The Coconut Latitudes: Secrets, Storms, and Survival in the Caribbean

by Rita M. Gardner

  Mama slumps over the dining room table in her chair. She smokes and watches him with narrow eyes, sometimes cringing. She doesn’t look at us, frozen in our seats at this now almost nightly ritual. Daddy’s eyes darken. He orders Mama to make him another drink. Berta tenses near me, picking at her lip with a fingernail like she always does, sometimes until it bleeds. Her features are locked shut, hard and impenetrable. I hold my stomach with my arms as if I can protect myself that way, and I will the tears to stay inside. It’s important to not call attention in any way. Daddy’s voice reverberates and bounces in this house of metal walls. Crickets buzz outside, drawn by the light. I pray for the sound of frogs that precedes rain, but the swamp is quiet. I wish rain would drown him out. A good downpour will send him to bed, defeated—outshouted by nature.

  But the only storm is inside these walls. I study the rug and the parade of llamas, heads held high, stepping one behind the other along the border. I watch a cigarette drop and smoke itself out on the cement floor. It misses the rug this time. I’m drowning with anger that has nowhere to go—so it stays a dull pain inside, burrowing deep. My eyes sting from trying to stay awake. I’m waiting for the end of this one, just waiting for the squall to pass. Not a good birthday; just another bad night in Miches.

  The next morning, Daddy is especially quiet and sits with his coffee on the front porch. I avoid him as much as I can, but have to face him at the breakfast table. He brushes a limp strand of hair from his forehead. “I was just blowing off steam,” he says. “You know that’s all it is. Come here.” He pulls me into his lap and gives me a smoky kiss on the head. “You’re my favorite,” he says quietly, so no one else will hear. I squirm and tell him I have chores to do, so he lets me go.

  Mama gathers her mending and takes her coffee into their bedroom. She sits by the window in silence, attacking the sewing pile. Her fingers guide the needle in and out, in and out, as if somehow she can fix everything that’s wrong by patching worn fabric and sewing on missing buttons. She winces once when she pricks her finger. She sees me in the doorway with a book in hand and musters a half-smile. “Finished with your history lesson?” she asks.

  Tonight, when Daddy’s exhausted himself from yelling again—this makes two nights in a row—when we’re finally allowed to go to bed, Berta stands in front of the bedroom mirror and picks at pimples until they bleed as I crawl under the mosquito netting that’s tucked around our beds. When the room goes dark I can hear her sniffle into the pillow.

  I can’t tell if I’m dreaming, but it’s past midnight when I hear a strange noise coming from the other bedroom. It sounds almost like crying, but it’s not Mama. Berta is asleep. The sound fades as the front door creaks open on its metal hinges, and now I can tell Mama’s getting out of bed too, following the noise outside. Then there’s a long, strange wail, a low sound that seems to be coming from some dark place far off. I shake Berta until she mumbles “What, what?”

  I try to tell her something bad is happening outside, but all I can do is whisper “I’m scared,” and then she can hear it too.

  She takes my hand and we tiptoe as far as the front door and peek out. My heart is throbbing and her hand is holding mine so tight it hurts. There’s a three-quarter moon, and it is light enough to see Daddy on his knees out by the front gate. Mama is kneeling next to him, saying something we can’t hear. He pushes her away and just stays there, planted on the ground, crying. The night goes still and now we can hear his words, not the usual yelling, just this strange moan.

  “Just get me a rope, Emily. Get me a goddamn rope.” His voice rises, and breaks. “Let me kill myself; I just want to die.”

  Berta flinches; I can barely breathe. Lightning rushes through my body, jolts of electricity, bolts of danger. We cling together by the doorway, paralyzed with fear. Mama moves closer to Daddy and puts her arms around him. He pushes away. “It’s all been a mistake, the biggest damn mistake in my life.”

  She hushes him. “No, no, no. Don’t say that. You don’t mean it.” He slumps against her and they sway together, cry together, under the pale light of the moon.

  “What do we do?” I ask Berta, my teeth chattering so hard I bite my tongue.

  “Nothing. He’s not going to do anything.”

  “But—”

  Her voice is small, hard as a rock. “He won’t. You hear? He just won’t.”

  We stand there, half-hidden behind the door, and watch as Mama and Daddy rock back and forth and his cries get smaller and smaller until all we can hear is Mama saying “Everything will get better, honey. Everything will be all right. We’ll make it.”

  A frog croaks off in the distance, and another answers. A cricket screeches over by the lagoon, and a mosquito circles our faces, looking for a landing spot. Daddy staggers to his feet, and Mama holds his arm. They begin to walk slowly back to the house. Berta propels me toward our room. “Hurry,” she whispers. “They can’t ever know we saw anything.”

  The next morning, Mama makes coffee as usual, but Daddy stays in bed.

  “Just a touch of the gripe,” Mama says. A cold. He sleeps until lunchtime and Mama takes a tray into the bedroom. He gets up after siesta, saying he’s feeling better. He showers and heads down the path to his workshop. He doesn’t drink at all that night, but I can barely sleep. A weight settles into my chest and pins me down in the bed until I think I’m suffocating. I keep seeing Daddy crouching on the ground, begging for a rope to hang himself with. I decide if I’m really good, and never make Daddy mad at me, then he won’t ever think like that again.

  BERTA DOESN’T EVER TALK much anyway, but after this episode she gets even quieter, at least at home. She buries herself in books for hours at a time, alone at a far corner of the yard, or gets in the ocean. In this place of no escape, Berta swims in the bay almost every day, paralleling the wave breaks all along the shore, diving and turning and floating. She grows tan and tall alone in the water, close to the deep where shark fins thread the surface and sting rays fly below. I stay close to shore, where my feet can find bottom, and worry when Berta is so far away she’s just a speck that I lose between waves.

  “No wonder she’s a good swimmer,” Daddy says. “Her feet are as big as flippers.”

  At thirteen, Berta’s feet are already too big to fit into women’s shoes, so she wears men’s sneakers. She towers over most Dominicans and tends to slump her back so her height isn’t as noticeable. But in the ocean she becomes fishlike, as graceful as a mermaid. I’m glad she can’t hear Daddy’s remark. He’s always criticizing her for something or another, like the time her bicycle chain came off the sprocket and she couldn’t figure out how to fix it. Mama doesn’t say anything when Daddy talks like that. When Berta’s not in the water, or studying her lessons, she reads and listens to the portable radio we are only allowed to turn on for short periods of time, because we have to save the batteries in case a hurricane threatens.

  She doesn’t let Daddy hug her anymore, not the way he still pulls me up into his lap. I think she’s mad because he won’t let her curl her hair. But she’s been upset at him for a long time, so maybe it’s something else. She reminds me of a hermit crab that way, scooting into a shell whenever he’s nearby. She has wary blue eyes and thick blond hair that flashes gold when she brushes it in the sun. She doesn’t think she’s pretty, but she likes her shiny hair. She wants to grow it long, but Daddy won’t let her. Mama cuts our hair outdoors, always the same way. Bangs just above the eyebrows, and straight across under our ears. When Berta is older she pleads with Mama to let it grow, so she does until the night Daddy yells at her that long hair isn’t practical and besides which, what the hell is she trying to do, show it off for Miches boys, huh? Berta just looks down and shakes her head no.

  Lately she doesn’t like me to tag along when she visits her friends, but since their younger sisters are my pals, we often end up together at the same house for a fiesta, or, like today, when we’re going to a birthday party. We wear identical dresses, which do
n’t fit right anymore since we got them two birthdays ago. On the way home, Berta crosses over to the other side of the street.

  “Why are you mad at me?” I yell across the roadway.

  “I’m not—just leave me alone.” We walk in silence.

  “What did I do?” I complain.

  “You just bug me. It makes me sick when you kiss up to Daddy. You’re always asking him to explain stuff.” She says it like it’s dirty or disgusting. That’s true, I do ask him some things, like how to mix different colors of paint to get the just the right shades, or where hurricanes come from, or why the frogs always croak when it rains. I think I’m trying to make up for the fact I’m not the boy he wanted; a boy who can fix bicycle tires and broken boat engine parts. I only talk to Daddy when he’s sober, and he seems to like that. Besides, this way he won’t kill himself—but I don’t tell Berta that.

  “I’m just curious,” I say, mimicking Mama the time I asked her why she likes looking up unusual words in the dictionary. Of course Mama also says learning fancy words helps her beat Daddy at Scrabble. When Berta ignores me, I pester her even more. She complains to Mama, who tells me to leave my sister alone. However, when it’s just the two of us, adrift in the pitching surf of Daddy’s rage, I think somehow that Berta will protect me if things get unbearable—even if we can’t walk on the same side of the street. I cling to the thought as if it will be true, as if it will stop me from drowning in fear.

  Chapter Ten

  Nightmare

  “Wake up, girls.” Mama’s urgent voice interrupts my dream. I cling to sleep as if it’s a life vest that will save me, but it’s no use. Mama has already moved the mosquito netting aside and now pulls me up to a sitting position. A jukebox blasts the stillness of the night. Daddy’s letter-writing campaign for silence after 10 p.m. didn’t work. The police chief just shrugs and says no laws are being broken, the comandante at the military post says he has no authority, and the alcalde, the town mayor, is an investor in the newest bar.

  I know what this wake-up call means even before Mama whispers, “Your father says we’re going to the finca.” Even with ears stuffed with cotton, Daddy has woken up.

  “What time is it?” I mutter. Berta is groaning awake in the bunk below me.

  “Late. It doesn’t matter. Don’t keep your father waiting.” She switches the light on. “Fifteen minutes,” she warns. Berta rubs her eyes and stumbles to the bathroom.

  Daddy is crashing about in their bedroom and yelling. “I can’t STAND it!” he booms, knocking a glass off his dresser. Mama shushes him, tells him we’ll be ready to go in a jiffy. She scours the refrigerator and pantry for food for tomorrow and fills a cloth bag with the findings.

  We travel up the coast in our open skiff, Daddy steering from the rear seat. Bobby balances at Daddy’s feet to stay dry, near the ten-horsepower Johnson outboard mounted on the stern. The middle seat is for Mama and Berta. I sit in a narrow vee in the bow, along with the anchor and a coil of rope. Keeping the motor running is a challenge since there are no engine parts locally available. I worry it will stall out midjourney—a scary proposition, as Daddy would have to remove the cover and troubleshoot as we drift. When this happens, I’m always afraid we’ll float away into open ocean or be overturned by breaking waves.

  The bay is full of sharks, moray eels, stingrays, and other dangerous creatures. In the daytime we watch out for the darker color of the water that can signal a concealed reef, but at night we travel blind. Motoring out around the mouth of the Yeguada River is tricky too, because here the bay fills with river silt and water depth changes dramatically. Once past the Yeguada, it’s a straight stretch toward the finca, but at night it’s hard to spot our property among the long fringe of coconut palms that line the entire coast to Punta Hicaco. We used to have a dock at the finca, but storms washed it away regularly and eventually Daddy gave up rebuilding it. Tonight the bay is calm. At least the rivers aren’t running high, flooding down from the mountains pushing logs, dead cows, or other debris out into the bay—more obstacles we could run into in the dark.

  Our skiff is a dark shadow on a black sea. I hold tight to the sides of the boat as if I can keep it from falling apart that way, keep myself from falling apart. Cocoloco is about four kilometers away by land, and the boat ride takes about forty minutes. The shoreline at night is an unbroken blur of beach and the spiky silhouettes of coconut fronds. Our small finca house is concealed behind a break of trees. Shivering with salt spray and fright, I strain my eyes trying to find landfall from my perch on the bow, but all I can see are vague shapes, which is true even on the clearest of nights. Finally we get near enough to see the tin roof reflecting the light of the moon and we navigate by that.

  When we get close to shore, Daddy swings the boat into the breaking waves and we jump out and scramble to the sandy beach. He anchors the boat away from the breakers and swims ashore, followed by Bobby. Stars twinkle like jewels and the moon pierces the darkness with light. Ahead of me, fireflies dart in and out of the shadows of the sea grape bushes. I tremble in relief and cold. Looking back at the faint light to the west that is Miches, I’m sure everyone there has been sound asleep for hours, even as jukeboxes blare into the night. There’s no electric power in the finca, except when Daddy runs the generator to dry copra.

  The flashlight glances along the dirt path leading to the fenced clearing and the wooden hut on stilts. I stay very close to Mama and Berta, putting my feet where they step to keep out of the way of land crabs and tarantulas. Exhausted by the effort of getting to the finca, Daddy is now sober and tired. The only sounds here are the rustle of the young coconut palms all around us and the splash of waves. At least now Daddy will sleep. When we unlock the upstairs room, I sigh in relief and climb into the sanctuary of my bunk—after a flashlight search for tarantulas or centipedes, because sometimes they sneak in even though the room is screened. Mama pulls out the chamber pot we can use inside just for peeing. Otherwise, we have to take the dark path to the outhouse. I can wait until morning. I don’t want to battle any more crabs and spiders, especially by myself. The clock says 1:35 a.m. It’s been a long night for a short sleep.

  The next morning, after I finish my chores, Bobby and I head into the finca backcountry, stopping by a stream to watch pollywogs wiggle around, and then follow a cloud of butterflies until they disappear. I come across workers pulling coconuts off the tree with long poles that have sharp hooks at the end. They wave at me. They’re used to my comings and goings. Another group is husking the coconuts by quick pushes on sharp spikes that are stuck in the ground. The outer husks are left in the field to rot and become fertilizer. The piles of nuts are loaded into saddlebags on the back of three horses and a donkey. I follow behind as the laden animals make their way to a group of sheds by the beach. Here the bags are unloaded right beside the men who chip off the hard shell with machetes to remove the fresh coconut meat. The tin-roofed building is buzzing with flies, sweat, and the sound of chipping.

  Coconut shell chips fuel the big copra dryer. When we’re at the finca, Berta and I take turns helping Daddy shovel chips into the furnace so he can rest. Berta sees me as she clangs the metal door shut and sets down the shovel.

  “Oh, good—it’s your turn,” she says, wiping her forehead. “I’m going for a swim. Daddy should be back in a few minutes.”

  The furnace crackles and sparks fly through the cracks of the heavy door. The building is screened in to let in the ocean breeze, but the hot air that funnels from the furnace to the commercial drier makes my skin all sticky. Daddy operates the drier from sunup to sundown; it turns five thousand fresh nuts into copra in two days. Every few minutes I open the creaky door and shovel in piles of chips. I always have a book nearby to pass the time, so I’m startled when Daddy shows up. He musses up my hair, as if last night’s nightmarish trip didn’t even happen. I guess it’s not a nightmare for him.

  “Whatcha reading?”

  I pick up the paperback and show him the tit
le. It’s a Zane Grey Western. Daddy imitates a gunfighter pulling out his weapon in a fast draw, and it’s funny so I laugh. He picks up the shovel and I stick the book in my pocket.

  “See you later, alligator,” he says.

  “After a while, crocodile.”

  When evening falls we gear up for one of Daddy’s favorite rituals, which takes place along the winding trails of the finca—the hunt for dinner. Armies of land crabs forage in the sandy soil of Cocoloco. Twelve inches long and anywhere from khaki-brown to silver-blue in color, the males are the scariest. One of their pincers is the size of a child’s hand, my hand. The inner parts of the claw are serrated and sharp, strong enough to pierce a young coconut. We head out in a drizzle, each of us armed with a flashlight, a cloth sack, and some kind of blunt instrument. Mine is a small hoe. The night crowds in around us as we slosh single file through the mud, our sneakers soaked just minutes into the trek. We aim our flashlights like guns as we squish-slide, slip-step. Daddy leads the way, followed by Mama and me. Berta brings up the rear because I’m too afraid to be the last one, where the blackness swallows up everything behind us. The rule is the first person to spot a crab is to stop and alert the rest of the family.

  “I see one!” Mama shouts. She points to a large crab frozen momentarily by the light. It scuttles from side to side, its pincers waving like a boxer in the ring and its protruding eyes swiveling on their stems. Berta lifts her shovel and whacks at it until it stops moving. Daddy helps lift the oozing creature, careful to pick it up from the back, away from the claws, just in case it isn’t really dead yet. He flips it into Mama’s sack and we move on. I’m lucky, this night I don’t have to be a killer. Even so, I have to carry my share of the bounty. After we’ve bagged enough we head back home, where Berta lights the Coleman lantern and Mama gets the big pot of water boiling on the camp stove. Daddy hacks away at the crabs, removing the guts and hard outer shell. He pulls each pincer off separately—the prize, packed full of meat. Berta pumps the well and rinses off the whole mess. I set the picnic-style table with plates and nutcrackers, the big metal kind with hinges. Dry and safe in the circle of the hissing lantern, we settle in for the feed. After dinner, Berta and I haul the carcasses to the compost pile, where the sun will bleach the growing mound into the color of ashes, the pallor of death.