Naomi Jackson - The Star Side of Bird Hill

Phaedra had inherited her fair share of fierceness from the women in her family. And so when it seemed like Father Loving was turning down yet another prayer avenue, Phaedra opened her mouth and spoke: “Lord God, Heavenly Father, please feed us with the food the cooks have prepared, especially the fish cakes. Amen.” And the hill women, who would normally have gathered themselves on a mission to correct a child speaking out of turn, simply chuckled and said “Amen,” because in truth hunger and heat were making close friends of their bellies and their backs.

“From the mouths of babes,” Father Loving said. He looked at Phaedra and she saw something like anger flash across his face even as his lips stretched wide across his teeth in a grin. Phaedra turned to Chris and he shrugged his shoulders; she remembered their unspoken pact not to discuss their parents.

In the requisite hour between feasting and going into the water, the adults’ heavy eyelids shuttered almost closed and the children who knew what was good for them sat in such a way as to preserve the neatness of their plaits and the pleats in their slacks and dresses. When they couldn’t stand it any longer, the children stripped down to the bathing suits they’d worn under their clothes because their mothers, suspicious as they were of germs, preferred the plain air to the public washrooms.

Dionne went off with Saranne to the changing rooms farther up the beach; they switched out of the dresses they’d arrived in and put on polka-dot bikinis, a matching set of swimsuits Saranne’s boyfriend had sent from Trinidad when she whined that she didn’t have anything to wear to the boring church picnic. Their tops covered the mosquito bumps Saranne had for breasts and Dionne’s ample bubbies. Dionne watched Saranne out of the corner of her eye, noting her flat stomach and firm arms. She was reminded of changing with her friend Taneisha for gym at Erasmus, the way she was comforted by her friend’s endless chatter that dulled the shame of having to undress in front of strangers. Dionne wondered for a moment what Taneisha was doing. It was Saturday and so it was likely that her mother, who made roti skins and cooked curry goat for women who called in orders from as close as Canarsie and as far away as Long Island, was already pouring oil into her pans and asking Taneisha to get the dough out of the industrial refrigerator that dwarfed their apartment’s small kitchen. Dionne shook her head then, because it hurt too much to think that she wouldn’t get a call from Taneisha that morning, which always began with the same question, “So, whatchu doing?” She wanted to forget Taneisha’s kindness in believing that she might actually be doing something interesting, rather than “nothing” or “watching TV,” like she usually said. That, and the fact that Taneisha always waited for Dionne to say something about her mother, instead of asking, was just part of what had made them such good friends.

“Eh eh, but it look like you real watching whatever movie you playing in you head,” Saranne said, pulling Dionne out of her reverie.

“Huh?” Dionne said, and then looked up to see Saranne was already halfway out the door of the changing room. She hustled, and trailed slightly behind Saranne as they edged farther down the beach, in the opposite direction of the Bird Hill picnickers.

The girls eyed and then circled their prey, a group of boys who sat on boulders that made the sea a calm lake around them. Dionne and Saranne could tell from the boys’ crisply pressed designer jeans and fresh haircuts that they were from town. They felt like their practiced coquetry had finally found a worthy audience.

Meanwhile, down the beach, the Bird Hill children and teenagers swam under the watch of a lifeguard while the adults napped in the shade. Hyacinth busied herself gathering aloe vera for sunburn and the women’s teas she made at home; she finished by collecting sea grapes, her favorite things on the beach. Nothing gave Hyacinth more pleasure than rolling the sea grapes’ seeds in her mouth so she could taste the sea and salt and fruit flesh all at once. She had her fill of them while the kids played in the radius of sand and water she’d circumscribed.

Looking at Phaedra and Chris, at first glance some people might have said they were both boys, Chris in his navy trunks and Phaedra in a pair of shorts and a sports bra and tank top Dionne had handed down to her. Phaedra felt a bit self-conscious at first, watching the other girls in their frothy-colored bathing suits with frills and ruffles. But it wasn’t long before Chris won back her attention with a challenge to see who could find the most sand dollars. That day, the sea was choppy, the waves bashing the shoreline like an angry god. The children swam just to the edge of where the lifeguards and their parents said they could go. White sea foam sprayed high above their heads, wetting and cooling them down. Phaedra was reminded of watching her father in the bathroom mirror in the morning, the dollop of cream that he put on her nose that she didn’t wash off until he was finished shaving.

It was easy to think about Avril in Barbados, but Phaedra had a hard time placing her father there. Errol never talked about Barbados much, always saying that you had to leave old-time things behind to get ahead, as if the key to surviving leaving home was to pretend it never existed. Phaedra wondered if Errol felt the same way about the life he’d left behind with Avril and Dionne and herself. Did he think of them, talk about them, or did they live in the shadows of his heart, along with his memories of home?

A few minutes before yet another round of eating was set to begin, when Phaedra’s and Chris’s pockets sagged with sand dollars and seashells, they emerged from the water and plopped on the sand in front of Hyacinth.

“Where’s your sister, P.?” Hyacinth asked.

“I don’t know,” Phaedra said, and shrugged.

“I don’t know, who?” Hyacinth said.

“I don’t know, Granny. I think she went off with Saranne.”

At the sound of that girl’s name, Hyacinth sprang into action. Hyacinth knew that Saranne had been sent to Barbados from Trinidad for the summer by her mother, who hoped that a dose of time at home might cool the fire beneath her clothes. Rumor had it that Saranne was pregnant when she came to Barbados, that she had stayed at a private clinic on the west coast to take care of it. Hyacinth didn’t know whether to believe the story about Saranne’s pregnancy, having never seen the girl for herself until she showed up one day at her house walking arm in arm with Dionne. As soon as she saw Saranne, Hyacinth noticed the way she walked, her chest and bottom thrust in opposite directions, an invitation to boys and trouble. Hyacinth didn’t like the way that Saranne was always brushing her bangs out of her eyes, either, because although she could see the heat bumps that the hair was hiding, she didn’t trust anyone who couldn’t hold her gaze. Having raised Avril, Hyacinth knew what she was looking at when she saw Saranne and she didn’t like it at all.

With all that in mind, Hyacinth walked across the sand to the cove where Saranne and Dionne stood up to their thighs in the calm, clear water so that the parts of their bodies that would most interest the boys were on display. A couple dips in the cold water made their nipples poke through their flimsy bikinis, and Hyacinth was horrified that neither girl had enough shame to cover herself.

Phaedra and Chris walked behind her, taking small, fast steps for every one of Hyacinth’s determined strides. Hyacinth stopped behind the boulders and looked up at the boys sitting on top of them.

“Tell your sister to find herself here now,” Hyacinth commanded.

“Yes, please,” Phaedra said. She and Chris scrambled up the rocks. In less than a minute they were back.