Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel Read online

  And though The Homecoming crashed miles away on the shoals of Anegada, Owen Arthur Bradshaw’s body was finally found washed up from the sea on the bay right there in St. Thomas’s Water Front. His face was liquid but the rest of him was unmistakable to anyone who had seen him naked in life. Antoinette wept and believed that her husband must have been trying to get back to her. But it must be said that he was equidistant between Villa by the Sea and Rebekah’s red-shuttered house. And of course, Antoinette was not the only woman of his heart who was there at Villa by the Sea.

  Most said drowned. But the Frenchies knew that Owen Arthur was a man of the sea and men of the sea don’t just drown. They walk into the sea with stones in their fists. They drink and bow into a heavy wave. They are smashed in the head by a loose anchor and heaved into the sea.

  From Anegada came the stories. Someone had seen the little side boat gliding away empty as the big ship sank. Someone else had seen a large beautiful bird circling a figure eight just as the boat began to rumble. It was whispered that the murderess was a woman with backward-facing feet and hair like the sea. Perhaps it was the captain’s witch mistress, who knew magic and knew love and knew that they were one and the same, despite any sin.

  Eeona, who knew she could sink ships, could only blame herself.

  Owen’s mates came in from around the closer islands. Mama Antoinette didn’t fling herself into the arms of any of these, as we’d all imagined she must do to save the family’s wealth. No, that Antoinette had her own ideas. No men even boarded at Villa by the Sea, which was too full of women for it to be decent. Male mourners stayed in the new Grand Hotel, right there in town, which otherwise catered to visiting Americans.

  During the wake, Owen Arthur’s bloated body lay in his marriage bed with a linen spread to hide the sea-mauled face. It was noted by Liva Lovernkrandt that Owen’s buttons were still sewn tightly on. Antoinette felt there had been no point in removing the buttons from his clothes. Nor did it make sense to cut out his pockets. He didn’t need this help to swim easily up the River Jordan. Clearly her husband had been swimming. Or drowning.

  The captain’s daughters, one too young and the other too shocked, also failed to tie his toes together so he wouldn’t turn into a jumbie and haunt them. But Owen Arthur would have haunted them anyway. This is what parents do.

  Three months after the funeral Eeona was still seventeen when Antoinette grasped her hand and said, “You are now the mother of Anette and mademoiselle of Villa by the Sea.” Antoinette packed one small bag full of the lace gloves that were her trademark. “I will return with iguana-skin shoes,” she announced, before she boarded the big boat and gushed off to New York toward her own slippery freedom.

  So before Eeona turned eighteen, she was no longer rich, no longer engaged, and no longer studying French in Tortola. But Eeona was still lustfully beautiful. Only now beauty was just about all she had.

  18.

  Antoinette had not been swept away to America on a whim. Staying at Villa by the Sea was not an option, really. The family needed money. She had considered returning home to Anegada. But her parents were gone now. Perhaps her lobsterman was there and perhaps he had resisted marriage. But Antoinette had two children, both for the man she’d married over him. Really, there was nothing there in Anegada except beauty. And that wouldn’t pay one expense. Rebekah had once told Antoinette that she would not mother Anette. As a widow, Antoinette now knew this was a harkening that she would leave the island. More than a harkening, it was a kind of permission.

  It was Liva Lovernkrandt who told Nettie about the Negro designer who wanted pretty, high-colored girls to sew and design for him. Actually, Liva had offered it as an option for Eeona, who everyone knew had lost her fiancé and her father and her future. It would have been rude to suggest that Antoinette needed the work.

  But once in Manhattan, Antoinette found that the Fashion Institute for Coloreds was only a grave of an office. One woman sitting at the typewriter but not typing, just there at her casket of a desk in order to tell Nettie, “The position is not available. Don’t you know, there is nothing available? Not even for the whites.” Then the woman turned aside to cough a spittle of blood delicately into a colored kerchief.

  There were no jobs in our United States of America. There was no milk and no honey. Instead there was a Depression. The streets were paved, but with litter as much as anything. And at night men would throw food out onto the streets and then other human beings would descend on the garbage like rats. Handsome women wore the designs from Liva Lovernkrandt’s magazines, but the dresses seemed to rattle instead of ring. The city was tall and dreary, and even the rats were hungry.

  The buildings were impossible mountains and carried ill-mannered people up and down as if they were freight. The food was more expensive than any food in the Virgin Islands. And the cold was colder than any cold Mama Antoinette had known.

  19.

  ANETTE

  This my first memory. Not history book or library archive, or even imagination. My own actual memory. Mama lying in bed. She beautiful and brown but still she look like a cloud. Like she going to just float off. Eeona tell me to step back. Mama gone, she say quiet-quiet. But I know I seeing Mama right there. “Dead,” Eeona say now, less quiet. “Dead like my doll?” I ask. Eeona look at me funny, but nod. Then I put my hand flat on Mama chest. In that place where my head always used to rest. And just so, Mama breathe. I make she breathe. I look at Eeona. “I bring my mama back to life!” I say. But Eeona just looking vex and shaking she head. Like I ain do enough. Because is true, when I look back, Mama ain breathe again.

  I so confuse because Mama reach back from America just to go again, but gone in a worse way. I want to ask Eeona why, but Eeona now marching up and down the room and talking some nonsense about a brother. And I thinking maybe he dead, too. Gone. Or maybe he coming to help we now that Mama gone. I go to Eeona and stand up strong in front she, make she stop pacing and chatting. “Sister Eeona, why God ain save Mama?”

  Eeona answer fast like she been waiting for this question. “God is not in the business of saving. You must do that yourself.” And is then I know that, yes, I could have save Mama. If only I had really think harder when I touch her chest. If I only had really believe.

  Then Eeona march out the dead room. She turn back and call for me to follow. She close the door and watch me tight. She speak tight. “We can still salvage your education and your decency. I make that commitment.” As if I care about any of that.

  20.

  There was no money. There was debt. Not only to Lovernkrandt, but to other businessmen who had helped Owen secure his new cargo. Financial assistance was needed but it would have been too disrespectful, so instead the women of Antoinette’s circle gave flowers. Endless useless flowers. The villa smelled like a whorehouse. The walk to the cemetery lacked the proper austerity—might have been a Carnival troupe what with all the shades of purple in the petals. Eeona made little Anette and Miss Lady leave all of the flowers at the grave. Those that were delivered directly to the house stayed until they stunk.

  The evening all the flowers finally died, Miss Lady placed a cup of tea beside Eeona and stood there until Eeona, swimming in her thoughts, looked up. “I have my own children,” Sheila Ladyinga said to Eeona. “My three girls almost grown up but they still needing me.” Three daughters? Almost grown up? “I going to get some cook and clean work at one of the hotels. You need to sell Villa by the Sea, Eeona.” She could leave off the “Miss” because she had braided Eeona’s hair. She had wiped Eeona’s backside. “The Yankees already come around asking. Get you some money to start.” Miss Lady didn’t say “start over.” She was kind that way.

  Everything was happening fast-fast. Eeona felt as though she were an earth full of standpipes that had been turned on full. Her head filled with liquid and became heavy. She opened her mouth to let it out. Water came. But in a drip, like saliva. She was not a standpipe. Eeona was just a girl who had never come aroun
d to forgiving her father for being her father or forgiving her mother for being his wife. Now everything that Eeona was—favorite daughter, desired debutante, even young miss of Villa by the Sea—had fled from her. And here was Anette needing her for mooring.

  21.

  EEONA

  Before she died, Mama had taken my hand and then had spoken quite clearly. “You have a brother. Your father’s outside child. Esau McKenzie. Same age as Anette. Please. Watch out for Esau and Anette.”

  I twisted my hand from hers and stepped away. I had not wanted to think at all about Owen Arthur having another woman and that woman not being me. Nor was it clear if Mama meant for me to care for this unknown brother or to be careful of him.

  22.

  It was their last evening at Villa by the Sea. The last supper of sorts. Miss Lady, who was not a Miss at all but a Mrs., brought Eeona and Anette a loaf of warm butter bread and some cheese that she had bought fresh that morning. She picked them some lemongrass bush from the yard and they all three had tea. For a month now the house had been emptying out of furniture. Already the living room and parlor were caverns. The things that had been their things had been hauled away by hand, by burro, and by man-pulled wagon.

  After supper, Miss Lady left them. She already had a job, working in the new Gull Reef Club hotel over on Water Island. She would be a cleaner there, later a cook, then eventually head chef. “If you need anything,” she’d said to Eeona before turning and walking out, never offering the second half of the sentence.

  Anette’s little bed had been sold off, so when she became sleepy, she hummed herself into slumber right there at the remaining supper table. But when she awoke, it was dark and quiet except for the crickets and the singing tree in the backyard. The house was a large one, but she went where she used to go when seeking safety. Eeona was there in Mama Antoinette’s high mahogany bed. Anette climbed the little bed stairs. Eeona felt the small warmth of a new body and moved from it.

  In the morning Eeona nearly screamed to see Antoinette lying in the bed beside her, for Antoinette’s body had been buried over a month now. But then Eeona realized that it was only the runt copy of Mama, the baby daughter now shook awake from sleep. And Eeona felt annoyed that this little sister thought it was her place to sleep in the same bed with her.

  No one had put down money for Antoinette’s bed and no one would, for Antoinette’s disease was a contagion. After the family left, Mr. Lyte, who had not been paid by the Bradshaws for almost a year now, would burn the bed into ash.

  That morning the sisters packed their belongings. That done, Eeona dragged Antoinette’s rocking chair to the veranda and began rocking. It was the chair where Antoinette had nursed each child and the chair where she had sat to tell stories. Eeona rocked like it was a spell. Like maybe she thought the chair was a boat and she could, if only she rocked hard enough, get it out to the water and across the harbor. It was frightening for a little child to watch Eeona, serious-faced, rocking in a frenzy, lost in a daydreaming episode. So little Anette did not watch. She turned and looked at the sea. The sky was open and clear, and had a tint of yellow in the air, showing how perfect the sun was. But Anette saw the sad clouds coming from across the harbor with their bundle of tears.

  They each had eaten a mango and some kenips for breakfast but now it was afternoon. They were hungry but there was nothing to eat in the house. Mr. Lyte arrived with a burro and pulled their bundles onto its back. The dark cloud arrived with him.

  The wind picked up. When their belongings were well tied to the burro, Eeona stood—the chair still rocking. She stepped down the stairs and Anette followed. Eeona walked with her back so straight one would have thought she was headed down to a great martyr’s death.

  The rain came like a sheet across the water and whipped toward them and then over them. And then it was gone before they’d even had a chance to contemplate escaping back into the house. But now they were sopping. Just so, they walked beside the burro, and Mr. Lyte tried to talk and little Anette tried to listen but Eeona would not speak. Speaking would make this ritual real and it was not real. Could not be real to Eeona.

  Anette had always sat with Mama during church and so she had heard of the pillar of salt. The girl had understood it as a parable of not letting go. But she did not want to let go. So she did look back to see the rocking chair pumping furiously in the left-behind wind.

  Eeona’s severe walk kept them moving slowly. The shame made more shameful by the indignity of making their way in wet clothes. They made their way to the little flat Eeona had secured, a flat the size their parlor had been. They left all the dead and dry funeral flowers behind. They left the rocking chair. They left the house and the land. They left it or it had been taken from them. Same thing.

  For Eeona, this day was like the end of her days. No mother, no father, no land, no Villa by the Sea. Nothing for which she could say, “You belong to me.”

  For Anette, this day would become the beginning. It was the same memory as Eeona’s but the feeling was opposite. No mother, no father, no villa, no land. Nothing for which she could say, “I belong to you.”

  23.

  ANETTE

  While my friends was learning to play marbles, I was learning from Eeona how to sit like a lady. How to curtsey. How to walk with my back very straight. How to sip tea from our chip-up china cups. How to talk in so-called proper English.

  But we was living in Savan and we wasn’t rich no more. I used to get tease for wearing rubbers to grammar school. Now the boys pay plenty money to play basketball in rubbers. But back then the shoes was poor people’s shoes and that was that. My friend Gertie couldn’t defend me with words, but she defend me with she fists. Even in grammar school Gertie knew how to fight. I mean, is fight she coulda fight. She talk rough, talk like Eeona had never wanted me to. Is Gertie she self who convince me to go to that party years later where I meet the man of my life.

  I was the young Bradshaw sister. I didn’t remember Papa at all. I was too small when he drown on the boat. Too small when Mama come back by boat to drown in she own blood. I wasn’t born by Transfer Day, but I born when everybody done decide we all going to be American. And then I was a orphan in fast time. So those two things, orphan and American, always seem the same to me.

  Eeona say she sell the house and everything in it, for food and a few months on the flat. She say that’s all that was left once the debt to the Lovernkrandts was paid. Then she say the house burn down—face tight and funny like she self might have flick the match. Eeona tell me we forbidden to go to the place where the villa used to be because of some law Lovernkrandt make against us.

  But in truth they say Frenchtown is for boat people. I don’t trust them things, boats. Boats kill off both my parents. I had just want to be really alive for as long as possible. That my goal. To live. To be up under a man who love me ’til death do us part. To make babies so I could keep on living after I dead. Eeona believe in ladylikeness and lineage. But I ain so.

  Let me tell you a story. One day a boy in my third-grade class name Franky make me a fake villa out of aluminum. Like for a doll so, with no roof. You could just sit a dollie down in it and start playing. Inside had a toonchy pair of chairs, a table, a love seat. He had carve tiny flower designs onto the front door. He good with he hands. Could have been an artist maybe if life was different.

  The Franky boy present the dollhouse to me with a puff-up chest one day after school. The villa was fastened onto a wood board but I was very careful, so afraid it going fall and crumple or scratch. I carry it home, up the little hill. I don’t look up or down the street, just keep my eye fastened on the little house and looking through the little window at the little love seat. I there wondering if my sister could make me some little pillow to be like a bed. She get the stitching skills from our mother. I thinking Eeona going to like it, since she always going on about our Villa by the Sea. In fact, I worry she might thief it from me. When I reach our flat, I look into the window at Eeona
taking a siesta, I see her lovely hair spread out all around her face.

  But when she wake, is as if she could have smell it. She walk right into the kitchen. She barely glance at me doing my sums before walking over to the aluminum miniatures.

  “How did you come by that?” she ask. She just wake, but already she evil like a needle.

  “Franky Joseph gave it to me.”

  Her eyes look startle, as though I slap she. “Little Franky Joseph is not of our class. You will return his offering tomorrow morning. Take it off the table. Put it on the floor.”

  The next morning I walk the toy house back to school. It a kind of walk of shame. I had really want that house. All night I been playing games in my head. Seeing me eating at the dollie table. Seeing me sitting on the dollie settee. Seeing me in that house like it own me.

  Outside of the schoolroom, I ain have to find Franky. He find me. The aluminum shimmering in the morning sun. “Why you ain keep it home, yes?” He voice, poor thing, was hopeful. As if he think maybe I bring it back to show it off to my friends. When I tell him that my sister making me give the fake villa back, you could have see in his eyes that he understand. He stand up watch me like he know something about me that I ain even know. Then he take the house from me and fling it in the bush. It crumple onto itself. It stay there in the sun for months. Winking at me whenever I walk to school.