Easier Said Than Done (38 page)

How could I forget? It was my grandmother's funeral. Every minute detail of it had been branded into my memory. That's what I wanted to say, but I nodded politely. I spied the book and cup waiting for me out of the corner of my eye. The window of opportunity for a few moments of peace had just been slammed shut.

With a resigned sigh, I plastered a bright smile on my face and ushered them both inside. I picked up some of Teeka's toys—a neon-colored snail that counted out loud and her book,
Walter the Farting Dog
—from the sofa and chairs, clearing space so they could sit. As I sat the cake on the dining room table, I cut my eyes at Damon with a look that said, I'll be talking to you later. I wanted him to know that Olivia's presence was the only thing keeping me on my best behavior.

“So what brings you this way?” I said more to her than to Damon, but he responded with excitement.

“We're on our way to the beach and thought you might like to go. Let me see you in a bikini.” Damon waggled his eyebrows, causing Olivia to titter and clutch her handbag to her chest, as if that would keep the laughter from spilling out of her bosom.

“Is that why you're wearing those ridiculous swimming trunks?”

“You don't like them?” Damon looked down and seemed to really take notice of the colorful cargo shorts. “I guess they do look like they were finger-painted by a group of one-year olds. But since my Aunt Olivia gave them to me as a present, they hold a special meaning for me.”

Olivia shrugged and studied the shorts with an intense gaze, adding matter-of-factly, “I think they bring out the color in his eyes.” Inwardly, I groaned. Maybe if I counted to three, the floor would swallow me up.

“Sooooo,” Damon continued, his voice resonating like a drill sergeant rallying his troops. “The boats come in at eleven o'clock; so if we want to see them, we need to get a move on.”

Teeka was still in the back room eating, her knife and fork clanking against the plate as she made mincemeat of her stack of pancakes. A day beneath the sun, breathing fresh ocean air would be a welcome change from the smog and dirt of the city. I knew that Teeka would love a day at the beach. But my day had already been scheduled.

“Today's not good for me. I'm supposed to meet with the lawyer to discuss the estate. Studio time has to be scheduled, along with a number of other things. I do have a record label to run as well.” I narrowed my eyes. “Maybe next time you could give me a little notice.”

“Awww, come on! You can meet with your lawyer anytime. As far as that other stuff is concerned, big time record label execs deserve a day off, too, right?” Crossing the room to sit next to me, he placed a hand on my thigh. “Think about it: the sun beaming down on your face, water rushing against your toes, crispy fried fish, sweet bammy, not to mention the company.”

Damon spread his arms wide while Olivia fluttered her hands and crossed her legs at the ankles. “He's got a point, Kingston. No sense in being cooped up in this house all day. Besides, I'd like to spend some time with you.” She wrinkled her nose as if something smelled funny. “ Y'know, have some girl talk.”

I blew a long stream of breath, sending a damp piece of hair up only to fall back over my eye. I knew Damon was not going to accept no for an answer. “I'm not by myself,” I said, the words had barely tripped off my tongue when Teeka walked back into the room, her lip still jutted out, the smell of melted butter and syrup following her like a fragrant cloud.

Damon's charm went into overdrive. “I heard there was a new princess in town, but no one told me how pretty you were.” Teeka stuck her finger in her mouth and ducked behind my
leg, snaking out every few seconds, staring at Damon with a mixture of curiosity and admiration. I suspected it was the same expression I wore on my six-year-old face when I first laid eyes on him.

Damon's eyes flashed as he knelt in front of her. “What's your name?”

“Teeka.”

“Princess Teeka.” Her name slipped off Damon's tongue as sweet as candy. “It's nice to meet you.” He extended his hand and she shook it like royalty before giggling and ducking again.

“Teeka, this is Mr. Whitfield. He's a doctor and lives down the street. And this is his Aunt Olivia.”

“Hi, sugah',” Olivia clucked. “Call me Ti-Ti and just call him Damon. None of that Mr. Whitfield, Aunt Olivia stuff, okay, precious?” She waggled her bejeweled fingers, cooed some more, and blew pink bubblicious kisses.

Damon slanted his head and bestowed Teeka with yet another smile before rubbing his chin thoughtfully, and saying, “So, Princess Teeka, I'm having a little bit of a problem here and I think that you are the only person in the world that can help me with it. Aunt Olivia . . .”

Olivia cleared her throat. “Ti-Ti.”

“I'm sorry, Ti-Ti and I are going to the beach today and we'd really like for you and Kingston to go with us. Would you like to go to the beach?”

Teeka nodded, sucking her fingers in earnest. Then, her eyes lit up until they beamed like the Fourth of July. She tugged on my shorts, gently at first then harder and harder as the magnitude of a day at the beach and all that that entailed weighed in on her.

My eyes darted between Teeka and Damon, amazed at how fast the tag team routine had come together.

“But she says she's too busy to go.” Damon frowned and Teeka frowned right along with him. “So we have to convince her that going to the beach is a great way to spend the day. Any ideas on how we can do that?”

Teeka opened her eyes wide and stopped sucking as if the last thing she had expected was to be asked to participate in the discussion. Damon scratched his head, then suddenly snapped his fingers.

“I say we tickle her ‘til she pees on herself,” Damon said and pounced, wrestling me to the ground, his fingers digging into my ribcage.

The beach ball flew through the air, ricocheted off Olivia's forehead and knocked a picture crooked. Teeka dropped to her knees giggling and clapping.

Damon's dreads hung in my face, teasing my nose and I reached up and pulled on one—hard.

“Ouch! Fighting dirty?” he asked, rubbing the sore spot. The tickling began again and soon I was laughing so hard my bladder pressed down heavily.

“Okay, okay! I give, I give!” I sat up holding my side. “You win. We'll spend the day at the beach.”

Damon whooped and hollered, holding his hand up for a high five.

Teeka slapped his palm as he grabbed me around my waist, pulling me into his side for a hug. The soft, lingering kiss that came next was as natural as breathing with the exception of Olivia eagle-eyeing us the whole time.

Damon stood, then pulled me to my feet. With my hand tucked under his arm, he said, “ Then, let's go.” And half an hour later, we all piled into Damon's gold Land Cruiser and backed out of the driveway, tires crunching on the gravel.

I thought of my ridiculously small white bikini and wondered if it had been a good choice. Knowing if I held it up against Teeka's pink striped two-piece, hers might be bigger.

I rolled down the window until the struggling air conditioner kicked in, and listened to the rhythmic sounds of our beach bags bouncing merrily beside a small blue cooler. “What's in the cooler?” I asked.

“Red Stripe.”

“Don't they sell Red Stripe at the beach?”

“Only in plastic cups.”

“And?”

“No self-respecting Red Stripe lover would drink it out of a plastic cup. Ruins the taste. Gotta be in a bottle.”

I formed the word “Oh” with my lips and settled back in my seat. Who knew there was a philosophy behind drinking beer?

Damon flipped on a local reggae station and Chaka Demus and Pliers bolted from the speakers, then danced their way through the car.

It was just as hot as it was bright, but that didn't slow down the activity in the streets. A group of young boys kicked around a battered football in the schoolyard, where more reggae music blared from a nearby system. Children skipped in and out of houses while women swept dirt from the sidewalks into the street with put-together brooms that were barely staying put together.

I pointed out the goats to Teeka who giggled behind her hand, then stuck her head out the window and made baaing sounds. Damon stopped at the end of the street to allow a colorful mixture of people and animals to cross.

“Everything crisp, doc?” asked a man before he bobbed in front of the truck and headed up the opposite side of the street.

Damon waved a hand. “As crisp as a new dollar bill.”

We continued through the maze of narrow streets, Damon occasionally acknowledging someone he knew, while I endured the whistles from male passersby, all to Olivia's amusement.

“Which beach are we going to?” I yelled over the noise of the rumbling engine.

“Hellshire.”

Memories of spending time with my grandfather and my mother at the beach made me smile. “I haven't been there since I was about twelve.”

“Then this should be a treat.” He winked, the simple gesture causing flames of desire to shoot through the core of my body, but my eyes narrowed anyway.

I could tell Damon was up to something. His words seemed to hold some sort of double meaning.

Thirty miles southwest of Kingston lay the white sandy beaches of Hellshire. As we traveled Garvey Drive, the inner city congestion and the rows of tenement blocks began to thin. We skirted the Kingston Freezone and crossed the causeway. To the right, across the Hunts Bay Lagoon, lie Caymanas Park Racetrack and the mouth of the Rio Cobre at Passage Fort. This was the seaport for the ancient capital of Spanish Town and the place where the British force landed to capture the island in 1655.

Next, Damon pointed out the historic Fort Augusta that sat on the left.

“It's now a women's prison. They keep drug runners, prostitutes, and thieves there; maybe even a murderer or two. All sorts of nasty women,” Aunt Olivia whispered from the backseat, her hands over Teeka's ears.

Acres of rusting roofs of corrugated metal sheets that slanted atop huts whizzed by. The grim structures were crowded on top of each other with a few feet of ground in front, fenced with wire, tin sheets, or rotting wood. Some had yards where children played. Others were patches of a dying garden, now overgrown with weeds, that used to burst with yams and eddoes once grown for subsistence. Round shaped women hauled buckets of sloshing water with fat babies toddling after them.

“We're almost there,” Damon shouted. Minutes later, we turned left at the next roundabout and the prevailing smell of fish along with the collection of oversized umbrellas and parked cars confirmed that we'd arrived.

As the car slowed, Damon said, “It's about the only nice beach left in Jamaica that's still owned by Jamaicans. Isn't that right, Auntie?”

Olivia gave a serious nod as Damon pulled into a parking space.

We unpacked the car before Teeka and I headed to the changing rooms.

When we emerged, clad in cover-ups and jeweled flip-flops, Damon had already quarantined a section of the beach guarded fiercely by Olivia. He, however, was nowhere in sight. I looked around as memories of lazy days, jelly sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, and my mother's carefree grins assaulted me from every which way.

The government's many efforts to give the beach a facelift that would leave it resembling other more commercial beaches hadn't happened. Hellshire residents had resisted, so there was still a certain roughness to the beach that only added to its charm.

Wood shack structures selling food dotted the beach mixed with boats anchored to decaying docks and cars that no longer ran and had been long forgotten. Men with bare feet, soles hardened from years of working in or by the water, skinned fish before packing them in ice. A thick woman pulled up her skirt and danced in the water to the cheers of the men behind the bar before dropping her scarf-covered head shyly.

Tourists in big straw hats and over-priced sunglasses took pictures and pointed with their children. They treated the island like their playground and as a result would be nursing inches of peeling skin when they returned home.

Olivia was perched on a lounger, slathering her hairy forearms with thick white sunblock, her nose already dotted with the crème.

“Come let Ti-Ti rub some on your arms,” she said to Teeka as I shrugged out of my cover up and settled on a matching lounger that was missing more than its share of slats. Struggling to get comfortable, I pulled a book from my bag.

I was only a couple of pages in when Teeka tapped me on the shoulder, her skin slick from coconut oil. “I wanna get in the water ‘Ingston.”

“Let's wait until Damon gets back.”

Teeka muttered something under her breath that I ignored. I pulled out a pail and shovel, instructing, “make a sand castle,” while trying to hold on to what was left of my patience.

“Where is he anyway?” I asked, as Teeka plopped beside me, almost toppling us both and sending the sand in her scooper flying. I brushed some from her chunky thighs before tending to my own.

Olivia's eyes were closed and covered by a white sun visor.. “To get some fried fish and bammy. Hopefully, they have some festival today. They don't always have it. You'll like festival, Teeka.” She opened one eye and glanced around. “Here he comes.”

We all looked up to see Damon negotiating the hot sand with bare feet and hands full of flimsy paper plates. His shirt had been removed and Olivia had obviously attacked him with sun block as well. His well-defined chest glistened like that of a body builder.

“Food is served,” he said, depositing his bounty on a small red plastic table designed more for show than use. “We're in luck, Auntie, they did have festival.”

Olivia clapped like a schoolgirl and peeked under the napkins stained brown with grease.

Then his eyes rested on me. Damon whistled, his caressing gaze traveling the length of my body before wandering back—taking in every naked inch—to capture my eyes. “You better be glad we're in mixed company, girl,” he said. “So I can't say what I really want to. But don't worry, I'll tell you all about it later.”