by KD Knight
Dark Fall
K. D. Knight
Copyright 2015 by K.D.Knight Publishing. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-9917752
Printed in Canada
~Jane~
Chapter One: Everything Is Not Irie
Although this is my first time on a plane, it’s not my first time moving. I'm well accustomed to moving. In fact, this will be my sixth or seventh time in the last fourteen years. Usually, with just a moment's notice my mother would frantically pack our meager belongings into our minivan and speed across the province in search of a new “home.”
On one particular night, when I was about ten years old, my mother, Ruthlyn, roused me out of bed in the middle of the night. In my half-conscious state I could see that she was distressed. Her hands trembled as she shoved clothing into an overnight bag. She ran frantically from room to room as she barked at me to get my things.
“We have to leave now!” she shouted from the other room. “Grab your things. Don't leave anything personal behind. Don't leave anything that can be traced.”
I looked around the room. I didn't have much. I had a few items of clothing and a book or two. None of those things mattered. The only possession I cared about was my necklace with a pendant in the shape of an ocean wave. It was my gran's necklace. She gave it to my mother when we first left the island when I was two. My mother later passed it to me. No matter how many times we moved, or what obscure town we moved to, as long as I had my gran's necklace I somehow felt okay.
I emerged from the room with my backpack in hand. She was waiting by the door.
“Maybe we should set the place on fire. Then we'd be sure there's nothing left behind to trace,” I said in a cold, flat tone.
My mother stood upright. “Don’t get smart with me. You have no idea what's going on here.” Her voice began to tremble. “You have no idea what I’ve sacrificed for you. You think I want to skip town like a thief in the night?”
“Then why do you do it?” My question was sincere.
But her silence was the only answer I received. We rode all the way to the next town without exchanging a word.
My mother finally settled down when I turned thirteen and we have stayed in the same home for the past three years. I attended the same school, saw the same people, and stared at the same four walls, night after night. Those were the golden years, and I welcomed them gladly after spending years roaming like a nomad.
Two months ago my mother received a call from the Kingston Public Hospital in Jamaica inviting her to join their team as a registered nurse. Apparently, there had been a dramatic increase in trauma cases over the last year. Their nurses were drowning in bodies, literally. They offered her double the amount she was making in her current position at the nursing home here in Canada. She glowed when she spoke of her new title—Ruthlyn Miller, Nurse Specialist in the Trauma Unit. I've never seen her so happy. But as I expected, she turned down the offer. Shockingly, a few days later Darlene Wisdom, my mother's younger sister who still lived on the island, somehow managed to change my mother's mind. I’m not sure why, but my mother agreed to accept the position. There was only one condition. She would complete her contract with her current patient. "This woman has been good to me," she said about the elderly woman. This gave us about six months.
Two weeks after that, another miracle happened. Aunt Darlene convinced my mother to let me travel alone to Jamaica while my mother completed her contract. I would live with her and her son, Kevin, until my mother was able to join us. I can’t imagine what she could have told my paranoid, overprotective mother to get her to agree.
Knowing my mother’s knee-jerk reactions, I tried not to get too excited. At any moment, she could change her mind and flush my hopes down the toilet. It didn’t take much. It could be as small as a suspicious phone call or an odd look from the stock boy at the supermarket to send us off and running. It’s happened.
Despite the nagging feeling that this new freedom was too good to be true, I found myself smiling. I’d be away from my mother for six months. This was the perfect opportunity to live a normal paranoia-free, teenage life.
I spent every spare minute on the internet googling Jamaica. I researched the people, the climate, the geography, you name it. I wanted to know it all. I found out that their motto 'Out of many, one people' summed up the Jamaican cultural composition. There were people on the island who were of African descent, German, Chinese, Lebanese, Syrian, Indian, and even Jewish.
The people speak a language called patois, which according to the blogs can sound like anything from perfect English to something incomprehensible. To me, patois sounded as foreign as Turkish. This is what scared me the most. My mother, although born and raised Jamaican, made it a point to speak perfect English at all times. I heard her speak patois only once, and it was by accident. I happened to have walked into the room one day as she was talking to her sister on the phone. She’s never made that mistake again.
As my move date approached, I found myself paying close attention to the island's tourism commercials, which featured middle-aged couples playing golf and palm trees blowing in the distance. My mother was quick to tell me that living in Jamaica was not going to be anything like a vacation. The native islanders were not going to be hanging around the beach chanting “Irie” and “Yah mon” while sipping on tropical drinks. From then on I kept my smiling to a minimum.
Up to the moment I stood in the line for Gate 7 at Pearson Airport, I feared that my mother was going to drag me back to the house. But she didn't. She gave me a long, lingering hug, wiped the tears from her eyes, gave me a few words of caution then said, “Goodbye.”
Now on the plane and in the air, the flight has been rough. I have been gripping the seat so tightly that my knuckles have turned white and my fingers numb. This is my first time on an airplane and it hasn’t been a good experience. After the narrow charter airplane plunged for the third time in the last twenty minutes, I felt the child-sized portion of scrambled eggs they served for breakfast threatens to erupt from my stomach.
"We are experiencing a bit of turbulence due to extreme weather conditions over South Carolina," the pilot announced calmly. "The weather should clear up as we get closer to our destination."
I closed my eyes and held my breath as the plane dipped to the right.
"Can I get you anything to drink?" a pleasant voice addressed me.
I opened one eye to see a flight attendant standing above me. There was a slight crease between her brows that most likely meant that she had been standing there longer than she would have liked.
"Yes. I'll have some orange juice," I answered.
My mother's voice was already echoing in my ears. This morning at the airport, just before I walked through the passengers only door heading towards Gate 7, she held me tightly and whispered, “You have to be on alert at all times. You can't afford to be daydreaming. There are certain places that you can't afford to wander into while your mind is off in the clouds.”
I'm not off to a good start.
I sipped my juice and stared out the window. I looked anxiously beyond the plane's wings to the dark clouds that soiled the southern sky.
"Uh, this is your captain speaking. The time is now 1:25 PM. We will be arriving at Kingston's Norman Manley International Airport in the next few moments. The weather is clear and sunny with a temperature of 81 degrees Fahrenheit. Please fasten your seat belts as we begin our descent."
My heart began to race as the plane began its st
eady decline. I felt excited. This was my chance to live a normal teenage life. No more moving. No more counting the cracks in my four walls every night. I'll go to a normal school, meet normal students, maybe go out on a weekend, and simply do the things that I’ve seen other sixteen-year-old girls doing.
Yet, despite the excitement, I also felt nervous. My mother has pumped me full of her worries about strangers and unknown places. A part of me has always been scared that she might be right.
I finally opened my eyes again when I heard the clamor of people unbuckling their seat belts and pulling their hand luggage from the overhead compartments. Grabbing my only piece of luggage—my backpack—I walked off the plane behind the crowd. The first thing I encountered was the island's fragrance. The air smelled like a sweet combination of flowers, the ocean, and asphalt. Beyond the ocean are green, rolling hills dotted by white housetops. I now understood why this island is a tourist favourite.
As I made my way through the long line at customs, I noticed a group of tourists pacing in the line beside me. They are wearing matching Hawaiian tops and wide-brimmed straw hats, which looked out of place amidst the sea of jeans and t-shirts everyone else wore, but they seemed to be right at home as they laughed with the customs officer. I gave myself a quick once over—blue jeans, plain white t-shirt, my dark curly hair pulled back into my usual high ponytail. I blended in with the crowd, but I couldn’t help my feeling of discomfort. I didn’t know where to walk or what to say. Everything felt unnatural.
After fumbling through the custom officer’s questions, I followed the tourists out of the airport to the passenger pick-up. The passenger pick-up zone is a long, narrow canopy-covered strip with luggage and people spilling over onto the street. I shuffled through the dense crowd and found a small spot at the end. I pulled out the photo of my mother's sister, Darlene; the picture was taken about years ago. In it her warm, hazel eyes shimmered as she proudly held her young son, Kevin. According to my mother, Aunt Darlene had a face that never changed, so spotting her should not be that difficult.
"Hello, Miss!" I heard a deep voice call in the strong island accent. "Hello!"
I turned curiously and saw a middle-aged man leaning casually against a white unbranded car. He had a round, stiff belly that extended well beyond his body.
"You need a taxi?" he asked, his firm, round belly retracting as he spoke.
"No. I'm fine. Thank you," I replied.
"Just come," he said, walking towards me. My heart beat leapt to my throat as the round-bellied stranger came close. He reached out to grab my elbow, “Mi wih gih you a good rate."
"I'm sorry I don't understand patois" I jerked my arm from his grip.
He reached for my arm again and my heart began to thunder. I stumbled back into a stack of luggage, sending the neatly piled items crashing to the ground. The owner of the luggage, a flat-faced woman, grumbled. I apologized for the accident and offered to help re-stack her things. I was relieved when she declined since the round-bellied stranger had inched even closer.
The ruckus caught the attention of a security patrol officer who took one look at the round-bellied taxi driver and abruptly ordered him to leave to premises. The round-bellied man smiled brightly, his brown eyes shining red in the sunlight, and left without argument.
Just then a woman appeared beside the security officer. It took a second but I recognized her from the picture.
"Aunty Darlene," I stepped forward, smiling.
She pulled me close, giving me the tightest hug I have ever received.
“Are you okay?” She asked, pulling me away from the officer. She eyed him suspiciously as he spoke with the flat-faced woman.
“I'm fine.”
“I saw that big-belly man talking to you and I thought …” She let her voice drop then took a deep breath and smiled brightly. "Look at you, girl," she squealed. "My goodness, you grow up to be a nice, young miss." She wrapped her arm around mine and turned to walk me toward the parking lot.
She stepped back, watching me carefully, as if inspecting me for wounds. "Call me ‘Aunt Dar.’ Darlene makes me sound so old."
"You are old," a teenage boy quipped as we approached the car. He pushed himself off of his comfortable spot on the trunk and began to straighten his clothes.
"Watch yourself," Aunt Dar warned him in a semi-playful tone.
"This mouthy boy is my son, Kevin," she gestured to the tall, athletically built young man as he ushered me toward the rear passenger seat.
"Kevin will be going away to college in a few weeks," Aunt Dar rubbed his shoulder with pride as she passed him. "My son's going to be an accountant."
"Congratulations." I said as I slid into the back seat of the car.
"Hopefully when I'm finished I could get an internship down by Port Royal, in the head office," he said, looking back at me through the rear view mirror.
Aunt Dar jabbed Kevin hard in the thigh. He flashed her a what-did-I-say-wrong glance, which she didn't appear to buy for one second. She continued to scold Kevin with her eyes for the remainder of the ride through the city. I leaned back against the seat and smiled as I watched the dusk settle over the busy streets of Kingston.
By the time we arrived at Aunt Dar's house, a full moon was out and the pitch-black sky was filled with stars. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. It's hard to believe that this is the same sky that appeared over my apartment back home.
The exterior of Aunt Dar's home was not the speckled red brick I'd grown up seeing. Instead, the house had a smooth, seamless finish as if it were carved out of one big piece of stone. As soon as I entered, my eyes were pulled up to the high vaulted ceiling.
"Welcome home," Aunt Dar said, rubbing my back.
Home. That word made me smile. I've never called anywhere I've lived 'home' before.
"It's mango season,” she said, dropping her bag and keys on a side table. “I've got a few trees in the back if you're interested." She led me through the living room and out to the backyard where she pointed to a string of trees nestled in the corner.
"Sure. I love mangos."
"Good. I'll get Kevin to pick one for you while we sit and catch up."
We sat on the veranda under the night sky. Aunt Dar brought out a pitcher of lemonade and poured me a generous glass. I sipped slowly as I watched Kevin disappear into the dark shadow under the mango tree.
"How is my big sister doing? She still miserable as usual?" She asked before taking a long sip.
"She's happier now with the nursing thing at the hospital in Kingston."
"It's about time you two came back home. This is where you belong Jane."
I rubbed the frost off the outer layer of the glass. "Aunt Dar, why did my mother leave Jamaica?"
She let out a laboured sigh. "She never told you?"
"She told me she left for better opportunities. But it doesn't make sense for someone who wants a better opportunity to hop and skip across the country. We had to start over each time we moved." I finished my lemonade and looked up at Aunt Dar whose gaze was fixed on my face. "Tell me the truth, I can handle it."
"I won't lie to you," she said. "I want us to have an honest relationship where we can trust each other." She looked over to Kevin who was still hidden in the mango tree’s foliage. "When you were two and living here in Jamaica, you were hurt in a home invasion. I won't go into too much detail, but they didn't get what they came for. Your mother felt that it was too dangerous to keep you here."
"So she moved to Canada?"
"Yes."
"I don't understand why she couldn't tell me that," I said watching the ice circle the bottom of my glass. "You know, I was convinced she was wanted for murder and she was running from the law."
Aunt Dar laughed heartily then fell into silence. She reached out and touched my hand, "I'm sure you're going to miss your friends while you're here. I have a good long distance plan; you can call them anytime you want. Talk as long as you like."
"I've got no one to call
."
"No friends? What about that boy your mother mentioned once. Kumar, I think his name was."
"Kumar Richardson." I wasn't surprised that Aunt Dar heard about him. My mother had an eye on everything I did.
Kumar was the closest thing I had to a friend. He was the first person I met when we finally settled. He lived two streets down from the apartment building where my mother and I lived. I used to go to the local park across from the building, sit on the swing and let my mind wander to anywhere other than where I was. The kids in the neighbourhood didn't make fun of me or tell stories about me. They simply acted as if I wasn't there, except for Kumar. He went out of his way to talk to me. My mother had pumped me so full of paranoia that I was scared to talk to anyone. But eventually, he won me over with his persistence.
After that, we spent every day together playing up and down our street. For the next year, we were inseparable. But everything changed when we got to high school. By the time Kumar turned fifteen, he had grown to over six feet tall and became the captain of the junior basketball team. Suddenly, he became the guy all the popular girls drooled over and the one all the guys wanted to be friends with. He changed. He became someone I didn't know. He was never home when I went to visit and if I did get him on the phone, he'd make up some excuse about having to go. Eventually, I stopped calling.
I was tough enough to get over that, just as I had gotten over many other things in my life. But I couldn't help wondering, what was the point of going through all the trouble to be my friend just to suddenly disappear in the end?
"We stopped being friends a long time ago."
Aunt Dar looked at me and sighed deeply. She pitied me. I could see it in the downward curl of her lip. “Jane, are you hungry?" She asked finally.
"A bit."
"I have oxtail with broad beans and rice."
"Um…"
"Or I may have some escovitch fish in the fridge," she said, heading for the kitchen.