The Lesson

by Cadwell Turnbull

  “Assimilation? Do they even have any interest in assimilating?” Derrick hadn’t kept an edge of disbelief from slipping into his tone, which he realized by the way she regarded him. A look that said, I see you. He held his breath.

  “No, they don’t. Not yet.”

  Derrick eased. “Then why do this? You can’t help my people or give them justice. And your people are unwilling to change. Why take the abuse? Why accept the blame?” Any comments about her lack of approachability would go unspoken for now, he decided.

  Mera’s face remained impassive. “To teach a new lesson.”

  “What lesson?”

  She moved only slightly, a tree in a weak wind. “Why did you take this job?”

  “Because of the money. Highest-paying starting position on the island.” This was one of the reasons Derrick took the job, but not the whole reason. He wouldn’t be telling her that, either. Not now. “Why did you hire me?”

  For the first time, Derrick saw a perceptible emotion visit Mera’s face. Disappointment? About what, he could not imagine. She frowned, a soft exhalation escaping from between her lips. “You were to be my bridge. My bridge between worlds.” And then she went back to her window, stiff, like an elder iguana perched on a branch.

  He wanted to say something about this, but what? Feeling unsure of himself, he changed the subject. “Well, what do you do for fun?” He waited intently for her to come alive again, not really knowing where he was going with the conversation.

  “For fun?”

  “Yeah, for fun.”

  “I swim. I like the water.” She was ready to return to her window.

  “What about going to the club or the movies?”

  “People are usually wary of me at night. And those things don’t interest me.”

  Derrick ignored the first part. “Have you ever been to a club?”

  “No.”

  “So how do you know they don’t interest you?”

  She gave him a look. Derrick decided to look back with the same intensity. He felt his arms tremble and his palms grow clammy. But he kept his face calm and friendly.

  “You don’t need to do something to know it is not for you,” she said.

  He remembered a conversation with his best friend, Louie, a Puerto Rican whose family had moved to the island a generation ago. He and Louie had often talked about Derrick’s job and the people who would call and come in to complain. Louie would give him the latest gossip on how people felt about the ambassador and her assistant. It was always bad, of course.

  On one occasion, Louie smiled and said, “You should take her out sometime. Then they’d really talk.”

  “Nah, dehman,” Derrick had said. “Can’t do that. These people would destroy me.”

  “No, they wouldn’t. They gon’ think you’s her pet. And you already know how them aliens does go on when they lose a pet. Nobody gon’ cross she. Not if they have a lick of preservation.”

  Derrick swallowed hard. He smiled at Mera, steeling himself. “Let me take you out,” he said.

  Surprise. Real surprise. “What?”

  “Let me take you out. To a bar. Not a club.”

  Derrick observed Mera. He felt the pull of both attraction and fear, felt the sweat coming down from his hairline. He understood the fear. It was a sign of sanity. The attraction, however, he did not understand. Not fully.

  “Come on, just once, as coworkers.”

  “I’m your boss.”

  “Is that a no, then?”

  She considered him, her eyes lingering uncertainly on his. “Okay. When and where?”

  “After work. Fat Turtle.”

  • • •

  If Derrick was honest, he would have to admit that more than monetary need made him work for Mera.

  He had spent his youth looking up at the stars. When he was ten, he made a habit of going out into the yard and peering up at the sky. He did this for hours, eyes glued to the slow-changing canvas of black specked with white, the island sky so clear that he was sure he could see every star in existence. It made him feel small, and everything around him trivial by comparison, a little ground of pepper in the sands of the universe. He would reach his hands up to the sky and squeeze his fingers into a fist, imagining that he pulled the stars down to him so that they knew he existed and he mattered.

  Then, when the stars finally did come down, he was painfully disappointed. He was seventeen when the Ynaa arrived, and aside from the miracle cures and their deceptively human appearance, they seemed cold, oppressive. He felt inconsequential. A pepper grain in a beach of sand.

  It took two years for him to become eligible to be the ambassador’s assistant, and another two years to work up the courage. He had wanted the job because he was curious, but there was more to it than that.

  He was sweaty the day of his interview, suffering from a case of nerves that could not be calmed. She didn’t seem to notice. Her office was a tiny room crammed in a little corner of the Legislature—a reluctant gift from the governor of the Virgin Islands, though it was made explicitly clear to everyone that Mera would play no part in island politics. Derrick wondered how true that was, knowing that she and her kind had everything to do with the current politics of his little island world. But he didn’t think about any of that stuff until after, none of the social and political aspects surrounding aliens from space with diplomatic immunity, none of the uproar over their appearance, or the suspicion about their gifts. And more personally, how his grandmother would react once she found out he was working for the devil.

  Instead, Derrick spent most of the interview just staring awkwardly at her. There were questions, he was sure of it, and he had given short, inadequate answers. But he had come away only remembering that she had a really nice face, trick or not. Almost kind.

  He also came away with that same feeling he had as a kid, out in the yard in front of his house, staring upward into the infinite black. He had that same vibrant emotion of feeling small yet hopeful. He desired to pull her from her heights, right down to his level, to cross the immeasurable distance between them.

  She called him a few days later, thanking him for coming in, and gave him the job. She expressed her hope that it would work out. After months, he had been the only one to answer the ad. Filled with excitement, he accepted the job.

  There was an inappropriateness to this excitement that felt shameful. This woman was not human. For a while, shame won out. But he had to admit—to himself, anyway—that he always desired to be her equal, to break the taboo that kept them at arm’s length. The job was just the perfect excuse.

  • • •

  They left a bit early together, Mera not far behind him but keeping a little distance. Even with that, they caught confused and judgmental looks from the people they passed, a few from people he knew. He kept walking without a word. This was the way of it, no matter what. And Derrick wasn’t trying too hard to hide the fact that they were leaving together.

  The Legislature was on a small peninsula right up on the ocean, the building surrounded on three sides by parking lots, two of which hugged the water. Derrick and Mera walked around the back, where the lot turned to gravel and the cars lined the open edge. In some places, beyond the parked cars were rocks leading into the ocean waves; in other places, there was only a sudden dip into the sea.

  Derrick was parked in the latter area and had to walk the small space between his old Honda and the ocean, the weak waves beating half-heartedly against the rocks below. When he reached the door, he stopped. Overhead, seagulls soared, their calls mixing with the distant honking of car horns. Out on the water, a pelican plunged from high up. Derrick watched it lift its head, a silver fish flapping in its beak for an instant before disappearing into its throat pouch. He still marveled at the sight.

  As he turned back to the car door, he caught Mera observing him, and that
sudden feeling of smallness returned. Did she see him the way he saw the pelican, as some lesser creature? Some quaint marvel?

  Pushing the thought from his mind, he got into the car and unlocked the passenger side so Mera could get in. She opened the car door, its old hinges creaking, and got in without a word.

  Derrick awkwardly moved all the junk near her feet onto the back seat. “Sorry about the mess.”

  Just then a group of people passed. Their voices were hushed, and their eyes were too deliberate in avoiding the car. Mera whipped the seat belt around her chest. The whir of the woven polyester unreeling, and the soft click of the metal tongue into the buckle were the only sounds in the quiet car.

  “You’re taking a real risk here,” Mera said.

  “What about you? Aren’t you taking a risk?”

  “If you mean socially, there is little risk for me. My people already see me as a sselree.” Seeing Derrick’s inquisitive stare, she added, “A lover of the weak.”

  So you are an outsider, he thought but didn’t dare say. It was enough to know that he was right about her.

  He knew of the Ynaa’s famous arrogance, had known since he first saw one of them speak on television. “We will help you, and for it, you will give us a place among you,” that one had said before waving the microphone away as if it were a pesky fly, the cameras flashing on his dark almost-human face. And in those words, Derrick had heard, We will save you because you are weak, and we will take because we are strong.

  His phone rang. His ringtone was an old tune from a local reggae artist. “Bat, bat, bat them off,” the phone yelled, a racket of percussion and brass accompanying the vocals.

  “Sorry, let me get this,” he said, smiling.

  It was his grandmother. “Bring me some cooked food, no?”

  “Grams, I can’t do that right now. I out with somebody.”

  “You’n tired gallivanting in the streets? Come quick, child.”

  “Grams—”

  “I raise you up and you can’t bring me a plate of food? Ungrateful children these days, I tell you.”

  “I’m a grown man, Grams.”

  Grandma chupsed her teeth, making a loud sucking sound through the phone. “Come on, child. I not feeling up to slaving at the stove.”

  “Fine. I gon’ bring some ribs and rice from Texas Pit.”

  “Chicken.”

  “All right. Chicken.”

  • • •

  Derrick stopped at Texas Pit, a food cart along the way, and then went up the hill to Upper John Donkoe, where he lived with Grams and his little sister. He raced up the narrow, winding roads as fast as he could, making the necessary hairpin turns to avoid flying off the soft shoulder. He got to a two-way road barely big enough for one car and had to squeeze past a Jeep. The low-hanging arms of trees reaching out into the road knocked against his car rickety-tick-tick as the driver’s-side tires roughed it over soft earth and hard rocks.

  He pulled into his driveway. “I’m really sorry about this. My grams—”

  Mera waved him off in a surprisingly human way. “I’ll be here.”

  Derrick grabbed the food and sprinted down the concrete stairs that led to their apartment. He met Grams on the porch. She sat staring out into the dense tree line in front of their apartment, her hand resting on the small coffee table beside her. She was in her nightgown, her wavy graying hair lank on her shoulders. Her thin lips were pursed. Something was wrong.

  She barely looked up at him before saying, “So I heard about poor Mr. Anderson today.”

  “Who?”

  “The man who came by your job. Poor man had to bury his dog in two pieces.”

  Derrick placed her food on the table. “How you know about that?”

  “This island is thirty-two square miles of people talking. How could I not?”

  “Did it get ’round that his dog wasn’t on a leash? That it attacked that man and—”

  “Demon,” she said, cutting him off. “No man could tear a dog down the middle with their bare hands. Is a devil, he is.”

  “Grams, they’re aliens.”

  “No such thing.”

  Derrick knew that it made no sense to argue. He could see the conversation in all its variations, and it would boil down to the simple truth that separated them. They each did not believe the other’s version of the world. It wasn’t something that could be resolved with talk.

  “Okay, Grams. I have to go.”

  “I hope you not going out with that one from work.”

  Derrick didn’t bother to ask how she knew. Grams had her spies, and even if she didn’t, there was no shortage of people ready and willing to call her up and tell her what her grandson was up to every minute of the day. It could have been any of the people he passed as he left work, or any random person who peeped him on the way home. He had a feeling it was somebody from the Legislature, however, because of the timing of her call.

  He tried to smile. “We’re just going out to listen to some music, Grams.”

  Immediately, he wondered why he even answered.

  “You best stay your butt in this house.”

  “Enjoy your food, Grams. I’ll be back later tonight.” He walked toward the stairs.

  “Where you think you going?”

  “Grams, I’m twenty-two years old. I going out.”

  “If you leave this house tonight, you better find yourself a new one in the morning.”

  Derrick knew his grandmother enough to know when she was serious. People like Grams did not back down from being challenged.

  Still, he had already chosen long before this. He’d made a million decisions before this one, and they all pointed to Mera.

  When he left, he could hear his grandmother yelling from the bottom of the stairs. “They kill people!” she was saying.

  This was true. But maybe Mera would be different.

  • • •

  They drove down Waterfront, a four-lane street that cradled Charlotte Amalie Harbor, and the biggest thoroughfare on the island. The sky was mostly a creamy pink like the inside of a conch shell, a mist of orange against the horizon, edged with the purple tint of coming night. Streetlights as well as house lights dotted the hillside. The palm trees that lined the street every few feet swayed in the trade winds coming in from the sea. The Danish-style buildings along the harbor whizzed by, their arched doorways and red roofs reduced to dark blurs in the setting sun.

  Derrick turned his phone to silent. He rolled the window down and took in the moment. The air was cool and salty, the breeze stroking his face as they sped along at forty miles per hour.

  Mera was quiet. Except for the unfocused image of her in his peripheral vision, it felt as if he were alone in the car. He didn’t fill the void with words. He let the wind do the talking, its loud and endless breath filling the silence.

  This was his island, a little green rock in the Caribbean Sea. And now it was hers, too. This woman with her dreads flowing down her back like cats’ tails, brown skin like his. And beneath that, what was she? Not human. So close, but still not. And if he didn’t care, what did that make him?

  Derrick pulled into Yacht Haven Grande’s parking lot. Yacht Haven was a private harbor for the rich, with a collection of high-end stores for tourists. Pristine white yachts bobbed side by side along the 180-foot concrete pier, their names etched in beautiful black letters on their sterns. The Drifter. Wind Rider. The Blue Dolphin.

  Fat Turtle was one of several seaside bars right along that stretch of human excess. Derrick and Mera made their way past the Louis Vuitton store, Gucci, and Bad Ass Coffee. Then they were there.

  The bar was filled with an older crowd—men and women in their late forties and fifties, who came in to unwind after work. A few groups of tourists were sprinkled throughout. As they walked up to the bar, Derrick met eyes with
a black man with short, curly white hair, wearing a satin tropical shirt too colorful to be anything but a gimmick. No doubt a shuttle driver for tourists. Only taxi drivers and tourists wore shirts like that.

  The man seemed to recognize Mera. Derrick avoided his glare.

  They found a seat at the bar, and Derrick ordered them drinks. Passion-fruit Cruzan rum and cranberry for him, Heineken

  for her.

  “Didn’t think you would be a beer drinker.”

  “I’m not, really. Just try it on occasion.”

  “Can you get drunk?”

  “Yes.” She gave him a smile that surprised him.

  “I would pay big dollars to see you drunk.”

  “Well, tonight will not be the night.” She gave him another smile. This one stuck and lingered.

  Was she flirting with him? He wasn’t sure.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It is just hard for me to wrap my mind around what you are. I’ve never been able to.”

  “I’m not a demon.”

  “I know that.”

  “And I don’t kill.”

  “I know.”

  “You want to ask me something, so ask it.”

  Derrick hesitated. He hadn’t been thinking to ask her anything. Not right now, anyway. But he could guess at what she meant. He had wanted to ask Mera that question a hundred times. The Ynaa never gave a real answer, and he assumed that she would be no different.

  “To teach,” they would say when asked. “To teach the lesson.”

  Derrick remembered the one time he had seen with his own eyes the lesson being delivered. It had been late at night. He was leaving Shipwreck Tavern, a bar near Havensight Harbor, where the cruise ships came in to let off tourists. A man, drunk on his ass, stumbled into one of the Ynaa, cursing and pushing.

  This one had towered over the drunk man. He had a hard jawline and small eyes—perfectly human if you were drunk or not paying attention, clearly Ynaa if you were aware of their mannerisms. The Ynaa had wrinkled his nose and bared his teeth. Animal rage, the first warning. The drunk man had stumbled back and swore. “What the fuck you gon’ do?” he said. A crowd had gathered on the tavern balcony. They understood what was going to happen.