Adrift on St. John (12 page)

Fred had already drawn a sizeable crowd by the time I reached the beach near his favorite surfing spot. Several of the resort’s excited guests were clumped together beneath a row of palm trees, clicking their cameras as his scaly body cut through the waves. Every so often, his bony head rose above the water’s foaming surface to reveal a crooked lizard grin.

As I stood on the beach admiring Fred’s surfing prowess, I heard the distinctive stomp of Vivian’s footsteps charging up behind me. After four years of working together, I was well acquainted with her heavy, accusing gait. Fixing my face with a calm expression, I turned to greet my hot-tempered assistant.

Sure enough, I spied Vivian chugging toward me at full speed. Her entire being steamed with a heated mixture of consternation and exertion. She must have spotted me leaving the administration offices and immediately set off to catch me.

Vivian looked as if she’d run all the way down the hill from the reception area, which was positioned just off the main road near the entrance to the resort. A network
of curving pathways connected the reception area to the guest accommodations sprinkled across the resort’s ocean-facing slope. Several wide lawns tastefully edged by colorful mounds of blooming vegetation filled in the rest of the space.

The reception’s open-air pagoda-style structure swallowed the rounded top of the hill, capturing whatever breeze blew in off of the ocean. The shade beneath the exposed wooden beams of the soaring vaulted roof made it one of the most comfortable spots on the resort, a cool oasis from the humidity-soaked environs. It was the only location other than the goose-pimpling administrative suite that I would have expected to find Vivian on such a sweltering afternoon.

Instead, my overheated assistant stood panting on the beach, her dark skin slick with perspiration, her sweat-drenched shirt clinging to her sturdy torso like a wrinkled sausage casing.

There was something about Vivian’s obvious physical discomfort and disheveled appearance that gave me a pleasant sense of confidence and superiority. I’d scored a temporary win in our never-ending game of one-upmanship—but every ounce of that smug satisfaction withered as my gaze traveled to our new employee.

In contrast to Vivian’s state of near heatstroke, Hannah still looked fresh as the daisy who had greeted me earlier that morning. She moved effortlessly in the island’s swampy heat, her creamy cocoa-colored skin flushed with only the slightest tinge of pink.

What was with this strange woman? I thought as my palms began to moisten. No file, no background, and, apparently, no sweat glands.

“Oh, hello. There you two are,” I greeted the pair with a forced brightness. “I’ve been searching for you all day. You look like you’ve been busy. How’s it going?”

Vivian scowled sternly, not the least bit amused by my remarks. She marched forward and steered me into a row of hydrangea bushes ringing a sidewalk near the beach.

Before I could protest, she latched hold of my sleeve and tugged down on my shoulder so that she could speak into my
ear. Her harshly whispered words curved with the inflection of her usually muted Caribbean dialect.

“She ask’d me if I waz a nate-teev.”

“She asked you what?” I replied in bewilderment.

I was unaccustomed to hearing Vivian speak with such a thick accent. She’d long since anglicized her speech patterns after tiring of me constantly asking her to repeat the words I couldn’t understand.

“A nate-teev. She ask’d me if I waz a nate-teev of thuh Ver-gene Eye-lands.”

Vivian glared with a fierce determination as she waited for me to interpret her hushed phrase. Several sharp branches from the hydrangea bushes poked painfully into my back, but I could see Vivian wasn’t budging until she confirmed I’d understood her message.

“She asked if you were a—native?” I repeated warily, trying to keep my voice inaudible to Hannah, who had wandered over to the iguana-watching group a few feet away.

“A nate-teev, a nate-teev…she ask’d if I waz a nate-teev!”
Vivian hissed into my ear again, giving me a look of great affront.
“Mark mye words. Shee’s tr-rouble, that wone!”

And with that, Vivian stormed off down the pathway, her stocky figure quickly disappearing as the trail circled into a clutch of villas.

I remained for a moment in the prickly embrace of the hydrangea bushes, contemplating Vivian’s words as I watched her depart.

Like most of my fellow expats, I didn’t pay much attention to local politics, but I was vaguely aware of the identity-based tensions that dominated the opinion pages of the local papers.

Loosely defined, “Native Virgin Islander” referred to someone who could trace his or her ancestry back to a resident of the Danish territory at the time of its 1917 transfer to the United States. It was a way of differentiating those with
a specific tie to the Territory’s colonial-era past from the numbers of West Indians who had immigrated to the islands in recent years to work for the booming tourism industry.

The distinction cut a strong undercurrent through almost every aspect of political debate; candidates for public office were clearly identified as Native—or not.

Native Virgin Islanders currently represented about forty percent of the population, and they had historically controlled the legislature and governorship. Nearly one-quarter of the Territory’s residents were employed in sought-after government jobs, and almost all of those positions were held by Native Virgin Islanders.

Falling outside the “Native” crowd were the expats, who couldn’t care less, and those of other West Indian or Afro-Caribbean descent, like Vivian, who cared a great deal about any perceived slight to herself, her son, or her beloved Bahamas.

While Native versus non-Native friction commenced soon after the transfer, the current tensions started to build in the 1960s.

After the Cuban revolution and the rise of Fidel Castro, Americans started looking for alternative Caribbean vacation destinations to replace Havana. The subsequent flood of tourists into the U.S. Virgin Islands triggered a substantial uptick in new construction, mostly in the form of hotels and lavish resorts, as well as an influx of much needed cash. With the resulting labor shortage in the service and construction industries, the USVI began issuing work visas, and the population exploded.

Much of the expanded workforce came from neighboring Caribbean islands. With the exception of those immigrants from the U.S. Territory of Puerto Rico, many of the newcomers were aliens and unlikely to gain U.S. citizenship or voting rights. Non-Native political influence soon began to grow, however, through the voting power of the immigrants’ offspring. At last count, more than half the residents of the
Territory were descended from a parent who had arrived on the islands after the U.S. purchase.

Over the past thirty years, the increasingly testy public discourse over the title of “Native Virgin Islander” had derailed the last two initiatives to draft a USVI constitution, and it was well on its way toward defeating another.

Delegates to the Territory’s Fifth Constitutional Convention were now meeting on St. Thomas to try to agree on the document’s language. Certain delegates were insisting on insertion of a clause that would explicitly define who among the citizenry qualified as a Native Virgin Islander. The implied and, in some cases, explicitly asserted rationale for the phrase’s inclusion was to form the basis for special rights that would attach to persons falling under the classification.

The subject of Native Rights was an increasingly touchy topic among the island’s long-term residents. The passionate debate on this issue showed no signs of abating.

From the prodding couch of the hydrangea bushes, I continued to puzzle over Vivian’s communication. Why would Hannah raise such a divisive question on her first day at the resort? Was it simply a matter of misplaced curiosity, or was she intentionally trying to rile people up?

Before I had time to decide which, Hannah left the group of iguana enthusiasts and began walking toward me. Given the expectant look on her face, I wouldn’t be able to dodge the handoff any longer.

Advantage Vivian, I thought as the sun focused its merciless beam on the top of my head. The heat here on the beach was rising by the minute. Pretty soon, I would match my assistant in terms of sweat production.

I attempted a gracious smile at Hannah as I finally extracted myself from the hydrangeas’ poking grasp.

“Why don’t we head into town?” I suggested with a glance at my watch. Since I’d been unable to glean any information from Hannah’s file, I reckoned it was time to
see what I could learn from the young woman directly. Plus it was never too early for a stop at the Crunchy Carrot. “I’ll introduce you to some of my friends.”

Hannah’s face immediately registered interest. “Vivian said you had a way with the locals,” she said in an admiring tone.

“I bet she did,” I muttered under my breath. Vivian was not a fan of my frequent Dumpster-table sessions.

“Right this way,” I added in response to Hannah’s confused expression as I ushered her toward the nearest path that would lead up to the reception area, where we could catch one of the truck taxis heading into Cruz Bay.

I suppose it was the rum shots dulling my senses, but it never occurred to me that Hannah might have had in mind a totally different group than the people I was taking her to meet.

12

Manto’s red hemi drove up the resort’s horseshoe-shaped front drive and pulled into one of the designated truck-taxi spots by the front entrance. In his loose-fitting collared shirt, dark pleated slacks, and huarache sandals, he was almost unrecognizable from the man who had led the grounds crew through their paces earlier that morning.

Still groaning from the soreness in his lower back, he eased out the driver’s-side door and limped around the flamingo-painted hood to help Vivian’s son from the cab’s high front seat. Per their long-standing arrangement, Manto coordinated his taxi pickup schedule so that he swung by the elementary school in Cruz Bay right as Hamilton was getting out of class.

Vivian never spoke of Hamilton’s father. As far as anyone at the resort knew, she had left him behind in the Bahamas. Manto had stepped in as a surrogate grandfather figure—a role for which he had plenty of practice.

All of the children on the island recognized Manto’s red truck. He kept a well-stocked tin of candies in the glove compartment and could always be counted on for a free ride in the case of inclement weather. Manto’s cab was the best
place to hide if you’d received a poor report card or were having trouble with a schoolyard bully. His understanding ears had heard countless childhood confessions over the years; his kind hands had dried thousands of tears.

Happily, Manto’s counseling skills weren’t needed that afternoon. Hamilton was nothing but smiles as he hopped down onto the pavement, holding his sticky fingers out from his body to avoid wiping them on the white shirt and blue shorts of his school uniform. The large piece of candy he’d eaten on the way to the resort had proved a little more than he could handle without making a mess.

Manto steered the little boy by the elbow into the reception building, behind the front check-in desk, and down a short hallway to a break room used by the resort staff.

“All rig’t, Ham. Les clean you-up ’fore your momma get’s hold of ya,”
Manto said with a chuckle as he trotted ahead to a counter by a sink.

After ripping off a paper towel, Manto wadded up a corner and waved it under a trickle of water from the faucet. Turning, he bent down with it to clean up the boy.

Hamilton, well accustomed to this routine, held his palms upward, tiny fingers spread apart.

Several West Indian women in resort-issued shirtdresses shuffled in as Manto began wiping the sugary coating from Hamilton’s skin. Some of the women were tasked with cleaning guest rooms; others supported the resort’s various dining facilities. One by one, they slid their time cards into a wall-mounted clock to punch out for the day.

A hardened, crowlike woman with short grizzly hair and a hooked nose shoved her card into the machine and shuddered.