The Empty Hammock (2 page)

“Ana, this is phenomenal,” her mother continued, ignoring the note of irritation in her daughter’s voice. “I was rooting around in the garden and I found a treasure chest.”

Oh no, she is getting senile just like Dad did
, was Ana’s first thought.

“Ma, I'm coming home this weekend. I will call Carey,” she said, referring to her brother, the doctor, “and ask him to check up on you today.”

“Ana,” her mother gasped, “are you implying that I'm off my rockers? Well young lady, let me tell you. I am completely sane, and I've already called Carey.  God knows that I cannot open this treasure chest on my own. It’s too big and too heavy and someone will have to lift it out of the garden and...”

“Oh, so it’s not a figment of your imagination,” Ana said and exhaled loudly and leaned back in her chair. This sounded intriguing. Since her mother moved to Rio Bueno in St. Ann, she took up gardening with a vengeance. “Ma, I'm coming home this weekend to see this discovery and to start my three-week vacation.”

“Yes,” her mother chirped cheerfully. “You can also help to clean out the basement; all your father’s things are down there. See you in two days then. I will ask Carey to put the chest on the back verandah, and then we wait until you come to sort out the gold that’s in it. Bye, sweetheart.”

“Bye, Ma,” Ana said and smiled. Her mother was eccentric and sometimes ditzy, but she knew how to make her daughter smile.

She was still smiling when her boss, the Managing Director of Probe Inc., Howard ‘The Prude’ Wilkins, strolled into her office.

“Ana,” he said, sitting before her, his big bulk taking up every square millimeter of the chair. “I am not sure Tanya can take over your responsibilities when you are gone on vacation. Probably she needs more training.” He peered at her above his glasses, his bulbous nose flaring.

Ana stared at him intently and wondered briefly if she was hallucinating. She had nightmares about this, that when her vacation was finally here, something would happen to snatch it away.

“Howard,” she said, shrugging and struggling to keep her voice level, and thinking of the mortgage on her new apartment. “I'm burnt out. I can hardly concentrate. I have been doing sixteen-hour days. My eucalyptus plant died yesterday. I eat my breakfast, lunch and dinner in the company’s cafeteria, and just last week, after living in my apartment for seventeen months, I found out that my neighbor is a famous drug dealer.”

Howard stared at her open-mouthed and she realized that finally she had snapped, and was on the verge of shouting. The busy office that had forty employees on her floor sounded a bit too quiet. They were listening intently to the conversation; she couldn't even hear Harriet’s nasal whine through the open door.

Mortgage or no, Probe Inc. could not pay her enough to give up her vacation. She was twenty-six and couldn't recall being happy during the last three years. It was get up and go to work, climb the corporate ladder, kiss every butt that was kissable and make money for the company.

Now after three years of hard, slugging work, she was the Vice President of Marketing. The newspapers described her as young, ambitious and ahead of the pack. But she was just young, disillusioned and would prefer not to see a computer screen for the next three weeks.

“Okay, Ana,” Howard sighed, eager to pacify her. “We will just have to struggle along until you get back. It was wrong of me to even suggest delaying your vacation, especially since you won that big account last week.”

She nodded at Howard and tried to inject a conciliatory tone. “I’ll see what I can do with Tanya for the next couple of days. She is, after all, the marketing manager and should be able to perform most of my job functions. I will ask the clients, who tend to be more difficult, to go easy with her and explain that she is new.”

“You are the best.” Howard winked and walked out of the office.

Phew, that was close, her vacation was almost snatched away and she was on the verge of clobbering her boss. She headed for the kitchen to prepare the sorrel and ginger tea and literally counted the minutes leading up to her vacation.

Ana drove into her apartment complex Tuesday night.  She was finally free. There would be no more Howard Wilkins, no more office memos, or Harriet’s wheedling, whiny tones for three whole weeks. This was her first vacation in three years—she felt like singing all the parts in Handel’s Hallelujah.

Her apartment complex was well maintained and the lawns immaculately groomed. She had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large living room and a well-equipped kitchen on the second floor with a balcony at the back.

At one point, she had a dog, but he ran away and lived with the neighbours on the first floor. They happily accepted him and then wrote her a long letter about her irresponsibility, and something about starvation. That must have been a year ago. She let herself into the hall and sighed.

Tonight, when she should be feeling on top of the world, she was just feeling low. The usual pleasure of opening her own door and breathing in her own space was gone. There was just emptiness, and for the first time in her life she had the strongest urge to review her life, and to catch up on who she was, before it was too late. She turned on the television and switched on all the lights while she shrugged off her work clothes and kicked off her shoes.

“Three people were murdered today after gunmen…” she hastily switched the TV channel. She was too tired and depressed for that.

“The murder rate for this year has reached a record high; so far 600 people have been murdered…” She switched again.

“It has been eight days now since the sudden disappearance of Gretna Jarrett; her kidnappers are demanding one million dollars for her return…”
Okay that’s it. No more news.
She switched the channels and music blared. The canned laughter from the comedies irritated her.

She looked at the clock, but it was only nine o’ clock. What did people do in their spare time? She couldn't believe it; she was a workaholic and didn't know how to have fun.

Her last boyfriend, Nick, had suffered from her negligence too. He must have hated her guts when he broke off the relationship. She could barely spare him any time or attention, especially to do fun things. When he had wanted to go to the movies or a party, she had wanted to study the competition’s marketing strategy. That was probably the time he snapped. She could barely remember them breaking up, but they must have because he had walked into her office with his wedding invitation and a self-satisfied look on his face.

She remembered looking at him and saying, “But we are still together. How could you cheat on me like this?” And Nick’s stony expression when he said, “Ana, we have not even spoken for six months. When we broke up, you said it was not the right time because you didn't have it scheduled.”

That was a year ago. Probably the same time her dog ran away.

She turned off the television and headed for the bathroom for a long hot soak in the tub then a manicure and pedicure.  She would eat a ton of chocolate and call… She paused. Actually, she didn't have anyone to call. She had been so caught up with work that she had neglected her friends.

She looked at herself in the mirror and started to make faces, eventually laughing at her attempts. Then she stared at her face intently. She could see herself as a little girl with ponytails; her little face crumpled into misery after one of her escapades landed her into trouble.

When her father was really angry with her because of one misdeed or the other, he would drag her in front of the mirror and declare, “Face yourself like a man.” He would hold her scrawny shoulders as she scowled defiantly at herself, until she broke down in tears.

“I'm sorry, Daddy.” 

“No,” he would say quietly. “Tell Ana you are sorry. Look her in the eye and tell her you will not do it again.”

She would have to look herself in the eye and confess, “Ana, I will not do it again.” For some strange reason, the bizarre punishment actually worked. She was more aware of herself and the consequences of her actions.

Her father was a good parent and she missed him terribly. His death had left a big void in her life. He was the person she went to when she had personal problems. His was the shoulder she cried on when she had problems with her career, or school, or boys. They would take long walks together in silence. Her father believed that silence was a healer of troubled thoughts.

She was always aware, though, that she, and the rest of the family had to compete against his addiction to history. His favorite obsession was the Tainos. He knew their customs and their beliefs and was always searching for enlightenment on how they lived while they were in Jamaica.

Even before his death at the family house in Rio Bueno, surrounded by his loving wife and tearful family members, her father’s main concern was to “warn” the people of the coming invasion of the Spanish and the regret that he failed. He had spoken of the past with such conviction, as if he had actually been there in the years when the Tainos were in Jamaica.

She wiped a tear that had escaped her eyes and turned away from the mirror. The diagnosis by the doctors was that her father was suffering from a delusional disorder and that his mental condition had reached a chronic stage. But the memory of her father’s sad expression, as he gazed at her imploringly, will forever haunt her.

“Ana please,” his raspy voice had tugged at her heart strings. “I am not going mad. I was there.”

“Where, Dad?” Ana had asked, tears streaming down her face.

“In the past. I know things the history books don’t.” His eyes had been alight with a hidden fire.

Ana had squeezed his hands reassuringly and nodded.

“You believe me, Ana, don’t you?” he had asked worried, his thick eyebrows drawing together over his sunken eyes. “Your mother doesn’t understand and your brother thinks I am psychotic.”

“I believe you, Dad.” Those last words spoken to her father replayed in her mind like a broken record.

Lies to reassure a dying man that he was not alone, that the bond between them was still very strong. She had watched him as he peacefully closed his eyes, secure in the knowledge that he was finally believed.

Ana left the bathroom and tried to forget the sad expression on her father’s face. She moved like an automaton toward her wardrobe and pulled her clothes from the drawers and flung them in her bag. There was now an inexplicable urgency for her to go home to Rio Bueno.

CHAPTER TWO

The drive out of Kingston was refreshing and the air felt better the farther she drove from the city. It was the middle of May and the summer season was approaching.

She smiled as she remembered the poetic line, ‘We have neither summer or winter nor autumn or spring,’ penned by a famous poet whose name eluded her—she hadn't paid much attention in English class during high school.

She loved history though, something she picked up from her father. She used to love to hear about old-time days, and her African grandmother would indulge her for hours, happy to have a captive audience.

She drove over Flat Bridge, a bridge that was built by the Spanish some time after the discovery of the island. The water was still and deep green, not even a ripple on its shiny surface.

Ana remembered driving over the bridge on her way to Kingston as a little girl and hearing exotic stories about the river. The main one being that a mermaid lived in its depths and would make her appearance at night, combing her long black hair and singing strange songs of a different language. Her father used to insist that she was a Taino mermaid and that he had seen her.

Whenever she reached this spot she always thought that she was well and truly on her way home. She was a rural girl at heart. There was just an inexplicable tingle when she headed into vast farmlands and spotted the blue, welcoming bands of the sea.

She grew up in Rio Bueno; the coast was washed by the Caribbean Sea while the Cockpit Country loomed over the inland. The small township was not far from Duncans in Trelawny and only six miles from Discovery Bay.

The sun was shining and the sky was brightly blue with little wisps of clouds. The air was cool so she turned off the car's air conditioner and wound down her windows.

She knew what was missing—music—she was a reggae enthusiast and Maxi Priest was her favorite artiste. She pushed the CD in the player and started singing aloong, “Alone in the crowds on the bus after work I’m daydreaming…” she was singing loudly and bobbing her head.

Life was good.
She would be at work now, but for the grace of God, she thought feelingly. Which reminded her, she would go to church with her mother every day, if she so desired. For the next three weeks, that she would be at home, she decided to be mommy’s little girl.

She waved to all and sundry as she accelerated her way to Rio Bueno: to the little boys who were selling June plums and otaheiti apples on the side of the road, and to the Rastafarian who sold statues and clothes in the dark, damp caverns of Fern Gully. The sugar loaf pineapple vendors looked at her oddly as she swept pass their stalls. She was happy and free.

******

Her mother was watering her rose bushes when she pulled up at the gate. She was in a brightly colored housedress and a washed-out looking tie head.