Naomi Jackson - The Star Side of Bird Hill

Nevertheless, Clotel and Dionne entered the church hall hand in hand. And both feigned surprise when the lights came up over pink streamers, balloons, and a sign that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YE CHILDREN IN CHRIST. The next day, in church, the congregation would sing to them, “Happy Birthday, Dear Christians.” But on this night, both young women were glad to be spared a song as they were overwhelmed by the smell of food in the church hall. There were the legendary fish cakes women from Bird Hill were known for all over the island, and which no small number of less-favored women bought at the bottom of the hill on Saturday mornings. Dionne could smell the yellow cakes with pineapple filling and frosting and the milk-soured mouths of the children who ran circles around their mothers. The church hall doors remained open behind Clotel and Dionne; the sweet stink of the guava trees, which were planted when an ugly woman named Cutie died and left her small fortune to the church, wafted inside.

Both girls were new to the high heels that bore blisters into their feet. Dionne was painfully aware that she’d finally turned sixteen, the age at which Avril said she could start wearing heels, and her mother wasn’t there to see her wobbling or to show her how to walk in them. Dionne and Clotel shifted their weight as Father Loving said an interminable prayer, during which Dionne fluttered her eyes open to find the reverend wiping his brow and studying her breasts, which pressed insistently against her dress. After his incantations, Father Loving offered them each a new leather-bound King James Bible. Clotel seemed genuinely excited to accept her gift while Dionne took hers reluctantly. She mumbled thanks to everyone for their gifts and kind words, all their variations on wishing her the best of life in Christ. Then she steeled her shoulders, readying herself for the inevitable conversations on one of two topics — books or baptism.

“So, now that you turn sixteen, are you going to give your life over to the Lord in service?” Mrs. Jeremiah asked, her rheumy eyes taking Dionne in. She clutched Dionne’s elbow between two firm fingers. The younger woman felt that Mrs. Jeremiah’s conviction about Christ could break bone.

“Yes, God willing,” Dionne said. Her voice cracked. God’s name felt like a word in a language she’d never learn.

Dionne looked over the jaunty red feather in Mrs. Jeremiah’s hat and her gaze landed on her grandmother and Phaedra. She felt keenly the absence of her mother, who was in no small part responsible for her birthday turning out like this and should, she thought, at least be there to witness the disaster. The women kept bringing more and more food in aluminum pans out to the blue-flame burners. And Dionne kept expecting her mother to walk through the church hall’s front door.

The people on the hill were Christians, and seriously so, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t like to have a good time. Lyrics like “get something and wave for the Lord” were made for Bird Hill, where any news was reason to have a party, and parties could start in the late afternoon and put the stars to bed the next morning. The Soul Train line sent women hobbling back to their seats with sweat on their brows and complaints on their lips about their old bones, the small children rubbing their eyes and seeking their mothers’ laps.

Dionne and Trevor, who had been keeping each other at a respectful distance until then, came together in the back of the church hall. They agreed to slip out separately and meet at their usual rendezvous location, star side. They’d named it that because of the way the moon and stars bathed the graves in the cemetery that sloped down behind the church in light, eliminating the need for flashlights that might lead prying eyes to their hiding place. “We’ll call this our special place,” Trevor whispered the night they named it, and Dionne, desperate for space that was not her sister’s, not Avril’s, not Hyacinth’s, just hers, nodded, thinking he could give her what she needed.

A couple hours later, when the sun had long since set and the murmurs of good-byes filled the church hall, Dionne went to find Trevor. It was hot outside, as if all the heat that had gathered during the day decided to stay the night. Sweat collected in Dionne’s bosom, plastering her cotton bra to the top of her dress’s wide collar. She’d worn the dress all evening with an air of self-sacrifice, but now, in the open air, she tugged at its buttons. She took a seat on Trevor’s forbearer’s grave with the gift Bible tucked firmly beneath her, making a show of trying not to dirty her new clothes.

“You having fun yet?” Trevor asked.

“Define fun.”

“C’mon, Dionne. You have to admit that seeing Sister B. do the pepper seed was fun.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Dionne laughed. She remembered the old woman’s shaking shoulders, the way that everyone was genuinely concerned about her teeth rattling out of her mouth.

“What do you think his life was like?” Dionne asked.

“Whose life?”

“His life. Trevor Cephus Loving. July 14, 1928–July 21, 1973.”

“Probably the same as my father’s. Baptisms, weddings, funerals. More food than you could ever eat in one lifetime.”

“Same as yours? Do you want to be a reverend?”

“I guess I never thought I had a choice.”

“Everything in life is a choice. It’s not like you just wake up one day and suddenly you’re Father Loving the third.”

“Well, it’s not like in the States, where you just decide what you’re going to be and then you go to school and become that thing. Here on the hill, who you are is who your people have been. I was born the same day my grandfather died. Everyone said that was a sign I was coming back as him.”

Dionne felt the door close on anything substantial between her and Trevor, but then also the urgency of their closeness. Dionne knew that any man whose life was already decided for him couldn’t be hers. But here, where her spirit felt only halfway home, anchorless without Avril, she wanted something familiar to be close to, somewhere to land.

“Have you ever noticed that all these people died close to their birthdays? It’s almost like the earth remembers them and knows it’s their time.”

“I don’t know how your mind works, Dionne, but I like it. What would you do if you knew this was your last birthday?”

Dionne turned to Trevor and whispered in his ear. Trevor was shocked that what he had been begging for all summer was finally being offered freely. He tried to stay cool. He placed a fiery hand on Dionne’s thigh and did away with her blue panties with the deftness and care that indicated he knew that at any moment she could decide differently.

“Go slow,” Dionne said, warning. She used her hands to guide him inside her.

Trevor made love to Dionne by moonlight, her bare feet planted on the crumbling gravestone while he entered her with sweetness she didn’t know he could muster. Dionne remembered the roughness of Darren’s hand inside her and braced herself for what Taneisha told her would feel like a pinch and then like the ocean opening inside her. She sighed, taking in the heat of him at her neck and the damp of the night air.

When they were done, Dionne took her panties in one hand and her new Bible in the other and let the breeze when it came touch her where Trevor had before. She felt wiser somehow, and looking at the church lit up above, thought that maybe this kind of pleasure could be her religion.

AFTER THE PARTY, Phaedra helped Hyacinth out of her brassiere. She unhooked all sixteen eyelets until the sandwich of flesh on the older woman’s back parted, and marveled at her grandmother’s unlined skin. Phaedra was going to find a book to lull herself to sleep with when Hyacinth told her that she should come to the back of the house.