A Marker to Measure Drift

by Alexander Maksik

  “She’s sick,” Bernard said.

  “Firm your jaw,” the boy said and with the barrel poked him hard in the temple.

  There was an older one speaking to her, but she could not see him.

  Where was she going?

  “New York,” she said, looking at the back of the driver’s head.

  “Why you go New York?”

  “I live there.”

  “Passport.”

  “They stole it,” she said. “They stole everything.”

  “Who do?”

  “Taylor,” she said. “Taylor’s soldiers.”

  “Journalist?”

  She nodded.

  “Out.”

  The door opened and she stumbled onto the red dirt road. She hadn’t noticed before, but now she could feel the camera Bernard must have hung around her neck.

  The man who’d been speaking stood in front of her. He was so close she could barely see him. His skin shone and he smelled of cologne. Reeked of it. It seemed the whole road smelled the same.

  “You tell that we will take action,” he said. “You tell we have enough to take city. Enough. You tell we come dress Taylor like a woman.” He stepped back. “You tell that.”

  She nodded. He let her back in the car. Held the door for her. Helped her in. In white letters across the back of his T-shirt the color of flooded roads, it read TOO TOUGH TO DIE.

  None of them spoke until they’d crossed the border. Jacqueline could still smell the cologne. They were all wearing it. It was in the back of her throat with the bile. She thought of them passing the bottle around, shaking it onto their palms, slapping it onto the backs of their necks, smoothing it over their cheeks. Like boys preparing for a dance.

  SHE HAS NOT RETURNED to see the tall man who served her lunch.

  Go see him, my love. Jacqueline lying on the couch, head in her mother’s lap. Go see him. You’ve got nothing better, her mother says, stroking and stroking Jacqueline’s forehead.

  Jacqueline stays behind the mattress and tries to think of her sister. Tries to think of Saifa before, but it is impossible. There is only Saifa. You do not choose where to see her. She should not have thought of her at all. There is no separating Saifa from time.

  Maybe one day, you can think of her without this, her mother says.

  Jacqueline is caught now. Her sister is there and she can’t stop it.

  This is why you must not stand still.

  But it is too late.

  Again, she feels madness coming.

  It stalks her on the heels of all the rest.

  What else to call it?

  Saifa, alone in the yellow chair. She is looking out the window, a chemistry book resting on her belly.

  Saifa, sixteen, seven months pregnant. She’s enormous.

  They are listening to the news of their country in chaos. Government soldiers terrorizing Gbah. Executing men refusing conscription, raping girls as young as eleven, the BBC reports. The LURD rebels closer and closer to Monrovia.

  When the power goes out for the fourth time in an hour the sound vanishes and her mother says, “Plug it into Saifa.”

  Her father hands her the cord and Saifa fits the prongs into her nostrils.

  “Still doesn’t work,” he says. “Must be something wrong with the radio.”

  Go see him, her mother says. Go see him, my love. My love, she says in her very gentlest voice, the one reserved for her daughters and only when they were falling, when they could no longer understand the things that happened in a life. Lives in which, even with all their privilege, the most terrible things had begun to enter, incomprehensible to her daughters, impossible for her to explain.

  My love, she says in that calmest, surest whisper, get up, go and see him.

  Jacqueline, weeping, says, “Tomorrow, I’ll go tomorrow, Mama.”

  She closes her eyes and imagines the mountain above her, all those layers of earth and rock and ash. This is her mother’s trick: Think of all the time. Think of all the people. Of every creature that has lived, that lives now. Think of all the history, of all the people that have ever lived. You are tiny. You are an eyelash, my little girl.

  Jacqueline turns onto her side, draws her legs in, and presses her smooth knees against the damp back wall of the cave. She tries, but can imagine no one else, can see no other life but her own.

  You are a selfish girl, her mother says.

  Jacqueline shifts her body so that her hip takes more of her weight.

  It is the pain of bone against rock that helps to pass time. It is the same lesson, she thinks. You must be careful of luxury. Keep a present need. Always keep a present need. Make it unbearable. Solve no problem too quickly.

  She sleeps and in the morning does not remember her dreams.

  When she wakes she is in shadow. The sea is bright in the low sun. She returns the mattress to its proper place and lies facedown so that she can rest her chin on her folded hands.

  A yacht in full sail, white as the moon, cuts across the bay.

  She watches the hours change the color of the sky.

  She sleeps and dreams she is giving birth to her sister’s child.

  IN THE MORNING she walked along the water to the far end of the beach, where she sat on the sand with her back to the road. The first bus arrived half full. She focused on the couples, the groups of girls. People with children were never interested. She avoided the single men. She walked end to end. Twenty minutes and not a job. She waited on a bench facing the sea across the street from the gyro shop. She marked time on the Pepsi clock. Two hours. The man saw her the second time she turned to look, but he did not wave. Perhaps he felt betrayed, as if she’d broken some pact. She was sorry. She’d make it right tomorrow. She wished she had something to read. A magazine, a newspaper. Above all, a paperback. She wanted something solid to hold, to carry with her. She added it to her list.

  Book followed watch.

  The beach was crowded now. More so than she’d ever seen it. She hadn’t noticed them arrive, but there they were. So many people it frightened her. Where had they come from? Those hours seemed like they’d been cut out of her life, easily extracted like two dead teeth. All she could remember of them was the idea of the paperback and the man looking at her, his elbows on the takeaway window. She hated the idea of going down to the sand. She hadn’t eaten in two days. She was dizzy, but she went.

  Her first job was two blond girls in bikinis.

  One of them doing a headstand, the other with legs crossed, eyes closed, thumbs and forefingers joined. Both of them laughing. They took her immediately. Two five-minute foot massages. She knelt and held a foot in her hands, pushing her thumbs along the sole. It felt as if she were talking to a single person. Not a person. Something else.

  “So where do you go to school?”

  “Columbia.”

  “Wow. I didn’t get in.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “We’re both at Duke.”

  “Sophomores.”

  “You’re a grad student?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what?”

  “Journalism.” She’d decided today it would be journalism; she switched to another foot.

  “Amazing. They have a great program.”

  “I love your accent. What are you, like, Jamaican?”

  “Liberian.”

  “That’s in Africa, right?”

  Jacqueline nodded.

  “You make enough money like this?”

  “I stay in a hostel.”

  “Oh cool, us too. Which one?”

  She hesitated.

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to say?”

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry.”

  “Well, we’re in Fira. I just asked because I thought how random if we were staying in the same one, you know?”

  “Mine’s not in Fira,” Jacqueline said. Then she looked up, smiled at one of the faces, and returned to the foot.

  “Are you in Oìa? I heard that’s the best.�
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  “It’s nice. Very quiet.”

  Jacqueline had moved on to the third foot. It was too fast probably, but they didn’t protest. She ended each massage by rubbing sand against the soles of their feet. A new flourish. “And finally to exfoliate,” she said.

  “Amazing.” They gave her a five-euro bill.

  “Keep the change.”

  “You know, if you ever want to meet out for a drink, we’re here for a week more.”

  “Sure,” she said, folding the bill in half.

  One of them handed her a card.

  “Call whenever.”

  She stood above them, brushing sand from her knees. “Sure,” she said. “Next time I’m in Fira.”

  She dropped the card into her skirt pocket, waved at them, and moved on down the sand.

  She thought of walking with Helen across the field after classes in Cheltenham. The two of them sneaking cigarettes in the trees behind Glenlee. The two of them sitting side by side on the train. Half term and on their way to visit Helen’s family in London.

  Call, her mother said. Call.

  Jacqueline saw the house on Lonsdale Road, Helen’s bedroom, the wallpaper. Yellow flowers on blue.

  She was lying on the deep white carpet looking up at Helen, who stood smoking at the open window in a black T-shirt. Cropped blond hair, her skinny legs, faint blue veins beneath pale skin. There was something printed on the T-shirt. A band name. A bar. Some famous face. But it wouldn’t come into focus.

  “JaJa,” Helen said. “What are we going to do tonight?”

  A phone call, JaJa, her mother said, a single phone call. Wouldn’t they help you, my heart?

  Yes, Jacqueline said, they would, and held her mother’s gaze.

  The money would be enough to go and see the tall man. It would provide pretext. She needed that shade. She needed to eat, but there was more than half the beach to travel. She stood up to her thighs in the water, until it passed, until some strength returned, and then she pushed along. She stayed down on the wet sand, keeping away from the building crowd, watching for customers.

  There was a couple sitting quietly up at the edge of the dry sand, just before it broke away and sloped to the sea. They were on matching blue towels neatly laid out, side by side, not a corner out of place. The woman with her legs crossed, the man leaning back on his elbows.

  “Excuse me for bothering you,” she began with the last of her energy.

  They looked up at her.

  “Do you speak English?”

  They both nodded.

  “Oh, great. So, I’ll be a student in the States this fall and I’m traveling around Europe this summer. I support myself by giving massages and was wondering if you’d like one. If either of you would like a massage.”

  She reached for her visor to make certain it was straight.

  “I don’t know,” the man said. He removed his sunglasses and squinted up at her.

  “What kind of massage is it?” The woman interlaced her fingers, raised her arms above her head, and drew herself into a long graceful stretch.

  “Oh, it’s a traditional form.” She’d replaced the word style with form. “Something my mother taught me.”

  The woman smiled at this. She reminded Jacqueline of a restless cat.

  “Sit down,” she said.

  Jacqueline kneeled in the sand. She did not like to kneel, but she couldn’t find a better position to do this work.

  “Sure,” the woman said. “Why not a massage?” She unfolded her legs and moved easily back along the towel.

  “What are your rates?” The man was watching his wife point and pull her feet, which moved like little levers.

  “Two euros for five minutes,” she said.

  He turned to her. “You live on that?” he asked.

  She shrugged.

  Jacqueline lifted the woman’s right ankle and cradled it in her hand. It was a small foot with a high arch and clear-varnished toenails. She pressed her thumbs into the flat pad of the heel.

  “You tell me if it’s too hard.” She held the foot steady and applied a slow, constant pressure.

  “Oh. As hard as you like.”

  She pushed deeper.

  “That’s wonderful. Oh, God.” She fell back and closed her eyes. “Do five minutes a foot, okay? Can you do that?”

  “Of course.” Plus five makes nine. She thought of the shaded table, the basket of bread.

  “My wife’s a glutton.” She glanced over and smiled. There was something soft about him. “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Massages? About a month. Bit longer maybe.”

  He nodded.

  “Where are you in school?”

  “Columbia.”

  “Yeah? You like it?”

  “I don’t know. I start in September.”

  “Where are you moving from?”

  “Liberia.”

  “Liberia?”

  She slid her thumbs along the arch and began working the ball of the foot.

  “When did you leave?”

  “June.”

  Was that right? She couldn’t remember.

  “June,” he repeated. She could feel him staring at her. “I’m glad you got out safe,” he said after a long pause.

  She turned to him, surprised by the tenderness in his voice.

  “Thank you.” She smiled. “I think your wife has fallen asleep.”

  “I guess you’re talented.”

  Jacqueline’s legs were going numb.

  “Must be strange to go from there to here. To an island like this, to rubbing the feet of people like us.”

  “People like you?”

  “With time to lie in the sun.”

  “It’s not what I think about.”

  He seemed embarrassed.

  “Why did you stay so long?”

  “My father was a believer.”

  “In Taylor?”

  She nodded.

  The woman woke up and stretched her arms above her head again, twisting slightly. “Oh,” she said. “You have such lovely hands.”

  Jacqueline moved on to the right foot. The man watched a piece of blue sea glass as he rolled it between his fingers.

  For a moment, while no one was speaking, she turned her head from side to side to stretch her neck. A few meters down the beach, thin blanket around his shoulders, the Senegalese man was watching her. He smiled. She returned to the woman’s foot, counted fifteen seconds, and stopped.

  “Okay,” she said. Her voice was thin.

  “Thank you, thank you,” the woman said. “Just lovely. You don’t have a card or something do you? Some way to reach you? I swear I could do this every day.”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Nowhere? No phone? Nothing?”

  She shook her head. She couldn’t master the fear. She could feel his fingers pulling her hair, could feel it crushing the muscles in the back of her neck, fingers against vertebrae. He was striding toward her, smiling, without hesitation, so certain of himself, everything under his control.

  She couldn’t stand. Her legs were still numb. She did not want to wait but the blood wouldn’t flow. There was only the cold tingling turning warmer.

  “Here you go.”

  The man was holding something out to her.

  “Take it,” he said. “Please.”

  The woman was swinging her knees from side to side. “Seriously, you earned every fucking penny.”

  Jacqueline took the money into her left hand, shifted forward, slipped the bill into her pocket, stumbled, and fell back off her heels into the sand. She forced a smile. Gave a dry, horrible laugh. Protect yourself. As if she’d meant to fall. As if she were only stretching her legs out. She could not stand. She was nauseated, the sky was turning white, was turning white, was turning away from her, swelling now into white. Breathe. Breathe. Get to the water. Stand up and swim. Swim.

  Then it came back. The sky. And then the surface beneath her. And then her own weight.


  She sat up and smiled. The woman, eyes closed, was still moving her knees from side to side like a metronome. Left. Right. Left. Right. The man had his hand on Jacqueline’s foot.

  She heard the metronome ticking atop their ridiculous piano.

  “You all right?”

  “Fine,” she said. It had felt like hours. She’d been gone so long. “Sometimes, my back spasms. Comes on fast.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I thought, you know … it was as if you’d passed out.”

  “No.”

  “We’ll be back. Look for us,” the woman said to the sky.

  The man stared with his girlish eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said. She looked down at her foot. His hand was still resting there. He drew it away immediately.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes. Just need to get out of the sun for a bit.”

  She took a long breath and stood up. “Take care,” she said and moved through the burning black sand in the direction of the road. She could barely see. Now it seemed impossible. Why would he be out there with a blanket around him? Had he been swimming? Was it a towel? Fabric to dry his skin. Why did it matter? So what if he’d been there? So what if he saw her? But it did matter. She could not be known here. Not like that. Not by them. She would say these were her friends. And the money? She was coming to get food. To bring them food. There was logic in this. It would be enough. And having the story would get her to the wall. It was taking a very long time. Then she was there at the steps, resting at the bottom, her hand on the burning steel banister. She climbed to the top and came out onto the road. The man was sitting on a bench, red beach towel wrapped around his shoulders.

  “Hello, sister.”

  The man said it to mock her. The inflection was wrong, the words were repeated sounds, she thought, not language. Still, Jacqueline recognized that cold, arrogant, angry smile. It seemed to exist separate from the body. She was not frightened, but she knew, even then in her haze of hunger and dehydration, that she would have to leave. The man posed all threats at once. She supported herself with her hand and did not move because she did not want to fall.

  “Why you’re not at hotel? In other town. Why you like this beach so much?” He raised his chin.

  She looked down the road past the restaurant to where the other two men, his partners, were standing behind their blankets of sunglasses. It was possible that he posed no threat at all, that he was being friendly, playful. Perhaps he meant no harm, but she did not like his face and she did not like to be identified. This was what had prevented her from returning to the restaurant, to the man who had fed her, who seemed to want nothing but to see her safe. Though this was impossible, of course. If she considered the things that people had wanted of her over the course of her life, she could use those things as a way to chart the decline of her life.