by Eboni Snoe
He closed the stone and held the rose quartz in his hands. Ulysses traced the smooth pink carving of the Moon Goddess. Her slender outstretched arms held a small sphere high above her head. About her neck hung the one symbol that connected them all. The sign of the cliff dwellers. The ancient cross within an eight-sided star surrounded by a double circle.
As Ulysses traced the gentle lines of the figure, his mind visualized the narrow jaw and smooth skin of the woman, Nadine. Her skin had felt like satin, and he could see the longing mixed with fear in her eyes as he touched her. Eyes that were so full of fear they were almost as green as the jade slab.
His instincts told him Nadine was no more than she professed to be, although he admitted there were times when her actions were contradictory. But there was one message that was constant. Nadine Clayton was a woman whose passions ran deep. So deep that even she was afraid to explore them.
Ulysses’ dark eyes stared at the Moon Goddess. But how did she know the Gaia Series was connected with the cliff dwellers when she claimed she had only been on Eros for one day? His brows knitted together. Unless Nadine Clayton was involved with the theft.
Ulysses could not, and would not allow himself to be blinded by the feelings she was able to invoke in him. She could very well be his enemy. A lovely, enticing enemy. The deadliest kind.
He rose, crossing over to the desk that held all of the notes on the family’s private collection that his father and grandfather had written through the years. He took out a key and unlocked the drawer; a cracked leather ledger lay inside. He studied the yellow pages filled with a list and description of Sovereign’s special treasures. Ulysses thumbed through the book until he came to the page entitled “The Five Pieces of Gaia.” Beneath this his father had written:
Of all the collection, these five slabs house the greatest mystery and history of Eros, the cliff dwellers, and the Deane family. They are my favorites, and they hold a special meaning for you, Ulysses, my son. One that I am on the brink of truly understanding.
Ulysses stared at his father’s incomplete message. Peter Deane had not known about the manuscript pages inside the slabs. If he had, Ulysses would have known. But for some reason he still felt the Five Pieces of Gaia were the most important pieces of their entire collection.
Ulysses read his father’s words again. The passage created a void that reminded him of the painful loss he felt as a child growing up without his parents.
Looking up, his gaze was drawn to a jade paperweight on top of the desk. Ulysses recalled how he had acquired it from a merchant selling articles to tourists on Barbados, then his thoughts drifted to Nadine again.
Yes, she was different. She was not the average American who had traveled to a foreign country taking in its sights and treasures with greedy apathy. He knew the feelings that stirred within her were real, but that didn’t mean they were all good.
Ulysses ran a searching finger over the round edges of the jade rose petals as he told himself he could not afford to feel anything else for this woman. He had learned the hard way. He knew forming emotional attachments of any kind brought nothing but pain and sadness. In the long run you would try to protect those you love, like his mother tried to protect him. But it would be to no avail because you would still lose them, and as his father had proven by his suicide, the pain of that loss was worse than death.
“I cannot allow myself to ever become involved in that way. Never!” His raspy voice rang out amongst the lifeless faces that watched him. Ulysses realized that his outburst before his deaf audience resembled that of the woman he had made up his mind to keep at arm’s length, Nadine. Clayton.
Chapter 9
Nadine recognized the distinct taste of fish and coconut as she bit into one of several codfish balls Catherine had placed before her. It was a taste she had not become accustomed to, and she would have done anything for some fried chicken and spaghetti. Her eyes kept straying to the empty place setting at the head of the table where Ulysses usually sat.
It was difficult for Nadine to accept that the poised creature, albeit still dressed in her usual chiton and olive headband, was the same person she had seen no more than an hour earlier.
“I must say I am thankful that my evening dose of medication does not put me to sleep like the earlier ration. It simply would not do for me to miss supper,” Madame Deane commented, then glanced at Ulysses’ vacant chair. “It is so unlike him to be absent from supper. This is the time when we usually go over household matters, and talk about other things that need to be taken care of. Catherine says he has locked himself upstairs inside the collection room again.” Her dark eyes clouded over with concern.
Nadine studied her hostess, her hazel eyes suspicious, curious. It just did not make sense. None at all. There was no medicine in the world that could change a person like Madame Deane’s medication changed her.
The older woman seemed oblivious to Nadine’s silence. “Sometimes I wish there was a pill Ulysses could take to get rid of the anger and hurt I know he still harbors about his parents. They died so long ago. As a matter of fact, next weekend it will be twenty-five years that they’ve been gone. If that’s not enough time for a person to purge themselves of such damaging feelings . . .” Her gaze sought Nadine’s compliance. “I am not saying he should not miss them, but you would think a child of seven would have grown up and left a bit of the pain behind. But some of the islanders,” she looked down, “well, they just would not let him forget. People can be so cruel, you know.”
Nadine had wondered about Ulysses’ parents. She was surprised to find out they had died when he was so young.
“I know just how cruel people can be,” she admitted. “But it seems when things happen to you when you are a child,” Nadine sought the right words, “so innocent and trusting, they stay with you somehow. Like an impression in wet clay, it hardens.” She looked at Madame Deane who was listening intently, as if she were searching for an answer.
Nadine continued. “I only saw my mother a few times when I was growing up. There were pictures of her and my father that kept them alive for me. For a while I chose to believe they were dead.” She looked directly at her hostess. “But then I accepted the truth, and the hurt was different, because I realized they were alive but they didn’t want me with them. They had chosen to leave me with Grandma Rose. My grandmother tried to make me feel better by saying they didn’t have the means to provide for me. But from time to time the pictures of different cities would arrive. They were always accompanied by a short note, describing the places where they were working. My mother would be dressed in extravagant clothes, posing glamorously outside of places with names like Dixie’s Dollhouse and Lacy’s Girls.”
Nadine looked at Madame Deane, embarrassed over revealing so much about her past, but as with Ulysses the pain of her childhood was still real. She would not lie to protect her parents’ dignity. They had not cared enough to protect hers.
“Did your parents ever come to visit you?” Madame Deane asked.
“No. But after a while I grew accustomed to it,” Nadine added quickly. “And for a short period of time I felt rather special. I thought it was wonderful to have parents who were able to travel all around, and I would boast to my playmates about it,” she continued, almost as if she were talking to herself. “Then I began to hear the rumors. ‘Nadine Clayton’s mother and father actually have a working relationship. That’s why she can’t live with them. The things they are involved in aren’t fit for a young girl to see, and that’s why Auntie Rose had to keep her. With the way things are, there is no way to really tell if Slim is really the girl’s father. After all, who else in the Clayton line has those strange hazel eyes,’ they would say.” Nadine became silent.
“You know,” Madame Deane jumped in, “Ulysses used to be teased all the time about his skin color and his curly hair. It used to make him furious,” she told her. “And I know deep inside it hurt him more than anything else.”
“Yes. It always hu
rts when people ridicule and degrade things you cannot change,” Nadine confirmed. “I remember one conversation Grandma Rose and I had about my eyes. I was already having a hard enough time when the incident happened. Just about all the children would tease me.” Her lips turned up into a smile, although it wasn’t a real one. “They called me the praying mantis because I was long and thin, and the color of my hair nearly matched my skin. But it was my large, hazel eyes, and the long periods of time my grandmother and I spent at church that had really earned me that name. My other features were merely icing on the cake,” Nadine continued.
“One particular day, several of the school bullies followed me without my knowing it. As usual, before going home from school, I went to my secret spot in the woods. It was springtime, and a couple of days before, I had managed to find a tree branch with butterfly cocoons attached to it.” This time Nadine smiled for real. “How excited I was at the prospect of watching the ugly caterpillars inside their shells, eventually turn into beautiful butterflies. And then to watch them fly up into the sky. Free! Free to experience the world, no longer hampered by their ugliness. It was just what I wanted to do,” she explained. “Well, I remember I didn’t want to disturb the cocoons, so I lifted the branch oh so gently to have a closer look. Suddenly, a loud voice screamed, ‘Hey! Look! The praying mantis is gonna eat those cocoons. Let’s take them away from her!’ And before I could stop them the three boys had snatched the branch out of my hand. Two of them held me, while the third took the cocoons off of the branch. I remember screaming, ‘No! Please! They’ll die!’ and feeling as if my little heart was being crushed inside my chest.” She sort of laughed. “But one of the boys turned to me with this ugly look on his face, and said, ‘What does it matter to you? You’re just an ole stick! You don’t have a mother or father. Those people that you talk about in those pictures don’t even know you. Just look at yourself. Does either one of them have those bug-colored eyes?’”
“No,” exhaled Madame Deane, her olive-leaf headband dipping a little too low.
“Yes, he did,” Nadine told her. “And boy, when he said that, this surge of anger and hurt came up in me like a roaring fire. I pulled away from the two who held me and hurled myself onto the boy who had said it. I started beating him like he had stole something.”
Madame Deane covered her mouth with her hand, almost laughing behind it.
“I sure did,” Nadine continued. “I mean I scratched and kicked as if my life depended on it—that is, until his friends pulled me away. Then I heard Grandma Rose calling my name, and they heard it too.” Her eyes got larger. “They ran away, but not before they attempted to smash the cocoons. When my grandmother found me I was holding the branch. It only had one cocoon on it. Somehow it had been spared.” Nadine paused. “Of course, when I saw Grandma, a new crop of tears started to fall, and I told her what the boys had said. Grandma just shook her head, sat down beside me in the forest, and put her arm around me.
“‘Look, honey,’” she said. “‘Don’t you worry about what people say. I love you, and in her way your mama does too. And as far as your eyes go, there have been stories passed down in our family that some folks say originated on an island called Barnado. It talked of a child who would be born with the proof of her ancestry in her eyes. She would be important to all humankind. Who knows,’ Grandma Rose shrugged, ‘perhaps that child is you.’ She looked deep into my eyes, then she said, ‘And you know what else?’ I remember shaking my head. ‘With us Black folks here in America and our history, it’s hard to tell what color a baby is going to be, or what he or she might look like. You know, it’s like throwing a couple of dice, all kinds of combinations are possible.’”
“I like that,” Madame Deane exclaimed, a subtle gleam in her eyes. “And you know what? It is kind of interesting how you and my nephew are somewhat alike when it comes to dealing with prejudice, even from your own people.” She straightened her headband. “It is a shame how we allow color, and different physical characteristics, to separate us.” Madame Deane looked down at the entree Catherine was placing before her. “From the very beginning we knew it was going to be hard for Ulysses’ parents, but what can you say when two people are in love.” She raised her thin hands expressively. “Ulysses is definitely a combination of the two. He was named by my brother, and that’s where he got all of his charm.” She smiled reminiscently. “But he took his height and some of his color from Layla. She was an Egyptian. There are very few on the island, but there are several African families. Ashanti. Ibo. A lot of the slaves who ended up on Barbados were from those tribes. Most of them are spiritual, peaceful people.” Madame Deane paused. “Boy, was she fiery.” She spoke with her fork and knife suspended in the air as she conjured up images from the past. “I am talking about Layla. And she was beautiful too. Her skin was a shiny, dark brown. Her ancestors were among a group of Africans brought here from Barbados as slaves. That was hundreds of years ago.” She placed a small amount of food in her mouth and chewed pensively. “Slavery was ingrained in our culture. But by the time my grandfather took over Sovereign, slavery had been abolished. Still, on some of the estates you wouldn’t have known it. And the folks here on Eros had been operating independent of the mainland for decades, so it was like a separate country. But my grandfather was determined to treat the African families that had been connected with Sovereign as fairly as he could. I’m not saying he didn’t have his prejudices.” Madame Deane waved her fork. “Inevitably that meant my brother Peter and I grew up with a different mind-set about them than most of the islanders,” Madame Deane continued to explain.
“My brother was always a true art lover, just like his son. Rare things of beauty always intrigued him.” She patted her wrinkled lips with a napkin. “One day he spotted Layla in some woods that edge our secluded beach. He said from the very first moment he saw her he knew she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her beauty captured him, but he said the way she was acting roused his curiosity. You see, Layla kept looking over her shoulder as if she didn’t want to be seen. Peter said she appeared to be very scared, so he hid himself and continued to watch her. Finally, when she felt secure she was alone, Layla removed two stones near the edge of the woods and began to dig. In no time at all Peter said she unearthed this magnificent bust. He said the sun reflected off of it like gold as she held it in her hands.” Madame Deane gazed off as if she too were looking at the scene. “Peter said seeing her hold it with such reverence was a work of art within itself, and out of pure excitement and overwhelming curiosity he came out of his hiding place. From what he knew about the African workers, he had expected her to flee or cower with fright. But not Layla. Peter said she pulled herself up to her fullest height and looked him dead in the eye, claiming the piece as her own. Her stance dared him to challenge her.” Madame Deane’s eyes sparkled with pride. “He said he could barely understand a word Layla was saying she was so excited, but he said her gestures were plain and clear. At that point Peter did his best to reassure her that he had no intention of taking the bust from her, and he expressed his appreciation for its beauty. He said they stood there staring at each other for a long time, and that Layla would not leave until he left. After that, for several days around the same time he revisited the spot where he had seen her, but she never came. Then finally Layla showed up again, and to his surprise she told him she had secretly watched him each time he visited the spot. It was only after the third time he had come, and had not tried to dig up the bust, did she feel she could trust him.
“Yes,” Madame Deane’s eyes clouded over with sad acceptance, “from that point on their visits together became the highlight of their days. Eventually people knew they had developed some kind of relationship, but none of the islanders expected Peter would ever marry Layla. But being the kind of man my brother was, he did. For a while they were really happy. I hate to say it,” she looked down at the food that was getting cold, “but they were happier after Father died. He really did not approve o
f the marriage. He knew the problems they would encounter. Then Ulysses was born, and their lives seemed so fulfilled, for a while.” Madame Deane paused as the ghostly images took over.
“He was seven years old when it happened. Ulysses had been beaten pretty badly by some older boys on the island, and Layla decided to take the matter up with their parents. Unlucky for her, two of the fathers were drinking together at the first home where she stopped. Instead of listening to what she had to say, they turned it into an opportunity to take advantage of her. From what I heard they did all sorts of horrible things. Then they brought her battered body and left it on one of the paths that led to Sovereign. My brother found her, and in his grief he stabbed himself in the heart. Sad to say Ulysses was the one who found the two of them. The crime went unpunished because we were never able to prove who did it.”
“How awful!” Nadine’s heart went out to Ulysses, and she looked up at the ceiling, picturing him locked inside his room.
“Here on Eros we have such a blend of the awful and the sublime, the old and the new. And it is only because of the recent tourist trade that things have changed as much as they have. It is a place rich in myths born out of ancient cultures.”
“Yes, the cliff dwellers appear to be living proof of that.” Nadine studied Madame Deane’s expression as she mentioned the name that had sent Ulysses into an unexplained rage. But madame showed no feelings at all as she took the conversational tidbit offered by her dinner guest.
“They are definitely an interesting people. Theirs is the oldest culture on the island. Their settlement sits among the cliffs on the far east side. Can you believe they actually live beneath cliff overhangs and in shallow caves?” She leaned forward. “Personally, I’ve never seen their houses. But of course the entire island knows about them, and Ulysses has visited them many times.” She pushed the cold pastry and sea eggs around on her plate. “It was not always the way it is now. I heard in the beginning their ancestors came here from a sunken continent that was located in the western part of the world. It was called Lemuria. They chose to make their homes among the caves and cliffs, and later, when outsiders inhabited the island, they tried to become more a part of the island community. At first they were well accepted. It is said they were a very demonstrative and expressive people, and because of this, they brought harmony and rhythm to the island of Eros. The outsiders began to enjoy their lives in ways they never had before, and before anyone realized it, the cliff dwellers were looked up to as leaders.