“Oh. Well, we usually eat our fish raw.”
“Like sushi?” At her puzzled look, he said, “That’s what the Japanese call raw fish, seaweed, and rice. You’d probably like it.”
“It sounds good. How do you like to eat fish?”
John sipped his beer. “I don’t normally eat fish or animal flesh. I’m a vegetarian, but it’s hard to stick with it here on the island so I’ve been eating fish.” He figured that there was no need to mention his brief deviation into beef.
“No fish?” Tamarind sounded shocked. “Why not? I thought everybody ate fish.”
“I guess there’s a lot of reasons.” John ticked off some of the issues that Zoë had given him when she insisted he become a vegetarian. They still seemed reasonable. “Mostly, it’s not sustainable. I mean, huge fishing boats come along and trawl with their nets, scooping up whatever gets trapped in them. The fish can’t possibly keep reproducing fast enough and sometimes other creatures die simply because they’re caught in the net. Plus, I think it’s healthier to cut out fish and meat.”
“It’s not because you don’t like to eat fish?”
“No, actually, I love fish, especially sushi.”
“But you don’t want to kill them to eat them? Didn’t you go fishing here?”
John squirmed a bit. “Yeah, but that’s not what I find objectionable. It’s kind’ve hard to explain, but it doesn’t bother me if somebody catches a few fish using a rod and bait. That’s just not how most people get fish in the U.S.”
“Oh. Okay.”
They fell silent. Tamarind continued to pick at her mojo isleño.
John decided to rescue her. “You don’t have to finish that.”
She sighed and pushed the fish aside. She dipped a tentative spoon into the coconut custard. “The tembleque’s good, though.”
“Anyone who loves Coke as much as you do obviously has a sweet tooth.”
Tamarind began rubbing the tip of her tongue over her teeth. “How do I know which one? None of them taste sweet.”
John laughed. “Sorry! That just means you like to eat sweet things.”
Tamarind frowned. “I always get it wrong.”
He put his hand briefly on hers. “I love the way you get it. I feel like I’m looking at the world through fresh eyes when I’m with you. It’s wonderful.”
Tamarind blushed and dipped the spoon back into the tembleque.
They drove to Isla Encantada twenty minutes later and found the live music just getting going. Even in the dim lighting, John recognized Jesus in the far corner. To his surprise—and relief—he recognized Jesus’ date as well. Raimunda’s voluptuous curves and luxuriant hair were unmistakable. He didn’t know what relieved him more: Jesus having a date or Raimunda’s near-feral sexuality being contained. A small sound at his side made him look down to see Tamarind gazing at Jesus. John squeezed her hand and smiled.
Tamarind said nothing but sidled closer to John, who forgot all about Jesus at her nearness and led her onto the dance floor. She watched John and imitated his movements, but after John ordered a beer she drank half of it without taking a breath. She closed her eyes when she returned to the dance floor and appeared to listen to something in the music audible only to her. John couldn’t take his eyes from her, barely dancing. She looked like a poem set to music.
They might have danced minutes or hours. The heat of bodies, the dim interior and flashes of mirror and lights, the beat of drums and the sound of Spanish—all these cocooned John in a timeless world. At last Tamarind opened eyes in a flushed face and grabbed John’s hand.
“Let’s get out of here!” She pulled him to the door and outside into the cooler, though still warm, Caribbean night. “I need water.”
“We can get something to drink inside.”
“No, no. I need to swim.”
The cocoon had split open and the night air touched a fingertip to John’s damp forehead. The need for full immersion in water of any kind seized him after she spoke.
“Me too. Let’s get out of here.”
John headed north toward Playa Tamarindo, but Tamarind tugged on his arm when they approached the right onto 250. He turned as she directed and they headed east. He’d driven this route only one other time since coming to Culebra—the time that Zoë visited and they’d driven around the whole island. Even so, he’d kayaked and cruised the eastern shore and visited Culebrita and its hundred-year-old lighthouse so he knew the eastern shoreline. Since 250 ended at Playa Zoni, he thought he knew where Tamarind intended for them to go. However, not long after the road bore sharply to the north, she asked him to pull over.
“Here. I want to show you Puerto del Manglar.”
After he’d parked the Samurai along the deserted two-lane road, they descended a rocky path toward the lagoon, which was bordered by a narrow muddy rim. A westerly breeze passed over the water and cooled their skin. Around them and along the shoreline of the lagoon, darker mangrove trees framed the night sky where stars lay scattered in brilliant disarray.
John tilted his face up to the dome of the night sky over them.
“I’m an explorer at the end of the world,” he said. In the still night, his quiet voice seemed loud to him. “Thanks for showing me this place.”
“Wait. There’s something else you need to see.” Tamarind bent down and picked something up from the ground. When she tossed whatever it was into the still waters, the incandescent filament of its plunge lit up the lagoon before his eyes. “There are tiny creatures that live in this water that react to movement by lighting up.”
“Like underwater fireflies?”
John turned to Tamarind, but she’d already lifted her dress over her head and dropped it on the ground at her feet, sighing. She wore nothing under the dress. As he watched her stride into the phosphorescent water, thousands of the tiny creatures shimmered like blue-green fire along the surface of her skin and in the patch of hair between her legs. Around them, the coquí frog sang its distinctive refrain and mosquitoes hummed.
He took a step forward and then stopped. Tamarind swam in the obsidian water, her strokes luminous and eerie.
“I thought you were hot from dancing.” Tamarind lay on her back fifty feet away looking at him, her torso elevated from the surface of the lagoon. Neon streaked the surrounding water as she stroked to stay afloat.
“I was.”
“You’re not now? Is something wrong?”
“No—yes. Sometimes I feel a little like I’m suffocating.”
She swam closer, her eyes never leaving his face. “Is that how you felt the day I pulled you from the canal?”
“Yes.”
“I know how you feel. Sometimes I find it hard to breathe when I’m out of water.”
John remembered her swimming. “Coming from you, that makes perfect sense.”
She stood up and walked to him, her small breasts high and their nipples taut. Seawater fell from her in a glowing sheet. When she reached him, she took his right hand in her left. He felt her vibrating hum through the skin of his palm.
“I’ll take care of you.” She lifted his t-shirt over his head while he stood there, shivering. “You’re cold?” Her hands, normally cool and moist, felt warm against his shoulders.
She stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his torso, pressing against him. Her heat seeped into his skin and he shivered more. She laid her head against his chest and hummed louder. John closed his eyes and breathed. After a moment he realized that Tamarind breathed in unison with him and he felt warmer. Something inside his chest unlocked and his lungs expanded to let in air. Slowly he lifted his left hand and cupped the back of her head. She didn’t move or halt her humming.
John shifted so that Tamarind looked up at him. In the dark he saw only starlight reflected in her eyes; her hair, so carefully clipped up earlier in the evening, curved around her face in damp clumps. He lowered his mouth to hers and tasted salt.
“Counting turtle eggs? You’re so full of shit
, John.” Zoë’s voice sliced through the night around them. “Care to introduce me to your naked friend?”
Eleven
John stood on the berm between the road and the lagoon with the dripping woman shrinking beside him. He dipped his head and stepped sideways, blocking Zoë’s view.
“Wha-what are you doing here?” He didn’t look at her.
“Fuck if I know!” Her voice cracked on the last word and she clinched her hands at her side. “I believed you when you said you were sorry about fucking another woman, that you cared about me. I believed you when you said you just needed to get away from grad school for a while, spend some time in the surf and sand. I came down here to give you a second chance.”
Her words flew at him. She almost wished that they were stilettos, and she didn’t mean those ridiculous neck-breakers that Barbie dolls wore.
He turned and said something Zoë couldn’t hear to his date. She scurried in the direction of the Samurai parked thirty feet from them.
“I didn’t lie to you.” John turned back to face her.
“So I’m supposed to believe that this–this—” She flung her arm in the direction of the Samurai. “That you haven’t been fucking this island bitch all summer?”
The moon had risen over them, bringing John’s features into sharp relief. Shadows underneath his eyes obscured their expression.
“You’re supposed to believe that I never intended to hurt you.” He raised his hand toward her—to ward off her next words or to console her, she didn’t know which.
“My God! Even now you’re dancing around the truth! You think you love her, don’t you?”
John dropped his hand and said nothing.
“What is she to you? Someone not too educated to forget her place? You’re an asshole, John, and I can’t believe I’ve been tearing myself up over you. Let me show you what a real woman does when a man tries to make a fool out of her.”
Before he could anticipate her or even protest, she lifted her right knee to her chest, rising onto the ball of her left foot. A fraction of a second later her right heel connected with his solar plexus, sending him flying away from her. He landed on the soft mud at the edge of Puerto del Manglar. She followed the kick up with a dash and a swing of her left leg that stopped short of his head; as she stood over him, panting, she knew he got the message: she could knock his block off if she chose. Then, after a long moment, she lowered her foot and turned away.
***
Ana hunkered within the scant shade of her doorway, her good eye squinted against the mid-afternoon light. Smoke from her clove cigarette curled and wafted until it was snared within the strands of her coarse hair. On a grass mat before her was a mound of tamarind pods, nearly ten pounds, that she’d collected this morning after scouring the ground near the tamarind trees along the coast; it was the first of the season’s fruit. She’d already washed each pod and now broke them into smaller pieces, leaving the outer shell and seeds with the pulp and tossing them into a large cast-iron pot at her right side. Reach, grasp, snap, snap, snap. Her body swayed and rocked as she worked, her movements efficient and easy; only the sounds of birds competed with her radio, now playing Latin salsa behind her.
After she’d finished breaking the tamarind pods, Ana built a fire under a cast-iron frame ten feet from her house. She hauled the pot to the frame and lifted it onto a hook over the flames. Next, she poured in twice as much spring water as fruit from her cache of bottled water and stirred the tamarind around in it, her left hand drifting to the stub of cigarette in her mouth before removing it; as she stirred, a spicy scent of tamarind fruit insinuated itself through the cloying smoke. She stirred until the water began to darken and the pulp separated from the shells and seeds. These she strained from the pot with a long-handled sieve and saved in a wooden bowl for later use in lotions and syrups for a wide range of ailments.
She let the water simmer for ten minutes or so before she tossed in a handful of cloves, allspice and black peppercorns, then slices of lime and ginger. She breathed the vapors rising from her brew and sighed before sinking down again on her heels under the shade of a nearby tree and waiting for the fruit and spices to flavor the water fully. A slight breeze stirred the air around her, drying the sweat from between her flaccid breasts and lifting the ends of her hair from her cheeks.
When she’d judged that the decoction was sufficiently spiced, she strained out the spices and fruit. Near the wooden bowl into which she deposited these spent flavorings sat two five-pound bags of palm sugar; she added these slowly to the pot, stirring until she had a thin syrup. She let this syrup boil for several minutes and then doused the fire under the pot. As the syrup cooled, she ladled it into a large glass bottle (which one of the Culebrenses had given her as payment for curing his diarrhea) filled with several gallons of purified water. Now the brew was cool enough for the yeast, which she’d already dissolved in warm water. Her task was nearly over: she would watch the fermentation over the next two weeks, adding sugar whenever it seemed to slow down. By the end of that time, it would be drinkable; in a month, it would be a spicy beer.
Ana had brewed a variety of other wines and beers from Culebra’s fruits, but none tasted nearly as good as tamarind beer and she’d long since abandoned any other recipes that she’d tested. Even though she had no one but herself to please, she’d found that more than a few of the locals preferred her tamarind beer to commercial beers and she was able to sell a cup here and there for far more than that which a bottle of Medalla garnered.
She lifted the full bottle of fermenting brew into her decrepit refrigerator, its once-white exterior now chipped and pockmarked from a lifetime of use. It was one of the few modern conveniences that she’d grudgingly adopted from her previous life as a sailor’s wife, but one which earned her respect for its ability to make her life more pleasant and pay for itself. It, a warming plate, and a radio were the only appliances that she owned.
Now that she’d finished brewing, she pulled out a smaller, two-and-a-half gallon bottle of finished beer from one of the higher shelves in the refrigerator and poured herself a cup. She took the cup and a fresh clove cigarette and returned to the doorway of her single room to wait for the rain that she smelled in the air.
A hush descended over the afternoon as the sun reached its zenith and all of the Creator’s wildlife dozed in its heat. Even Ana grew sleepy in the still warmth, her head drooping over her cup and her hand holding the cigarette growing limp. Gentle fingers saved her from being burned and woke her with their cool touch. Struggling awake, Ana lifted her face. Seeing the mermaid, she shifted on her heels and brought her cup up to her mouth. It wouldn’t do for the young one to guess that she’d been waiting for her. She drained the last of the tamarind beer, its fiery descent into her stomach bracing her, and set the cup down. She rose to face Tamarind, who still held her burning cigarette.
“I’ll take that.”
Tamarind handed it to her, her forehead puckered. The young one looked so much like Ana herself had before she’d married her sailor that a deep soreness settled in her chest, but this time there was no tamarind beer to fortify her nerves. Even if she had a mirror, Ana knew that Tamarind would not recognize her own innocence and vulnerability within it.
“You’ve been gone all night.” She said, her voice gruff from the heartache, and took a drag. “Did you manage to win your legs by mating with that man?”
The muscles in Tamarind’s face tightened. Ana noticed that her dress, originally brilliant blue, was dusty and torn in several places.
“Did he hurt you? Tell me and I’ll brew him a special potion. Or I’ll call on Mother Sea and curse him to the seventh generation!”
Tamarind sank into a squat and folded her arms across her chest. Her corkscrew hair concealed her face.
“He didn’t hurt me the way you think. We went dancing last night and I took him to Puerto Manglar to show him the glowing ones. Then he kissed me.”
She stopped, but Ana said no
thing. Instead, she went inside and returned with a cup of the tamarind beer. She handed it to Tamarind, who gulped some of it and winced.
“His girlfriend appeared at just that moment. Her anger pulsed from her—it nearly overwhelmed my senses. John asked me to wait in his Samurai, but I could still hear them talking.” She paused long enough to sip the tamarind beer. “Then she kicked him in the chest. He fell hard and she nearly kicked him in the head, but she didn’t. I could tell she wanted to though.”
Ana dropped her cigarette butt onto the hard ground and twisted her heel on it. “Ah. Did he plead with her?”
“No, he lay on the ground, clutching at his chest. I waited until she left to go to him, but he said nothing to me, just waved me back into the Samurai. When he finally got in, he said it was time for me to go home. He dropped me off at the bottom of the hill.”
“Where’ve you been then?”
Tamarind looked into her cup as though she looked at it for the first time and didn’t like what she saw. “Just wandering—and swimming. I couldn’t sleep anyway.”
Ana gripped Tamarind’s chin and made her look up. “I warned you to stay away from him. He’s not worth the pain you’ve already been through. Don’t let him hurt you anymore.”
“His girlfriend said he thinks he loves me.”
“Bah! She said that in the heat of the moment. Even if she’s right, he’s not to be trusted. Look how he’s hurt her. I doubt he knows what he wants. And as hurt and angry as she is, I bet you a colossal squid for dinner she’d take him back if he asked her to.”
Tamarind stood up. “I need another swim.”
“Go and have one. But keep in mind, young one: you win this man, you’re not likely to live close to the ocean. You won’t be able to swim whenever your heart troubles you.”
Tamarind frowned. Without speaking, she turned toward the hidden path to Playa Tamarindo and trudged away.
Ana lit another clove cigarette and took a deep drag, her eyes all the while on Tamarind’s hunched shoulders. After Tamarind disappeared over the rise, she smiled and exhaled smoke, which lingered around her face pleasantly.
An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant Page 14