The Lesson

by Cadwell Turnbull

  • • •

  In senior year of high school, Patrice and Derrick dated.

  He professed his love in their junior year, not long after the Ynaa landed. The event had affected him deeply, he said. It had made him come to terms with his feelings about her. The first time he confessed this, Patrice laughed.

  “You serious?” she asked. “Aliens invade, and you talking about love?” The invasion hadn’t had the same impact on her. Mostly, she wanted to run away. Far, far away. When she didn’t feel that impulse, she felt numb. The whole thing had knocked the wind out of her. It still hadn’t come back.

  “When would be a better time to confess your love to someone?” Derrick asked, not really asking. He thought he had already won the argument. “And they didn’t invade. They arrived.”

  This was one of the reasons she and Derrick were doomed from the beginning. The difference between those two words, the vast gulf between the two points of view they represented.

  Patrice brushed him off at first. But Derrick was persistent. For the whole summer, he told her again and again. Each time, she would roll her eyes and tell him to shut up. She wasn’t interested in relationships.

  All the while, the aliens were setting up shop. You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing them, monsters wrapped in human skin. You couldn’t look out at the ocean without seeing their massive ship, a silver-blue blight over Water Island. And you couldn’t read the paper without stumbling across a story of an islander torn to pieces.

  On the second day of senior year, Derrick confessed again, and this time Patrice said yes. It was mostly out of exhaustion.

  “If you’re sure this is what you want,” she said. She felt like a ghost floating through the world.

  “This is what I want,” he said.

  They dated the entire year, and within a few months, she had remembered how she felt about him, too. Her old self, before everything changed, started to return to her. She felt semisolid, almost human again.

  And then it came time to apply to colleges.

  “I want to stay here,” Derrick said. “Go to UVI.”

  “What?” They were on her bed, his head on her stomach, his feet kicked up against the wall. Patrice looked down at him in disbelief.

  “I don’t see the point in applying stateside. Right now, St. Thomas is the most interesting place on earth.”

  He was talking about the Ynaa. St. Thomas was interesting because aliens had landed here. Until then, she had assumed that Derrick would at least have entertained the thought of leaving, of forming a life away from all this, away from them.

  “I’m applying stateside,” she said. “Why didn’t you say this before?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking it through. I think you should stay, too.”

  “How could you be so selfish? You know I hate it here.”

  “I’m here.”

  “This ain’t about you.”

  “Stay.”

  “No.”

  “Please stay.” Derrick was up now. He was sitting cross-legged on the bed, looking at her with his dopey eyes. Patrice sighed. If he didn’t understand this about her, he didn’t know her at all.

  “Whatever,” she said.

  “Is that a yes?”

  She nodded.

  That month, Patrice applied to the University of the Virgin Islands and five schools stateside. She got into UVI and two others: Florida State and the University of Pittsburgh. Florida wasn’t far enough, so she enrolled at Pitt. On a hot day in July, she told Derrick. She didn’t expect him to cry, and it caught her by surprise when he did.

  “Why would you do this?” he moaned. “I can’t believe you would do this!” Then he looked away, wiping at his eyes with the collar of his shirt.

  They were sitting in his beat-up car, parked out in front of her house. Patrice didn’t say much, only “sorry,” only that if she stayed she wouldn’t be alive and she desperately wanted to be alive. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. He hit his fists against the steering wheel, and when he was too angry to look at her, he told her to get out of the car. She left quietly. If she was sad then, she couldn’t truly feel it. She felt numb. She was a ghost floating through the world. Two weeks later, she got on a plane.

  • • •

  Derrick led Patrice to the living room. They walked through a long hall and then a dining area next to a ridiculously large kitchen. In passing, she could see that the countertops were of glossy granite. The ceiling in the house was high, each room entered through high archways.

  The living room had the widest arch. It was lower than the other rooms, so you had to step down into it. They sat on the couch. It was a plush gray, matching the rug at her feet. On top of the rug stood a glass coffee table with generic home-and-garden magazines spread like folding fans. On the walls were paintings of pastoral scenes: ducks on a pond, a verdant hillside, palm trees silhouetted by a tropical sunset. The corners had giant vases with small palm trees, their leaves dark and waxy.

  The whole place looked like a guesthouse for rich white expats coming down to the islands for the “tropical experience.” Patrice just rolled her eyes and stared at the least offensive thing in the room: an attractive gray armchair next to the couch.

  “Pretty nice place, right?” Derrick said.

  “Sure.”

  He sat wide-legged on the other side of the couch. He faced her, his arms spread over the arm and back of the couch like a bird in flight, taking up as much space as possible. The baby kicked again in Patrice’s belly. She adjusted herself to be more comfortable, tilting toward him and resting the side of her face on the back cushion.

  “So what happened?” she asked.

  “You’n know already?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Some dude threw a rock through my car windshield. Cracked my skull.”

  Patrice looked at Derrick’s wrapped head again. The wound under the white gauze didn’t seem to be giving him much discomfort. “Who was the dude?”

  “You hear about that kid from a while back, right? The one that got killed by one of the Ynaa on Polyberg Hill?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Tony. Went to school with your little sister.” “Nah, a year below her. Anyway. It was his big brother. They were having an anniversary ceremony at the gravesite. Saw me parked up and lost his shit.”

  “What were you doing down there, anyway?”

  Derrick looked at her as if she should know the answer to that question. “We really should talk more often. You never call.”

  “It takes two, Derrick.”

  He shrugged. “Lee wanted to visit Angela’s grave.”

  Patrice lowered her head, feeling a little guilty. She had totally forgotten about that. “How’s she doing?”

  “She safe. Was a little shaken up with me bleeding all over her, though.”

  “How’s your head?”

  “Want see something cool?” Derrick pulled at the gauze wrapped around his head, untangling it. If there was a wound there, Patrice couldn’t see it. No indication of bleeding on the gauze, either. And no scar. “Mera healed it right after we left the graveyard. She felt really bad about it. Suggested I wear this for a while, though. Just to be safe. Didn’t want to make people any angrier than they already are.”

  “Yeah,” Patrice said. “I guess I’m just people, too, huh?”

  “You came all this way to check up on me. Didn’t want you to feel like it was a waste of a trip.”

  “Why did you go there with her?”

  “Where? With who?”

  Patrice said nothing.

  “You still haven’t told me about that.” He looked at her belly.

  “Not much to tell.”

  Derrick inched closer to her. The baby kicked like mad. Patrice held her stomach.

  “Tell me anyways,” he said.

 
By the time the ambassador returned to the house, Derrick was up to speed on everything—or the version of everything that Patrice lied her way through. The ambassador walked in so quietly, Patrice didn’t notice until she appeared beneath the archway. Patrice jumped, her heart pounding in her chest. Derrick laughed and told her to relax. The ambassador sat in the chair beside the sofa where Patrice and Derrick sat.

  “This is Patrice,” Derrick said. “She came to check up on me.”

  “Nice to meet you, Patrice,” the ambassador said. “My name is Mera.”

  “I know,” Patrice said. “Everyone knows.” She could feel herself shaking, which only made her angrier. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Like what?” Mera asked.

  “Why you’re here. Not the bullshit reason. The real reason.”

  “Trice …” Derrick started, concern in his voice.

  “I’ll tell you one day,” Mera said with what looked to Patrice like smug amusement. “When it’s safe.”

  “Sure, because this is about my safety and not your control. Your power.” Derrick actually looked terrified, but the ambassador’s expression didn’t give anything away. She just kept up that damn smirk of hers. “I’ll be leaving now,” Patrice said.

  “You sure?” Derrick said. “I think you should stay a bit.”

  “I have to get back. Nice meeting you.” Patrice forced a smile.

  “Wait, wait,” Derrick said, looking from Patrice to Mera, to Patrice again.

  Mera stood up. “I can leave if you two need more time.”

  Patrice really took the ambassador in then. She was not like the others. When she tried to be human, she could almost fool you. Mera was the same caramel brown as Patrice, with long dreads that she let hang loose around her shoulders. Her eyes were a piercing amber. Patrice could appreciate the mask for what it was. It had certainly had its effect on Derrick. She seemed human enough for Derrick to decide to work for her. And now this, whatever this was.

  Patrice glanced at Derrick. He looked like a stray cat caught in the headlights. She took one look at his gaping mouth, his dopey eyes, and got up. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Let me walk you out.”

  “No. Don’t worry yourself.”

  Patrice made her way back through several arches to the door. She could hear nothing behind her, just the conspiratorial silence of two people with secrets. One person, anyway. Now the baby was fully awake and doing backflips. She stifled a groan. She had no idea what sex the baby was. She listened again for any sound from the big house. Nothing. She wished she hadn’t wasted her time coming here.

  She slammed the door on her way out.

  • • •

  The boy was a basketball player. She had seen him around campus before, so she recognized him at the house party when she caught him staring at her.

  She stood in the middle of the basement, surrounded by a few girls from the cross-country team. He stood in a corner, huddled with some other dudes from the basketball team. The basement floor was already wet with booze, and Patrice’s heels stuck dangerously to the gummy surface. She’d already had too much to drink.

  It took him a while to come over, and when he did, he danced around the periphery of the cross-country girls, edging his way closer to her. He was tall and dark-skinned and danced okay for a Yankee. By the time he had worked up the courage to dance next to her, the DJ had switched from hip-hop to reggae. It was old stuff, a mix of nineties dancehall and some Sean Paul shit that had gotten popular in the early 2000s. It reminded Patrice vaguely of home, so she allowed herself to get into the music. When she felt him against her, her eyes were closed. This presumption she was used to. Black dudes from the States behaved much the same way island men did. Unlike most of the girls she knew back in high school, she usually responded to this aggressively, turning immediately and cutting her eye at the perpetrator. But that night, the music swelling in her ears, the faint feeling of home pulling at her edges, she allowed herself to be like those other girls. She let him be. She swayed her hips, and when the song called for it, she wined against him.

  She lost count of the songs. With each one, they got closer and he pressed harder against her. She caught the eyes of the other girls on the team, and they smiled approvingly. The DJ played “Murder She Wrote,” and she let the music take her over. She swayed slowly to it, allowed her whole body to pulse with the throb of the bass. He held her thighs, and she let him. She felt something shift somewhere inside her, a small candle being lit in a back room.

  When she was younger, she believed in the value of virginity, that it was a gift to be guarded. She went to church every Sunday. She listened to the pastor speak on the value of chastity. She believed. She didn’t question it. After the Ynaa arrived, she still didn’t have sex. Even when she and Derrick had been dating for a while and he asked if they could, she still held out, still guarding that gift, even after she had given up going to church.

  At the end of the night, she told her cross-country friends not to wait up. She let him take her home. They didn’t talk much. He took his time, which she appreciated. There was lots of touching and kissing. She could smell the night on them, the beer, the weed, the sweat. She kissed his neck and tasted his salt on her tongue.

  The moment of penetration just flowed from what had come before. He hadn’t reached for a condom. She thought about this only for a moment. She considered the consequences. But then she let him continue. It was unlikely that this one time would be a big deal.

  Throughout all this, she was surprised at herself. Surprised at how easy it was. She clawed the ripples of his back. She wrapped her legs around him. There was no fire or brimstone. No manna from heaven. No shame. No salvation.

  The next morning, she watched him get dressed, observing his body distantly. She acknowledged how beautiful it was but didn’t want to do it again.

  She gave him her number, with every intention of ghosting him. When he texted her, often late at night, she didn’t respond.

  One morning, she woke up nauseated, and soon it became a ritual to sit on the floor of her bathroom, her body hunched over the toilet bowl, the pain like rough hands pulling at her, tugging her insides apart.

  When she finally spotted him on campus, he averted his eyes.

  By then she was wearing large hoodies.

  • • •

  When Patrice came back, Alice was still there, cooking in the kitchen. It smelled good. Patrice could pick up the scent of plantain, mutton, and peas and rice. It made her remember her hunger.

  She went to her room and closed the door behind her. She sat on her old bed. It felt so small now. Her entire room did. There was still stuff on her walls—old doodles she had drawn during AP calculus and honors English. She looked at one of them, watched the aimless swirls wind in on themselves. At the time, she thought it was nice—beautiful, even. Now it looked like a child’s drawing. She cradled her stomach and eased back onto her bed. She stared up at the ceiling, looking for patterns in the little knobs of the orange-peel drywall. When she was younger, she did this all the time. If she looked long enough, she could find anything up there, constellations of white against white, contrasted by a legion of shadows. She searched for one of her favorites and found it quickly: a side portrait of an old woman with no eyes and a crook nose. Patrice wondered what it would be like to be stuck like that, forever trapped behind drywall in a vacant room.

  She was close to sleep when she heard the knock at the door. The person didn’t wait for Patrice to answer. The door creaked open. Her mother.

  “We need to talk about this,” her mother said from the doorway.

  “About what?” Patrice didn’t bother to get up.

  “Why you’n tell me about this?”

  “Sorry.”

  “When’s the last time you been to a doctor?” her mother asked. One day back and she was
already mothering.

  “A couple months ago.”

  “What!” Her mother stepped inside and closed the door. “We should go sometime this week.”

  “Mom, I’m fine.”

  “You’re not.” Her mother sat on the bed. “Who is he, anyway?”

  “Just a guy. He not involved.”

  “What the shit!”

  “Look, it’s my business. I taking care of it.”

  “Don’t look it.”

  “Do I ask you about your business?”

  Her mother said nothing.

  “No, I don’t,” Patrice answered for her.

  “Trish,” her mother said in that old way Patrice remembered, filled with that old familiarity. “You still angry with me?”

  “I’m not angry.” Patrice sat up, her back pushed against the wall.

  Her mother sighed loudly. “Me and your father—”

  “You and Dad is you and Dad. None of my business.” She could see her mother’s face now. She looked horrified. Patrice felt a pang of guilt. “I’ll take care of it, okay? Don’t worry.”

  “What you gon’ do when the baby is born? You have another year of school. You know people up there? Can you pay for a sitter? For day care?”

  Patrice knew people, but she wasn’t close to anyone in that sort of way. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “She living here now?” Patrice asked.

  Her mother stared at her for a long time and then looked down. “No.”

  Patrice watched her mother. She wanted to say something but couldn’t think of a single thing.

  “You have a name for the baby?” her mother asked. She wasn’t looking at her. She was still looking down.

  “No.”

  “You should transfer to UVI. I can watch the baby when I can.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Come home, Trish.” Her mother waited for an answer. When none came, she got up and straightened her dress. She left the room without another word.