Bliss (27 page)

“Because you’re like this … huge … measuring stick.” Dart dropped his shorts and walked toward the water.

Eva sat in the sand under the dyed fabric next to neat rows of orangey-pink starfish, set on their backs to dry.
No sand flies on the beach like there were in Rio de Janeiro
. Eva had been there twice, each time to Ipanema for video shoots. What she remembered were hotel rooms. Nightclubs. A little samba, but mostly she remembered the world she and her compadres had imported. That and the sand flies. And Ron drunkenly suggesting a three-way. Eva picked up the book again.

Eva’s body tensed. She swallowed a swell of nausea. She didn’t turn, but her eyes rose from the book and looked slightly to the left and right for the shadow of what was on her back.

“You like the batik,” Audrey said flatly. “You’ll have to buy ten from me.”

“You like to walk up on people.”

“You like to stare into space.”

“I’m reading.”
And thinking in weeks
. Eva was thinking also of her kidnapped luggage. Thinking of Ron. Thinking in weeks. Thinking of her child’s soul. Her children’s souls. “I may have to buy one, though, depending on how long we stay.”

“Days or weeks? Months. It doesn’t matter.”

Weeks. Maybe until May. If I stay until then, I’m AWOL. There’s a hospital on Nassau? I could do it. Dart and I can do it if he’d just be a little more normal. I could take a leave of absence. It’s crazy. But Dart’s crazy enough to make crazy happen
.

“Come with me to the store,” Audrey said. “Have to get things for
m’fré pati
.”

Eva looked toward Dart. He walked waist deep through water, parallel to the shoreline. He picked his steps carefully and looked toward the bottom.

“What will he do?” Audrey said, “Drown?”

“Come on, then,” Eva said. “Let’s go now.”

“Now I must hurry-hurry, so Eva can get back to her man. He will surely die without her for a quarter hour.” Audrey pressed her fingers into the cloth, came to a conclusion Eva couldn’t decipher. Then Audrey turned over a starfish, weighed it in her hand, and looked at Eva with lips tight. “Can I go for my list first? We have time for that?”

“What are the starfish for?”

“For to sell,” Audrey said, like Eva was stupid. “These my wares here drying.” She motioned for Eva to follow, and before Eva could protest, Audrey’d placed the rusted bars of a bike in her hands.

Eva hadn’t been on a bike since college, but figured the ride was an Audrey-type down-to-earth test, and decided she’d pass it with colors.

Audrey told her that they were on the “Caribbean” side of Cat, where the water—especially of the bay called the Bight—was mostly
calm. The Atlantic side, she said, was choppy and dangerous. The Rowe House and Audrey and Benjamin’s were near New Bight, where there was a tiny airport. Just when Eva started feeling every dip and pebble in the road, a small green plane dove to land.

Audrey looked from the plane to Eva as if to say,
There’s your proof, if you don’t believe me
.

There were more signs of life on Cat than when Benjamin had driven them from Smith Bay. A man fed a kid goat with a huge bottle. A trio of girls in school uniform exchanged giggles. There was a browned blond couple on foot, with wraparound sunglasses, loudly praising a place called Tea Bay. The island, Audrey told her, was shaped like a young lady’s stocking, and that Cat was in fact 130 miles from Nassau.

Thanks. For the fun facts
. Eva panted and pumped. They kept at their slow ride, Eva always just far enough behind for Audrey to look at Eva like she was a slug, and for Eva to look at Audrey like Audrey was an overseer.

“Me and Eddie come from Haiti fifteen years ago now,” she called out as they passed a plantation house with a sign before it announcing PIGEON BAY. It was a place collapsing in the slowest of motions. Hot wind scraped Eva’s scalp like a pitchfork. She perspired. She had a worry about Dart, like he required her presence, though he’d said nothing of the kind.

Eva slowed, stopped, got off her bike, and walked it. Audrey pedaled into the distance, past walking tourists in red bathing suits, past a lone minitruck filled with fishing poles and sunburned faces. Eva had no idea whether she was right or not, but she didn’t think the jolting and pumping could be good for her pregnancy. She was fiending for some rules, angry she had no experience, and was too proud to ask Audrey, or anyone, for guidance.

Up ahead, Audrey stopped near a neat cinder-block hut with a tin roof. She stood with the bike between her legs, arms stretched to the broad handlebars.

“You can ride, Eva,” Audrey called out courteously. “It won’t hurt the baby.”

For the first time, Eva sensed in Audrey no smart-ass, no coldness. Eva kept walking her bike, though.
One thing I’m not going to do is hurt it by accident
.

“You and Benjamin don’t have kids, Audrey?”

“I do,” she said shortly, as they walked into the dank store. “Two girls. In Port-au-Prince.” Audrey cradled a rice sack under her breast. “They work now. Since I’ve seen my daughters. Almost women.”

Audrey picked up a few more things, and when they left the store, Eva got on her bike and rode. Audrey watched as Eva flew down a small hill, not knowing Eva was crying. Pedals slapped her bare feet as she recalled chances.
First babies would be in high school. Third one would be in elementary. The other one, seven years old. And this one, right here with me, speaking for its brothers—You ain’t nobody’s mother. Won’t be anyone’s mother. You could have tried. We don’t even rate a grave
. Eva claimed the sacrifices she’d made and thrashed against the catch-22’s that knotted her sense of self and always would.
I wish I hadn’t had those abortions. My freedom’s not worth those babies never coming to life. If I had it to do again, though, I’d do the same thing
. Eva swerved and scraped her leg bloody against a fence post and then crashed into a grassy mound. Eva lay flat on her back, coughing and crying. She was happy, though, to feel sad. And she had a terrifying, concrete feeling that her baby was all right.

“It’s just my calf,” she choked out to a panicked Audrey, who zoomed up and helped Eva to her feet. “Ain’t nobody dying.”

T
here was one deep, clean V-shaped cut and a distorted graph of abrasions. Eva’s leg throbbed as Benjamin cleaned it with a solution that flowed bright clear red from the bottle and turned the pan of water he was using tea-brown. Dart was awestruck. They were on the Rowe House patio.

“Eddie uses this to soak his iguanas,” Ben said while he washed Eva’s leg. “Betadine.” She braced for a sting but none came. Her blood swirled in the water and made it brighter.

Eva waved away a glass of ginger ale, and Audrey frowned at her, anxious.

“Iguanas,” Dart mumbled, gazing at Benjamin’s fingers. Eva was dizzy.

“Don’t see the point of keeping them,” Benjamin went on matter-of-factly. “Mean creatures, standoffish, picky about their space.”

“Eddie doesn’t keep them anymore,” Audrey said. She looked at Eva, who was looking at Dart. “Keep quiet about them, Benny.”

“Quiet about iguanas?” He shook his head and shrugged. “Quiet about the iguanas.”

“Do you eat them?” Dart asked Audrey.

“Eat them?” Ben stopped rinsing Eva and looked at Dart like he was a child. “They bite and they swing their tails and they stare and stare—”

“Benjamin! Eva’s leg needs to be wrapped.” There was no more blood flowing.

Eva wanted to vomit, but she swallowed, and took the ginger ale when Audrey pushed it on her again.

Audrey handed Benjamin gauze and a roll of tape. “I guess none of the Tylenol or aspirin for you?”

Eva shook her head. She was in pain, but wanted nothing to touch the baby.

Sink your teeth right through my bones/Baby/Let’s see what we can do
.

She lay back on the chaise and let the sun wash over her. Eva didn’t feel luxurious, but like the hot light might medicate, make the pulsing pain smaller by comparison, and seal her wounds finally.
Come on and make it hurt/Hurt so good
. It was a John Mellencamp song, from when he still was John “Cougar” Mellencamp.
From the
American Fool
album. Nineteen … nineteen eighty-something
…

Benjamin folded a cushion and put it under Eva’s ankle. “Sleep,” he said. “If you feel like seeing Eddie tonight, you come over—”

“You rest,” Audrey said, and gave Benjamin a sharp look. When she picked up the pan and started away with it, Dart looked up from his daze.

“What are you going to do with that?” He asked Audrey.

“Bathe in it,” Audrey said angrily. “And boil what’s left up for soup.”

Eva was asleep for four hours. When she woke, Dart was showering sand from his body. She washed up and fashioned a dress from a piece of green cloth Audrey’d left her. Eva tightened but didn’t change her bandage.

“You’re sure you want to go.”

“Of course we’re going,” Eva said. “It’s for Édouard.” Like she’d known him for years.

Leaning on Dart’s arm, Eva limped barefoot over to the smaller house. Her leg burned, and she thought it might be leaking behind the bandage.

“You okay?”

Eva pressed her molars together. “No.”

Dart picked her up and carried her into Audrey and Benjamin’s spotless, light-trimmed house, just as guests were starting to arrive for Eddie’s party

Her mind was blown clean. Eva was in the air, helpless and being helped. As Dart sat her on a low couch, and pushed a footstool under her injured leg, there was no doubt for Eva that she’d come to the right place.

T
his ain’t no record industry after-party
.

There was Édouard and Ben and Audrey. A youngish guy with a crunchy natural Ben introduced as his helper from down at Hermitage Rental. Another man old enough, and looking like Ben enough, to be Ben’s father. Ben introduced him as Jeeter. Jeeter was slightly bent over, in ragged canvas slip-ons and neat, creased slacks that had been cut off at the knees and hemmed with a cuff. His palms were amber, and in the place of three fingernails were pinched black scars. Dart was transfixed by Jeeter. Shook his hand solemnly, spoke in an awed murmur. Jeeter was impressed to meet such a polite American boy.

“You like that man,” Eva said when Dart came over to check on her.

She enjoyed being checked on—the status of her pregnancy and her injury and the idea of being Dart’s date at the party. Her leg throbbed.

“Whether I like him,” Dart said, like a new jack quoting Garvey, “is beside the point. “He either knows the way, or he is the way.”

A woman of about twenty walked in with a small box radio, which Édouard promptly attached to three-foot speakers. She had a deep tin of fluffed rice and pigeon peas. Had anklets and earrings and bracelets and necklaces and cornrows so tight her eyes slanted tight toward her temples. She had on a gold spandex dress over a black spandex slip, the thin straps cutting her shoulders like twine in a tri-tip, and the spandex sheaths forced flesh into smooth, tight bike tires at her waist and rigged her rump to the exact dimensions of a standard bedroom pillow. There was no jiggling. Arms wide and flanked with muscle, tough thighs in the shadow of her stride-stretched dress. Calves like small hams, her flat feet soft and slashed with scarlet polish. Silver toe rings. In a way she rarely did, Eva immediately feared comparison. The girl seemed very strong and very free.

“Miss Eva, this is Jenny. My girlfriend.”

Jenny shook Eva’s hand politely, smiled, and then handed Audrey the rice and peas, who set them down next to a plate of maraschinos bleeding on sliced pineapple. Édouard watched his girl with none of the reserve he had for Eva on the boat from Nassau to Cat. Plus he was being kissed by everyone, and was soon engulfed by the fuss of what turned out to be his twenty-eighth birthday.