Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel (20 page)

After Eeona reach back to St. Thomas, I had to warn Jacob. I tell him that she more than pretty. That he going to think she the most pretty woman he ever see. But he say that he know all about she. That every man raise on this island know of her, but that he don’t want no woman who every man fall in love with. He just want the one he love.

But he still talk a little funny about she. “I heard that she a little wild,” he say, like is a question he asking.

“Wild? She only wild by mistake.”

“Well, I’ve heard that she does get a little twist in the head. Go wandering when she get ready.”

“Just be a gentleman and you going be fine.”

He arrive at the door with a bunch of anthuriums.

But here is the thing. Eeona eyes them looking like empty shells since she return. But from the minute I tell she that I going around with somebody new, her eyes them now squinching up like they full of sand. But she ain ask no questions. She behaving strange. Like she drain of energy. She ain saying where she been these months or what she doing back or what
she going do now. She just find she itinerary to America and rip it slowly into pieces as tiny as dirt.

When Jacob come through the door, she watching hard as if she know him and know something bad. When she ask his background, he speak in his Yankee English, explaining that he is a McKenzie and who he for, who he come from. But is like he name alone reach out and strangle she. Jacob face watch Eeona and he come like a piece of stone. Only when he look at me do his face soften, though it soften in a kind of confusion because Eeona like she hate he on site.

She ask what he know of his father, and he tell she he ain seen he father, Benjamin McKenzie, since he small and that his mother alone raise him and he older brothers. Then Eeona stand up and speak loud so it come like she talking to a crowd of people, “I regret to inform you, sir, that you are no longer allowed to court my sister,” which is the most words she string together since she appear in my bed two nights before.

I stand up. “Eeona, what the ass? You gone crazy?”

She twist her head around at me in such a fast way it seem she a iguana. “Yes, I have gone crazy. Now I have returned to tell you, Anette, that you will do as I say!”

And this is such a strange thing that it stump me. I ain have time to gather myself and slap she in the face before Jacob stand and said, “Nettie.” Just my name, as though this rigamarole was what he expect. After all, is he tell me that she wild. With the tips of his fingers, he pat the air down as though is water he testing to see if it hot or cold. Simmer down, he trying to tell me. Is okay. Is okay. Then he back out of the house like he can’t turn around. Like he must keep he eye on the enemy. Eeona stand there in the doorway blocking me from following, like she a mountain.

But I ain really bother with she. I go to the bedroom where Ronalda there napping. I crawl on the bed, careful not to wake my child, and I ooze out the window. Jacob going up the hill and I catch up to him as he turning. He look at my neck and at my hair, but I reach up and grab his face to
make him look in my eye. I feeling the tears like a stone in my throat. I feel I can’t speak.

“That’s not a beautiful woman,” he say finally. “That’s a soucouyant. That sister of yours best put her skin back on every night or I will salt it for her.” For a long few moments we let that sit between us. My sister a ugly witch living in a beautiful woman skin. But then he finally reach out, grab me, and swaddle he arms around me. We high up and we look down over the roofs, down the streets that leading right to the sea. I look with he at the sea and we hold each other as though we might go swim away this very instant. Then he turn and hold my face in he hands, like it belong to him.

“My mother will not allow us and your sister will not allow us.” Now he put the flat of his hand on my front, pressing my dress ’til he reach the small rounding belly.

When I walk back down to our flat, I can’t help but think about John Smith and Pocahontas, which I know all about because I studying to be a history teacher. About how they end up with other people. But still, I so stupid and so catch up in this romance that it seem romantic. It don’t seem impossible.

I start in on my sister as soon as she in earshot, while I still in the street and she still there in the doorway. “Every girl want a McKenzie,” I shout at her. “Even you, Eeona. A McKenzie would do even for you.” She standing in the doorway looking at me as I cross the road to her. I keep expecting that she going fuss with me for putting all our business in the street, but instead she just stand up there until I feel like maybe I should shut up. She don’t even speak to me until I get inside the house and she sitting down in that rickety rocker that she pick up from some garbage heap.

“He’s a good match for me,” I try again.

“You do not know the half of him.”

She speaking slowly and quietly, like she trying not to say the wrong thing, even though everything she saying sounding wrong to me. Then she lower she eyes to look down at she belly like she have something hiding
in there. This I ain never seen. I mean, I ain never seen my sister lower her eyes to anybody for any reason.

“Eeona. I know all I need to know,” I say gently. “He’s good to Ronalda. He will be a good father.”

She look up into my eyes now. “You have no idea what a good father is.” Now, that’s my Eeona. Getting riled up just by mention of Father. “Anette, this young man does not know what a good father is.”

I can’t bear to stand over her while she seem so softy, so I sit on the settee. Her moods like they all over the place and maybe she gone crazy for true. Maybe them episodes finally become more than episodes and become what she is.

“His mother is not a decent woman,” she continue. “His McKenzie father”—she say this slowly as though she reciting something she just teach she self—“was a poor example of husbandry.” And now she look up at me with her usual stern Eeona face. “Do you understand my meaning, Anette?” And her face is finally fierce, as if she know these people good.

I confuse, so I just say what I really mean to say. “Eeona, you too late for whatever it is harassing you so. I done love him.”

She lean forward, her back straight as a board, looking like she might ram her head into mine. “Anette Bradshaw, did I not warn you against a McKenzie called Esau?”

“His name is Jacob, Eeona. You thinking of the elder brother, Saul, maybe. I understand your worry. I know Saul is the sweet one who don’t go for woman. But mine is Jacob. Jacob McKenzie.”

She watch in my face like she casting a spell. “He is Esau. Ask him if he is not Esau.”

But why I going ask the man such a thing? Not on he Army badge or he driver’s license, not what he friends does call him. Why I going ask the man such stupidness when I know what it is really going on? Eeona jealous. She think I can’t tell that she run away and reach back sour, and that it must be that whatever episode she having is over some man? I done had
two man already, so I can easy put two and two together. Must be she finally give that cherry away, but then the man wasn’t so sweet.

It ain my fault, I want to tell she. It ain my fault that the reason Eeona gone bazadie is that she heart get break. “Eeona. I sorry you taking issue. I real sorry, but he the one for me.”

“Not this one,” she say firmly, with her hand them tight like she have my Jacob there in she fist.

I stand up and walk to the next side of the room because I realize that I ’fraid she might lunge at me, though this ain nothing she do before.

“We have to marry, Eeona. With or without your consent.” I put both my hands on my belly, where the baby there blooming, so she can understand my meaning. Just then Ronalda wake up in the next room with a screaming.

Jacob had known who Anette was from the moment he’d sat down next to her at that party. Well, he knew she was the wife from Ronald’s picture. He even remembered seeing her at the dock in that red dress when he kissed the ground, and she was there staring at him as though they already had a history together. But he did not remember running to her on the beach when they were both eight years old, her red dress swimming around her, her queen conch shell crooning in his ear. That was like a dream. And dreams, like all vital things, have to be written down to be really remembered.

When Anette was nine months pregnant, and clearly growing weary of waiting, he told her his plan. “Once the baby is born, we’ll marry. My mother will support us once the baby comes.” Anette had nodded with eyes facing the sea. She had thought they would be married and living together already. Perhaps she didn’t understand his mother-love because she
couldn’t remember her own mother’s love. Or perhaps sister Eeona was right, in a small way, about him. That he couldn’t know how to be a father. Anette wanted to ask Jacob about Esau, but she’d become too reticent to ask him anything.

She and Jacob walked into the water and made love to each other with their hands. The contractions kept coming hard until she finally walked out of the water and noticed that her own water had broken.

Eve Youme saw Jacob’s face first, before she saw her mother’s. This is why her mother couldn’t save her from what she became. The only one who might save her was her father.

He called her Eve, for she was the first female McKenzie anyone had ever known. And like the biblical Eve, she would lose her father. But Jacob wanted the baby when he saw her, even though he let her go. She really did look like the first thing ever created. Jacob was God. Anette was Earth. Eve was of them both. And Eve went wild, of course; what other choice did the first woman have?

But naming is a voodoo all parents do. Anette listed the child’s second name as Youme. She’d spent hours in the island’s library looking up baby names instead of studying for the teaching certificate. The name didn’t mean “ours” as she’d first hoped. It meant “dream.” But that also made sense and perhaps what was ours was all a dream anyway. Something to keep striving for or something all in our mind—depending. And as these things go on island, the child was never called Eve. She was called Youme early on, but in the islands’ history she will simply be called Me. History could do that, change a person’s name. History was something so simple and insistent that none of us has escaped it. History even derailed Jacob and his Anette.

You see, another American war was brewing, this time in Korea. And it turned out that there was only one way for Jacob to avoid being swept into that one. And that way was not sinking into the woman he loved. Despite Jacob’s vow to Anette, his mother had still not approved. Indeed, she had told him he must never bring the new child to her house. Rebekah told
him that she could see in his future that he would end up in a Korean ditch if he did not listen to his mother very carefully. So, being the mama’s boy he was fighting and failing not to be, he listened.

“She already has one child. And a girl at that. You have no business raising another man’s child.”

“We will have help. And it’s not just some other man’s. It’s my mate’s. He’ll help, too.”

“Do you hear yourself, son? You can’t be a father to a daughter. You will get in trouble with girl children. And two of them? Never. Even the one you think is yours can’t be yours,” Rebekah said. “Remember, you’re a McKenzie and McKenzies have only boys.”

“Maybe I’m not really a McKenzie,” he said, remembering the man with the sea eyes.

Rebekah did not even pause. “That woman has put a magic on you. Don’t you dare forget who you are. Then you’ll never be a doctor and you’ll never be anything. Do as your mother says and you’ll be blessed. Go to medical school and don’t marry that Bradshaw girl. Really, son, you don’t want to be in Korea for just eighteen hours before you are taken hostage by the enemy and they strap you to a wooden board, tilt you backward, and pour the sea down your nose and mouth until it fill up your chest because you drowning. Or perhaps you will only think you drowning, which is worse, because you will lose your bladder and you will lose your tears and you will be cowed worse than a soldier in a segregated Army. So, to avoid losing your life and, more important, your manhood, you must go to medical school and become a doctor with the money those McKenzie uncles of yours provide because they believe you are one of them.”

Jacob heard his mother. He heard the parts that sounded like savior. He told himself that as a doctor he would be respectable. And as a doctor no one would tell him what restaurant he couldn’t eat in. As a doctor he would be responsible for life, like God. Then he would be able to save himself and his woman and his child . . . and, if possible, his woman’s first child, too.
He wouldn’t wed Anette now. He needed to get strong enough on his own. So he made another plan. As soon as he got back to America, he would go to his other brother who was a dentist and finally get his reddish tooth bleached white. No more dreams of crumbling seashell teeth. Then he would grin his way through.

He would come back for Anette when he was a man. As soon as he was free of his mother’s premonitions. He’d taken Ronnie’s wife. He’d fathered a child with a divorcée. These weren’t very gentlemanly moves. He wanted to do right now and doing right meant he must survive and become a man. Then a husband and a father. He tried not to think of his own McKenzie father who’d left and never returned. Tried not to think about his mother finding another man to love. He tried not to think that maybe that other man was his real father.

But Jacob always knew Anette like a hibiscus that closed in on him at night and made him feel like sand alone. For years he would slip his hands into other women and search for Anette.

It is my belief that human beings have children because of a need to love. This is not a sentimental position. After all, is it not so that men fought two great wars because they loved their big countries or their tiny string of islands?

When I returned from Freedom City, I found I could still love a child, despite what I had lived through. Indeed, it is the least I can do. I have loved Anette’s daughter, Eve Youme. Yet it is in her that I have watched my sins row before me.