Bliss (26 page)

Eva assumed the Rowes to be the owners of the stone house.
Let me at least try to be friendly
. As Audrey walked back toward her place, Eva called out, “I guess it’s a good thing we were on Édouard’s boat.”

“Eddie wishes that was his boat,” she answered without turning back to face Eva. A bun of braids rested on her neck like a turtle’s shell. “But it’s his birthday tomorrow, so who knows.” And Audrey was gone.

Eva shut the screen and settled into the food like a hound. Dart woke up and joined her. They ate from the tins with found plastic spoons.

“You swam naked.” She was chewing and angry at his freedom. He was buoyant and without responsibility for anyone but himself.

“Earlier? Yep. You missed out. We’ll do it tomorrow. You’re gonna be glad you came here.”

Eva nodded.
Just say it
. She wanted to give him something to deal with. Wanted to come clean—be the pregnant woman who would either have the baby and get the tummy-rub accolades or have the abortion and get the pitying or disgusted looks. Eva wanted to state her truth on tiny Cat Island where she was far away from every-thing and almost everyone that mattered. “I hope you know,” she said, “I’m pregnant.”

“No way.”

“How about ‘congratulations’? Or, ‘How far along are you’?”

“You can’t be too far along.” He ladled more food in his mouth. “Are you having it?”

“I need to.” The everydayness about the way he was responding relaxed her.
Your boy’s moods swing
. She heard Ron’s voice in her head.

“Well then, congratulations. It’s a blessing.”

“I’ve been pregnant three times before.”

He put his spoon down. “Damn.” His face was full of pity and curiosity.

“It’s my problem.”

“I get it now,” Dart said, like long-standing questions had been answered. “Why you came over here.”

“Not to be felt sorry for.”

“You’re the one acting like somebody died.” He stopped. Started again, slowly. “Some people, a female in your situation might make the announcement, even to me, the man you’re over here with, the man who’s not even the father, with some happiness. I’m saying the reason you came over here is because the baby made up your mind for you. And maybe for me. This could be perfect. This could be the culmination of a dream neither of us dared to have. This, us all here—this could be the baby’s dream.”

“Dart, you’re not the father.”

“I just said that. I know that.” He scooted back a bit from the table. “Have I been?”

“No.”

“So maybe this one … is supposed to be spiritually ours. Maybe he wants us to be here. The three of us, together.”

Eva was stunned.
He. What if it is a he? A she? Not an it
. She didn’t speak.

“He’d get here, when?”

Eva knew that, or had a good idea. “May, I think. Or early June.”

“A Gemini,” Dart said like he was announcing a name at a commencement. “Powerful. Represented by twins. Gemini is the
communicator
of the Zodiac—you know? He’s communicating with you
now
, already! And 1999 will be the year of the Rabbit, I think, or the Cat. In Chinese, I mean.”

Twins
. “I haven’t thought about that kind of stuff—”

“Eva, look
around
here. What better place to be? Can’t you see yourself, getting round, being healthy, sitting in the water here, bringing our boy into the world in a place like this? This is a chance to be taken.”

There were footsteps. Then Audrey tapped on the door and walked in at the same time. She had crêpes suzette in a closed tin, wrapped in a thick cloth.

Audrey stood waiting while they tasted them. Eva concentrated on the brown edges of her crêpe where the brandy—she thought it was brandy—seemed to collect. And so much butter—unsalted butter, sweet with having almost spoiled.

“These are heaven,” Eva said, spinning from Dart’s soliloquy, and trying again to be pleasant. “With the fresh orange juice. And the bits of zest.”

“Haitian oranges,” Audrey said, like to preschoolers, “are bitter for a reason.”

Eva assumed Audrey was referring to the conditions of Haitian laborers. The ones who pick and peel oranges without toilets near, or washing facilities. Whose fingernails corrode from the citric acid. The ones who get paid a pittance above slave wages so people around the world can sip orange liqueur. Eva ate her crêpe, satisfied and proud she’d read about the plight.

Dart was caught up in other possibilities. “Why?” he said, mouth full of food, eyes still famished, and ready with inquiry. “Bitter, why?”

“Centuries of blood in the soil,” Audrey said, more like a sage this time. “And the spirits that live among the thorny trees.” Audrey, her patient eyes as clear with contempt as Dart’s were with desperation, looked to Eva.

Eva flashed Audrey the kind of hot glare mothers reserve for those mean to children.

“So you know about that kind of stuff,” Dart said eagerly. “About spirits and voodoo and Obeah. Me and Eva—”

“Do not
speak
of it,” Audrey said to him in the same solemn tone. “You must not talk of such things. Eat your food, boy. How do you tempt such powers to notice you, when you are so blessed?”

“I’m not blessed all the way,” he said. “You don’t know.”

Eva wanted to slap him.
How is he letting Audrey play him like this? And he just said the baby was a blessing. Even without the baby, he and me have only the problems of the blessed. This woman is enjoying herself
.

“Eat,” Audrey said. “I will not stay another moment in a room so filled with recklessness. Leave the tins on the porch.” She walked from the house.

Dart was thunderstruck by the melodrama. “Unbelievable,” he said to Eva. “We walk right into it. Right after you tell me about the baby.”

Eva followed Audrey out the door. Moonlight washed gray the patchy lawn between the two houses. “You like to tease, I see.”

“How can I not?” Audrey said. “He’s such a baby. Eyes so sad and wide open.” Audrey’s hands were free, and even her shrug was hostile.

“He’s got problems.”
Bitch
.

“Problems that you can’t fix? He’s a big good-looking boy. As you told me today—”

“What did I tell you today?”

“You’re staying here,” Audrey snapped, morally offended by the interruption. “Will be nice. Eddie talks nicely of Miss Eva and Mister Dart.”

“Oh,
okay
. I get it now. I said we have
money
. You asked.”

“I was supposed to ask.”

Eva said, “Bye, Audrey,” and started back toward the Rowe house. Eva was dismissive but polite. It was a knack of hers.

“Or maybe it’s you? With the problems.”

Eva turned.
I will curse this bitter bitch out, I swear I will do it, and sleep at whatever shack of an airport they have on this piece of shit island
. She wanted a Scotch.

“Why’s your hand rest on your belly like that, Eva? Dart’s already put you in a fix?” Audrey widened her eyes, in sage mode again. “You came to Cat, the island of the supernatural, to find someone to fix your problem, in the old ways.” Hers were not words as birds.

“We’re leaving tomorrow, Audrey.” Eva wanted to rush her, rub Audrey’s face in the pink sand.

“Oh no, Miss Eva. Eddie expects you at his birthday celebration.”

A
chain of 700 islands, the Bahamas stretch from north of Haiti to east of Florida. The capital city is Nassau, on New Providence Island. Other principal islands are known as “out islands” or family islands” and include Crooked Island, The Berrys, Cat Island, The Inagua Islands, Eleuthra, Andros, San Salvador, and the Biminis
.

Per capita income: $15,000 (Haiti $500, United States $35,000)
.

Exports: fish, lobsters, rum, salt. Main income sources: tourism and ship registration
.

Population: 308,000. Many islands and cays are without population. Sixty-six percent of Bahamians live in New Providence
.

Infant mortality rate is 13 per 1,000 births (Cuba 7, Haiti 79, U.S. 7). Water and electricity supplies are good. Health problems are due mostly to overconsumption. HIV/AIDS is widespread
.

British colonialism competed for almost three centuries with North American influences. A majority black population, descended from slaves, was marginalized for generation upon generation, but the political (though not economic) power of the white minority was cracked during the 1960s
.

English is the official language of the Bahamas. A migrant population of approximately 50,000 speaks Haitian Creole
.

O
n the sandy bedclothes. There was grit in Dart and Eva’s sex. Pillows were folded in half, rolled under heads or under butts. Thin sheets and blankets wash-worn at the edges, salt-scented and stiff from drying in sea air. Dart’s voice was airy, yawning, and arcane, like from a shell at Eva’s ear. Then he got up to pee.

I need to dance. With people I don’t know. In loose pants and a tight top with straps skinnier than my bra’s. Until I’m wet with sweat I need to dance. While I’m still young. Before I’m grown and somebody’s mother
.

“I’m not sure I’m gonna find a voodoo priestess here,” Dart said, “to exorcise demons from my soul or anything. It’s the
trek
I want to be on. I don’t want my trek to be running Sunny around the world, some tie to her former self. She’s holding on to me, not knowing I’m barely holding on, period.”

“She knows.”

“I know who I am, Eva. What my strengths are and aren’t.”

“You’re ahead of me, then,” Eva said, and she meant it.

“I’m not stupid—there’s probably nothing in them herb capsules but starch. But they’re magic to me when I’m in the dark. A couple of times, you’ve been magic for me.”

“But what about inflicting … yourself … on yourself?” she said, loving the idea of being magic for someone, but playing his words short because she thought herself too tainted to be wonder-working, and him too much in need of a real diagnosis and meds. “Or on … other people?”

“Only person I’m inflicting myself on is you.”

“Why?” She really wanted the answer.

“Among other things,” he said, reaching for her calf and stroking it, “because you had the bracelet on. I told you. It was meant. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“How do you know I’m looking at you? You’re not even looking at me.”

“I feel your stare,” he said as though he were a Halloween ghoul. “It’s cold.”

“You’re bananas.”

“At last,” Dart said, grabbing Eva’s calf so hard, she jumped. His voice came back to its normal timbre. “She sees me.”

Eva woke up just as the sun rose. She picked up a buckram-covered book from the nightstand.

Eva got out of bed without waking Dart. She pulled the sheet over his bare feet and left the fan twirling slowly above him. Under an overhead shower with weak pressure, Eva washed with flat, unscented, latherless soap, unwrapped from crumbling waxed paper. Then she was nude on the living room couch.

Everything is connected
, Eva thought.
There’s no paradise. Just places called that—relative to other places. There’s no pure place. No pure victory, pure love, or pure crime. No pure way
.

Eva pulled on panties and a red sliplike dress and walked from the deck out to a low footbridge. She sat on it, her feet dangling over a tidal pool. The sky was warming. Eva had on the bracelet from Ron and Dart, and a plastic orange one she’d found in the medicine cabinet. It was supposed to keep away mosquitoes.

Behind Eva, a few trees were spread with yards of wet fabric dyed
red, gold, and mossy green. The sand had drops of dye and wax in it. She walked over, put the book down, picked up a wax drop, and was flattening the sand-covered bean when Dart came outside. He was wide awake and moving loudly.

“I went to find Benjamin,” Dart said. “His wife told me the whole thing’s worked out. She’s deep. Said she saw it in me that I’m on a mission.”

Eva was irritated by the intrusion. “I don’t know for how long it’s ‘worked out,’ “she said.

“It’s a perfect compromise,” Dart said, certain. “You get to live nice. But on my budget. I talked to her about the rate.” He looked at her with a gleam. “We found a family that lets a room.”

“It’s a house. And it’s not theirs. If you don’t care about money, why spend so much time thinking about how it’s doled out, who’s paying for what?” She tossed her sand bean at him, but he didn’t flinch.