.

  Frank was not with his sister when Youme walked into the door that afternoon to meet Anette. Frank was in jail.

  Within the hour, it was reported by radio that young Frank Joseph was staging a hunger strike, Anette looked to the ceiling and shook her head. Her boy was already stick thin though he ate like a hog. He wouldn’t survive a day on a hunger strike. She packed up some food, and she and Youme started off toward the local jail, which overlooked the sea.

  “Mommy,” asked Youme, her face betraying both eagerness and defiance. “What’s the plan for me? What did you and Dr. McKenzie figure out?”

  “Me, let’s worry about your brother for now.”

  At the jailhouse there was a crowd, mostly of protesters from the lime-in/swim-in, the salt dried on their faces like war wounds. The people gave way for Me. They hailed her loudly, “Me! Me!” but she only smiled and held her mother. Franky was standing at the front desk, barefoot in a damp undershirt and his Coast Guard white pants. He was whispering with the police chief. He raised his arm so his wife and daughter could find their way toward him.

  “The boy won’t take food,” Franky said.

  “He will from his mother,” said Anette.
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br />   “Don’t do that to him,” Franky said to his wife. “Let him be a man.”

  Here it was. And so quickly. Her son belonged to himself now. Anette passed the food to Franky. “Me?” she asked her daughter.

  “We should go, Mommy,” Youme said. She could feel the crowd getting thirsty just watching her.

  During Frank’s airheaded hunger meditation in jail, he thought only on his sister and Auntie Eeona. He didn’t believe Auntie Eeona was dead, like they were all fearing. He didn’t believe she had gone off to drown like it was said was the Bradshaw way. Without food, Frank felt high and he felt that he knew, really knew, that his women didn’t just give way to slice of knife or wall of water or ceasing of a beating heart. They last. They rise like volcanoes, like a pustule on the skin. They explode and do their cleansing damage.

  Young Frank was released, no charges pressed, before twenty-four hours even passed. Franky had stayed all night at the station to wait for his boy because the police officers would only release Frank to one of their enforcement own.

  When Frank walked through the door that morning, he went to his sister. He turned the big ice vat over and sat on it while Eve Youme sat on the couch.

  “Why did you run to the water like that?”

  “I don’t know. It just come over me.”

  Frank watched his sister in the face and saw Auntie Eeona rising in her skin.

  95.

  The Beach Occupation Movement and Bacchanal was in full sail after the successful swim-in/lime-in over on Water Island. Eve Youme’s picture, the indecent one with her chest bare, the black strip of the censor like a dark slot for entry, appeared in the paper the very morning that Frank was released. The BOMB was over a month later. It didn’t take long for the Free Beach Act to be passed. It was the time, after all. If lunch counters in the State of Georgia were being made to serve Negroes, then it seemed that Virgin Islands beaches would be made to serve Virgin Islanders. Not that history always worked this symmetrically, but this time it did. The last mean hotel and the last stingy family had to take down their PRIVATE signs and remove their chains. We lay on the beach and felt our self-worth rise with the tide.

  Of course, the tourists kept coming and the hotels kept bursting. And imagine, not even months into the new freedom Franky came home and announced that the Muhlenfeldt Point land had been sold to a big resort chain. The lighthouse was in jeopardy, as was Franky’s life’s work. But in the grand scheme of things, that point was on a cliff. Not on a beach. At least not on a beach.

  The BOMB all happened and was over within three months. A month to represent each major island—for St. Croix and St. John were in it, too. Or perhaps a month for each Bradshaw sibling. Or a month for each manifestation of God. No matter. Because after those three months, after the beaches were peaceably free and justly occupied, Eeona returned.

  LOVE

  My name is love

  I am the beloved one

  The last romantic

  Coming out of the islands

  Of the sea

  Coming out of the mossed ocean

  —HABIB TIWONI, “AL-HABIB”

  96.

  JACOB

  If I may . . . once more. Please. I would like to make it clear that I made an attempt. When Anette left me at the restaurant, I waited . . . I called . . . but I did not want to disrespect her household. I was sure her husband knew nothing of our meeting in Frenchtown. My wife . . . per usual . . . knew nothing.

  Understand . . . I did see my daughter there in the newspaper when she was a protester. I cut her picture out . . . for her decency the black strip of the censor was across her chest. I kept the picture in my wallet until it wore to tissue. Please, know . . . I did not participate in the movement and bacchanal . . . Never in my life have I been asked to vacate a beach . . . But I understood the movement’s concern.

  During the dark months of the BOMB, I had been writing fellow physicians about my daughter’s condition . . . My letters were cast out but did not produce a yield. Fellow colleagues wrote suggesting other colleagues . . . I wrote to Puerto Rico and the United States, to England and Denmark. There was a French doctor . . . he suggested a Spanish doctor . . . he turned out to be a priest who had been a medic on the Nazi side in the war. “Bring her to me.” The Spanish doctor priest wrote his epistle in medical Latin.

  Believe me . . . This letter lay open on my desk. My good wife dusted my table and folded the letter, but I reconsidered the Spaniard’s offer every night. Here it was . . . a doctor who had been a priest. His cure would be codeine, exorcism, surgery . . . prayer. I contemplated this possibility without anyone to consult with.

  As I deliberated, I would take out the picture of my daughter from the paper. In it she is the symbol, like a statue of liberty for the Virgin Islands. She’s wet and standing in the water . . . she looks strong and defiant despite the Coast Guardsman holding on to her. I would try to talk to this symbol of her. Ask this symbol of liberty and tether what was best for my daughter. I contemplated alone with that picture until I knew there was no option but to send her away. In a country like Spain there would be others like her. Know this . . . I didn’t like my decision, but it was the only one I had.

  I phoned the Joseph residence day after day . . . for weeks . . . until finally my daughter answered. The beach protests were over, and now any old common person . . . even those from other islands . . . could lie out on our best beaches. Yes . . . she had made that possible. For better or for worse. When she answered . . . well, I could hear the beauty in her voice.

  “You wouldn’t send me away,” she said.

  I had to admit it. “My Eve, I already have. I’ve called the Spanish priest doctor long-distance on the phone. He and I have agreed. You will be there in less than a month. I must talk with your mother about the plan.”

  And then Eve spoke to me in a very adult manner: “Dr. McKenzie,” she said, “don’t you think that, in a way, it is beautiful? Worth holding on to?”

  I felt my fingers grasp hard and sweaty around the phone receiver. I saw myself making love to her mother. I remembered making her. Yes, of course, every bit of her was beautiful. Of course . . . but beauty could be wrong. “Eve. My first child. I don’t believe that this thing is of God.”

  “And so? It’s of me.”

  Yes. It turns out . . . yes . . . yes . . . I admired my daughter for her bravery. I made the . . . well, momentous decision . . . I let Eve be.

  Understand. What I’m saying is that I remember. I remember myself singing in the middle of the street to a woman with red roots at the base of her hair. I remember playing the piano, and the photographer at school snapping me. I remember my mother bathing me in the sweet-smelling water . . . I remember . . . believe me. I remember shining my military shoes and stealing the shiny rifles. I remember choosing the fine white cloth and then the racy red and yellow. I remember that beauty can be dangerous . . . I don’t know . . . perhaps even that danger is worth it. I remember that I have been niggardly. I never intended to be.

  97.

  The rooms at Eeona’s inn were charged at a price better suited for 1935. Because Mother Eeona still hadn’t returned, the Josephs collected the rent and, after paying the staff, sent a bit of it to help Ronalda in college. They couldn’t spare their own funds now because Franky had been released from keeping the lighthouse. A political demotion, he felt, for being the father of a BOMB family. But the Coast Guard had said that there was just no more need for a lighthouse. A hotel was going up there. A Marriott hotel, to be exact. That would shine brighter than anything.

  Franky wasn’t relegated to mess duty or anything degrading. He would continue routine coastal laps around the islands, but he had nothing so special as his lighthouse again. At home he was his same self. Only he started polishing the faces of the flashlights. Checking and rechecking the batteries with the tip of his tongue. He was a nuisance, but Anette let him be
. The island had won the beaches and it had seemed there were no casualties. But here was the casualty. Living in her house.

  And the family also fretted about Auntie Eeona. Anette did not feel the coming feeling. Maybe Eeona would never return. Perhaps Anette would even have to get on a boat and visit the inn. Make a decision about what to do with it.

  But the good thing is that the Joseph family was going, every Saturday, to a different beach now. Stumpy and Sapphire. Sugar Bay and Botany. Magens and Secret Harbor. Afterward they would spend the evening looking at one another over candlelight, reading books until their eyes were sore and telling stories until sleep took over. Some private homes on island had electricity, but the Josephs were still waiting.

  Then one evening Anette was grading history papers by kerosene lamp and Frank could be heard singing kaiso from the tub. Anette had just cleared out her now reddish-gray hair, for she was letting the black dye go, and there were stray tufts of it floating around her. The phone rang and it was the inn’s housekeeper who had been promoted to inn manager, what with Mother Eeona disappeared. Anette and the woman had a banal conversation about a backed-up toilet and a newlywed couple who seemed to have forgotten they had real lives and still, two months gone, made love loudly until three in the morning.

  “Well, thank you for the news.”

  “News, Mrs. Joseph? But I ain give you the news yet.”

  And that is when Anette found out that Eeona had been reliably spotted in town. A whole two days ago. Her human self, with her hair flying like wings, seen on the road, wandering as though lost. Seen talking to herself, muttering—so one report confirmed—about lobster. More than one person had fed her saltfish, figuring she was seafood hungry.