by K. E. Silva
Auntie Clara followed me in, started to make noise.
I walked back out to the front porch to catch my breath away from her screeching, felt Susan’s eyes follow me out.
Mr. H., a man who works my mother’s garden, keeping away the underbrush with his machete, had been chopping away at the roots of one of her coconut trees. Ten years he’d been working for my mom. Ten years, little by little, he’d been chopping away at those roots. Earlier that week the tree finally toppled, just like that, in the last big storm.
I walked against the winds over to the coconut tree at the far end of Granny’s front yard, the one next to the tall cedar. A sharp pain pierced the top of my head.
I woke to Susan’s pocket light shining straight into my eye, her soft fingers callously stretching its lid open way too far.
Ow! I groaned. My entire head throbbed.
Never, ever, walk underneath a coconut tree, J! Coconuts fall all the time … But don’t worry, na. We’ve killed the one that got you. It won’t be troubling you anymore. She clicked off her light, let go my face, gave me a quick wink and an almost imperceptible smile.
I tried to get up, but the throbbing in my head held me down. All I could do was start to cry. So I did.
Susan took my face again in her hands, wiped the tears.
I tried to push her away. Stop, they’ll see us! They’ll see us! We’ll go to jail!
But she didn’t stop, bent her head down to mine. Shush, J. It’s all right … We’re in the maid’s quarters. Everyone is up front. They’re busy with your granny right now. I told them I’d look after you.
Susan, my head …
I know, J. I know. She showed me the towel, full of ice, she’d been holding to my scalp.
What happened? The panic lessened.
Just a coconut. It fell on your head. She smiled, stifled a laugh.
A coconut fell on my head? Are you joking?
No, J.
That’s ridiculous. I started to laugh, but the movement was a bad idea. Ow!
You should sit up now, if you can. I’ve already given you something for the pain. She slid an arm underneath my back, lifted me to sitting. Scoot back against the wall.
Susan? I whispered.
Yes, J, she followed.
Granny’s dead.
She took my hand in hers, squeezed. Yes. I know.
Susan?
Yes, J.
It’s my fault.
She smiled, small. Silly girl, it was life alone that killed your granny. But you do have very bad timing.
Susan, I was crying again, still whispering, don’t leave.
I’m not going anywhere, J.
Susan?
Yes, J.
Why am I crying? I can’t stop.
You tell me, J … You tell me. But she pulled out her pocket light again, checked my pupils.
Out back, always, the wind through the trees.
Out front, voices, baritone and soprano. All running together. One of them, my mother’s.
CHAPTER 20
Granny’d always said she wanted to be buried in Tete Queue next to her mother, the wash girl, not at Godwyn next to Grampy. But no one mentioned that right then. Mostly, she said it for attention. Mostly, when Granny talked, it wasn’t for conversation, it was just to hear someone answer her back, just to know that someone, anyone, was still around.
Susan told me I was not to sleep tonight, for fear of slipping into a place from which I could not wake. Like Granny. Uncle George. Grampy.
There was noise out front. The pain medication was taking effect, and I was curious to hear what the others were discussing so loudly on the evening of their mother’s death, a time, I would have thought, for gentle reflection. So I moved slowly from Susan’s side in the maid’s quarters to join my uncles, my aunts, my mother, scattered wide—a winter constellation—across the front porch, under the electric light of a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, collecting mosquitoes.
Susan followed me as far as the living room, did not enter my family’s circle. She lay down on the couch. Rested.
Although I had arrived mid-discussion with a lump still swelling on top of my head, even a child could tell something more than just Granny was going on. My mom stood on wobbly legs between her brother and Granny’s iron gate, locked this time of evening from outsiders come to intrude; sea blast palpable in the strong winds against her back—once again in danger of imminent collapse.
I deflected their attention from her to me, held the doorway, though, for support against the hot throbbing in my head and the chill of their reception. But I had lost my ability to be polite. I hurt and was sick of all the endless argument.
What?! I yelled, deep with all the authority I could find. What now?
Uncle Martin asserted his spin: The family will have to reevaluate Godwyn, in light of Granny’s passing.
What do you mean, reevaluate? I could see his backpedaling a mile away.
Susan intervened. I hadn’t seen her get up, join me in the doorway, but there she was. She placed a steadying hand just above the small of my back, said to my uncle, This cannot be resolved tonight. You all should be ashamed of yourselves for even discussing it.
My head was spinning: Granny’s moon appeared and disappeared behind fast-moving clouds; mosquitoes circled the electric bulb. I was not steady.
Susan took my arm, led me to her car, and buckled me in, but not before my stomach heaved and I got sick all over Granny’s imaginary garden. Susan repeated the process with my mother, and drove us to Godwyn.
* * *
You cannot sleep tonight, she reminded me, after seeing my mom to bed, feeding the dogs, and locking Rascal inside with us. That was the way to do it: one dog outside, one in, for security.
But I was tired. I told her so, and she was unsympathetic, decided we’d make ginger beer to keep me this side of slumber.
Until my mom moved back to Baobique, I never knew there was such a thing as ginger beer. She’d known the recipe by heart since she was a child, but apparently forgot to tell me about it. Ever.
It is, simply, root beer, but made from ginger. So it’s sharper, has more of a bite.
Susan filled the biggest pot we could find with water from the faucet, placed it to boil on the Wolfe range while I stood at the counter grating the ginger Fatima had rooted up sometime the week before.
The beer is stronger if you grate the root.
* * *
You like it too sweet, J. That’s not how it’s supposed to taste, Susan warned me, when it came time to add the sugar and I measured out an entire cup.
I know. Don’t ruin the whole batch. Let’s just take some out for me and I’ll sweeten it myself.
But this is ginger beer. What you want is some child’s drink. She poured two glasses, tall and obstinate with too little sugar, over ice.
Blame my mother for giving me her sweet tooth. But she makes it with extra.
Exactly. She’s lived away too long. I’m showing you how it’s really done. What do you think your mother knows about making ginger beer, na? All you Pascals take a sip of water and claim you’ve discovered the river.
She took the pot of beer from the stove. Poured the entire batch into three standing bottles, capped them tight from air and such.
You are just like your family. You come to Baobique for a few weeks out of your life and tell me how to make ginger beer. It is arrogance through and through.
We were not really arguing about beer; my head was hurting and I felt, yet again, on the edge of tears.
Susan moved to the dining room table, to her left a hole in the cedar floorboards above the crawlspace under the house where Lucia slept; above her head, bats in the attic hidden only by the thinnest veneer.
She finished, I hate to see them in you … Then started again. You expect things to come to you, J. Rest themselves at your feet without any effort on your part. But it’s you that has to take a step or two if you want something, na.
I want
ed, more than anything, to go back to that afternoon, when she was just being nice, just taking care of me; or farther, to those nights she’d crawled on top of me of her own free will and her skin shone back brown against the light from all those stars. But between us, things were not so easy as simple touch anymore.
I wanted to kiss her, but instead I apologized. Susan, I’m sorry I never answered your letters.
An entire year, Jean. An entire year I had no one to talk to after what happened.
I’m sorry.
I left my home. Why do you think I took that residency in Nassau? I had to leave Baobique! I didn’t think I could come back, your uncles made such noise. And all that time, all that time, na, I was still willing to believe you were worth it … And stupidly, when my father told me you were here again, to see about your mummy’s house, a little piece of me was waiting for you to come running to my door, convince me all over again that we have something—you and I.
Susan, we do. I’m sorry.
That is the first accurate statement you’ve made all day: You are sorry!
Can we never be that close again? I asked, softly as possible.
Her silence steamed like a tea kettle—no one watching, save maybe Grampy and Uncle George, my mother sleeping behind closed doors.
I held still, on some verge.
Susan kept her gaze off mine, but gave a little. Perhaps ours was a false start, Jean.
What’s this, then? Another? I was tentative, where Susan wasn’t.
No. This one here is the real race. If you want me, J, it’s your step forward.
I stepped. I want to touch you.
Then touch me.
* * *
It was dark in the guest bedroom, the shutters closed tight, tight, to keep us safe from intruders, or weather, come knocking. But the wind, strong against the broken boards of the house outside, made me wonder if we weren’t missing signals Grampy and Uncle George might have been trying to send.
Inside the guestroom, Susan lit a citronella candle for the mosquitoes, unknotted the netting to cascade around the bed, whispered, At the hospital, I can always tell the foreign-born children from their mosquito bites. It was too dark to tell if she was smiling or not.
The net was torn. If the mosquitoes wanted to get me, they would. That’s just the way it is for me there.
Inside our tent of ghostly white mosquito netting, its edges tucked tight around the four corners of the mattress, Susan promised, I’ll rub your skin with aloe in the morning to stop the scars from taking hold.
Every inch, I told her, finally. I want every inch of you.
* * *
It’s just that there was something about Susan; some spark ignited, knowing beforehand that when she touched my arm, my leg, my back, gripped tight and pulled herself to me, she was entering a place already familiar, a person built on volcanoes, red clay, and salt. It was a comfort I had felt with no one else that this woman knew trails inside me I could never have found alone.
I didn’t become a Pascal, it seemed, until I reached adulthood. And then, all at once, it happened. I looked in a mirror, doubled-up in some department store, and all over my back—Grampy’s moles. Mostly I pretended they weren’t there. But Susan laughed, our eyes grown accustomed to the dark, she connected the dots, lightly with the very tip of her long, thin finger—sending pictures from her head to my skin, lining me with her touch. And apparently, I wouldn’t have given them up for anything, those thousand and three moles, from my shoulders to the lowest arch of my back.
Silently, I thanked the ceiling, Grampy swirling around somewhere up there, looking down on Susan and me, wearing his skin—marked for eternity.
CHAPTER 21
Morning broke clear and wide.
I was not supposed to sleep, but I woke to the sound of birds just this side of the open window, and to Susan’s soft fingers gently separating my eyelids to get at my pupils.
I wasn’t to let you sleep. She looked a bit concerned, disappointed in herself for failing me in that way. But it looks as if you’ve made it through.
My head only hurt to the touch. I leaned it against her, not wanting to start the day.
I’ve got early rounds, J. And you and your mummy should get back to Tours.
I moaned in forced agreement. She was up, and right. The sun had risen whether I liked it or not, inching higher and higher in the sky; and there were matters to which I needed to turn my attention.
Susan leaned down to me one last time, barely graced the top of my forehead with her lips, and smiled. She’s up this morning, J. She’s made breakfast.
What? I was slow, still a bit groggy.
But Susan was already out the door, called back to my mom, Goodbye, Mrs. Souza. You take it slow today, na. Doctor’s orders.
I heard noise from the dining room, rose to investigate: plates to wood, silverware, glasses with fresh juice.
The redness in her eyes had cleared and Susan was right, my mom was up—moving, actually, a little too fast for my achy head.
You’re up, I observed flatly, as I sat down at the table in front of one of the two place settings, poured myself a cup of tea, its tannins golden brown, spreading their color to fill the space of my mug. I sipped. Took a few bites of egg in the welcomed silence. Early-morning birds outside the open door.
But my mom didn’t want to be peaceful. She was up. And angry. Started right in on me. Jean, I want to talk to you about Godwyn before we go to Tours today.
The egg in my stomach wound itself into a knot, swelled to twice its natural size, impinged on my lungs.
Mom! Please! Can’t I at least finish breakfast in peace? She was either on or off those days. I couldn’t take it much longer. But by then I didn’t want peace either. Nor eggs. So I let her have it: All this family ever does is fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Nonstop, Mom. It’s nonstop and I want off!
My whole life, it seemed as if I never belonged to my mother’s family, as if it had been a gift I had neglected to receive, forgotten on Christmas like those many Fridays waiting on the sill of the picture window for my dad to pick me up for the weekend in the Mustang that kept forgetting the way back to our house. Then, just when things started falling apart and the gift turned out to be rotten—like a guava left too long at the bottom of the tree, poked by worms and bugs and birds alike—her family turned into a curse. And I was first in line to catch its hell.
* * *
When Grampy died, his children had little experience with change so permanent as death. They left his body whole; laid it, thick, between sheets of cedar in a casket his boys had built themselves: chopping and sanding and nailing the boards together so tight it would take a long, long time for anything to eat its way through, and by that time Grampy’d be safely in heaven.
They carried his casket on their backs all the way from Tours to the burial plot out back—shrouded in orchids and frangipani under a steady August shower—cutting in from the access road, uphill to his grave.
Thing is, Grampy never went to heaven at all. He stayed right there at Godwyn. Walked its rooms at night.
It’s not like I expected Grampy’s strong hand, or even Uncle George’s, to reach down from the sky, grab me by the collar, and shake, shake, shake me to my senses. But they were in the trees, the floorboards, the salty film on my skin after a sea bath. I breathed them in the air, my lungs expanding, stretching skin marked with Grampy’s moles.
I don’t even believe in ghosts. But those were no ghosts: Grampy, Uncle George, Granny too. They were alive as any living voice—telling me things like who I was and why, and where I could belong should I simply say yes.
Even though they couldn’t really kill me, they could—in an instant—blow out the flame that warmed my blood under the guise of a gentle evening breeze.
* * *
Just before midday we got the call from Tours: Uncle Charles had arrived. He wanted to settle matters with Godwyn before driving Granny’s body down to Bato to be cremated. There’d be
a lot to do to prepare for the funeral.
They had Valerie make the call.
I was a little unclear, though, about what they meant by settling matters with Godwyn. My mom and Granny held title as joint tenants, which meant when Granny passed, all ownership rights transferred directly to my mom. Uncle Charles, Uncle Martin, even Granny from her unfilled grave, had no say in the matter. Neither law nor logic supported their presumptions. They’d not been added as heirs to Granny’s share, so my uncles’ names were not on the deed.
I knew, though, that wouldn’t stop them. I dreaded my role—playing counsel.
CHAPTER 22
At Tours there was a bustle of activity. It was a good thing my mom was up, because even if I had remembered to stop by the police station for a temporary driver’s license, the roads were more of a challenge than I was up for right then. We pulled up in the front yard, under the frangipani, its cascading white flowers. Uncle Martin’s Four-Runner was crooked in front of the porch, the open gate.
We passed through the empty living room and made our way back to Valerie in the kitchen. Uncle Martin and Uncle Charles stood together, arms folded, beside Granny’s big copper, full to the rim from last night’s storm. I knew they’d heard the car, but they stayed rooted—made us wait.
Fine by me. The only danger, imminent idleness. There in Granny’s kitchen, though, my mom was right at home, took up the one good knife and started chopping things. Valerie took pity on me, handed me an empty pot, asked me to return it to the Australians living in the trailer just around the bend, Polly and Eugene of the half-built hotel.
Polly had sent up a pot of beans after hearing about Granny, to help with the company sure to follow. No one had thanked her as yet. The beans went bad overnight, left out. But I wouldn’t tell her that. The first words I would utter to the stranger who lived across from Tours, one of the few but growing number of whites settling in Baobique, would be a lie. I would tell her we all enjoyed the beans very much.