Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel (32 page)

Frank was not with his sister when Youme walked into the door that afternoon to meet Anette. Frank was in jail.

Within the hour, it was reported by radio that young Frank Joseph was staging a hunger strike, Anette looked to the ceiling and shook her head. Her boy was already stick thin though he ate like a hog. He wouldn’t survive a day on a hunger strike. She packed up some food, and she and Youme started off toward the local jail, which overlooked the sea.

“Mommy,” asked Youme, her face betraying both eagerness and defiance. “What’s the plan for me? What did you and Dr. McKenzie figure out?”

“Me, let’s worry about your brother for now.”

At the jailhouse there was a crowd, mostly of protesters from the lime-in/swim-in, the salt dried on their faces like war wounds. The people gave way for Me. They hailed her loudly, “Me! Me!” but she only smiled and held her mother. Franky was standing at the front desk, barefoot in a damp undershirt and his Coast Guard white pants. He was whispering with the police chief. He raised his arm so his wife and daughter could find their way toward him.

“The boy won’t take food,” Franky said.

“He will from his mother,” said Anette.

“Don’t do that to him,” Franky said to his wife. “Let him be a man.”

Here it was. And so quickly. Her son belonged to himself now. Anette passed the food to Franky. “Me?” she asked her daughter.

“We should go, Mommy,” Youme said. She could feel the crowd getting thirsty just watching her.

During Frank’s airheaded hunger meditation in jail, he thought only on his sister and Auntie Eeona. He didn’t believe Auntie Eeona was dead, like they were all fearing. He didn’t believe she had gone off to drown like it was said was the Bradshaw way. Without food, Frank felt high and he felt that he knew, really knew, that his women didn’t just give way to slice of knife or wall of water or ceasing of a beating heart. They last. They rise like volcanoes, like a pustule on the skin. They explode and do their cleansing damage.

Young Frank was released, no charges pressed, before twenty-four hours even passed. Franky had stayed all night at the station to wait for his boy because the police officers would only release Frank to one of their enforcement own.

When Frank walked through the door that morning, he went to his sister. He turned the big ice vat over and sat on it while Eve Youme sat on the couch.

“Why did you run to the water like that?”

“I don’t know. It just come over me.”

Frank watched his sister in the face and saw Auntie Eeona rising in her skin.

The Beach Occupation Movement and Bacchanal was in full sail after the successful swim-in/lime-in over on Water Island. Eve Youme’s picture, the indecent one with her chest bare, the black strip of the censor like a dark slot for entry, appeared in the paper the very morning that Frank was released. The BOMB was over a month later. It didn’t take long for the Free Beach Act to be passed. It was the time, after all. If lunch counters in the State of Georgia were being made to serve Negroes, then it seemed that Virgin Islands beaches would be made to serve Virgin Islanders. Not that history always worked this symmetrically, but this time it did. The last mean hotel and the last stingy family had to take down their
PRIVATE
signs and remove their chains. We lay on the beach and felt our self-worth rise with the tide.

Of course, the tourists kept coming and the hotels kept bursting. And imagine, not even months into the new freedom Franky came home and announced that the Muhlenfeldt Point land had been sold to a big resort chain. The lighthouse was in jeopardy, as was Franky’s life’s work. But in the grand scheme of things, that point was on a cliff. Not on a beach. At least not on a beach.

The BOMB all happened and was over within three months. A month to represent each major island—for St. Croix and St. John were in it, too. Or perhaps a month for each Bradshaw sibling. Or a month for each manifestation of God. No matter. Because after those three months, after the beaches were peaceably free and justly occupied, Eeona returned.

My name is love
I am the beloved one
The last romantic
Coming out of the islands
Of the sea
Coming out of the mossed ocean

—HABIB TIWONI,
“AL-HABIB”

If I may . . . once more. Please. I would like to make it clear that I made an attempt. When Anette left me at the restaurant, I waited . . . I called . . . but I did not want to disrespect her household. I was sure her husband knew nothing of our meeting in Frenchtown. My wife . . . per usual . . . knew nothing.

Understand . . . I did see my daughter there in the newspaper when she was a protester. I cut her picture out . . . for her decency the black strip of the censor was across her chest. I kept the picture in my wallet until it wore to tissue. Please, know . . . I did not participate in the movement and bacchanal . . . Never in my life have I been asked to vacate a beach . . . But I understood the movement’s concern.

During the dark months of the BOMB, I had been writing fellow physicians about my daughter’s condition . . . My letters were cast out but did not produce a yield. Fellow colleagues wrote suggesting other colleagues . . . I wrote to Puerto Rico and the United States, to England and Denmark. There was a French doctor . . . he suggested a Spanish doctor . . . he turned out to be a priest who had been a medic on the Nazi side in the war. “Bring her to me.” The Spanish doctor priest wrote his epistle in medical Latin.

Believe me . . . This letter lay open on my desk. My good wife dusted
my table and folded the letter, but I reconsidered the Spaniard’s offer every night. Here it was . . . a doctor who had been a priest. His cure would be codeine, exorcism, surgery . . . prayer. I contemplated this possibility without anyone to consult with.

As I deliberated, I would take out the picture of my daughter from the paper. In it she is the symbol, like a statue of liberty for the Virgin Islands. She’s wet and standing in the water . . . she looks strong and defiant despite the Coast Guardsman holding on to her. I would try to talk to this symbol of her. Ask this symbol of liberty and tether what was best for my daughter. I contemplated alone with that picture until I knew there was no option but to send her away. In a country like Spain there would be others like her. Know this . . . I didn’t like my decision, but it was the only one I had.

I phoned the Joseph residence day after day . . . for weeks . . . until finally my daughter answered. The beach protests were over, and now any old common person . . . even those from other islands . . . could lie out on our best beaches. Yes . . . she had made that possible. For better or for worse. When she answered . . . well, I could hear the beauty in her voice.

“You wouldn’t send me away,” she said.

I had to admit it. “My Eve, I already have. I’ve called the Spanish priest doctor long-distance on the phone. He and I have agreed. You will be there in less than a month. I must talk with your mother about the plan.”

And then Eve spoke to me in a very adult manner: “Dr. McKenzie,” she said, “don’t you think that, in a way, it is beautiful? Worth holding on to?”

I felt my fingers grasp hard and sweaty around the phone receiver. I saw myself making love to her mother. I remembered making her. Yes, of course, every bit of her was beautiful. Of course . . . but beauty could be wrong. “Eve. My first child. I don’t believe that this thing is of God.”

“And so? It’s of me.”

Yes. It turns out . . . yes . . . yes . . . I admired my daughter for her bravery. I made the . . . well, momentous decision . . . I let Eve be.

Understand. What I’m saying is that I remember. I remember myself singing in the middle of the street to a woman with red roots at the base of her hair. I remember playing the piano, and the photographer at school snapping me. I remember my mother bathing me in the sweet-smelling water . . . I remember . . . believe me. I remember shining my military shoes and stealing the shiny rifles. I remember choosing the fine white cloth and then the racy red and yellow. I remember that beauty can be dangerous . . . I don’t know . . . perhaps even that danger is worth it. I remember that I have been niggardly. I never intended to be.

The rooms at Eeona’s inn were charged at a price better suited for 1935. Because Mother Eeona still hadn’t returned, the Josephs collected the rent and, after paying the staff, sent a bit of it to help Ronalda in college. They couldn’t spare their own funds now because Franky had been released from keeping the lighthouse. A political demotion, he felt, for being the father of a BOMB family. But the Coast Guard had said that there was just no more need for a lighthouse. A hotel was going up there. A Marriott hotel, to be exact. That would shine brighter than anything.

Franky wasn’t relegated to mess duty or anything degrading. He would continue routine coastal laps around the islands, but he had nothing so special as his lighthouse again. At home he was his same self. Only he started polishing the faces of the flashlights. Checking and rechecking the batteries with the tip of his tongue. He was a nuisance, but Anette let him be. The island had won the beaches and it had seemed there were no casualties. But here was the casualty. Living in her house.

And the family also fretted about Auntie Eeona. Anette did not feel the
coming feeling. Maybe Eeona would never return. Perhaps Anette would even have to get on a boat and visit the inn. Make a decision about what to do with it.

But the good thing is that the Joseph family was going, every Saturday, to a different beach now. Stumpy and Sapphire. Sugar Bay and Botany. Magens and Secret Harbor. Afterward they would spend the evening looking at one another over candlelight, reading books until their eyes were sore and telling stories until sleep took over. Some private homes on island had electricity, but the Josephs were still waiting.

Then one evening Anette was grading history papers by kerosene lamp and Frank could be heard singing kaiso from the tub. Anette had just cleared out her now reddish-gray hair, for she was letting the black dye go, and there were stray tufts of it floating around her. The phone rang and it was the inn’s housekeeper who had been promoted to inn manager, what with Mother Eeona disappeared. Anette and the woman had a banal conversation about a backed-up toilet and a newlywed couple who seemed to have forgotten they had real lives and still, two months gone, made love loudly until three in the morning.

“Well, thank you for the news.”

“News, Mrs. Joseph? But I ain give you the news yet.”

And that is when Anette found out that Eeona had been reliably spotted in town. A whole two days ago. Her human self, with her hair flying like wings, seen on the road, wandering as though lost. Seen talking to herself, muttering—so one report confirmed—about lobster. More than one person had fed her saltfish, figuring she was seafood hungry.

There was nothing new to rumors of Eeona sightings. People had been sighting her since she was a girl. But the beggar banality of this one caused Anette to believe that something terrible had finally happened. Perhaps Eeona had had her own Villa by the Sea fright. Or perhaps winning the beaches had now brought her ghost back.

Anette had never been to the inn before. She had never been curious.
And after her recent Hibiscus Hotel visit, Anette was worse than uncurious. But now she prepared herself for the ferry ride to St. John.

Little sister, Anette. She did not like boats or ships or any vessel of the sea, but now she walked up the swaying plank without anyone’s help. She spent forty eternal minutes on the boat, which included the time spent with the boat just sitting there, doing no goddamn thing but swaying and shuddering and preparing to sink—so Anette felt. She survived it all by standing at the railing and staring. This seemed brave, but it wasn’t. She was focusing on the sea so she would know where to dive if the boat suddenly broke into pieces. Swimming was natural, she knew. She’d long ago decided that boats were not. It was a late-afternoon journey but there was enough sunshine for her to see a huge sea turtle gliding beside the boat. She saw herself jumping onto the turtle’s back and coasting to safety. Her hands gripped the railing so hard that they ached.

She arrived at the inn in the evening because she had been slow getting ready, reticent really, and had missed the ferry’s morning voyage. But it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The inn, unlike the Joseph house, was bursting with electricity. It glowed in the dusk.

The groundskeeper opened the door before Anette could even knock on it.

Eeona’s inn was painted blue on the inside and the out. It was ornate with dark mahogany chairs that seemed as old as antiques. It was baroque, old-fashioned. There were elaborate trimmings where the high ceiling and the walls of the foyer met. Cream curtains made of light linen separated the foyer from the kitchen and the kitchen from the hallway. It gave the feeling of an old galleon. Anette felt a bit unsteady on her feet. On one far wall there was a picture of Eeona herself, proprietress, with its own little spotlight perched above and shining on it directly. In the painting the madame was quite young, seventeen maybe, and her beauty tugged all the attention from the room.

Anette sat in the foyer of the room and had the odd feeling again. As
though she had been here before. Or somewhere quite like this. As the inn manager stood with her hands clasped at her belly, Anette trailed her own fingers along the windowsills. It was so familiar it was making Anette’s head swim. Finally, she asked to be taken to Eeona’s room, knowing, just knowing, that it would look more like Villa by the Sea than even Hibiscus Hotel had managed. But the inn manager said, with all her professionalism, that that was the one room for which she didn’t have a key. And it was quite locked.

Anette left her one small bag in another room with a bed very much like the bed she had slept in as a small child. But Anette would never have remembered this. Then she hired a gypsy taxi to drive her through the town of Coral Bay and then around the whole island of St. John. She held her aching hands in her lap and called out of the taxi’s window, “Eeona! E-on-a. He Own Her,” into the homes of Coral Bay, and people came out of their houses to watch. The evening stretched out until Anette lost her voice.

Finally, the taxi took Anette to the Emergency Station on the opposite side of the island from the inn. The Emergency Station was the hospital, police, and fire station all in one. Strangely, Anette’s polite words came out in a croaking whisper, though when she cursed, she found the crass words came out clear and brassy. The emergency personnel looked at her in bewilderment, for wasn’t she the dignified lady who began the whole BOMB? Maybe not. They knew for sure, though, who Mother Eeona was. They had directed many a tourist couple to her inn. When last was she seen? Seen a few days ago, but before that, not for months.

Then Anette waited. A group of teenaged St. Johnians came into the station making noise. Their car had crashed into a tree, but they were still well pressed and coiffed. They looked healthy and excited. Anette envied them. Their youth, their togetherness.

Hours later, two police officers drove Anette back to the remote side of the island, back to Eeona’s inn. The officers rarely drove to this side of the
island and they were weary of being out here in the darkness, for there was not one streetlight for the entire journey. But the officers were also thrilled to have the opportunity to drive someone around instead of the sacks of potatoes and rice their wives made them transport in the backseat. Anette sat quietly in the back of the cruiser and dusted off the grains of rice. With the bars between her and the men, she felt like something dangerous. The only illumination ahead of them was their own headlights.

When they finally arrived at the inn, Anette had her mind decided. She gesticulated that they should open Eeona’s suite. But the police could not bust the lock, as the owner had not given permission. “But the owner is missing,” insisted Anette now, her voice feeling choked and meager. The inn manager went to fetch the deed. But no, Eeona had years earlier made Youme the official owner of the entire inn. Who knew? Well, Youme knew. But that was a secret between her and her aunt.

“You moomoos! The owner is my child,” Anette shouted now. “She a motherscunting minor. So I have the blasted say.” The police officers stepped back, like they’d seen something more dirty than they could handle. Anette looked down and started to weep.

But the police stayed around and asked the guests and staff questions. Anette heard that Eeona had been seen days ago wandering the roads at night like a ghost. That she had been polite and accepted a can of fake crab as if she were a cat. But that just last night she
was
a cat with long silver fur in mats and curls. Here was the mystery Anette had expected, but this was not the Eeona who was expected. Yes, Eeona must be having an episode. She would be found, she would be returned, she would be okay. Anette tried to pull herself together.

One of the officers turned to Anette and, putting his index finger to his temple and twirling it around, asked: “Crazy?” But Anette did not reply. She couldn’t answer.

Maybe sister Eeona had finally gone crazy. No children. No husband. And all that nastiness Mr. Lyte had talked about. Imagine the secrets Eeona
must have pooling in her head. Anette couldn’t really blame her for racing away. Anette herself had sped from Jacob, now that she knew what she knew.

It was too dark now to even consider driving back to the other side of the island, so the officers called their wives. Then they asked the inn manager politely if they could each have a complimentary room, even though it was clear that they would need the room and they would not need to pay. They took to their beds and didn’t stir.

It was night and almost everyone was in bed so Anette went to the groundsman, who was in the kitchen prepping ahead for breakfast because he was the cook as well, and commanded slowly: “Open the door.” He shook his head no. “Sorry, Mrs. Joseph. I can’t do that.” Anette set her fire eyes on him and then from deep in her chest she started growling. “Open the fucking door before I broke it down.” It was an American curse word and the worst she could think of. And it was like it was a magic word, because the man scrunched his face into a ball and brought out a large key from the secret folds of cloth at his chest. It was so like Eeona, to give a man the key to her room. It was like so many of the women of her time and place.

Anette and the groundsman went up to the third floor, past the rooms of the inn now empty save for the police officers who were snoring and the newlywed couple who were too fogged with their love.

At the suite, which was more than a room, but was what people once called “apartments,” the groundsman opened the door. When he did, they smelled an alive smell. It was something like molt and moss. Like someone had turned their own human body inside out. But it was cool, a wind was coming through. And yes, the room was very familiar. But Anette would never have remembered that it was a copy of her mother’s room.

“Eeona,” Anette called. But no one was there. Eeona’s blue clothes, though, were everywhere. Blue pantaloons and long-sleeved blouses patterned with bluebells. There were also opened food tins and uncovered pots rattling slowly, as if they were alive. There was a sticky liquid on the floor. There were magazines, torn and moist, laying like a crazy carpet, their
corners lapping. On the glossy covers were women in fancy American clothes. The bed, a large grand mahogany antique with gauzy mosquito netting, was sooty and unmade. Then there was the writing on the wall. Actual paragraphs of Eeona’s script written in pen. Up and down the walls. Sideways or in columns, down close to the floor or up at eye level. But all neatly done as though the room were a cave and the writer needed to preserve this writing for future discovery. Once Anette stood close enough, she could see that the writing was scraps from Anancy stories and Duene stories and other story stories.

And there was a balcony, a very small one, but still. This is where the breeze was coming from. The linen curtains were plump, like the sails of a ship. Anette went to the balcony, but no one was there. There was just enough space for two people to stand and embrace. She looked over the ledge. But no one was there either.

The groundsman began to shiver. “I should not have, I should never have let you in.”

“Is me,” Anette said finally in her own sweet voice. Then she guided the man out of the suite with her own arms. She faced the rooms alone. She went to the tiny kitchen. There was expensive champagne. In the fridge there was milk in a glass bottle, juice with its hand-squeezed pulp. All gone rank and sour. In an old-fashioned bread box there was fine butter bread now hard as rock.

Anette began to make up the bed with fresh sheets. She swept the floor and folded the clean blue clothes. She dumped papers into the downstairs bins. Dumped the sooty laundry into the washing machine downstairs. She fastened the balcony door shut. And she didn’t cry.

That night she lay in the room that resembled her childhood room. She rubbed her hands with the lotion she found in the bathroom. She wore a proper nightgown, knowing that Eeona would appreciate such a thing. It was new and felt stiff on her body. There was a rack for hanging the damp underwear she had rinsed in the sink. A small bureau where she rested her
toiletries. A shallow closet where she hung the matching house robe. The bed was large and high with little steps leading to the mattress. Beside the bed was a phone. Anette called Franky and told him, her voice finally her own, of the futile day and the sad room. She did not tell him about the antique furniture, the curtains, or about the possession of her speech. She couldn’t explain that.

“When you coming back?” asked Franky, without a hint of the desperation he felt.

“Is summer time. I don’t have to teach for a next month. I waiting the witch out.”

“You know something, a light just come on for me, yes,” he said. And Anette wondered what he knew. It wasn’t like him to speak in metaphors. If he’d suddenly realized something, it couldn’t be good. Did he know, somehow, about her and Jacob? She waited silently for him to continue.

“You hear me?” he said.

“I listening,” she said.