The next day dawned cloudy but not rainy, and she wondered if he was a fair-weather painter, but he came back like he’d said and they continued painting, changing their positions to face west and the island in the distance. He asked a few questions about her use of colors, but most of the time they talked as if they were in art class at neighboring easels, sticking to banal topics.
Throughout a quiet Saturday and a Sunday drive to Ocho Rios with her housemates, Sarah waited, the hours creeping by, recalling how he’d wiped his scalp with a handkerchief, how his sentences went up at the end, how he chuckled when something he said tickled him. Her chest tightened when she thought of him, and she tried not to think of him.
On Monday morning, she asked him why he’d started painting. “I was married to this woman,” he said. “Lots of drama, every evening more drama. You know the kind, eh?” His gray eyes with their thin spokes of black laughed with her. “I had to find a reason to stay out of the house and I always loved to draw and paint, from when I was a child, so I decided that instead of killing her I’d go to an art class after work, and—that’s it—that’s how I started. The marriage didn’t last long, but it got me painting. I can thank her for that.”
He had left St. Croix (explaining where it was, because she’d never heard of it), when he was fourteen. His mother had been offered a job as a maid by a man who’d been visiting the island on vacation, a widower with three small children. She’d moved to San Francisco to take the live-in job.
“I stayed with my grandparents for a year after she left, until she sent for me and I flew over—my first airplane trip. I thought San Francisco would be wonderful, you know, Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars and everything. But I arrived in July, and the place was so damn—so freezing cold that I had to wear a winter coat!” He laughed at the memory. “We lived in the man’s house in the Presidio. You ever hear of it? It’s an old military base near the Golden Gate Bridge, and the fog just comes sweeping up the hill off the water. But you couldn’t swim or nothing, it was so cold.” He looked over the long stretch of beach he was painting. “I really missed the islands, man.”
During a water break, he talked of his mother and how she’d studied to be a hairstylist in San Francisco, going to classes on Saturdays. She was an ambitious woman, he said, and he admired her for that. Two years after he arrived in California, she’d graduated as a hairdresser and announced they were moving to New York.
“I was glad, because the kids in the school in Frisco were kind of snobbish. They didn’t mean to be, but there was no other black kids in the place, you know, and they treated me like I was a mascot. They kept saying my accent was cute. The girls wouldn’t go out with me or nothing, but they liked how I spoke.”
He didn’t speak perfect English, his language and accent a mixture of St. Croix and America, but they were full of life and harmonized with the landscape. He seemed to make the setting more complete and she was glad he’d come back.
On Tuesday he asked her about her family, and she told him about growing up as an only child in Maidstone, having a father, now deceased, who was a physician and a mother who was still alive and still in Kent. She never mentioned that she’d loved her father, even if he’d lectured her, but she didn’t know how she felt about her mother. She kept short her descriptions of their comfortable, sedate family life in three separate bedrooms, not wanting to sound like she’d had advantages that he hadn’t.
When she finished, Danny stood up and pulled off his sandals. “You ever swim in the Caribbean Sea?”
“Not yet.”
“But if you’re going to paint it, you must know how it feels.” He peeled off his T-shirt. “I’m sweating like crazy, aren’t you . . . ? Let’s go for a swim.”
“I don’t have a suit.”
“We swim in—whatever.” He laughed and took off his shorts. He ran toward the water in his briefs, a boy again. Biting her bottom lip, she slid off her shorts, pulling down her T-shirt to cover her panties, and hurried across the hot sand. Danny had already plunged in and was underwater by the time she stood with the water crashing around her hips. He came to the surface farther out.
“You have to pass the waves,” he called, wiping his eyes. “It’s calmer out here.”
“I don’t swim very well.”
He swam and then waded up to her. She kept her eyes on his to avoid looking at his underwear.
“I walk you out,” he said. Holding her hand, he pulled her one step at a time past the breakers—while she shut her eyes and turned her head against the slapping waves—into calmer water where her toes barely touched the sandy bottom.
“Don’t leave me,” she said, holding on tight to his shoulder.
“I’m not leaving you.” They bobbed around, her feet lifting off the bottom sometimes. He told her to duck her head under the water and she quickly followed his instructions.
“Keep paddling,” he said, and she paddled with one hand, knowing she looked like a wet, red rat.
“I told you you’d love it.” He was totally at home in the water, showing her how to ride the waves, his eyelashes covered with droplets, telling her about swimming as a boy. Every few minutes, he’d dip his head under a wave, and when he pulled up the water would stream off his scalp like it was rolling off a rock.
Seawater was about healing, he told her, that’s what his grandfather always said. And she believed him, because he looked healed and whole, happier than ever. She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun, felt its heat penetrating her pores, felt her heart swelling in the midst of its fear—even while she held on to his shoulder and made sure she never got completely out of her depth.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
* * *
Sunlight falling through the mango tree speckled the children’s arms as they gathered around the kitten. Skinny legs folded under her, Ashanti sat on the floor to one side, in her own world as usual.
“Can I hold him, Dadda?” Rickia said, and picked up the black-and-white ball of fluff before Shad could answer.
“Where you get him?” Joella inquired. She had Joshua in one arm, fanning the other hand to let her nail polish dry.
“I found him under the bar counter this morning,” her father answered. “He drank a whole bowl of milk.”
Baby Joshua held his hand out to the kitten and Rickia pulled the wide-eyed animal away. “Can we keep him, please, please?” she begged.
“If your mother says yes,” her father said. “No spoiling him, though, no sleeping in the bed.”
Joella frowned. “Is he going to wee-wee in the house?”
Shad stroked Ashanti’s hair and the child pushed his hand away. “I don’t think so. Where your mother?”
“She gone to Port Antonio,” Rickia announced.
“I in charge,” Joella said, patting the baby’s bottom like any big woman.
“Everybody do homework?”
“No homework today,” said his eldest. “Teacher meeting this afternoon.”
“I reading,” said Rickia, and held up a book.
“You don’t buy no book, right?” Shad asked. “We can’t afford to—”
“Mama borrow it from the library for me.”
“Good,” Shad said. “I going to take my nap. Keep it down.”
“A sandwich on the table for you,” Joella announced behind him, sounding so much like Beth he could have confused them.
After Shad woke from his nap, he walked out to the kitchen, where Beth was washing rice in a strainer in the sink. She was still wearing her good green dress with the belt, and in her ears were small earrings he hadn’t seen before. Their eyes met for a second and she lowered hers and turned off the tap.
“I get a job,” she said, sighing as if she was sorry, although she wasn’t. When he didn’t answer—not trusting his feelings or the words to express them—she continued. “Is not the first job
I was telling you about, is another job.”
“Doing what?”
“Cleaning, Port Antonio library.” She half filled a pot with water and put it on the fire.
Shad leaned his hip against the counter and crossed his arms. “You going to clean toilets for a hundred people, people with all kind of sickness? I hope they paying you good.”
“The hours suit me, from eight to four, better than the housework with the woman. I was going to the school for autistics yesterday, and I see the library next door. I went in and ask about work, and they tell me to come back today.” She looked out the window. “I always like books. The manager take me on. You want little soup before you go?”
“No, I had a sandwich already and I going straight back to work. The boss say he want to talk to me about something.”
“What kind of something?”
“He don’t say. Must be about the hotel.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I tell you tonight.”
“Mistah Shad,” she called behind him, “I see you bring a puss in the house, another mouth to feed.”
He laughed over his shoulder. “We can afford it now, man, like how you have a big job.”
When Shad arrived at the bar, Eric rose from his table. “We’re going over to Miss Mac’s for a minute. I left Maisie in charge.”
They walked the hundred yards around the fence to Miss Mac’s front door. The boardinghouse owner was standing on her verandah with Danny Caines. Closing the wire gate behind him, Shad felt his throat go dry. Jumbled thoughts came to mind, none pleasant: it had to be either bad news or something he wouldn’t understand.
“Miss Mac,” Shad and Eric said at the same time as they walked up the verandah steps.
“Danny,” Shad greeted Caines, and the two exchanged fist bumps. The men followed the old woman into her front room, where glasses and a tall jug of juice were waiting on a tray.
“I feel like I coming to a wake,” Shad said, and everyone laughed, maybe a little too much.
When they were all seated and drinks handed around, there was an awkward silence until Danny spoke up. “You know that Eric and I talked about having you as a partner. You not only work hard, but you helped to build the first hotel and the bar. Eric says he couldn’t have done it without you, and I believe him.” The investor put down his glass and leaned back in the heavy mahogany chair.
“Miss Mac says you was a good student in the old days,” he continued, and the bartender bit down on his lips. “And I also hear you spent some—some time in prison—had a little run-in with the law.” Shad looked from Eric to Miss Mac, neither looking at him, their eyes fixed on Danny. “But since then you prove that you’re a good, solid man, churchgoing and everything. You work hard and you take care of your wife and family. I seen that with my own eyes.”
He threw a hand toward Shad. “What I’m saying, man, because I don’t want you to worry, is that we all know you deserve a break. You paid your dues.”
It was coming, Shad thought, the news was about to come. He took a sip of June plum juice, but its acid stung his throat and he coughed, almost choked. Danny stopped talking while Shad wiped his mouth with a napkin.
There was no reason why he should hope to be a partner in a hotel. He couldn’t read well, couldn’t write well. He liked words, big words, and tried to use them sometimes so his children would learn them. But it didn’t matter that he traced the shorter newspaper articles with his finger and read them out loud to Beth, or that she helped him sometimes with words he couldn’t recognize. He wouldn’t be able to keep up with these men who had gone to high school and college. No way he could understand all the hotel papers. Even the young employees would be more educated than him. Nobody would respect him if he had to hire them or fire them. It didn’t make sense that a little man like him should be a partner with a rich man like Danny or a white man like Eric.
“Shad,” Miss Mac followed up. “It’s going to be different with the new hotel. When you a partner, you have different things, management things, you have to do. You must stay informed about all the comings and goings of money and government documents and everything.”
“I thought Beth could . . .” Shad started but stopped, thinking of how little time she would have to help him now.
“You’re going to need more than that, my friend,” Eric said, shaking his head.
“Well—well, I just want you to know,” Shad said, “that I not going to hold up anything to do with the hotel.” He rubbed his scalp with one hand and closed his eyes. “I don’t have to be a partner. The hotel more important than me. I just want a job—”
Miss Mac’s forehead was folded into a deep crease when he opened his eyes. “Wait, Shad, they not forcing you out. They just saying that if you want to be a partner, you have work to do, some catching up. Like how you left school at nine to start fishing, you miss out on a lot of learning.”
“What kind of learning?”
“I think,” the boss said, “we should be straight with you. Danny and I are foreigners here, and we need a local partner. We want you to be that person. But there has been—there are people who think you might not be in a—a position to be a partner. I think you can do it, because I know you, and I’ve stood up for you, and Danny here has stood up for you. We think you can handle it. But the truth is that there’s going to be a lot you might not understand about running a business.”
“I can learn.”
Eric leaned back and crossed his feet in the old flip-flops. “That’s the point. You can learn. I remember when we were building the hotel, Old Man Job taught us how to build with block and steel, and you learned faster than me. And when that finished, you got yourself to Port Antonio and learned bartending from your cousin in two weeks flat. I remember that. But this is more complicated.”
“You just tell me what to sign, boss, and I will sign.”
Miss Mac rested her elbows on her wide-spread knees. “Is not for Mr. Keller to tell you what to sign. You have to make up your own mind about everything. If you’re willing to take up the reading and writing lessons again, I will teach you, because you going to have to read legal contracts and sign your name to things you understand. I can read you the documents, we can discuss them, and then you can decide what you going to do.” She looked at him above the metal rims of her glasses. “Are you willing to do that work, though? Do you really want to be a partner? That is the question.”
Shad stared at Miss Mac, the elder who’d held him, a grown man, like a baby when his grandmother died. He was more than aware, the bile starting to crawl in his stomach, that she was forcing him to make a choice that would change everything for him and his family. He could either remain a bartender for the rest of his life or venture into the land of the bushas. The downside, he knew, was that—ignorant, untraveled, burdened with a criminal record—he could also make a fool of himself and fall flat on his face.
He held her gaze and swallowed hard. “Miss Mac, how I going to learn if you do all the reading?”
“You will learn as you go along, I will teach you. And what I don’t understand, we ask Mr. Eric to explain.”
Looking first at the men to see if they had any doubt, Shad turned to his old teacher. “If you have the patience, Miss Mac, so do I.”
“It going to be hard work, you know,” the woman said, shaking her head.
“I never afraid of hard work yet.”
“When you can start? They have a document right now for you to sign.”
“Tomorrow?” Danny said.
“I just have to tell Beth I not coming home for lunch.”
“You can have lunch here every day, you know,” Miss Mac said.
“No problem.” Soon there’d be no lunch at home for him, anyway.
After shooing Maisie home from the bar later, Shad climbed up on the counter and replaced the burned-out lightbulb overhead, still thinking about the
meeting. The three other participants had clearly been discussing the difficulties of having him as a partner. Miss Mac, who’d always been disappointed that he’d dropped out of school, had probably been the one to suggest that she teach him to read big words so he could understand all the legal business, and the men had gone along with it. If he wanted to, he could have made something of it, this talking about him behind his back—but he wouldn’t, because they’d made decisions for his good, ones that gave him a chance to be a partner in the hotel.
Later that night he slid into bed, cuddling into Beth’s back, and she rolled over sleepily in his arms. “Something bothering you, I know.”
He described the meeting in its entirety, including the part about someone suggesting to Eric and Danny that he shouldn’t be a partner.
“Why they would do that?” she asked.
“They think I don’t have enough education. I not the right class, must be.” His heart started racing as he said it, his chest burning. “The person think I not good enough to own a hotel.”
“Who you think the person is?”
“Only two people possible. One is Lambert Delgado, but it not him. He don’t have it in him to be a small man.”
“The other one?”
Shad rolled onto his back and folded his arms under his head. “Mistah big-shot lawyer, Horace Mac. It have to be him. He always know everything, always have to have the last word and like how he was the teacher’s child, he used to get away with murder in school. Then, after he go to university in Kingston and become a lawyer, he think he somebody. I went with the boss to see him once, about the woman living on the island, remember, and he act like he don’t even know me, and I pretend like I don’t know him neither.”
Beth snorted and, although he couldn’t see her expression in the dark, he knew her upper right lip was curling. “Horace Mac?” she said.
“He too bad-mind.”
“You don’t remember he went to Titchfield High with me?” she said. “I never tell you, but he used to want to talk to me. I couldn’t stand him. He was so skinny and stupid looking. Even though he was bright, I just . . .” She shuddered.
The Sea Grape Tree Page 10