Girls' Night In

by Jessica Adams

  Al looked from the crabs on the floor to the boiling pan of water, back to the crabs, and then to me, still standing by the door. I couldn’t tell if the brightness in his eyes was laughter or anger. I hadn’t known him long enough, though he’d been fantasizing about eating fresh crab all the way down in the car. It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized I had been holding my breath. ‘I’m not really all that hungry,’ he said, and I let out a sigh.

  ‘There’s tomatoes and stuff,’ I said, ‘and we can have some toast.’

  Then he tuned the radio to Johnny Walker and that’s when we danced, elated because our merciful hearts beat as one and our eyes were bright with the power of absolution.

  There was the occasional click of shell on shell to remind us about the crabs which were safely back in the sack, coaxed there by Al and the fire shovel while I hid in the back room. We ate the tomatos on toast and salad by candlelight, sitting huddled together at a little blue painted table by the back door with the beach stretching into the shadows beyond the sandy patch of rough grass and the sea wall.

  We mopped our plates clean of juice and oil with bread torn straight from the loaf and drank cold white wine from heavy tumblers because we couldn’t find stem glasses. It was one of those meals that you know will be memorable even before the moment has passed. I sat back and tried to stop my mind from wandering while Al cleared away the plates.

  ‘Right, I think it’s time,’ he said, coming back from the kitchen with the sack. Together we clambered on to the wall and jumped down to the beach where the seaweed was strewn across the sand like rags. There was half a moon that night and I watched as Al became a silhouette, a shadow-dancer, halfway down the beach, tipping open the sack, holding it by its corners at arm’s-length, to release the crabs. He had to shake it quite hard in the end as the crabs clung to the hessian, their pincers clipping and snapping like surgical instruments. The sack had become their comfort blanket. I stayed where I was as he finally managed to untangle them and I heard them fall on to the sand with two little thumps, like shoes on to a carpet, before they scuttled towards the glittering darkness that was the sea.

  The crabs disappeared into the shadows long before they reached the water. I could see the marks they had left in the sand, like scars or stitches or lines of perforations to be torn apart. Al went back to the cottage for the remainder of the wine and then we sat on the damp sand, side by side, swigging from the bottle like teenagers.

  I was leaning back on to my elbows and looking up at the stars and for a moment I felt entirely at peace in a way that I hadn’t managed since I was a small child. But then Al, in all his innocence, touched me and the strength of his hands brought the blackness back, like old bruises made new. He pushed me on to my back, beside the stinking fisherman’s sack. He pinned me there, with my skirt around my waist and the rough grittiness of the beach against my skin. He was using his knee to push my legs apart. I wanted to cry out. I wanted him to know about me without my having to tell him: I needed him to understand that gentleness and privacy were the only options. His fingers were rubbing me, but I knew I’d stay dry while I fought the panic that was knotting me up like old rope.

  ‘No, stop.’ I tried not to scream as the sound of the waves grew ever louder in my ears, except it wasn’t the sea, it was his breathing.

  ‘Ssh,’ said Al then, his hand over my mouth. ‘I can hear someone,’ and rising from his knees he shouted, ‘Who’s there?’

  There was the scrunch of boots on sand behind my head but on our side of the sea wall. ‘Evening to you,’ and then a rumble like laughter, muffled by a sleeve.

  ‘The crabman,’ whispered Al, as Petroc, hunched and snaily inside his oilskin, continued on his way to check his pots, his torch beam swaying before him but leaving us untouched by its light.

  I could still hear the sea through the bedroom window and the light from the lamp outside was soft through the open curtains. Al’s mood had changed between the beach and the cottage and he unwrapped me gently, as though I was made from bone china. He brushed the sand from my legs as I pushed my shoulder blades deep into the pillows which made my breasts rise towards him; I pulled in my stomach so that – from the outside at least – he would believe me perfect. The pillows sighed beneath us as he leant over me, drawing himself inside so tenderly that I could believe it was the first time for us both and his brown eyes stayed open, warm and liquid as malted milk, even at the end when his breathing became more frightening.

  ‘I didn’t withdraw.’ It was later, I don’t know how long, but he was stroking my face with soft fingers, as we lay face to face, curled into one another like babies.

  I should have told him then. It doesn’t matter.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

  Why would I mind?

  There were things about me he didn’t know then. About the scars inside. About the things those men had used, the meat reek of them, the smell of my own blood, their eyes closing in on me, so many years ago that for most of my life I could pretend it never happened. My therapist once told me – I think it was while I was still in the hospital – that within seven years, not a single cell of my body would remain that those men had touched. I suppose she wanted to give me something to look forward to when she said that.

  ‘I want to marry you,’ Al said. I should have told him. ‘I want you to have my babies,’ he said. Then I knew it was wrong of me not to say and I started to cry. The sea rushed to the shore, close enough that it sounded like it was boiling on the stones. ‘Marry me,’ he said.

  I always think there’s something rather disgusting about preparing a crab; the juiciness, the trickle on your fingers from the wet brown meat you’ve scooped out, like scrapings from the inside of a skull, and after that, probing with a skewer into the fiddly places makes me think of bits of brain being pulled from an ear and I get a pain in my own, like when you stick a Q-tip in too far, or a hairpin. There was something on the radio the other day about how you can slice a brain any way you like but you won’t find a morsel called memory.

  I mix the meat with finely chopped shallots, tomatoes, cayenne, salt and pepper and spoon it back into the shell, packing it neatly like cement. Alan likes it like that and it really is the least I can do, though he’s never as appreciative as I would like him to be.

  There was a time. Candy-stripe sheets on a rented bed and Al’s fingers following the lines of tears on my face. ‘Nothing you tell me will change the way I feel,’ he said and for a while I allowed him to believe that I was perfect. There was a time by the sea that Al was so dazzled by love that he couldn’t see anything deeper than the blush on my skin.

  I lie in bed, Al becomes Alan once more and the world fades.

  ‘You do realize we’ll have been married seven years next month?’ I say.

  ‘That’s what it must be then,’ he says. Perhaps he thinks that I no longer understand his sarcasm.

  ‘Someone once told me that there’s a scientific explanation for the seven-year itch,’ I continue. ‘Apparently it takes that long for each and every cell in the body to die and regenerate. Strange to think there’s nothing of us left that set those crabs free on the night you asked me to marry you.’

  He doesn’t reply, instead he clicks off the bedside light. He likes to wait until he thinks I’m asleep before he starts on me. I shut my eyes, let my breathing deepen. It’s not long before I feel Alan reach out and lift my nightdress, efficiently, like a surgeon. His fingers move across my stomach like calipers and I no longer bother to breathe in as his hands pass.

  Alecia McKenzie

  Alecia McKenzie is a Jamaican writer, artist and journalist currently based in Paris, France. Her first book, Satellite City, and her novel Sweetheart have both won Commonwealth literary awards, and she was shortlisted for the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her other books include Stories from Yard and two novellas for young readers: When the Rain Stopped in Natland and Doctor’s Orders.

  Ale
cia has participated in art exhibitions in Kingston, New York, London, Paris and other cities, and her works hang in official and private collections. As a journalist, she has reported on human rights, gender, development, culture and the environment for international agencies. She is also the founder and editor of Southern World Arts News (SWAN), an on-line magazine that provides information about the arts.

  Morro

  Alecia McKenzie

  His mouth tasted of cane juice. His hands, too, when he touched her face smelled of sugarcane. She wondered drowsily whether he were a juice vendor, but his sculpted body said otherwise, and besides she hadn’t seen any juice stalls here on Morro de São Paolo; back in Salvador she had seen quite a few, screaming with germs.

  She pulled back from him, reluctantly, the realization hitting her that they were still in public, the object of amused glances from the few people already out on the beach before breakfast.

  She had gone to lie on a beach chair in front of the pousada as soon as there’d been enough sunlight. And it had taken five minutes for him to approach and stand looking down at her. ‘Where are you from,’ he had asked in Portuguese. She had looked up at him and immediately quelled the brush-off that had risen in her mouth. Jesus, what did Brazilian men do to look like this? He was amber-coloured, with curly reddish hair and brown-green eyes. But that was nothing compared to the body-toned muscles emerging upwards and downwards from the skimpy bikini trunks. Her eyes swept from head to feet and noticed he had a crudely wrapped bandage around his right big toe.

  ‘I’m from Jamaica,’ she answered.

  He put a hand over his heart. ‘It’s my dream to go there,’ he said. ‘Bob Marley.’

  Oh Christ, everywhere she’d been in Bahia she’d got the same response. She’d seen Bob’s face emblazoned on hundreds of T-shirts being sold in the streets of Pelourinho, and she’d been laughed at when she asked if they hadn’t a T-shirt with Jorge Ben Jor on it.

  She gave her muscled friend a broad smile. ‘Jimmy Jallah,’ she said.

  His grin shone whitely in the morning sun. ‘Yes, Jimmy Jallah, he lives here in Brazil.’

  She nodded. She knew that. It was Jimmy who had invited her to Bahia the four times she’d been there to perform, but she didn’t tell the young man that. ‘Peter Tosh,’ she said instead, and he did an enthusiastic thumbs-up sign.

  ‘Shabba Ranks, Mr Lover Man,’ he said. Now he sat down in the chair next to hers.

  ‘Me, I like Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus,’ she told him, reaching back into her youth.

  His face went blank.

  ‘And Jacob Miller. My God, he was a good singer, but he’s dead now,’ she continued.

  Her new friend frowned slightly.

  ‘Don Drummond, that was the best musician we ever had. He played trombone but he killed his girl-friend and died in Bellevue – that’s a madhouse.’

  He was losing interest so she had pity on him and asked, ‘Do you like Ziggy Marley?’

  His smile returned. ‘“Look Who’s Dancing”,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, that’s my favourite too,’ she agreed.

  He looked long at her, one of his eyes slightly squinted, a movie-bad-guy gaze. ‘I always wanted to kiss a Jamaican girl,’ he said.

  It was the ‘girl’ bit that did it. If he were sweet, or nearsighted, enough to call a tough-back forty-five-year-old woman like her a ‘girl’, he deserved a kiss. So she slowly sat up and bent towards him. But before she knew what was happening, there were tongue and teeth involved and waves of warm sea water were rushing through her head. He was good. If she’d been standing up she would’ve had to sit down.

  A second after the kiss ended came the unwelcome thought that he had said he’d always wanted to kiss ‘a Jamaican girl’. He probably hadn’t meant her at all. Had she made a blasted fool of herself? But he was smiling at her as if he wanted to do it again. She shifted back in the chair and put on her shades.

  ‘What is your name?’ she asked, making her voice formal.

  ‘Paolo,’ he said, and she wondered whether it was an easy alias, derived from the name of this part of the island.

  ‘What’s yours?’

  She gave him the second half of it. ‘Marie.’

  ‘Where did you learn Portuguese?’

  ‘A friend.’ Her face clouded momentarily as she thought of Antonio. But she made his image go blank. ‘Besides, this is the fourth time I’ve been to Brazil.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Of course, otherwise I wouldn’t have come back.’

  ‘You’re the first Jamaican I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said drily. ‘We like to go to North America, not South.’ But he didn’t get it.

  ‘Are you staying at this pousada?’

  She looked towards the pastel orange-yellow walls of the Casa das Pedras guesthouse, and nodded.

  ‘There’s a party at the bar next door tonight? Do you want to come?’

  ‘You mean they’re going to have another party tonight? I couldn’t sleep because of the loud music last night, and I thought this was supposed to be low season.’

  ‘They have a party there every night,’ Paolo said. He sounded impatient. ‘Do you want to come? I can meet you here at ten o’clock.’

  ‘Well, since I won’t be able to sleep, I may as well go–’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I have to go to work now. Ate logo.’ He squinted, smiled and walked off down the beach, limping slightly. She watched him through her shades and hoped, Jesus, hoped, that he was at least twenty-five. Make him please be older than my son.

  She waited until he had mounted the steps that led from the beach up to the ‘town’ before rising from her chair. She wrapped the canga she’d bought in Salvador two days ago tightly round her waist and, satisfied that her not-as-firm-as-they-used-to-be thighs were hidden, she went back into the Casa das Pedras for breakfast. The buffet was impressive, with the heaps of fried and boiled plantains, slices of pineapple, papaya and melon, pots of cooked yam, and two platters with cakes made from rice and cornmeal. It was all a welcome change from the greasy meat dishes she’d had in Salvador, and for the first time in days, she ate her fill.

  Paolo was punctual. She casually emerged from the pousada at quarter past ten and he was already there, wearing a light green short-sleeved shirt, washed-out blue jeans and brown leather sandals; the bandage was still on his toe. He said he had been waiting for ten minutes, she apologized, and they strolled down to the open-air bar where Bob Marley’s ‘Exodus’ was already blaring. She hoped the DJ would play some Brazilian music because if she’d wanted reggae with her beach she would’ve gone to Negril. She had to admit though that this place was much nicer than Negril. In the two days she’d been on Morro, no one had tried to sell her yet another carving or offered her ganja.

  ‘Do you smoke?’ Paolo asked, after the bartender had brought them their drinks – a caipirinha for her and coke for him.

  ‘No-o,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Smoke what?’

  ‘What Jamaicans smoke. I have some, if you like.’

  Jesus, it had to happen. ‘No, I gave that up a long time ago,’ she said. In truth, she had never smoked although nearly everyone in every band she’d sung with had been inseparable from their spliffs, or their rum bottles. But she had always said no. Always? Let’s revise that. She had tried a spliff, a big hell-of-a-spliff, after Antonio had left, but it hadn’t done a thing for her. Just made her think more about her troubles.

  ‘You said you had to work today. What do you do here?’

  ‘I’m building a house,’ Paolo beamed. ‘When it’s finished I’ll rent some rooms out to the tourists.’

  A house? Was he married? ‘How old are you?’ she asked him.

  ‘Twenty. I’m the oldest of nine. My mother and my brothers and sisters live in Porto Seguro. It’s the most beautiful town in Bahia. Have you been there?’

  ‘No. I’ve only been as far south as llheus. That’s also nice.’

 
; ‘Not as nice as Porto Seguro. If you’re still here next weekend, I can take you. There’s a bus from Valenca.’

  So he didn’t have a car. That wasn’t a problem. She’d travelled from Salvador to Morro by bus and boat and had enjoyed it, especially the ferry from Cidade Baixa to Bomdespacho. On it, a mad-looking man in a torn T-shirt had suddenly started shrieking, making the other passengers uneasy. When he had everybody’s attention, he opened a suitcase that had seen better times, set up a make-shift stage and proceeded to give a puppet show in which two quarrelling spouses continuously screamed at each other. She had laughed along with the other spectators although she hadn’t understood all the jokes.

  Would she still be in Morro de São Paolo the following weekend? Things could be arranged. Her next concert was three weeks away, in Miami; maybe she could reorganize her flight so that she flew directly from Salvador to the States instead of going back to Kingston. A little sightseeing in Porto Seguro wouldn’t hurt.

  As they sipped their drinks and talked, the bar started filling up. Anne-Marie looked around; besides the jowly bartender with his long grey hair, she had to be the oldest person there. The perfect young brown and tanned bodies made her feel her full four-and-a-half decades.

  The D J had now switched from Marley to Olodum, and the young people quickly took to the concrete dance floor. Anne-Marie smiled; before coming to Morro she had seen Olodum live in Salvador where their drumming had made even the most jaded tourists dance for hours on the Largo do Pelourinho. It was Jimmy who had taken her to the free outdoor concert and he had jumped up on the ‘stage’ – the steps of a museum – and sung along with Olodum’s lead singer. Typical Jimmy. She smiled once more, tapping her fingers on the bar counter to the beat of the drums, and Paolo looked down and said, ‘You have very beautiful hands.’

  ‘Obrigada,’ she said, thinking: you should talk. All of you is beautiful. And my son is three years older than you.

  He was looking at her with one eye squinted again and she quickly decided to call it a night. ‘It’s past my bed-time,’ she told him. ‘I have to go.’ She slipped from the stool and began walking away but he came after her and held her arm. ‘Let’s just dance once,’ he suggested.