by Jacob Ross
After a while she lost track of Sookramer’s words, absorbed more by the sound of them, the way the woman wrapped her tongue around them, the emotions that they rode on – at once soft with rage and made harsh by a frightening indignation – as if she were railing more against herself than Missa Jonko.
Sienna stared at the markings on the sand. By showing her what lay beneath the surface of the lagoon – a different ocean – Sookramer was telling her something about herself. There were other worlds around them they did not know existed. And because these strangers knew more about her place than they who lived here, it felt as if it belonged less to her and to the people of The Silent.
She felt a welling in her chest and throat. She swallowed on it lest the woman saw or sensed her change of mood.
But why would Jonko, or any person for that matter, want to do something like that to someone else? To call them nice names, smile at them, make them feel they were important, and then, with that same smile, seek to make the sea destroy them?
She knew, as everyone on The Silent did, that each time she turned her heels up at the sky there was nothing that said she would ever see the day again. The ocean might simply embrace her and not release her. That did not frighten her. It was not the same thing. Missa Mosan told her once that no one could predict when the sea would take a life. What was certain, though, it never wasted it. It added that life to its own. With Jonko, it was like showing her a room in her own house that she had never known was there, then locking her in it to die.
A question occurred to her, and she might have asked it if the woman hadn’t been still speaking.
‘One thing I’ve learned about you, you’re smarter than you’re letting on. You’re…’ Sookramer’s mouth stayed open. She reached under the nest of hair at the back of her neck and her fingers fumbled there. The silver chain cascaded like water into the palm of her hand and made an island of the blue stone. ‘You like this, don’t you? Take it. I – I have to go.’ It slipped onto Sienna’s knee, flowed onto the sand and settled at her instep. The girl picked it up, wide-eyed, speechless. She moved to hand it back. But the woman had scrambled to her feet.
‘Go home,’ she hissed. ‘Go to your people and don’t come near this place until we leave. Y’hear me! And – and for Gawd’s sake don’t tell him what I told you.’
Then she was running, her eyes not on the sand but on the boat approaching in the distance.
Sienna told herself that there hadn’t been time to tell Sookramer that it was not Jonko’s boat, because the woman was off the moment her eyes had fallen on the speck that had emerged from behind Krill Island. More truthfully, Sookramer’s terror had fascinated her. Fear was something she had not thought possible with people like them.
*
Missa Mosan did not greet her. He was trying to get his hand under the tail of a hefty tuna. This was a man, they said, who never sold the fish he caught, who, by some secret agreement with the ocean, always returned with enough to feed his crowd of children, even when the sea offered nothing to others.
‘Missa Mosan?’
‘Yaas!’
‘What is de deepest deep a pusson kin dive?’
‘Deep? What deep?’ He did not look at her. He was still working his hand under the fish.
‘Deep, Missa Mosan! Deep-deep-deep – where a pusson kin hardly see de bottom from de top.’
The man straightened up, began working his jaw, as if he were passing the idea around his mouth.
‘What kind o pusson?’
‘A pusson like you. A pusson like anybody,’ she replied, her eyes avoiding his.
‘How deep is deep?’
‘Deep,’ she insisted. ‘Like from de top o dat tree to halfway down de cliff.’
‘Dat what dem askin you?’ He was looking at her closely.
She frowned a quick denial. ‘Is not dem dat askin nothin, Missa Mosan. I jus want to know’
He chewed some more. ‘From dat tree up dere you say?’
She nodded.
This time his mouth clamped down on his thoughts, as if what he’d tasted was not good at all. ‘Not nice, not nice,’ he muttered. ‘Not nice at all! A dive like dat kin kill a man. I hear you hit de bottom of de Mouth?’
She nodded again.
‘Dat’s what dem askin you? Dat’s why dem makin you skin kuffum across dat water dere?’
‘Dem teachin me to dive. Dem…’
‘Don’t lie for me. Next ting you goin tell me is dem tryin to make de water wet!’ He turned his back on her.
She watched him haul the small boat up the sand. There was something flat and angular about him that reminded her of those one-sided fish she often spotted on the sea floor. Even his head was like that, with hair like hers, scorched a rust-brown at the fringes by sun and salt. But it was his feet that fascinated her, narrow at the heels and flared like spatulas at the front – feet that had the same compact toughness as his body. It was then she was sure – thinking of the yellow flippers that Jonko had given her – it was in the size and shape of those amazing pair of feet that lay the secret of his diving. She looked down at her own feet and decided they were like his. Not as large, but that would come with time.
‘Nobody in de worl’ kin dive like us. Becuz nobody make to dive like us.’ She said this without pride or gesture and Missa Mosan took it the way she meant it. He swivelled his head around and a broad, surprised smile pleated his face.
‘When dey leavin? Cos dem have to leave here soon.’
She realised that he too had been counting the days. He too had been having thoughts about Sookramer and Jonko.
‘Tonight, p’raps tomorrow.’ She shrugged. ‘It don’t matter.’
She could not tell whether it was a cough or curse that came from Mosan’s mouth. He raised his head towards the tree above the lagoon. ‘If it was me, if is have I have to go. I goin to tek it fast.’
He seemed taken by his idea. He chewed on it furiously, then straightened up and fixed the tree again. ‘Speed, speed is what is nerecerry for dis kinda dangerousness, becuz is dangerousness I call dat. An before I go, before I decide to play rummy wid my life for nothing, I’ll tell meself – I’ll say, “Mosan, don ferget to tek your time comin up. Strong as de water is, cold as it is down dere, hurt as mih chest goin be hurtin, bustin as mih lungs goin be bustin, you have to come up slow, becos comin up fast kin leave a whole heap o bubble in a pusson blood… an when it reach yuh heart…” He brought his palms together with a sudden thunder-clap that shook her to the core.
‘What time o day a pusson might be thinkin about?’ He threw a worried glance, not at her but at the sea.
‘Dunno – no time, Missa Mosan. I was only askin. I was…’
‘Mornin!’ he growled. ‘Early as a pusson kin make it. Before de sun come up an hit de water. Ain’t got no tide dat time. De water don’t wake up yet. It have to be early mornin.’ He looked at the sea as if seeking approval for his words, took up his crocus bag and swung the tuna off the sand.
He was half way up the hill before he checked his stride.
‘Once, Miss Lady! Jus once,’ he shouted without turning. ‘Yooman-been not make to do dat twice. Jus once – o else.’ He did not say the rest, but that clap of his hands still echoed in her head, and without realising it, she nodded.
Afterwards, Sienna never spoke about what happened. The little that The Silent learned came from the mouths of those who went out hours before the stirring of the gulls, when morning was still a faint suggestion against a sky the colour of mud-soaked canvas.
Those who boasted eyes that could spot the markings on a gull’s wing in the middle of a squall said they saw the flash of yellow flippers in the lagoon near the boat. It was something their minds rejected at the time.
What was certain was the emergence of the girl, bonesoaked and shivering, from somewhere near the tree above the lagoon. The women claimed it was the chattering of her teeth that made them lift their heads from their breakfast fires. They’d turned t
heir eyes down towards the beach and spotted the flippers arranged side by side on the sand like a pair of parrot fish.
She’d gone into the house, stripped, and pulled on every spare bit of dry clothing she could put her hands on, including Cedric’s underpants. Then she’d laid down on the floor and sunk into a kind of darkness which was nearer death than sleep.
They knew it as The Chill. That was clear from the pallor of her face, and the coldness that seeped from her bones and settled on her skin in a kind of sweat.
Tan Lin’s candlelight inspection of the girl’s body had not delivered any answers. If Sienna had been tampered with, she said, it was in a way that went beyond her understanding.
By then the whiteman’s boat had left.
When Sienna came out of it, Cedric told her about the boat leaving, and the odd sight of a whitewoman at the prow, looking up at them, then at the yellow flippers on the beach, her blue dress fluttering in the wind, her face as pale as an early morning moon. That, he told her, was two days before a couple of big grey boats with bright disturbing lights arrived and began circling The Silent.
The flippers were no longer where she’d left them after she’d swum back to the beach, emptied the heavy little canvas bag and slipped into the sea again, this time to toss the empty sack on deck where she thought Sookramer ought to see it, since she was always first to come up from below.
Sienna imagined the white trail the boat would have made all the way out, past Krill Island. And Sookramer, sad and smiling at the prow, casting a last glass-blue stare at the houses and the beach. The sense of abandonment she had anticipated was not there.
It was as if they had never come.
LISTEN, THE SEA
Amos is watching the white girl walk the length of the headland. She is above the mouth of the channel where the ocean becomes a muscular river that flares out further down and collides with the cross tides of Kick ‘em Jenny.
It is a great leap to clear the rocks below and hit the choppy water. But she does it, crouched at first, then rising and unfolding as she takes to air in a massive dolphin-leap. For an instant her naked body is a pale arc against the morning sky before the sea closes itself around her.
Amos would have thought this jump impossible had he not seen that white girl do it three mornings in a row.
His eyes follow the water down to where it comes to a boil. She is mid-channel, the pale arms rhythmic and precise in all that violence around her. She is using the force of the tide to sweep her down, while steering her body towards the shingle beach directly under his house.
Amos has a clear view of the young woman when she emerges: slight, with a thin-boned fragility that makes him think of birds.
She stands on the rock facing the water. The light from the brightening day traces the outlines of her limbs. She releases her hair from the band that bunches it behind. The stringy mass falls around her face and shoulders like a toss of bleached seaweed. With a quick deft jerk of her head she throws back her hair and slips the band in place.
When she reaches beneath the ledge of rock that overhangs the shingle beach and pulls out a bundle of clothes she must have left there the day before. Amos lifts his elbows from his window sill and walks out of his door.
Night still smudges the lower rim of the western sky. In an hour or so the sun will touch the waters and the seven little islands they call The Sisters will emerge into clearly defined shapes.
There is a heaviness in his shoulders – a reawakened tension in his gut. He goes to the drum of water, breaks his reflection with a hand and scrubs his face.
There are things he has to do today. Miss Gerty’s little radio is fixed. He should take it to the old woman because it is the only company she’s got, and there’s an extra sachet of herb for Hillman to keep him quiet about the electricity he ‘borrows’ from the pole at the bottom of the hill.
Amos waters his plants; breaks from time to time to stare at the roiling waters of the channel, then at the beach. The girl has gone now. A pair of sea gulls are beaking each other on the flat grey stone on which she stood. He is lost for a while in the heavy rattling of the pebbles down below. That beach is getting louder every day. He should tell her what that means, and if she does not listen he will have to find a way to stop her.
Any other day, he would take his speargun and old tin bucket and go spear-fishing in the lagoon at the southern tip of the island. This morning, he takes the narrow limestone path to Delna’s Guest House. His head is full of things he doesn’t want to think about, and he blames the whitegirl for it.
He is at the cross-path that would take him uphill and across the spine of the island when he catches a flash of colour ahead. It is still early and the old sea-island cotton trees that line the road are in shadow. The girl is an animated cut-out against their dusky foliage. Hers is a long, lean-boned stride – an odd flicking of her canvas shoes at the end of every step. She keeps her head down, her eyes on her feet. Amos stays in the centre of the path. She is almost upon him when she halts and lifts her head. Large, sea-green eyes settle on his face. It is as if he’s being looked at through panes of tinted glass. She smells of salt. He saw her the evening she arrived, but not this close. She’s too flimsy, too magga-bone and underfed to possess the strength she displays in the water, he thinks.
He must have been standing there longer than he imagined because he doesn’t realise she’s stepped around him until he hears the padding of her shoes behind him. He does not look back but carries in his head a snapshot of the young woman: the mass of reddish hair bunched at the back of her head, the raised cheekbones, the flimsy top through which he glimpsed the tattoo on her flesh, just beneath her clavicle, and the marks along her arms.
Bowman’s Rise is where he climbs when he needs to clear his head. The boom of breakers against the northern precipice and the heavy winds crowd out his thoughts. From there, the entire stony coastline of the island, sequined by frothing breakers, surrounds him. The southward procession of sea-beaten rock-islands trace a receding arc all the way to Main Island. Down below, the town is a narrow patch of colour against the vast, heaving blue.
He thinks of the white girl and the way she looked at him, through him, or beyond him. It felt like a collision.
He wonders if his sister had that look and why no-one on the island noticed it. From the moment the foreigner raised her head at him, he knew his warning would be wasted, as surely as he knows that one of these mornings she will lose her timing. Whatever skill or trick she uses to defy the tide will not save her. Those killing waters will swallow her and spit her out on some dirty shore in South America – if the sharks or barracudas don’t get her first.
The Osprey is a white dot against the horizon. Amos watches the boat loom larger, its twin prows already angling northwards to avoid the turbulent waters.
It is the usual way the tourists come to Kara Isle. The diving girl was a surprise. Night was already gathering around the island. The jetty and the seafront were heaving with people watching the heavy wooden inter-island schooner grumble and grind towards them, before mooring in a suffocating choke of diesel oil and dry goods.
Her bag dropped first. It hit the jetty with a thud, then folded in on itself. Amos was one of those who lifted their eyes to where it came from, saw the flash of canvas shoes as she descended the narrow ladder with her back to them, her shoulder blades rolling under her flimsy top. He looked up again to observe the impossibly muscled seamen, rough as rusted iron, who looked down from the deck on the woman’s descending head. No goodbye wave from them; none of those big tropical grins reserved for tourists. Just a quick exchange of looks between the men, because they too must have noticed what he saw in those glassy, staring eyes when their ways crossed.
She looked at no one. She slung the little canvas bag over her shoulders and strode off to Delna’s Guest House. The old man they called Stinkfish rolled yellow rum-shot eyes at Amos and laughed.
It is afternoon when he rises from the rock. H
is stomach is grumbling but he is not sure he wants to eat. He remembers that his little friend, Daphne, will come later for her lessons. She will bring her usual animated conversation and lift his mood.
He dusts himself and follows the road down to the seafront. It has its usual mix of rowdiness and sun-struck apathy. Young men sit on concrete walls with crossed arms and legs, chuckling at private jokes. Elders recline on doorsteps, staring out at nothing. The hot air hums with the burble of conversation from the houses further back.
He feels their eyes on him – the narrowed, dark-eyed gazes of the young women in particular. The group in the front of Venus’ Fish-Fry raise a burst of laughter. Paula is the boldest. She rakes him with her eyes, then clears her throat. Chuckles follow him into the shop.
Venus lifts a sweating forehead. ‘What for you, Missa Amos?’
‘Fishcake,’ he says, ‘No bread.’
Another wash of giggles from outside. Venus turns her head and looks out of the window.
‘Never mind them. Is jealous they jealous. All dem little woman out dere want you for theyself and dey hate you becuz you got no time for dem.’
Amos smiles at her. ‘Fishcake, no bread.’
Venus wraps the food but does not hand it over. She wipes her face, speaks with a hissing, low-voiced urgency. ‘Go back to America, Amos. You done punish yourself enough. Is time you leave. You not make for dis place.’
Behind him, he hears ‘waster’, ‘grave-man’, ‘sketel’. He recognises Simeon’s voice. Simeon’s been goading him for months.
‘And him,’ Venus rolls her eyeballs to the left. ‘That got to stop.’
‘The fishcake, Miss Venus.’
‘Only ole bag de fella want. This one too young for him.’
‘This one’ is the white girl. She is standing in the far left corner with her ankles crossed, her shoulder propped against the wall. The light from the open window settles on her hand. She is poking at a sandwich as though she finds no pleasure in the food. Again, Amos wonders how such fragility could launch itself from such a height and breach the channel tide.