Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel (4 page)

In the market Antoinette Bradshaw took her time through the sugar apples and the hot peppers. When a lady of a fancy house, even a fancy house in not fancy Frenchtown, came to the market, she was usually accompanied by her maid or daughter. But here was Madame Bradshaw, mistress of Villa by the Sea, wife of Captain Owen Arthur Bradshaw, wandering calmly through the open-air bungalow by herself. Carrying only a little basket. One that might hold some lime, some guava—not much more. The St. Thomas market was not the sprawling thing one could find on the big islands of the Caribbean. Here there might be two dozen women selling produce. Half a dozen men selling cane. Here the walking market women, their baskets on their heads, called out to Antoinette by name. “Best plantains, Mada Bradshaw. Ready for frying. You don’t want fry, I have ones for boil.”

As she eased through the market, Antoinette was aware of where Rebekah was and Rebekah was aware of her. Women who have a man between them always are. Even in the crowded market, filled with the aggressive selling of provisions and the passive selling of sugar, Rebekah and Antoinette had already seen each other and kept each other firm in the corner of an eye. But Antoinette took her time. It was a hot day. She refused to break out in a sweat.

Many of the market women sat beside their produce, a linen cloth spread beneath them and their wares. The buyers looked down on these women, and when they turned away, the market women had to witness the retreating backsides. But not Rebekah McKenzie. Rebekah had a table. One that sat in her little yard at night and that her sons hauled out to the market every morning. Rebekah sat behind her table in an actual chair, more like a privileged bank clerk than a market woman. When Antoinette
reached Rebekah’s table, Rebekah said to her what she had been saying to everyone else: “You must buy some lime if you want mesple. Today, lime marry to mesple.”

“I know quite well who is married to whom.”

Rebekah smiled. “Of course, Madame Bradshaw. Is me does forget sometimes.”

“Do your best to remember, Miss McKenzie.” It wasn’t true that she was
Miss
McKenzie. Rebekah had married Benjamin McKenzie. But her husband was dead or at least he was like dead—run away on a naval ship or dead in a Puerto Rican rain forest, so the stories poured. But Rebekah was not like Antoinette. Rebekah was a woman who managed to do as she pleased. Even though her husband’s brothers did not drop a dime and did not drop in for visits, they could not take away what she had gained. She had the McKenzie house. She had the McKenzie marriage. Her sons had the McKenzie name.

In the same yard where Rebekah stored her table, she also grew her fruit. She sold what she didn’t use in the market. She played her piano in her parlor. She took in pupils, daughters of the wealthy, though never the daughters of men she slept with, which meant not Madame Bradshaw’s daughter. Besides, Rebekah loved the market. Loved the noise and the interaction. Loved the power. Loved using the power she had. In the market she was more than a woman selling lime and mesple. She was a doctor, a kind of doctor, and her specialty was women problems.

She had a power that came from all those people who had made Owen Arthur Bradshaw, all those people who made all of us. Knowledge of the mustard from Scandinavia. Knowledge of the nutmeg from West Africa. Knowledge of the sesame from China. Knowledge of the sea grape from the Arawak. So Rebekah could do things. She could make the blood in your body course saltwater—burn you from the inside out. Erode your womb as if it were tin until the eggs inside rattled like a beggar shaking a
cup. She could make a stingy husband’s pockets turn to dust, his fingernails turn to dust, then his mind slowly turn until the coin crumbled out of his ears. She could get a woman from St. Thomas to New York City safely, even on a drowning ship. Every woman on island knew what Rebekah McKenzie could do. Of course, she could get rid of what Antoinette wanted riddance from.

“I need to lose a little fruit.” Antoinette spoke quietly and looked the other way.

“Did you try the mash of dirt with nutmeg and pepper sauce? That worked before.”

“Nothing turns this fruit into juice.” Antoinette rolled one of Rebekah’s limes around in her hand.

Rebekah made change for someone else and passed that person a bag of limes and mesple. “Try the tea with soursop and sea grape. Follow with a soak in scalding salted water.”

“This is a hard lime.” She looked at Rebekah now. She leaned over the table, squeezing the lime she now held in her hand. “Don’t make me beg, sister.” For, of course, that is what they were. Women loving the same man. They had this in common, like two daughters sharing one father.

Rebekah looked at Antoinette’s hands, which were now sticky with sour pulp. “I’ll see you this evening.” Then she passed Antoinette the sweetest mesple on her table.

—

Oh, but what happened that evening was not enough because nothing would be enough. Afterward, Antoinette lay in her own bed at Villa by the Sea. She had gone to visit the Lovernkrandts for just a brief visit to chat with Liva about the possibilities of iguana shoes and mongoose stoles. Then she’d gone to Rebekah’s. Rebekah had put her hand on Antoinette’s stomach and then pulled it away as though she were burnt.

—

Now it was night and Antoinette lay in her bed, but this time she was not alone. The doctor had come. Not because Antoinette had lost the baby. But because Antoinette had walked the whole way home from Rebekah’s, forgetting her sidesaddled mule tied up outside of the McKenzie house where everyone would know. Antoinette had walked up the grand stairs to her own house, then turned and flung herself down. But Antoinette didn’t even twist her ankle. She didn’t even retain a bruise. Nothing at all happened to the baby.

But the madame of the house flinging herself down her own steps was dangerous enough. So the doctor had been summoned and the pregnancy Antoinette was trying to keep from the world was discovered and announced. This doctor was the same one who had prescribed bed rest before and salt air after, then both. Now he prescribed the best-worst thing of all: Someone must be with Madame Bradshaw at all times. And while Madame Bradshaw slept, someone must be more than near her; someone must be touching her. She needed the feeling of another heartbeat, of another pulse, the doctor said. This would calm her nervous episodes and keep her and the baby alive.

So that night Owen Arthur stayed with his wife and did not go to his mistress or out with his daughter. He stayed in the bed with his wife and held her close to his chest so she could feel his heartbeat. In the past he had resisted touching her even in the earliest stages of pregnancy for fear of her miscarrying. But in truth he loved how nymphetish her body became when with child, as though she became a child herself.

Now Antoinette rested against his chest. His bare chest, naked of any hair as it had always been. Antoinette felt she would surely lose everything now. Everything, except perhaps her man. Fine, then. She would relinquish. Because at least in this she had bested someone. Blasted Rebekah, who couldn’t even help her get rid of the child.

—

But Antoinette was not entirely right. Rebekah was also in her own house that night. The house with the red shutters and the piano Owen had bought. Her sons were asleep, except for the one in her belly. She was also carrying Owen’s child. In this, she was not bested by Antoinette after all. Rebekah’s husband had been gone for just under a year. Everyone would whisper that this new child could not be legitimate. Rebekah, too, had tried to lose the baby—for its own sake. But even Rebekah’s stews and teas and prayers had not worked. And then when she had seen Antoinette she knew why.

“I spit up blood,” Antoinette had said when she’d gone to Rebekah looking for obeah. “When I vomit, it’s always maroon.” Rebekah had touched Antoinette’s belly. Rebekah’s hand felt smooth and cool. But then the obeah woman had snatched her hand away and smacked her own chest in surprise.

“Fine,” Rebekah said. “Fine. You leave me no choice, woman.” But she wasn’t speaking to Antoinette. Rebekah was speaking to the spirit of the child who would become the redheaded woman. This redhead woman who would stain Rebekah’s son’s soul. Together those two children would be the whole awful story.

Rebekah went into her room. She removed her right boot. She gripped a piece of brown hair from her own ankle and plucked it out.

Antoinette took the strand of animal hair that Rebekah gave her.

“Put it under your tongue,” Rebekah had directed.

Antoinette did not hesitate.

“Now we wait,” Rebekah said.

The coarse hair rested under Antoinette’s tongue. She waited for it to dissolve or grow legs and crawl out of her mouth. She listened to the sounds of people passing and calling for each other.

“Anything?”

Antoinette shook her head.

“Give it.”

Antoinette slipped the hair out of her mouth. It was slimy, but it was also silver now. Was that the obeah? Antoinette thought on her living daughter, on Eeona’s silver, and wondered what this might all mean. Would Antoinette go home, feel the familiar cramps, and then see the child, a stream of blood and silver and nothing more, pour out of her? Would some curse be transferred to Eeona?

Rebekah looked at her own hair in Antoinette’s palm. She was alarmed by its sparkle. This has never happened before. But she knew it meant something bad for both her and Antoinette. This one was old, ancient.

“This child will kill you before you kill her.”

“Why? I tell it not to come. This child is disobeying me already.”

Rebekah turned away. She reached into her bosom for the money Antoinette had given her. She knew Madame Bradshaw’s name was Antoinette, though she would never call her that. Rebekah even knew that Owen Arthur called Madame Bradshaw “Nettie,” for he had called Rebekah that more than once in the storms of their lovemaking. “Madame Bradshaw, you won’t be mother to this one.”

Every night for the next many months, young Eeona was made to lie all night in her own bed, which was now on the other side of the house. The room beside Mama’s was being readied for the new baby. Eeona lay alone and seethed. She was old enough, a marriageable age herself, to know better. But she was livid that she and her father had not swum together at night for so long. They had not danced on the balcony at dusk for so long. He had not taken her for walks at dawn for so long. All that time he now gave to Mama. “Your mother is the madame of this house,” he had said to her when she’d searched for him that first lonely evening. “I have to be with her in this time of need.” The resentment grew in Eeona’s own body like a tumor, or like a child.

Antoinette’s stomach grew like a continent. Owen stayed beside her, as the doctor ordered. Despite desiring her early expectant body, he had never made love to his wife when he knew she was pregnant. He always feared losing the child. Besides, if Antoinette ever made it to a rounding in the belly she would no longer seem as nubile to him as in the first months of her condition. This is the stage when Owen had always desired the narrowness of his daughter’s body and so would go elsewhere to relieve himself. But now Rebekah was pregnant, too. Nothing narrow there. He had been ordered to stay with Nettie and he wanted to stay. Perhaps this might be the hoped-for boy in her womb. So now the husband and wife made love, for the doctor had prescribed this as well. She was large as a ship, and Owen steered like her captain. He found he enjoyed the new swelling and the heat that spread inside. Owen never muttered Rebekah’s name when making love to his wife. “I own her” was mantra’d in his head, but he never let that escape either.

The one time Antoinette went to the market that season, Eeona and Miss Lady both went with her. But she didn’t go again until the baby was
born. For that one time Nettie had seen Rebekah, selling sweet pepper and nutmeg. And Nettie had seen Rebekah’s own slope of belly, just a bit larger than Antoinette’s. Madame Bradshaw had not known about the other pregnancy. For fear of causing more nervous episodes in the madame, no one had even let the meté slip. But now Antoinette knew what had happened. She had not won out over Rebekah. They were both in this together.

The morning that Antoinette finally felt the steady contractions, Owen Arthur was inside her. She moaned and he, mistaken, thrust harder. She let him finish because she was a good wife, after all. When he slumped beside her, she turned to face him. “You made the baby come.”

There in the bed, it felt like the Earth was pounding out of her. When the baby did come, it wailed as though on fire, and its hair was red as lobster. Antoinette looked the child in the face. “Oh,” she said. “If I had known it would be you . . .” The child was red all over. Her lobsterness reminded Antoinette of a time before nannies and maids and a husband with a ship. Reminded her of Anegada. So she gave the baby a trick name.

When Owen came in, Antoinette allowed him to take their daughter. Owen held the child, not so disappointed at her femaleness as he had thought he might be. Instead, he wondered if this one would help diffuse the dangerous love he had for the other. He thought of a name like Francesca or Liberia that might give the girl some freedom. But Antoinette spoke clearly. “I’ve named her Anette. After me.” Instead of a middle name, Antoinette had Stemme, her maiden family name, put on the baby’s birth certificate. Naming is a parent’s first sorcery.

She gave her breast to Anette. But the red-haired baby gnawed at her mother instead of sucking. Though Antoinette dabbed her breasts with a soothing salve, her nipples still cracked and bled. So raw, they looked like the inside of a snapper fish. Antoinette, determined as ever, thrust the nipple into the child’s mouth and they cried together.

It might be said that Anette clamped on because she knew her mother
would go. She didn’t even get a chance to hold on to her father. Owen Arthur didn’t even leave Anette anything when he left. Not even a piece of land. That was what every island man knew he should leave. For in the beginning there is the water but in the end there is only the dirt. Owen left his wife and children nothing but the sea.