Learning to Breathe

by Janice Lynn Mather

  “Listen, we really in a bind down here. We need some help all day tomorrow. Any chance you free?”

  “Um—yeah.”

  “Can you come by this morning, too? It’s a chance to make a little money.” He sounds harried. “And I thought you might want to get out of the house. You done with exams now, right?”

  I glance over at Aunt Patrice, who’s starting across the kitchen toward me purposefully. “Sure,” I say.

  “Great!” Dion’s enthusiastic voice is so loud Aunt Patrice has to have heard him.

  “See you,” I say, and hang up on Dion just as she reaches my side.

  “And who was that?” she asks.

  “It was a girl from school.”

  “And what’s that you agreed to?”

  “Helping her study.”

  Smiley snorts unhelpfully, her ironing abandoned.

  Aunt Patrice gives me a long stare. “I hope that’s the case, for your sake,” she says.

  “Morning, Mummy. Morning, Smiley.” Gary shuffles past the kitchen doorway. No greeting for me; apparently I don’t exist. Fine with me. He backsteps to glance at Smiley. “You ain goin to school dressed like that, ay?”

  Aunt Patrice looks over. “Cecile Anne, if you don’t put your blouse on!”

  As she scolds Smiley, I retreat to the living room to get a fresh set of uniform. Hunched down by the sofa, I pick out a blouse and skirt from the stash of clean clothes I leave stacked in the corner so Aunt Patrice won’t know I’m sneaking into Smiley’s room to sleep at night.

  “That’s a nice little stunt you pull yesterday.” Gary’s voice, right behind me. I can hear Aunt Patrice in the other room, lecturing Smiley on modesty. They might as well be an ocean away.

  “You don’t walk around the house dressed that way,” Aunt Patrice is saying. “You growing up now. You don’t do them kinda things.”

  “You lucky I ain get no scratches on my truck.” Gary is bent down too, his mouth close to my neck. There is a heat that rises up out of him. I strain away but there’s nowhere to go. “You could never pay for that. What your ma is go for again? Twenty? Forty? That can’t fix no damage.”

  From the kitchen, Smiley’s voice is a childish squeal. “So what, man? Daddy ain home, an we all family.”

  “Don’t cross me again,” Gary warns. A finger presses into my neck.

  “Who cares?” Smiley’s voice is defensive and shrill. “It’s only Gary.”

  “I watchin you, ya know.”

  Feel his nail digging into my skin. I wish I could pull away, move even an inch, but everything in me is paralyzed, I can’t so much as flinch. Everything except my mind. Come in, I will Smiley. Come in, catch him, make him stop.

  “I see you with ya little friend. Your rescuer. Got a nice picture of y’all two. You lucky I ain tell my mummy you in trouble at school. You owe me.” Voice drops. “How you wanna pay?”

  I don’t realize when Aunt Patrice finishes lecturing Smiley. Gary must not either. At the sound of a throat being cleared behind us, he springs away from me.

  “Hey, Mummy.” His voice is so normal, barely the slightest of shakes. “I gotta get going, they have me down for nine.” He’s gone quickly. I’m still frozen, crouched down, the school blouse in my hand clenched so tight it feels like part of my palm.

  When I stand up, I see Aunt Patrice’s lips pressed together in a line. Her eyes meet mine, and narrow. How much has she seen? But before I can read her, she’s turned away.

  • • •

  At the retreat, the office is unlocked but empty, the paths deserted except for the potcake, who wags his tail lazily before settling back onto the grass.

  “Dion?” I call, checking the kitchen, which is also empty. A huge pot, still sticky from breakfast grits, rests in the sink, half full of water. In the dining pavilion, a few guests sit with their plates. Out on the deck facing the ocean, a teacher calls out instructions to a class of a dozen or so people. I follow the path out past the bathrooms and call again.

  “Over here.” I see Dion waving from over by the beach, Maya standing near him.

  “Hey,” I call as I get closer. I come around to where they are, and there, off to the side, arms full of yoga mats, face screwed into a scowl, is Joe.

  “Morning,” Maya chirps. Dion greets me with a guilty nod.

  “What you doing here?” Joe snaps, dropping the mats. “Dion? Why’s she here?”

  I shoot Dion a glare, hitching my bag up higher on my shoulder. “Leaving.” Then I see his right arm, wrist and forearm wrapped in a brace. In his left arm, he clutches a plastic bag loaded down with something. “What happened to you?”

  He grins sheepishly, holding the bag out. Inside, a pile of early scarlet plums, fat with juice. “I fell out of the tree. Gotta wear this thing for a few weeks now. Hey, you hung up before I could finish talking.”

  “Bad connection,” I say. I can feel Joe glowering at me.

  “Dion, why’s this girl here on a school day? You getting kids to play hooky to cover your job now?”

  “I’m finished school.” I tell her. It’s not a complete lie; I feel done right now. How can I go back, after what happened yesterday?

  “Before ten?” Joe retorts. “And you’re in school uniform?”

  “I have graduation pictures.” Now it’s a lie. I turn to Dion. “What you called me for?” Beside him, Joe’s scowl has deepened. She steps forward.

  “I don’t know what he told you, but we don’t need you here.” She sneers, a funny, lip-curling experience that makes her look like a disgruntled fish.

  “Who you think’s gonna fill in for me?” Dion reaches out, gently stopping Joe. “Who you think cleaned those bathrooms after you fired Steph?”

  “Maya—” Joe starts.

  “Uh-uh, don’t look at me,” Maya says as she starts down the path, excusing herself. “My job in the kitchen, that’s what y’all hired me for.”

  “Why’d you call me here?” I ask Dion.

  Dion looks from Joe to me. “We need you. Matter of fact, Joe needs you.”

  “Of all the idiotic times to go falling out of a tree,” she complains. She looks like she might start walloping him with a rolled-up yoga mat.

  I don’t think I can handle Joe. She’s just another Aunt Patrice, judgmental and angry. Right now, Aunt Patrice is mandatory; without her, I have no place to live. Joe is a choice. “Sorry, Dion,” I say, starting to walk away.

  “All right, then,” he says, then turns to Joe. “I guess you might as well call the people on Mariner’s Cay and tell them you can’t make it. I hope they won’t be too disappointed.”

  I turn back.

  “Mariner’s?”

  “It’s something new,” Dion says, shooting a sideways look at Joe. “Something we wanted to start. Joe was going up there to teach yoga at a hotel and a few places in the community. But I guess that won’t be happening now.” Dion reaches for his bag of plums with his good hand. “The woman I talked to at the school told me she’d believe we were miracle workers if we could get her bad students to sit still and keep quiet for more than a minute.”

  I’d think he was bluffing if I didn’t actually know Mrs. Whyms; she’s sour-faced, fatter than, but not as cruel as, her sister, Mrs. Ellis, who made Churchy cry while he stood there under the casuarinas outside the white church, pants cold and stinking of pee, trying to stutter out the details of Adam and Eve’s days in the Garden of Eden. This could be a ticket back to Mariner’s. A ticket to Grammy. I would have to face her, with my secret that won’t be a secret much longer. But either I face Grammy or I stay here, waiting for Aunt Patrice to throw me out. Or for the next time Gary corners me.

  “That’s a lot of mats to pack up by yourself,” Dion says to Joe, cajoling.

  Joe shakes her head. “What you know about this girl? She showed up from nowhere, twice now, middle of the day, not in school, acting funny, and I’m supposed to take her off the island with me? Who knows what kind of trouble she could get in
? What if she goes off with somebody? And then what? I still don’t have help, and on top of all that, her parents come looking for me.”

  While Dion reminds her how Mariner’s is steep and rocky, how she’ll have sixteen mats to tote, I try to decide what to do. Do I take this boat ride? Will this woman even let me?

  “And you don’t know nobody up there,” Dion continues. “You think anybody want help you? Watch. You lucky if you don’t break your neck trying to unload all them things at the dock.” His usually mellow voice rises in frustration.

  “Susan can’t come?”

  “Susan teaching tomorrow, but Indy could be there. Right, Indy?” Dion steps toward me, his face full of hope.

  Joe makes an angry noise, throwing her arms up in disgust. “Look, you’re the one who went and strained your arm doing foolishness. You figure it out. I’m loading up the car.” She snatches up an armload of rolled-up yoga mats and storms out to the parking lot.

  “Sorry about that,” Dion says.

  “I’m not trouble.”

  “I know, I know,” he says. How do you know, I want to ask. How are you so sure, when everyone else takes a look at me and decides, right off the bat, I must be no good? “Look, we’ll pay you for the day. A hundred dollars.”

  I don’t think I’ve ever held a hundred dollars all at once.

  “And I’ll make sure she lets you have time to go see your family.”

  A hundred dollars. A hundred dollars closer to being free of Aunt Patrice.

  “Free boat ride.” His grin is convincing, but that’s not what decides it. Neither is the money, even though that sounds sweet. This is my one shot to go home, to see Grammy. To be back on Mariner’s Cay. What if I never came back to Nassau? I imagine walking up to Grammy’s house, stepping onto the porch, my hand on the doorknob. Inside, bread will be baking. Shelves full of her books. Grammy will turn and see me and smile. I’ll forget everything that’s happened and just be Indy again. Light and empty.

  Over Dion’s shoulder, I see Joe in the distance, dropping two of the mats. She bends to pick them up and another falls, unrolling in the dirt. Man, this girl actually can teach yoga? That’s what she looks like, I realize—a girl. She may be older than Mamma, but right now, she has no more idea how to handle life than I do. And no one’s taught her how to fake it. She’s never thought to duct-tape herself together.

  “Man, come on.” Dion looks back too. Joe gives the mats a kick—as solid a kick as you can give mats—and stomps away. She actually stomps. “Look at that. You don’t feel kinda sorry for her?” He tries to sound serious, but a smile starts to take over his face.

  “Nope. Matter of fact, I hope she does go to Mariner’s by herself. Mrs. Ellis would cane her skinny behind if she start throwing tantrums over there. And Mrs. Whyms would have her mouth washed out with soap.”

  Dion laughs, totally erasing the somber expression of sympathy he’s been trying to cultivate. “Please, Indira. All you gotta do, show up at the boat for six-thirty tomorrow. Help her load onto the boat, and back off at the end of the day. Maybe wipe down the mats.”

  We both look back at the jumble of yoga mats in the dust.

  “And set up,” Dion carries on, as if he hopes I won’t notice how arduous it’s starting to sound. “She got about three classes lined up. You’d only have to be there for them; the rest of the day you could go see your people. You don’t have to hang with her, just help her. Please. As a favor to me. I know your people raised you to help out someone in need.”

  I can feel it, the warm air in Grammy’s kitchen, afternoon light heating the room. Her hands patting my back as she hugs me. Look at you, she would say.

  She would look at me. She would see.

  “A hundred and ten.” Dion breaks into my thoughts. “One ten is the most we could do. Come on, man. Say yes. This a good thing for your hometown. She ain makin no money from this. None of us are.”

  “Then what you doin it for?” I don’t expect him to answer, and sure enough, he twists the question back on me.

  “I could ask you that too. What you come down here for if you didn’t want to help?”

  It’s too much to explain, Aunt Patrice and Gary, school and everything. And anyway, this isn’t about me. It’s about Joe. “Her attitude so stink. Why you all here helping her? This her dream, right?”

  Dion pauses, then sighs. “That’s my mummy.”

  “Joe?” How is that even possible? I try to imagine a young Joe with a baby Dion. I picture her tossing a baby bottle against a wall, throwing a hissy fit over a dirty diaper. Well, I guess it’s no more ludicrous than Mamma being my mother. It’s still not a real answer, not for me. “So?”

  “I here because I want to be here. This place feels right to me. I could stand out on that rock and enjoy the sea. I plant my little flowers here and grow my little veggies there, and Maya in the kitchen could cook her food in peace. Susan could teach the students here, right in the garden or facing that way.” He looks out over the water, glinting in the morning light. “This place ain hers, this ours. I called you to ask you for help cause I thought you might want it to be yours too, a little bit. I thought that first day when you show up and fall right onto a mat . . . And when the next day, you jump in front of the jeep. And now today, time number three, you come all the way down here. Thought maybe this was your place too. But maybe I was wrong.”

  I want to say that something sympathetic in me poked through all the annoyance, the way a new shoot pushes up through rocks and soil. I want to say I heard Grammy’s voice. What I teach you? Do unto others, Indy May. The truth is, this could be my only way home.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Oh, thank you, Indy!” Before I can stop it, Dion crunches me in a hug. Then he’s stepped back, almost bouncing from one foot to the other, babbling on about where Joe and I will be going, for how long, how much fun it will be. “You want to help load the jeep now?”

  “I can’t,” I say. Missing school all day today won’t help if I’m gone tomorrow, too. The longer I can at least half-pretend at school, the longer before Aunt Patrice finds out.

  “Why not? I thought you done with school.”

  “I still have graduation pictures.” It feels unnatural, lying to Dion, especially when he nods and wishes me luck.

  “For what? The pictures, or tomorrow?”

  He grins. “Take a little for both.”

  7

  I WALK OUT TO the main road and wait at the bus stop by the clinic, keeping an eye out. It’s dangerous, being outside school in your uniform during the day. Anyone who sees you knows you shouldn’t be there. Of course, this time of year, grade twelves are done anyway. Question is whether I can pass for one of them. With this chest, chances are I can, but it never hurts to be careful. I go stand in the shade right under the clinic’s awning. I figure if anyone sees me, I can say I wasn’t feeling well. It’s not a total lie. The walking, the sun, it all has me tired. Come to think of it, all I’ve eaten today is a couple of ginger biscuits. I wonder if Smiley packed enough lunch to share.

  A hundred and ten dollars. I decide I’ll save most of it, all of it, if I can. For later, that hazy time not far from now, when everybody knows and things really start to change, not just my body, but my whole life. I can’t let Aunt Patrice find out I have a little money coming to me, no matter what. She’d find a way to get her hands on some of it, even if I was back in Mariner’s Cay for good.

  We’re all in the living room watching TV, Smiley and Gary and even Aunt Patrice, when Uncle walks in the front door. Smiley springs up first, hurling herself at him like she’s five, screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!” and hanging off his shoulders before he’s even put his suitcase down. He laughs even though he’s tired, and hugs her and swings her around.

  “Hey, big man,” Gary says, getting up.

  They hug briefly, roughly, before Uncle stoops to give Aunt Patrice a kiss on the cheek. She stays in her chair.

  “Indira,” Uncle says. As always,
he doesn’t know what to say next. The way he looks away from me is different from Aunt Patrice. She always sees me as an unpleasant obligation, a plastic neon-green punch bowl with pink spots received as a gift, a thing she’s required to keep but has no purpose for; he seems to recognize something in me that makes him feel ashamed. He nods his head now, aware that this is the point where most people would hug. “You all right?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I say, glad to leave it at that.

  “How was Miami?” Gary asks, while Smiley prances around.

  “Great. That black bag has the part you wanted for your truck,” Uncle says.

  “You bring me anything, Daddy?” Smiley’s dance has reached ridiculous levels, arms flapping, feet kicking high. Must be different, feeling that way to see a man come home. Aunt Patrice frowns at the display, but Uncle only laughs.

  “Go look in the outside pocket of my suitcase,” he says, and she scampers away. “Here.” He turns to Aunt Patrice. “I stopped for the mail.” He hands her a stack of envelopes. Aunt Patrice sifts through them.

  “Nothing from Sharice? Again?”

  Uncle tries to lower his voice. “Probably late.”

  “This the third month she didn’t send anything.” Aunt Patrice gets up, heading for the kitchen. Her voice is extra loud; she wants to make sure I hear. “Where she think food and clothes come from? Thin air?”

  I muffle a snort. Aunt Patrice might let me eat out of the fridge, but she’s never bought me clothes, not even a pair of socks. The three or four times Mamma sent money, Aunt Patrice doled out a few dollars to me every week for the bus and pocketed the rest. Good thing I had a little put away from Grammy so I could buy pads when I needed them, though I haven’t had to for a while now. And anyway, if Aunt Patrice knows Mamma so well, she shouldn’t be surprised the money’s stopped coming. I’m not.

  Uncle picks up the envelopes without a word. He avoids looking at me.

  “Indira, I know how you could earn some money.” A grin spreads over Gary’s face. “You want help me put this thing in my truck?”

  As I get up, his laughter follows me all the way into Smiley’s room, until I close the door and fling myself down on her bed. So what if Aunt Patrice doesn’t want me in here? I have no place else to go. And what’s wrong with my uncle? He can’t hear what Gary said to me, right in front of him? They’re out there talking about mechanics now, as if Gary’s quip had anything to do with cars. I hate them all: Aunt Patrice crashing around in her big, sloppy kitchen as if not getting fifty dollars from Mamma is the worst possible thing in the world; Smiley, dancing around like a baby, worrying about if her daddy brought her presents, knowing that he always does, always will; Uncle, tripping over things he knows aren’t right, dusting himself off, and pretending nothing is there. And Gary.