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

by Rita M. Gardner

  I sit back heavily on the floor and hold my sister’s life in my arms. Will it tell me who she is, who she was, beyond the little she revealed about the gaping hole in her life?

  Someone wrote that “death is the ultimate invasion of privacy,” or words to that effect. I think of this as I begin to excavate, to hunt for what I do not know. A thick paper bag is crammed with small notebooks. So this is where she stored her years, in tiny Hallmark calendars with inch-square spaces for each day. Small, dry facts shorthand their way across the page. I flip the doll-sized booklet back to her birthday in 1968 and read: Civil service exam. Nap. Cleaned.

  I find a large stack of photographs, the ones she kept through more than half a century: There’s a black-and-white picture of our grandmother, looking dignified against the banister of her Southampton home. Here’s a photo of our family posing in front of a young palm on a deserted stretch of beach, probably taken on our first trip to Miches. Daddy is holding Berta’s hand. She’s four, pulling away and squinting uncertainly into the sun. I’m just a baby, nestled in Mama’s arms. My parents are smiling, eyes bright with adventure and promise. I don’t remember them like this. I set the picture aside, that window into hope and possibility, careful to smooth out the tattered edges. Next I pull out snapshots and awkward notes I sent to my sister that first year we communicated by mail, ohso-gingerly, after her reappearance.

  A series of photographs from a later time spill out from a torn envelope—nudes, obviously taken by a lover. In them, she peeks out from behind a waterfall of hair, eyes smiling at the photographer. They must have been taken after she moved to California. She’s sitting on river rocks, her long blonde mane cascading over her breasts and eddying around her knees. She looks happy. She didn’t cut her hair for more than thirty years. I still remember her asking me to go with her for a haircut, decades later, when she was in her late forties. It took her this long to allow a change. She didn’t want to go to the hairdresser alone, my sister who by now was traveling the world by herself, working hard jobs as a forest ranger or park ranger and collecting books and friends with equal enthusiasm. I was grateful she needed me that day when she shed her mane of protection, although even then she couldn’t let it go entirely. In the pocket of a manila folder, I find the ponytail of blond hair curled up like a sleeping snake. Tied in a blue ribbon, it’s almost two feet long.

  The contents of this suitcase represent everything that was valuable to her, so I’m still hoping I’ll learn about the years of which I was never to speak. But the suitcase mocks me in the end. If I want to know exactly what she did on a particular day, six years ago, twenty-five years ago, I can find her scribbled notes. But she keeps that other time secret, even to herself—and now she’s gone, taken by cancer at age sixty. The light outside has faded into dusk and I’m still sitting on the floor. Finally I close the suitcase—there’s no more I will know. The house is cleaned out now; there is nothing else to find. Instead, I must focus on what has been revealed by these carefully hidden bundles. Even if she had to abandon us for those long and aching years, she protected what mattered, and kept us safe with her all along.

  TODAY IS THE FOURTH OF JULY. I reach up to the top of the bookcase for a velvet-wrapped box. I think I should be doing this with more ceremony—that I should be dressed up, not wearing a torn T-shirt. I untie the gold cord and pull out a heavy gray box sealed with a cross of white packing tape. I wonder if it will be as hard to open as Mama’s container was after her death. Berta and I had to wrestle that lid off with a screwdriver and hammer. But I rip off the tape, and the cover yields instantly to my touch. Inside, a plastic bag is tied off with a twist-tie, the kind we use at a grocery store.

  The bag has taken the shape of the container, like a brick of clay ready to be molded into a new creation. It is said that your ashes are the same weight as you when you’re born. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sags into the curve of my arm. The line from a song comes into mind and I change it slightly: She’s not heavy; she’s my sister. I place my cargo into a daypack and step out into the early morning. I’m taking Berta to the park where she worked for almost twenty years. I know she’d rather be there as the quiet cove wakes up to the ducks and seagulls, the joggers, walkers, and today, the many picnickers who will swarm in later with their coolers and charcoal and ribs.

  The sun glints on the tops of skyscrapers across the bay, and a bank of gray fog hovers low along the waterfront. I crunch across the gravel path to the fresh trail at the edge of the inlet. A section of recently acquired marshland is still fenced off, growing wild with weeds and poison oak. A sign says “AREA CLOSED—do not enter until it has been made accessible and safe for the public.” Several small pines, gangly as teenagers, are just ahead. I kneel into the damp grass next to the smallest sapling, which glistens with dew, its branches as tender as dawn. I study the footpath and for the moment no one is in sight. On bent knee I rip open the plastic and pour handfuls of ashes around the base of the pine. I run my hands through my sister’s remains, blending them into the surrounding earth, and my fingers turn silver and gritty. A group of walkers is nearing, so I slip away as nonchalantly as possible.

  The pond in the middle of the park is still in the soft light. A loon bobs and dives, leaving circles that fan out slowly then quiet to stillness again. I wait until the strollers are far beyond the curve of the trail, then pour a stream of gray into the pond. It blooms into a whitish cloud underwater, spreading in swirls of light and shadow. Berta loved the water almost as much as her job. She’s part of it now, swimming in millions of specks among the reeds in the sun-warmed shallows.

  Thirty-one years ago it was Mama and Berta and me standing on a cliff at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in Mexico, casting Daddy’s ashes to the water below. After discovering that Daddy’s lingering gripe was really lung cancer, they sold the finca and moved to Mexico for his final years, leaving most of their belongings for the new owner of Casalata. Anything too treasured to bear a stranger’s touch they threw into the laguna. I can see it all falling, sinking as my own heart sinks, tumbling into the dark waters. The odd sparkle of a gem, my paintings, family photographs, notes typed on the old Royal, double-spaced on onionskin paper—scraps of a life and a family beached on a deceptively gentle shore. The typewriter itself, plummeting beneath the layers of the laguna, scattering tadpoles and turtles and dreams in its path.

  I shake myself back to the present but the past swirls around and now I’m remembering the Tijuana hospital and Daddy swaddled in white sheets, thin brown arms hooked to IVs and tubes. When he sees us he opens his mouth in a toothless grimace that tries to be a smile. We make small talk, the kind you make when you can’t say what’s really happening so it doesn’t happen. When we step outside for a break, Daddy rests his head back into the pillow. “See you later, alligator.”

  “After awhile, crocodile,” I manage through the lump in my throat.

  We come back inside the room and minutes later Mama jumps up and her cry lies there in the still air and we move quietly, as if silence matters—but it doesn’t anymore. When we spread his ashes, the wind spins them around and coats us all with shards of bone. We don’t know what to do so we laugh uneasily as we shake Daddy from our hair and clothing. Maybe he doesn’t want to leave us, I say.

  YEARS AFTER OUR FATHER’S DEATH, Mama moved here to be near us and adopted the park as her own. She took her walks here every morning without fail, unless it was raining heavily, always carrying a spare plastic bag to scoop up any discarded trash on the trail. Mama lived until she was ninety-one, and was healthy almost up to the end. Five years ago, Berta and I spread her ashes under a young bush full of glossy leaves. The bush has since grown strong and thick with foliage and is beginning to look like a tree; we call it Mama’s tree. And now here I am, this time alone, spreading the last bit of Berta’s ashes to join Mama in a light snowfall around the trunk. Now it’s Berta’s tree, too.

  I put the now-empty bag in one of the trash cans. Somet
ime later today, one of Berta’s former work companions will empty the can, not knowing what they’re lifting into the park truck she used to drive. My legs give way and I crumple into a park bench. A seagull cocks his head at me a few feet away. The morning wakes up around me and the sun climbs higher. A slight breeze riffles the surface into points of light. I pull myself heavily off the bench and head home, passing the sign again, the one that says “AREA CLOSED.”

  Berta had areas of her life that were always closed, that never felt safe enough to open for public access, even to me. But it’s Independence Day, and today she’s finally free. It dawns on me that I now have the liberty to open up to the deep place where the secrets have remained hidden and tearing me up inside for so long. It’s not too late, I tell myself, even as something akin to fear courses through my body, but maybe it’s not fear at all. Maybe I don’t know what real hope and freedom feels like.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Palm Song

  Despite once vowing to never return to this island, I am here once again. On the bus trip over the mountain, I ask the driver to pull over at the summit when the crescent of Samana Bay comes into view. He remembers me from when I was little. “Sí, sí, por seguro.” Of course I’ll stop. He opens the door and gestures at the long sweep of palm groves at the edge of the turquoise water below, as if I wouldn’t remember where to look—as if this precious view weren’t seared into my soul. I shade my eyes to see if Cocoloco still stands out from the rest of the fincas like it did when our coconut trees were young and the fronds were a lighter green than the other palms in neighboring farms. But the finca blends in now with the rest, boundaries and color blurred by time and age. I close my eyes and Daddy is pulling my five-year-old self up onto a rock for a better view. But I don’t need him this time; I still know where to look, what exact curve of beach draws me back.

  My feet dig into wet Cocoloco sand as stories in my head fade in and out like the stations on the old Zenith radio, once our only link to an outside world. A memory pushes in from a few years ago, when my mother’s life was waning. I asked her if she’d ever jotted down an outline of our family’s many journeys—something I could hang my memories onto before they faded forever. She stiffened and a hard tone filtered through her voice, a smoky ember that choked her words.

  “I wrote a book about our family once, you know.”

  “You did? What happened to it?”

  She shrugged, her voice now a dying spark, all the fire drained away. “Your father didn’t think much of it, and you children weren’t particularly interested in your past. I threw it away.”

  So I’ve returned to this beach, standing unsteadily as ghosts spin in the warm breath of the trade winds. A green coconut bobs in the surf a few yards away. It will eventually drift ashore and sprout, much as we did, or tried to. I squint at the sun through tears. I remember those spurts of time when my sister and I were children, when laughter lit up our life, before the numbness set in like fog. Other memories flood in, unwanted, and ebb like the tide. I think of Luís and wonder what happened to him. I heard he married and is a grandfather now. I lean against the aged trunk of a palm, pockmarked with beetle holes and scarred by hurricanes. Planted ages ago by my father, the trunk still pushes skyward, its topknot tattered but still bearing fruit. It drops a ripe nut a few yards away, scattering a few sand crabs. The breeze freshens and the coconut grove becomes a loud chorus.

  A short distance away the river beckons, its caramel surface dammed up by a sand bar. The water dims to dark red at its depths. It is deceptively still, hiding sodden logs and branches ripped from its banks when the rains caused the river to swell. Now the storms have passed and the river has settled back on itself, making a lagoon. The beach is empty except for a lone horse and rider ambling past at the water’s edge. The man whistles a low tune and his saddlebags, filled with husked coconuts, sway from side to side. They don’t see me, a ghost in the blue shadows of the riverbank.

  I’ve walked here from the finca house a half a kilometer away. Its original skeleton is intact even now. The owner who bought our property over four decades ago has left some things unchanged still, like the Adirondack chairs, still painted turquoise, and the picnic table with the faint cigarette burn marks. The downstairs, which used to be open, is screened in now, and another room has been added, along with a sturdy water tower to catch rainfall. It’s as if Daddy’s pulse still beats inside, but it’s no longer as open to the elements or to the unknown. It’s encased, grown more solid, unyielding.

  In many ways I’m like that house, sealed by the hard casings that grew over my core and tried to keep me from too much pain those early years. I know about protection; it’s the same shell that also kept me from ever saying yes to bright-eyed men who dreamed of babies and who asked me to be their partner. But I’m melting despite myself, yielding to this beach, as Daddy did when he gave his heart to the trade winds, to the dance of sunlight on blue water. He gave us this long stretch of sand to play on, to dream on. He gave us fireflies and skies full of stars. We were the rhythm of merengue, and the taste of dulce de coco. He gave us chubascos, those swift rainstorms that thundered down on Casalata like heaven’s fury, and hurricanes, too. So we grew like weeds in this sweet wildness, burnt by the sun, blown away by Daddy’s storms, and yet, like seeds, reborn again.

  Here, in this place that is no longer home but which still holds me fast, sadness and loss make way for something else. I tremble and let the music of the palm trees sing its way into that dark place, let it begin to thaw. I pick up a twig and trace a shallow canal through the top of the sand bar. A trickle of water leaks into the fissure, then stops. I dig deeper, and it fills some more. I tunnel harder, until sweat drips off my nose, and watch as the water starts flowing of its own accord, telling its story as it plows through melting sand and finds a steady path to the mother ocean.

  Author’s Note

  It is not easy to write about a family submerged in secrets, nor to expose truths long buried. The best any of us can do is to rely on memory, which shape-shifts as we grow older but is our only truth nevertheless. This book involves family members who have died, and people with whom I’ve not had contact for many decades. To honor and respect their privacy, I have changed some names and other personal details. In some cases I compressed or expanded time for better narrative continuity, but the events described in this book are otherwise factually accurate.

  Captions

  Title Page: Small child, large crab

  Introduction: Jesse and Emily Gardner at Cocoloco beach

  Chapter 1: Casalata

  Chapter 2: Berta and Rita with mother

  Chapter 3: Our dog Bobby follows Daddy

  Chapter 5: Cartoon of primitive copra drying equipment

  Chapter 6: Portrait of Trujillo

  Chapter 7: Cockfighting Arena, Miches

  Chapter 8: Kerosene Lanterns, Casalata

  Chapter 9: Daddy’s chair

  Chapter 10: Daddy at the helm of skiff

  Chapter 11: Rita and Berta in Frisky on the laguna

  Chapter 12: Berta

  Chapter 13: Beach, Cocoloco

  Chapter 14: Storm coming in

  Chapter 16: Mama, Casalata

  Chapter 17: Bobby

  Chapter 18: The sisters Mirabal – “The Butterflies”

  Chapter 20: Christmas holiday, Florida

  Chapter 21: Coconut Palm

  Chapter 23: Graduation Day

  Chapter 26: Berta, Mama, and Aunt Betty, Miami

  Chapter 27: Family Reunion

  Epilogue Page: Beach at Cocoloco

  Chapter 28: Painting of Berta

  Chapter 29: Coconut Palm

  Acknowledgments

  I come from a family of voracious readers and would-be writers. As a child, I wrote constantly and secretly, and words along with painting and drawing, became my lifeboat and refuge. My father wrote a never-published article about our adventures in the Dominican Republic. My mother wrote her own ma
nuscript on that subject and discarded it after apparent indifference from her husband and children, although I never remember seeing it at all. I need to thank my mother, whose primary wish for me was that I become proficient in typing and shorthand so I could work as a secretary. Thankfully, knowing how to type has had other benefits as well.

  A chance decision to take an essay workshop from Thom Elkjer resulted in my first published piece and the introduction to the camaraderie and magic of writing groups. Thank you to so many of my fellow-journeyers: Kaye McKinzie, Donna Emerson, Barbara Euser, Gregg Elliott, Laurie Oman, Paula Terrey, Marianne Manilov, Marianna Cacciatore, and more. A note of gratitude to Book Passage and Leslie Keenan’s classes. Thanks also to Hedgebrook’s “Writers in Residence” Program, a sanctuary where I turned scattered notes into the beginnings of a memoir and myself into a writer. I also appreciate all my friends who have patiently read various drafts along the way.

  Thank you to Brooke Warner and She Writes Press for publishing this book. I owe a debt of gratitude to Liz Kracht, who edited my work vigorously and helped me to understand what language sings and what plods along, begging to be cut. I must also thank my childhood friends from the Dominican Republic, who lived through extreme political turmoil in their country but never lost their love for home. This book could never have been written if, so many decades ago, Michero hearts hadn’t opened wide to embrace an extranjero family into their lives and community. Gracias, mis amigos de siempre.

  Reader’s Guide

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. What made you want to read this book and suggest it for discussion?

  2. What do you think motivated the author to share her life story? What was your response to her voice?