Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel (19 page)

I never could bring myself to tell my sister the true story, but I shall deliver it here and now.

For many months I did not leave the house without Monsieur Prideux. Everything I did, I did with him. If you were there, you would have understood. Freedom City, it was called. It was quite lush and lovely. The house he lived in was grand and overlooked the ocean. It was difficult not to be in love and therefore desperate. One evening we were returning from a scenic drive when I leaned across the front seat and beseeched my Prideux. “Let us go to the beach,” I asked, for that was one thing we had never done. He shook his head as though he was scolding me. “It’s too late, my baby. The no-see-ums will get you.” Still, I believed the beach would be the place where I would finally win him over. The beach had convinced even Louis Moreau to propose.

The blue air of dusk surrounded the car. The wind was gathering in the darkening clouds. It would rain presently. One could hear chimes dancing loudly. The music was uncoordinated, as were the thoughts in my mind.

By the time Monsieur Prideux parked the silver Chevy at our door, the sky was a deep blue. I was feeling a sense of freedom, as our drives through the country were wont to make me feel. I felt what was inside of me. St. Croix was so like Anegada, flatter than St. Thomas. Made of coral. Sitting there on the Anegada Passage. I wanted the beach. I must have the beach.

I went into our great house and put on a pair of my man’s rubbers and changed from this leaf-green dress he had bought me just for drives, into the blue dress I wore when I walked onto the seaplane that first day. It fit
tight around the bust and barely fit around the belly. I announced that I was going for a walk to the beach with or without him. I had not been so bold since I first arrived.

“There ain no streetlamps and it getting dark. You can’t go.”

“I am going.” I decided this in the same manner in which I had decided to board the seaplane so many months earlier. I had secrets from him. One such secret was that for weeks I had been attempting to lay a plan for myself, but my confusion was such that there were fish swimming in my mind. I had hoped that my maternal condition would hasten my Prideux’s commitment, but this had not yet been the case. If I went to the water at night, perhaps my mind would clear and I would discern my options. More important, if I ventured out, he would grow scared of my not returning. Perhaps my leaving, even for a short time, would convince him of me.

“Eeona, girl. No one’s going to watch for you when you walking.”

I carried a lit kerosene lamp when I departed. I felt safe as I began down the driveway. I had to walk through the bougainvillea bush to get around the latched gate built to keep out cars. Why was there this gate? Someone could easily sneak in and steal anything we had. Though I knew even then that there was not much that we had. Still, they might take my honour. They might kill my man. They might burn our house to ashes. They might throw us over the ledge to drown in the sea.

As I walked farther, it grew dark quite quickly. I could hear the conversation of a father and a young daughter. The familiar sounds were floating from a house just above. They spoke with proper American inflections. The sound of their laughing pooled in my head.

I began to see that what I was doing was quite nonsensical. Prideux was right, no one else was walking. It had been months since I had set out on my own and here I was doing so at night on an island that I did not truly know. A vehicle raced by with headlights on. I pressed myself against the side of the hill. It was a flashy car and the driver honked his horn in surprise at me. There was an American woman in the passenger’s seat. With
great speed, she stuck out her manicured middle finger. These Continentals coming to our islands have turned out to be so uncouth.

As soon as that car disappeared, I felt very alone. I felt then that Prideux should have lashed me to his chair and prevented me from leaving. I was losing my mind, like it was said always threatened Mama. I had already been gone for half an hour or more. He should have come just then with the car. He should have been worried.

As the road curved, I saw the water.

It would not be like the bays of St. Thomas. On St. Croix the shore will be narrow. The sand will have chunks of seashells in it. The water will have slivers of seaweed. From where I was standing, the waves looked frozen. The bay seemed dangerous and distant.

I remembered night swimming with my father. We would strip off our clothes and dive into the cold dark water. Our bodies would light up with the shining phosphorescence that swam around us and
The Homecoming
in reverence.

“I curse you,” I now said out loud, though I did not know to whom I said it.

I thought about my sister and wondered if perhaps she had found her way back to her husband. It seemed like years ago that I had gone to return my ticket and instead found myself heading here, to Freedom City.

I turned down the long road leading to the beach. The lamp in my hand was dimming. It was vital that I show Prideux that I could be worthy of nighttime beaches. It was vital that I show myself. I am Eeona Bradshaw and men have always thought me to be more than worthy. I am the daughter of a captain and I can swim and dive and direct a boat out to sea.

I walked all the long way to the bay. When I arrived, the air at the ocean was cool. The sand waved like water under my feet. The moon was out in a sliver. The sound was just the waves and my feet moving towards them. I took off all my clothes slowly and elegantly. Maybe Prideux could see me from the house. I left my clothes on the sand. I stood at the lip of the
ocean as the waves covered my feet. The water was quite frigid, but I walked into it anyway. I swam naked in the ocean as I had done with my father. The water felt as if it were a man claiming me. Beneath the water, the silver of myself was glittering like a jewel. I tended to it like any lady would her diamonds.

When I was relieved, I ran out into the cold air. I hugged my belly with one hand and my breasts with the other. I stood at the water’s edge and it began to rain. I sensed that I had called the rain. I found my clothes and dressed quickly. I held the lamp before me and I walked all the long way back to the gate of our large empty house.

I was myself again. I only needed that small escape. Now I will add my touch to our home. I must sew curtains. I must purchase us some decent pans for cooking. I do not need his proposal. I will venture into the city and see to our marriage ceremony myself.

There was my Prideux with a candle at the doorway.

“I was worried. I was coming to find you,” he said. “Where did you go for so long?”

“I went to the beach,” I will say. “I swam naked in the ocean lights.” He will look at me as though I were some mythical creature who did what she wanted.

—

My dear. That is not what really happened. That was all just a story I told myself.

—

What really happened is that I went to the water’s edge, but I did not even take off my shoes. I did not expose my private diamonds. I did not know myself in the water at all. I kept the failing lamp on the entire time. I was too afraid. I balanced the lamp in the sand so the light would ease out to mimic a full moon. The only sound was the ocean and the kerosene
humming from the lamp. I walked to the water and splashed the coldness on my face. Then I retrieved the lamp. Prideux’s rubbers were too big for my feet and I slid back with each step. This made me feel more afraid, as though the ocean were holding on to me. It wanted to take me like it took my father.

When I finally arrived back at the main road, I began to run. I ran harder than I have since childhood, for ladies do not run. I tripped in the large shoes. My lamp shone at wild angles ahead of me. There was a bit of rock. Here was a slice of tree. Everything ahead looked as splintered and as threatening as what I was leaving behind. I did not turn into a Duene or a soucouyant.

When I reached the big black gate, I was just a woman. My ribs were bursting through my chest. I wondered if what was inside of me could feel my ribs. I wondered if what was inside of me could feel. I was wet with sweat. I lay down on the ground and stared at the weak moon.

Finally, the lamp burnt down and I walked the last bit of driveway to the house that was mine in my heart.

My Prideux was on the porch, leaning forwards. When he saw me, he rushed forwards with a bitterness that should have been my warning.

“You had me waiting here so long.” He did not ask me where I had been. Instead, it began to rain. Still, I felt defiantly magical, like some creature who had seen a hint that she might do as she pleased. I could walk down dark alleys of beach road. I could kiss the ocean and run all the way back.

—

Oh, dear. Please accept my apologies, for that, too, was a story.

—

The very truth, my love, is that I did not even make it to the beach for the baptism I had planned. I did not even get halfway down the beach road. I was too scared and it was too dark. I was not a shadow nor was I a bird nor
was I a mythical creature. Instead, I simply stood there and imagined myself going to the beach and swimming and then drowning or drowning myself. Then I turned back to the house. My lamp was dimming. It began to rain and I began to run back. No, no. Let me be true. I only walked back up the road through the rain. The cold rain beat down hard on my eyelids. I felt an abiding shame.

When I arrived at the gate, I had to rake through a dewy cobweb. I walked up the driveway and pushed myself through our door. Prideux did not even look away from the spiderweb he was tearing from a window.

I knew then that I would never return to what I had been.

The end of Kweku and Eeona is a real story, for true. Kweku had three days to convince Eeona to stay and bear the child in her belly before she would climb onto a boat or a plane or what have you, swimming herself toward her family. And her family, as far as she was concerned, was Anette and Anette’s offspring and no one else at all. Kweku already had children—boys and boys for Rebekah. But he loved this Eeona. He loved her the best his history had taught him how, but the best he knew was bad. He did not know that he had three days. He expected her to leave at any moment or not at all. He didn’t believe in her packing. But for a crazy woman, she was packing meticulously. She was folding her muted cotton bra, rolling her bloomers into a ball.

Now Kweku stood in the doorway of the bedroom. Inside his mind was flipping because he did want her to stay.

“Drapetomania,” he said. “That’s what you have.”

Eeona refolded the blue dress she had arrived in. It was too small for her now with her belly. “I suppose you want me to ask what that is,” which
was her way of asking, because even then she could not admit to him that she might be less then perfect.

“It means you wanting to run away, even though you ain have a cause.”

So she said nothing aloud, but she thought in her head that he was right. She had a runaway sickness. But there was a cause. There was a whole history of causes.

Perhaps if Kweku had tried “I love you” instead, he might have won her over and she would have been lost with him in mind and in body until she died—wife or concubine. But the spider man thought that “I love you” could never be enough. That had never been enough for Rebekah.

Though she wasn’t full-term, Eeona’s water broke the second day of her packing. She kept folding. It seemed as though she were folding all the linen in the world, even though all she had was the dress she’d come in, the nappy rags still in the closet, and the few frocks he’d bought her as her belly swelled. Now Kweku brought her sea grapes and tea, and left them at the door while he sat in the living room drinking rum, waiting her out. She took the food without giving him any attention. Then she napped as though there were not contractions crashing and waving and crashing again through her. The mucusy water seeped out of her and onto the bedsheets—just his bedsheets now. She awoke to see Kweku Prideux standing in the doorway, his pale skin glistening with the shower’s water. Though she couldn’t see it, she knew that the big patch of hair in the center of his back harbored a thick fuzz of bath soap. It was the one place he could never reach. She looked up at him; finally, she looked up. “I still cannot help but believe that I deserve it,” she said to him. “Then again, what is ‘deserve’?” In the throes of labor, Eeona’s beauty was receding like a wave.

In the doorway Kweku felt clean and empowered. When Eeona was too beautiful, it made him feel weak. When she was less beautiful, it made her feel weak. When she was weak, it was good for him. He would be good to her if she would just stay weak. “Eeona, my baby girl,” he said to her sweetly. “Your water broken. Come on. We have to go to the clinic so you
can have our baby healthy.” He thrust his arm into the room toward her. It was the first time in all these months that he had acknowledged that she was pregnant. When they made love, which they still did despite her packing, he would fuck her from the back or the side so he could avoid her stomach, the mass between them.

But now Eeona closed the suitcase and stood up. “This baby will go where the water goes.”

Kweku considered letting her be. People who are crazy have a logic that can be convincing.
But it is a wrong logic,
he thought again,
always wrong
. “Eeona, that baby going to drown in there.” But she wasn’t listening to him. Perhaps her water hadn’t broken at all. Kweku didn’t know what else to say to her. He had tried, hadn’t he? He walked through the living room to the balcony. He lowered himself and lay down on the floor. He stayed there until the air grew cold and goose bumps raised on his arms. The sky turned orange then purple like a bruise. He listened to the ocean beneath him. He fell asleep.

He dreamed of himself as a better man. As a McKenzie. As a father to sons. As someone brave enough to love a woman as he’d loved his Rebekah despite what the family men warned. What had happened to him, Benjamin McKenzie? Only in his dreams did he dare to ask himself this question. Perhaps he hadn’t tried hard enough with Rebekah. Perhaps he hadn’t given enough of himself to her. It was just that now, in exile, he couldn’t find the him of himself.

In the morning Kweku awoke on the balcony. He felt emptiness in his house. Perhaps Eeona had just walked out. Perhaps she’d killed herself. Kweku thought maybe it was time to move again and this time farther away. Someone was bound to recognize him soon enough on a flight to St. Thomas. He’d hoped for that, hadn’t he? But no, it was too late for hope. He’d fly to America perhaps, where no one would even have heard of the Virgin Islands. He smiled. Perhaps it was he who had the runaway sickness.

In the kitchen he opened the pantry and stared into it. There was bread and cheese, but Kweku did not see anything. He opened all the cupboards one by one and left them opened as he walked out of the kitchen. He went to the bedroom, thinking he would bury his face in the bed where Eeona’s smells might still remain. But there was Eeona, laid out across the mattress heaving with the swells of childbirth. Her suitcase, which was really his suitcase, beside her. Her eyes were open and watching the ceiling.

“Eeona,” he called quietly. “You leaving me? Go, then. But know is your own fault. You expect too much of me.” None of this was true. But how could he say the truth? How to say I am a fable? I am in need of you. I am in need of us. But I cannot bear my own need. How to say any of that?

He stepped into the room. The room was bare and white. Only the mattress and the nightstand as furniture. He and Eeona hadn’t even been married. They hadn’t even bought real furniture. They hadn’t talked about their child’s future, hadn’t sat on the pot while the other took a bath. There had been no relinquishing the radio station as a tiny gift, no frying the fish with the right pepper sauce for the other’s palate. They hadn’t really been lovers at all.

Eeona did not know why she was leaving. He had slept with other women since she’d arrived. This she knew, but even that was salvageable. He had stolen her, but it wasn’t that either. Hadn’t she, in a wild way, wanted to be stolen? Now all she wanted was for him to say the right thing. That he would put her name on the deed. That he would love her and this child, and put the land in their names. That she would be a lady with an elegant last name. That they would go into town together and be respectable. That he would not die and leave her. That he would let her call him Papa.

But how could she know all this, how could she say it? Instead: “Be my husband,” she beseeched him now. Right there on the mattress, hard into a too-early labor. Her face tightening and releasing like a heart.

And then, as if he did not know how this could kill her: “My love, I is somebody else husband.”

She must have known. Yes, it was true that he shaved the kinky hair on his head and arms and legs. But still. Despite his mythical chosen name, he was clearly a McKenzie, what with his skin so light he could pass easily for black Irish or Jew. And wasn’t it obvious which exact McKenzie he was—the lost one, Rebekah’s one? But Eeona was knowingly begging away her last grain of sane self-respect. “There is such a thing as divorce, Monsieur Prideux.”

“A man don’t leave his wife.” And because he was cruel, he said this kindly.

“You have already left her, Prideux.”

“She the mother of my children, Eeona.”

“I am about to be, as well.”

He looked at her and saw her face like a fist against the pain. “But Eeona, baby girl. That ain your role in my story.”

What lunacy was he talking? But it made a kind of lunatic sense to her. She had tried not to think about the time she’d seen him, his body covered in shaving soap as if it were a sweater. He’d taken the blade first to the knuckles on his toes and clean shaved his body of all its McKenzie hair. Shaved the parts he’d directed her never to shave on her own body. She tried to conjure the memory now so it would repel her. So she could convince herself that this spider man was not her man. Could never be. But the baby was coming regardless.

Afterward, her own silver hair was everywhere, matching the sheen of the new spiderwebs. It was beautiful, as though she and Kweku and the whole house had died and been sent to the lining of clouds. The baby was born still. Not alive. Dead. It was a boy, of course. Kweku Prideux was, after all, a true McKenzie.

Eeona did not cry. Instead, she held the lump of boy child to her chest and thought about her mother. Perhaps Antoinette had been right to return so many children to God before they were born. There was no one else to tell, so Eeona told Kweku that the child was named Owen Arthur.
The name would not do for a living child, but the child would not have to live with the name. And no one knew the child had almost existed except for the two of them. Kweku took Owen Arthur’s baby body and flung it over the balcony. He did not look to observe if it hit land or sea.

Then Eeona laid on her back until she could sit up. Sat until she could stand. Stood until she could walk. Walked until she found a boat. And did not stop until she was in bed with her sister.