Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel (22 page)

Franky Joseph was no obeah man or magician. He was simply a disciple to his love of Anette. Had been for years and years. He had been learning this love and studying this love like history. During the war, he had worked for the Coast Guard. That history made all the difference. His war had been spent in mess duty on a cutter. He hadn’t gone to Germany and he hadn’t been on the mainland. He’d been on the ocean. Now that they took colored boys for more than just cleaning and cooking, Franky was in the Coast Guard proper. Hailing foreign ships, mostly from other islands, checking their papers. He also served as the assistant to the keeper of the lighthouse up on Muhlenfeldt Point. Not many of us even had the opportunity to see that lighthouse up close. But Franky knew all the Virgin Islands, the lands and the seas in between.

Franky had heard about the movie dance over on Water Island before anyone. But he waited until the buzz. Yes, the Americans were making a movie. The Virgin Islands itself was going to be a star. Franky had only been going around with Anette for a few weeks. Their outings were chaste and nostalgic.

He took her on a picnic with the children up at the lighthouse. A place she and Jacob had tried to visit but had nearly been killed when Gertie’s Hamilton crashed the car. Now up at the lighthouse, the wind didn’t whisper; it shrieked. The view was wide, as if they were in the center of it on a ship, except Anette felt safe. But Franky cooked all the food himself, which reminded her too much of Ronnie. Next they’d had a predawn breakfast on the beach with the children, and when the sun rose, that had reminded her too much of Jacob. This movie filming over on Water Island would be their first going without the children and without him doing the cooking.
Franky needed something to make himself original for Anette. She’d never even been to Water Island; this time wouldn’t conjure images of anyone else at all.

On the radio it said to wear bright colors. Dresses that fly when you spin. Most of the men wore their finest white linen. A few came in American-style shirts and suits. These men had lived on the mainland and knew that Continentals didn’t really understand the formality of the guayabera, so they didn’t trust the request for “island formal.” Everyone wore their best shoes—the worst kind for dancing.

Anette, who was still working at the pharmacy but had recently begun working as a teacher’s aide in the Anglican school, was going to the dance despite her fear of boats and despite her waiting for Jacob. She was working hard at being respectable. What else could she do? Unwed and a single mother—she couldn’t be hired as a full-time teacher. She needed to keep up appearances. All over town, there was the meté of how a McKenzie man had served her up a girl child and then left her. No one could believe it—McKenzie men only had boys. Anette was likely a liar. Who would want her now?

So Anette went to the movie filming over on Water Island at the Gull Reef Club because everyone was going and she wanted everyone to see that she was fine, just fine; and look, green-eyed Coast Guardsman Franky had offered to escort her in his dress blues uniform. And Anette, like the island, used revelry the way other people and other lands use cough syrup or the confessional. Bacchanal was the cure for all personal and social ills.

Besides the fact that Franky was still not entirely acceptable, what with his dark skin and unlanded name, Anette was generally doing what Eeona wanted for her. She wasn’t making love to Franky. She hadn’t even let Franky kiss her.

But it must be said that Anette was also going to the dance because she’d met Jacob at a dance and who could deny that it would be just like the
sandman to row a boat across the channel to the Gull Reef Club, appearing out of the fog to reclaim Anette hard?

But Franky Joseph had other ideas. He was wearing his dress uniform, seaman’s hat and all. Franky knew that Jacob had wooed Anette at a dance. After all, Franky had attempted the same. Their little relationship, Franky knew, was as fragile as a baby. What he wanted was to give Anette a memory that would wash out any others.

May I interject here? I am a doctor . . . I have saved many women’s lives. Perhaps when I die they will name the St. Thomas hospital after me . . . I just want to give a word here. May I have a word? My mother . . . she had powers to stop and start so many things. Love, however, was not in her jurisdiction. All about the island it has been said that my mother, too, fell in love with a man she should not have. Perhaps that is the story to tell . . . my mother gave in to her love and she was never able to move anyone else’s. I tell you, she didn’t move my heart . . . which is to say . . . I loved Anette immediately and always . . . like my own flesh. Is only that . . . it is only that I needed to obey my mother . . . until I became a doctor . . . then I could be my own man. But Anette . . . she went first. Not me. I was waiting for her.

That’s all I have to say.

The crowd met at the waterfront. Boats had been hired to row them over to Water Island. Anette held on to Franky as the little fishing boat docked up. It was only a short ride, ten minutes, five minutes, maybe. Anette could swim, but it was the boat she didn’t like. Franky, who was a Coast Guardsman and so trained to deal with both boats and frightened people, held Anette around the waist even as the boatman took her hand. Franky could feel Anette’s quick breathing.

The Americans had built their movie set on the island in the harbor. Everyone who lived downtown, which was almost everyone on the main island, saw the movie equipment being rowed over to the little island. It had taken two whole days. Water Island rose out of the harbor like the back of a large underwater creature. The Gull Reef Club was on the shoulder of that rock.

There were hotels on the main island, which would have been more appropriate. There was the Grand Hotel with the austere Danish architecture. There was the Hilton, which boasted a waterfall filled with the fattest shrimp in the world. But the movie people wanted solitude along with a beach and a hotel owner who would let them have their way. The Grand Hotel was owned by locals, who the film people felt might ask too many questions. The Hilton was owned by the Hiltons and those sorts knew too much already and didn’t need to ask questions at all.

Anette Bradshaw, who would always be a Bradshaw no matter what other name followed, wore a dress of red dupioni with a pattern of yellow flowers. It was the fabric that Jacob McKenzie had bought her. It was cloth that was supposed to take the place of an engagement ring. She hadn’t touched the fabric for the months and months Jacob had disappeared.

But Anette didn’t want the red fabric to hang in the closet and haunt
her, so she’d decided she would wear it to the filming. Or perhaps Anette knew the fabric would always be about that Jacob McKenzie, who would always be a McKenzie because his mother had made it so. And so she wore the dress, like a siren, to call out to him. She wore it like any magic.

Eeona, with her still-fabulous hair bursting out, had declared to her younger sister that the dress of red dupioni was too risqué for the filming.

“Stop harassing me,” said Anette. “I look like a star.” She ran her palms down the bright red fabric.

“You look like a tart. You are the mother of two daughters.” The older sister leaned forward and hissed, “What are you signaling to society?” Eeona knew about Franky, but on that she made no comment at all.

But it was a dress for American movies. Anette had also planned to wear her nice black heels, but Franky thought they didn’t go with the dress. With his green eyes and green Cadillac, he knew about matching. He took her to La Zapatería, the Puerto Rican store with the latest fashions, and bought her a pair of white patent-leather shoes with a thin silver strap and a tiny silver buckle. On her feet they shimmered like fish scales. Franky knew what he, in his dress blues, and Anette, in her bright red and white, would look like. They would look like a real American couple.

Their old boatman introduced himself as Mr. Hippolyte Lammartine, or Mr. Lyte, if you like. He offered Anette a taste from his rum bottle to calm her. “Miss Bradshaw,” he called her. Anette smiled through her unease, though she didn’t remember him. She took a little sip and felt the sweet heat. “I knew your father,” he said.

“Thank you,” Anette said, because she hadn’t known Owen Arthur Bradshaw at all. She looked down at the water and then forward at Water Island. She could swim to land if the stupid pirogue sank. Franky’s arm was around her like a lifesaving tube. Hippolyte Lammartine let the bottle be passed around to everyone as he began to row.

The Frenchy men, who would be classified racially as white but identified themselves ethnically as Caribbean, were the most suspicious of the
white movie people from America. As he rowed, Hippolyte asked the question he had been soaking to ask since he’d been offered this boat job for the night. “Why all you think they ain want to make the movie at the Grand Hotel?” Passing the bottle from mouth to mouth, everyone nodded that it was a good question. Hippolyte, receiving the bottle and holding it tight between his knees, kept prodding. “Is a secret they have to hide, you don’t think?”

Franky, who was a natural leader and wearing his uniform besides, was the first to offer. “Is because they want a hotel what have a beach. And this the only one have a beach, yes. Name of the beach is Honeymoon.”

And since none of the others had ever even been to Water Island, much less the Gull Reef Club, they all nodded at this answer. Yes, a hotel on a sweetly named beach. That was a nice idea. Though it was also a strange idea. Didn’t them Continentals consider the biting of the sandflies? Or didn’t they consider how the hotel would manage its plumbing so close to sea level? Or didn’t they consider that a hotel would block other people from getting to the beach? But Franky had only considered the name of the beach, Honeymoon. And now that he had said the name out loud, he also allowed himself to think the thought:
Might this evening not be the real beginning of him and Anette? Like a honeymoon?

Hippolyte spoke up now with what he’d figured. That the movie people wanted sticks of fire as decoration. The Hilton wouldn’t allow this and it would be too dangerous downtown where the Grand Hotel presided. Franky didn’t think the fire on the beach was a good idea at all. There would be trees around for the flames to catch. Everyone else in the boat was thinking that maybe the flames would keep the sandflies from biting everything with blood. Otherwise they would have to really dance up to keep the bugs from leaving itchy welts that wouldn’t look good on camera.

“That ain no worry,” said Mr. Lyte. “Only them Americans going get bite. Sandflies like fresh blood.”

—

The set was indeed out at the beach. There were a few tables in the center and they were decorated with glasses oddly half full and others more oddly turned over, which were draining onto black tablecloths. But the St. Thomas men in their white guayaberas looked smart beside their ladies in blue and yellow. But Anette was in bright red dupioni and Franky was in his seaman’s dress blues. They stood apart.

Markie and the Pick-up Men
were given matching shirts and short pants with a design of waves and surfboards. They protested the shorts, stating in vexed sputters that a real West Indian scratch band would never wear short pants to play a party. It would be shameful—they weren’t little boys, they weren’t working around the blasted house, they weren’t going for a damn swim. The director ranted back: “It’s a movie! You’re getting paid to be authentic.”

“I thought we was getting paid to be a scratch band.”

The director seemed as though he was fed up with them all before any film had even begun to roll, but then the leading lady, yellow-haired with impossibly lean hips held tightly in a wrap skirt, noted that the musicians had all come in matching black slacks anyway. The director calmed and nodded. Markie and his men were allowed their long slacks. It didn’t matter much anyway; not much camera time would be spent on the musicians. They wouldn’t even be singing. The movie people had a record. The Pick-up Men would be phantom playing. Hadn’t they read the contract? They were just for background. They were just for authenticity.

So it go. Markie never really recovered from being sent away from his microphone. Before, he used to do a little skedaddle dance up front and get the crowd really ready. That evening he was sent to play the cowbell over on the side, and he remained there ever after. The band never sounded the same again.

The record that played was the popular song “Rum and Coca-Cola.” Only it wasn’t sung by Lord Invader, as everyone knew, but by some white sisters named Andrews who were doing a horrendous job. The Pick-up Men held their fingers above their instruments and made ghost music, their bodies stiff like corpses, their faces stricken. The song was played over and over again. None of the Virgin Islanders had heard this version. We queried the director. But the American moviemaker said he’d never heard of the original version sung by any invader.

“But it’s women singing and they have the Pick-up
Men
up there,” a young esquire tried to point out gently. Everyone had thought this, but no one had said a word. “Hush, Attorney Fondred,” we called. “Is no big deal.” This was an opportunity for the island. We all, the band and the dancers, tried to look happy.

We smiled into the camera and smoothly forced our way into its vision. The nice shoes were more than just too nice for dancing, they were almost impossible for dancing in sand. We avoided too much grinding and bum jerking because that would cause a tumble; besides, there was a minister among us.

But it
was
a free lime and it was on a beach and that is all we ever need to enjoy ourselves. Husbands held wives closer and then farther as if they were courting, wives clutched husbands’ shoulders as if this was juicy infidelity. Those going steady showed off their slippery foot action, sometimes with only fingertips touching.

Anette thought on that obnoxious couple who owned the Gull Reef Club and had mistaken her for a possible chambermaid. Were they here now? Could they see her so well dressed? She looked for them but didn’t recognize them among any of the whites milling around. Perhaps they’d already sold the place and left. Seems like the Americans were always buying and selling, coming and leaving. Now Anette wanted to throw her head back and give a good wind-up, but she controlled herself, remembering that she was representing her island and, just as important, she was showing
everyone how okay she was. Everyone was, after all, watching. There had been so much talk.

Them poor Bradshaw sisters. You ain hear how the father dead and leave? Just look at how the family fallen since! The elder daughter used to be so pretty but then she disappear and return a old maid. And that Anette one—a divorcée! Gone and had a second child with piano-playing-war-hero Jacob McKenzie—so she say. He gone and left she and the child. Gone a whole year almost. Now look how she jump on the first green-eye man that come along! Them Bradshaw women. Is a curse they have. But they father and mother orphan them. So what you expect?

Anette knew and heard, and there on the sand in her new white shoes and red dress, she kept the smile wide and camera-loved on her face. She felt the feeling she sometimes felt. That someone important was arriving for her. Maybe Jacob McKenzie. Coming to claim her in this dress made of the fabric he had bought her. But Franky, knowing more than he ever let on, twirled Anette and held her tight. For all to see. Maybe Franky would be the man to banish Jacob McKenzie from her head. They looked special, they did. And even the others stepped closer to them, to get a bit of their spirit.

But during the break, the chef of the Gull Reef Club charged out with her arms spread wide and hugged Anette. “Can it be? Yes, my Lord. Baby Nettie,” she exclaimed loudly. Others stared because few of this group had been this friendly with the Bradshaw sisters, not since their parents left them paupers and certainly not since all the talk. “You don’t remember me?” asked the chef, as if she really couldn’t believe it. “Is me. Sheila Ladyinga. I used to work for your mother over by Villa by the Sea. I wiped your backside when you was a baby. You all used to call me Miss Lady.”

Anette stepped back. Was this the person who she’d felt coming? Not her man Jacob after all. Mrs. Ladyinga searched Anette’s face until it became clear that Anette did not remember her. Then it became clear that Anette didn’t want to remember her, not right then.

Mrs. Ladyinga started to say more, to further explain who she was and ask the cordial questions, but then the movie people put on another record. This was a recording of drums, not steel drums or conga drums, but African drums. The Pick-up Men were told they were no longer needed. The dancers were called to form a half circle and to clap vigorously in time while a limbo stick was set up and then set on fire. “You, sitting,” the director called out to Anette and Franky. “Are you in or out?”

Anette stood up without saying anything polite to the lady chef.
I am with Franky,
she said to herself.
I am here with Franky. I am here and I am with Franky. This is not Jacob. I am with Franky.

“Well, little Anette,” said Mrs. Ladyinga sourly. “I’ve got to get back to the kitchen. A lot to feed tonight. Not like when it was just you and your sister.” She wiped her clean hands along the clean front of her chef’s coat. “But if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be born. Believe it. So now let me give you one bit of warning.” Anette could not follow what this woman was saying. She didn’t even try to smile, but instead leaned back, making her distance. This woman was not Jacob. Not Jacob at all. How could Anette care about this woman coming and giving her anything? But the chef continued anyway, now a bit more quickly and quietly, as though they were conspiring. “I’m not certain that this here movie is your kind of movie.” Then she left Anette Bradshaw, just as she’d left her before.

Franky and Anette joined the group in the clapping and the dancing in the circle. Anette knew she had something to prove to these people and, really, mostly to herself. So she danced and clapped and smiled and laughed and in general seemed to be having fun, fun, fun. More fun than anyone. Jacob had not come. Jacob would not come.

Instead, the American leading lady, whose wrap skirt was too fitted for limbo, walked into the center of the circle. The lady chef came out to watch the performance. Now Anette tried to catch the chef’s eyes, tried to give a smile—she knew she’d been rude earlier. But Sheila Ladyinga looked everywhere but at Anette. So Anette looked at the American woman and
made a small wish that the American would catch a fire. She didn’t have a bitter feeling toward this woman, per se, it was just that she had a bitter feeling. The woman was only there to receive it.

The limbo stick was placed lower and lower, and as the leading lady contorted more and more, the crowd of sixty, not twenty, roared in support. Franky shout-whispered, “Is a dancer she must be.” Anette nodded and tried to keep her mind on the moment.