Tea by the Sea
Page 22
In the end it came down to a single thing, not love or respect or gratitude. Just the fact of where Opal belonged and to whom. The car started rolling. Plum looked back again, turning only her neck at first, then shifting to look fully behind at Opal dodging the police officer, running onto the sidewalk and into the street, chasing the car. The driver stopped, waited for another officer to move a car barricading the road. Opal was nearly there, had very nearly caught up to the car when it moved again. Undefeated, undaunted, Opal ran toward Plum and away from him, her arms pumping steadily, oblivious of the police officers watching and waiting for her to give up. The truth wouldn’t wait. The truth was there, behind the car, running after it, not yet catching up, but moving forward at a measured and steady pace. Plum leaned her head back and waited for what was hers.
Biographical Note
Jamaican-born Donna Hemans is the author of the novel River Woman, winner of the 2003–4 Towson University Prize for Literature. Tea by the Sea, for which she won the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award for Adult Literature, is her second novel. Her short fiction has appeared in the Caribbean Writer, Crab Orchard Review, Witness, and the anthology Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad, among others. She received her undergraduate degree from Fordham University and an MFA from American University. She lives in Greenbelt, Maryland.