A Simple Distance (12 page)

Mr. Bruce let go my arm. The four of us stood in silence, save the running engine, the drumming rain.

There was nothing I could say to take back the insults I had twice placed at Mr. Bruce’s bare feet; me in my eightydollar running shoes, soaked through with shame and caked with red clay. But I offered, as quietly as audible,
I am so sorry.

Thank God it was too dark for them to look me in the eye.

Mr. Petion broke the ice:
Let’s go get Ma Pascal.

As Mr. Bruce and I approached the car, I realized it was my mom’s jeep.

I found my voice.
This is my mother’s car.

Hill answered without even a hint of apology,
We heard she wasn’t using it this evening.

I knew enough not to respond right then. I was not so much in their favor as I’d been even an hour before; before I showed my true colors—the Pascal slipping out from under my costume.

But Hill, not quite finished with my punishment, continued as we filed into my mom’s jeep and headed toward Sommerset:
Do you know how your uncle’s party came to power?

It was a coup, a bloodless coup.
I remembered reading a clipping in Uncle George’s living room just after I graduated from college, when I stayed with him in De Canne.

Nearly bloodless,
he corrected my history.
There were two deaths. One man was shot. And a baby died from tear gas.

Mmm. I remember that now. I’d forgotten those two.

The car was silent again, the rain lessening against its roof, high beams clawing at the dark along the bumpy incline of the access road, back toward the pavement of the governmentsponsored street heading to Sommerset.

Once on the pavement, Mr. Hill shifted up, told me, as all eyes but mine knew to avert,
That was Mr. Bruce’s child. His little girl.

We drove through the intersection at Sommerset that rested at the mouth of its well-trafficked cove; left through the thinning road, no longer paved, but lined with homes of wood and tin.

The wind had sway with the trees’ tall fronds, and there sat my mother on Mr. Williams’s porch, with her arms around a rain-soaked goat.

CHAPTER 15

One-Mile is a strip of road that leads in, toward the mountains, from the sea at Port Commons. It is exactly one mile from start to finish.

Part of me felt as though Granny had always been on her front porch, staring out past the cliff, the muffled crash of the waves below. But I knew she hadn’t. I knew she used to make them all walk One-Mile every day for exercise, just before dinner, even when it was too windy and for every step forward it pushed them back two. The exercise was to make them strong. But my mom had trouble keeping up.

They’d walk until the “Y” at the roundabout that goes to either Milieu or deeper, into the forest where the dreds live, grow their cannabis, steal young girls—Granny said.

My mom told me that once when she couldn’t keep up, she just sat down right there, low in a ditch along the side of the road—the worst place to be when a storm is coming. And a big one was coming that night.

The rest of them kept going. But Uncle Martin went back for her with a rope. He tied one end around his own waist, the other around my mom’s. Dragged her home that way against strong winds.

Granny had Grampy give them both the switch for falling behind. Granny always said the country was no place to be weak.

Uncle Martin said he’d walked that stretch of road more than any other in his entire life, remembered it
like the back of Grampy’s hand
: the overgrown soccer field; the bus stop’s blue and white cement blocks; Granny Lavall’s wooden shack; the forest, close, close; and that rope, burns on their stomachs.

My mom didn’t joke about it like Uncle Martin.

* * *

Could it have been as simple as giving shelter to a goat in a storm—my mother’s apology, as we came to fetch her home? But who was she protecting in her stupor?

We pulled up next to Mr. Williams’s house, stopping there in the narrow road, clogged the muddy artery. Mostly walkers, rarely cars, passed through. The rain, by then barely falling, allowed for open doors; through his, one of Mr. Williams’s boys, on a stoop in the center of their one room, beneath a dangling cord and its electric bulb.

Mr. Williams leaned against one side of the doorway, greeted the men—Messrs. Hill, Petion, and Bruce—with a nod, ignored me completely.

I returned the favor, left my mother’s car for her side, next to the goat. But she didn’t seem to see me. And while I wanted her to reach out to me, it was hard enough to extend my own hand, grab hold, help carry her weight.

I had to tug to break her grip on the damn goat, pull her to the backseat of her jeep, lock the door, leave her there.

The men had moved inside and Mr. Hill had the keys to the car. So I had to follow them in, past the porch and its wind-weary stock. As I strode, head high with the false confidence of my family’s airs, out the corner of my eye I caught sight of its left hind leg—marred thick with scar.

I blinked it aside, but not really. So the goat had lived, after all. And Mr. Williams had gotten a windfall: Granny’s cash and the goat to boot. The goat was quiet though. That night I was the only one screaming out, in the bush, for aid.

I crossed the threshold, into Mr. Williams’s wooden room, and all their eyes jerked up at me. The four of them: Hill, Petion, Williams, and Bruce; huddled together around the single table, mostly used for dominoes, suddenly looking like it was them rolling on the ground together out back at Godwyn instead of Susan and me—doing something equally unspeakable. Caught in a private act. Embarrassed.

Mr. Hill was first to clear his throat, fish around in his mouth for something to say, find his tongue.

It’s settled, then
. He rose from his seat, the others following his lead.
Come, Jean, let’s get your mummy home. She needs to sleep
.

What’s going on?
I asked, as they filed past me, out the door and back into the night. But no one answered.

We drove back up the hill, from Sommerset to Godwyn, Mr. Williams following us in an old Toyota.

At Godwyn, I put my mother to bed. She, falling asleep before her head hit the pillow that buffered her loaded little gun. I pulled off her sandals, foot by muddy foot, removed her wet clothes, covered her up with a white cotton sheet, and left her to commune with Grampy and Uncle George.

I closed the door behind myself on the way out.

Mr. Williams and Mr. Bruce must have gone back down to Sommerset. But Hill and Petion had followed me into the house and made themselves at home while I was with my mom. They’d pulled out chairs, Orange Fanta, rum, and a cold cooked chicken from a brown paper bag in the back of Mr. Petion’s brother’s truck. They made themselves more comfortable, there in my mother’s dining room, than I would likely be that entire visit.

Mr. Hill told me to get some plates, pepper sauce, and glasses, rolled his eyes at his friend in mock paternal horror.
She is just like Susan, na? These children would have us all eating out of paper bags if it wasn’t for us reminding them how to be civilized.

In the kitchen for the place settings, I found the plates next to the window above the counter. Its shutters open for air, I looked out into the night. As our picture window framed my view of the world when I was a child, that one framed my mother’s. You could see the mountains: layered and canopied with wide green fronds. You could see the graves, the plum tree, and all the paths that led us everywhere we’d been: chasing Mr. Williams’s goat, my mom, Grampy’s bay leaves, his ghost.

The first time I met Fatima, grating soursop to pulp for juice, she saw me in my running shorts out that window. She said to me,
Boy, you sure Sophie’s girl all right. You’ve your mummy’s legs.

Back when my mom was young, her legs may not have run like mine, but they carried her swift into trouble. When my uncles would sneak out Grampy’s motorcar, push it to the road so they wouldn’t be heard, drive themselves, Auntie Clara, and my mom into Bato to make mischief for the night—a two-hour trip back then, top speed—her legs caught the attention of the young school master from the Grenadines.

So even when she’d be so tired she’d nod off the next day during lessons, she never got switched for it. Instead, the school master would slip his hand under the skirt of her school uniform to wake her with his touch.

Before she knew it, he was doing favors for my uncles, lending them turns on his motorbike so they’d say favorable things to Grampy about him. My mom was just seventeen when they married. He was twenty-three. He’d sold his motorbike to buy her engagement ring. But Grampy paid for the rest.

After my parents had moved to the States, Grampy’d ask them, when they’d call,
Why live like a pauper in a strange country when you can live like a king in your own?

Living like a king in Baobique, though, came attached to strings I guess my father’d rather cut, because they didn’t stay there long. Even with that view: forest so green it breathed right along with you; cliffs; the ocean; the single black paved road negotiated by Uncle George, peeking out just around the bend down there.

During rainy season, when the wind picked up, it combed through the fronds, and the trees just swayed, swayed in its wake.

And there I stood, on that precipice, wondering what was next.

Sometimes there is a simple distance through which we must pass before we can even begin. Sometimes that distance is all wound up—tight on itself like a tangle—inside us.

I gathered the plates and glasses, returned to lessening strangers in the dining room.

* * *

At the end of our meal as well as the end of the rum, the two men joked about my uncle.
At first
, Hill said,
George didn’t look like politics at all
, because he couldn’t curse the other politicians in patois. Grampy only ever allowed the King’s English to pass from the lips of his children.

They told me they’d take me, in the morning, to Tours. They’d talk to Granny with me. Uncle Martin had already been called, CarCom to CarCom; his morning appearances in Bato continued to the afternoon. They’d stay with us at Godwyn tonight, on the couch and the extra bed.

Whether I liked it or not, they were all I had. So I practiced being calm with them.

Before we turned in, Mr. Petion took me, again, into his confidence, like at the airport earlier that day. Tipsy from rum, he told me they’d received some convincing evidence from Mr. Williams that evening. Mr. Hill was good and ready for a fight with the Pascals because Granny had embarrassed Susan at Uncle George’s funeral—wouldn’t let her place flowers or pay her respects. He told me Mr. Hill did not like his only daughter to feel she had no place on this island over
some such silly women’s business
. The hospital at Port Commons needed a new Chief of Staff and Susan had recently expressed a strong interest in staying on the island, since her residency in Nassau had reached its end. There was also a young engineer in Bato, just back from London, an eligible bachelor Mr. Petion had had his eyes on for his only godchild.

So she was there. Susan was in Baobique.

From the bathroom sink, Mr. Hill called out. He told me not to worry,
the Pascals aren’t the only family in Baobique, you know.
Directly to my uncle, Hill shouted out open shutters,
George, your young Pascal is fighting back, man. Fighting back!
His loose chest bouncing from the chuckle. Softer, he added,
And she’s not alone, boy. She’s not alone.

There, at the sink, Mr. Hill could have been my Uncle George, readying himself for tomorrow’s trial, rinsing his briefs before he went to bed. But Uncle George was lying out back next to Grampy under the guava trees, protected by a layer of red clay from the swift midnight breeze.

CHAPTER 16

Morning woke only moments before I did, woke me with wind and the sting of fear in my chest, knocked over a tin wheelbarrow next to the shed. Seemed to me a storm was again approaching. Hurricane season. My stomach was in knots.

Mr. Petion and Mr. Hill wanted some aspirin for their heads.
Perhaps a little too much of the Bajan rum last night,
I suggested, as they washed up. I put the water on to boil for instant coffee.

We took the aging sedan Mr. Williams had driven up behind us from Sommerset the night before, something vaguely familiar in its worn velvet seats, and left my mom, still sleeping, in Fatima’s strong hands.

The night before on Mr. Williams’s porch, reaching back for her, tugging her body, limp with resignation, to the car, and buckling her in, I’d felt her weight was slowing me down. Never mind I wasn’t going anywhere myself—had been stationary for some time.

Mr. Hill drove quick and twisty along the winding coastal road to Tours, hugging corners by instinct—the drop to the left, unthinkable, off those cliffs.

From the backseat, I could see early risers waiting along the side of the road for a lift into Bato, or for the bus—a minivan with an extra row of seats. We drove against the flow of traffic, mostly a handful of trucks. Flatbeds holding more bodies than cargo. It was not banana day, and anyway, banana day was not what it used to be. Not since the European Union took away the British subsidies.

Less curious than anxious, little to lose at this point, I asked Mr. Hill,
How did you know what my grandmother was up to with my mom’s house?

He answered,
This island is smaller than you think, Jean. Valerie, your granny’s maid, works for me on the weekends.

* * *

Granny dangled the family house over my mom’s head like a carrot, keeping her under foot so there was always someone around to step on. One day she said Godwyn would go to my mom, the next day took it back. All, she said, because of either me and Susan, or a goat, depending on whom she was talking to.

Here’s the irony. Not so long before my grandfather acquired his land in Baobique, at Tours, at Godwyn, at Milieu, I would have had a stronger claim to it than either of my grandparents.