“The plot is smooth and exciting, the polemics are subtle but smart, and the characters are heartfelt.”
—Tiphanie Yanique,
author of Land of Love and Drowning
“The Lesson isn’t just a serious, important book—it’s also a fun and rewarding one.”
—Analog Science Fiction and Fact
“[A] bold and provocative debut…On the island of St. Thomas, a family collides with intergalactic meddlers, stranding two lovers with souls in distant worlds. A forbidding panoply of colonial mischief.”
—Kris Lackey,
USA Today bestselling author of Nail’s Crossing
“[A] rich debut novel about family, love, and loyalty in turbulent times…Turnbull uses a beautifully drawn cast of black characters to convey the complexity of ordinary hardship in extraordinary times.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A compelling and layered narrative that explores colonialism and our messy human flaws through a diverse and painfully real cast of characters. The Lesson is smart, full of dry wit and creeping dread—a unique and artful debut.”
—M. K. England,
author of The Disasters
“Three families wind up in a horrific cycle of violence in a book about family in turbulent times in a debut that has been spoken of in the same breath as last year’s standout Rosewater.”
—B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
“The Lesson is a story that should not be missed by readers who embraced such books as Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven or even Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End…Truly gripping and shocking.”
—SFF180
Copyright © 2019 by Cadwell Turnbull
E-book published in 2019 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover and book design by Kathryn Galloway English
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-5385-8466-8
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-5385-8465-1
Fiction / Science Fiction / General
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
To Mom, Sis, and Nanay
Water Island
Fifteen days before
After school, Patrice and Derrick rushed to beat midafternoon traffic. They got out of Charlotte Amalie gate fast enough, but it still took thirty minutes to pick up Derrick’s little sister, Lee, from Ulla F. Muller Elementary School and climb the steep hill to home.
They both lived at the same residence, an attractive two-story maroon-and-white house. Patrice’s family owned the house and lived on the top floor, while Derrick and his family rented out the bottom floor. Derrick’s family had been living there several years, since before Derrick’s father died. Now he lived there with his grandmother, Ms. Reed, and his little sister, Lee.
As soon as they parked, Lee ran downstairs. By the time Derrick and Patrice made it down into the house, she was already telling her grandmother about the day.
“And then the teacher gave him six lashes, Grandma!” Lee made emphatic gestures with her hands as she talked, mimicking the scene for her grandmother. “He cried and cried.”
Grandma Reed chuckled. “Sounds like he deserve it, though.”
“It not funny, Grandma.”
“You two hungry?” Ms. Reed asked, addressing Patrice and Derrick. They were standing near the doorway, not wanting to interrupt the conversation.
“Afternoon, Grams.”
“Afternoon, Ms. Reed.”
“Well, you hungry, or what?” Ms. Reed asked again.
“A little,” said Derrick.
“Got some food on the stove. Fix your sister and Patrice a plate.”
Derrick nodded and moved to the kitchen. Patrice followed. Lee kept talking to Ms. Reed, whose larger-than-life laughter echoed through the house.
The kitchen wasn’t big, but they had managed to cram a dining room table into it. Derrick rinsed plates and shared out food. Light from the window over the sink emptied into the room, contrasting with the relative darkness of the rest of the kitchen. As Derrick stood in front of the window, Patrice watched him from behind, observing the way the light caught around his body like a halo.
Derrick brought all the plates to the table. Stew chicken, rice and beans, and fried plantain steamed on well-used china. He called Lee for food, and she came running in and sat in the chair next to Patrice, as she always did. Derrick and Patrice ate quietly and listened as Lee talked about her day at school, recounting to them all the things she had said to her grandmother in the other room. Then, when they were done, Derrick put the empty dishes in the sink, sent Lee back into the living room to watch cartoons with her grandmother, and took Patrice down the hall to his room, to begin studying for Ms. Robin’s biology test.
“Aren’t you going to close the door?” Patrice asked.
“Grams said I can’t close the door if I have a girl in my room.”
“We grew up together.”
“That’s the problem. You grown now. Can’t have you up in my room with the door shut.”
Patrice glared at him, communicating all she could.
“Her words,” Derrick said.
“Boy, don’t you close that door!” Grandma Reed yelled from the living room.
“I know, Grams.”
“Come here for a second!”
“Be right back,” Derrick said. He grabbed some home clothes as he left to change out of his school uniform.
Patrice sat on Derrick’s bed. She dusted off her pleated navy-blue skirt and watched the green trees through the window as they swayed with the wind.
The heavy breathing of Derrick’s old desktop computer made the room seem alive. His walls were filled with posters, some drawn, some bought. Spaceships of different kinds. Star Trek’s Enterprise. Star Wars’ Death Star. A hand painting of Firefly’s Serenity. Battlestar Galactica. Stargate’s Prometheus, Daedalus, and Destiny. Drawings of strange creatures with several heads; multiple eyes; and long, hanging limbs ending in large hands, talons, three-toe feet. On the desk next to his computer were stacks of comic books and National Geographic and Discovery magazines.
It seemed as though every time Patrice came over, Derrick had more posters and more books.
He had a bookshelf on his far wall. On it, the worn spines of paperbacks stood pressed tight together, their uneven sides forming a bar graph of color and book titles. The Foundation trilogy. 1984. The Left Hand of Darkness. The Earthsea series. Native Tongue. The Dispossessed. Green Mars. On the edge of the bookshelf, smashed between The Silmarillion and dark wood was a pristine hardcover Student Bible. Patrice pulled it out.
The book creaked as she opened it, the white pages flowing by as she thumbed through, making the sound of pigeon wings. She found a passage and started reading. Genesis, chapter 3. The hum of the desktop disappeared from Patrice’s awareness. She skipped to the end of the Bible. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The beasts of Earth rising up to kill men.
“Yeah, Grams gave it to me,” Derrick said. He was standing behind her.
Patrice turned to face him.
Derrick wore an old and to
rn blue shirt, his wiry, thin arms ending in the pockets of his white-and-blue sweatpants. He still had the awkward look of a preteen adjusting to the various changes to his body, but good looks were starting to peek out from his acne-ridden face.
“You use it?” she asked.
“Come on, Trice,” he answered. “You know me.” His eyes lit up as if he had remembered something. “I got something to show you.” Derrick went to his bed, stooped down, and started rummaging under it. He slid out a crate filled with books, magazines, and old comics and started pulling out all the contents. “Remember that Greek mythology book we had to read for Ms. Parks?”
“Yeah,” Patrice answered.
He stopped taking out books. “Take a look at these.”
Patrice looked down into the crate. She read the titles of the books on top of the remaining pile. Oriental Mythology. Egyptian Mythology. Central African Myth. The Life of the Buddha. Tao Te Ching. “What are these?”
“Can’t say Ms. Parks didn’t inspire something in me. Been learning a whole lot.”
“About what?”
“World religions. Philosophy. Myth. Things beyond the little rock we live on.”
Patrice sat on the bed and picked up Oriental Mythology. She read the name of the writer: Joseph Campbell. She knew nothing about Oriental mythology and couldn’t imagine a version of herself that would even care about it. “Okay. Cool.”
“I know you’s a little church girl.”
“We go to the same church, Derrick.”
“You never think about it?”
“Think about what?”
“That we might be wrong. That there’s a whole world out there that think different than we do. How we know we right about any of it?” He sat down next to her on the bed, staring at her without blinking.
Patrice sighed. “You got your head in the clouds again, Derrick.” She quickly put the book back down into the crate.
“Do me a favor, no?”
“What?”
“Just take one of them home. See what I talking about.”
“Don’t want to, Derrick. Don’t have time for no foolishness.”
“Come on, Trice. Trust me on this one.”
Derrick had a way of looking at her when he really wanted something, his eyes getting all puppylike so she couldn’t say no. Her stomach was in knots. What was that about? She looked back down at the books, each laid out for her. She picked up Oriental Mythology again.
“I’ll take this one.”
“Tell me what you think, okay?”
“Yeah.” She put it in her school bag. “So we going to get started on this homework, or what?”
“Yeah,” Derrick said, but he didn’t move to take anything out of his bag. Instead, he inched closer to Patrice. He put his hand on the folds of her pleated school skirt. The gesture alarmed both of them. “It would mean a lot if you read it. I don’t get to talk about this with anyone.”
She nodded.
The room got really quiet. Patrice could hear the hum of Derrick’s desktop computer again, this time right in her ears. He leaned in a little more.
“Promise me.”
She nodded again.
“Boy, come wash up these dishes!” yelled Grandma Reed, shocking them both out of the moment.
“Grams, we about to do some homework.”
“Did I ask you something, or did I tell you to come wash these dishes?”
“Be right back,” Derrick said.
Patrice laughed.
“She always harassing me.” Derrick left the room.
Patrice went into her bag to pull out her books for class. There was still that feeling in her stomach, like something rolling around in there. She could feel her heartbeat. Her eyes fell on the book again. This was her fourth time now studying the title—its magenta letters and serif font.
On the cover, a pale Asian woman with dark hair lay enclosed in a circle. She leaned on a stack of what looked like paper, her eyes closed as if asleep. Below her was another group of words: “The Masks of God.” Patrice repeated the words over and over in her mind, trying to understand their meaning. Then she opened the book and looked inside.
• • •
Fourteen days before
It was early Saturday afternoon. Jackson read a book out on the porch, swatting away mosquitoes.
The sun lit the green coconut trees in front of their house, giving the leaves a whitish shine. They rustled in the gentle breeze. In the shade of a big genip tree, a brown iguana lay dormant on a branch, its unmoving body the color of bark. A silver-purple hummingbird hovered at a bush of bright red hibiscus flowers, its wings fluttering in a loud blur, long tongue stretching to reach the sweet nectar within. The blue sky and the sunlight reflecting off all the vibrant green plant surfaces were almost too much to look at, but Jackson lifted his gaze periodically from his book to admire the view.
Beyond the line of trees, down the sloped green hills, he could see Charlotte Amalie Harbor. Past the pink-roofed buildings of Harbor View, cruise ships lined Havensight Dock, their pearly white sides eclipsing the buildings in their shadow, puffs of gray smoke rising from their funnels. Disney Cruise Line. Carnival. Royal Caribbean. They stretched almost past the peninsula of Frenchman’s Reef, their multiple decks rising almost to the height of the hills behind them.
In the middle of the harbor were Hassel Island, with its small wood-and-concrete dock and old stone castle, and the larger Water Island, with its big, elegant homes and villas. A little channel stretched between the two islets, its deep blue water sparkling in the sun.
Jackson could hear his wife, Aubrey, cooking inside, his daughter, Patrice, talking, and the TV blaring some silly commercial.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was a text.
Hey Mr. Paige!
He texted back.
Who is this?
Lisa.
Jackson stared at the phone for a moment, confused. Lisa had been one of his best students ten years ago. And she loved to write stories. More importantly, she loved giving them to Jackson for feedback, and had been doing so on and off since she’d graduated. He didn’t mind. He enjoyed helping, the feeling of being needed.
You need me to read one of your stories? Just email it to me.
No messages came for another thirty minutes. Jackson continued reading.
His phone buzzed again.
No. Still working on the story.
What do you need, then?
Was just wondering about you.
Jackson stared at the cell phone again for a long time. It crossed his mind to tell her that he didn’t think she should do that: wonder about him. But he decided to just not respond. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the trees. Their rustling sounded to him like a wave that came in but never left, forever crashing. He lay there in thought for a while, and then when the phone didn’t vibrate again for a time, he returned to his book.
Later that evening, another text came through.
I’m sorry Mr. P. Just needed
someone to talk to.
It’s fine. You okay?
No more text messages came that day. Jackson thought he would feel relieved. He thought maybe she had realized on her own how inappropriate it was, and that he wouldn’t have to bother breaking it to her. But as the weekend dragged on, he found himself compulsively checking his phone.
• • •
Thirteen days before
Jackson’s phone rattled on the nightstand, waking him up. Angry, he grabbed the phone and squinted at the text message.
I can’t sleep.
Lisa again.
He went into the bathroom, closed the door, and sat on the toilet.
What’s wrong?
Just thinking. What you doing?
I was sleeping. You re
ally shouldn’t be texting me this late.
I know. I’m sorry Mr. P. Hey,
you have a first name?
Jackson.
That’s a last name. You got
two last names?
My mother’s doing.
LOL. I like it though. People call
you Jack?
Some people.
A few minutes passed before she texted again. Jackson sat on the toilet seat, staring at the cell phone in his hand. He rubbed his knee where he had overworked it jogging around the high school track. He was fifty-four. His habitual jog was becoming increasingly harder. Lately, he had fought this difficulty by pushing a little too hard.
The phone buzzed. The touch screen lit up the dark bathroom.
You married Jack?
Yes. Why?
Another few minutes.
That’s a shame.
Why you say that?
Five minutes.
No reason.
???
Lisa must have known he was married. How couldn’t she?
Jackson sat on the toilet seat and stared at the wall, waiting. No response came. In his mind, he traced a line through the spaces between the tiles as if following a maze. He didn’t know why he was doing it. The phone on his lap felt unusually heavy. A few times, it almost seemed to vibrate. He didn’t know how much time passed while he sat there. But the phone just got heavier and heavier as he traced the lines of grout in the dark.
• • •
Twelve days before
Aubrey got up on her tiptoes to stir the dog food as she always did. Her small but powerful slender body angled, her arm moving in quick natural circles as she worked the yellow scooper into a blur. The dog-food pellets made the sound of disturbed gravel as they rolled around in the hollow container.
Aubrey let her muscle memory take over as she drifted along in daydreams. She thought of the softness of her bed. The day at the animal shelter had just begun, and she already felt tired. She wondered why it was so hard to be happy with what she was doing. Why did she always want to be somewhere else?
While she was lost in thought, Alice knocked on the door. Aubrey turned. Alice had her hands folded over her green veterinary scrubs. She leaned on the door frame.
The Lesson Page 1