Naomi Jackson - The Star Side of Bird Hill

Dionne stood behind her sister and grandmother in the shade of a tree whose wide, waxy green leaves made this part of the hill feel like a slice of rain forest. After they’d been waiting for the better part of an hour, the bus, blue and yellow like the colors of the Barbados flag, barreled toward them. Dionne and Phaedra walked past Hyacinth and onto the bus while she painstakingly counted out change for their fares. Hyacinth nodded at the only other passenger, a dapper man with coarse white hair pocking his jaw, wearing a suit so carefully pressed it looked as if it had been ironed directly onto him. Phaedra took a seat with Hyacinth in the front of the bus and Dionne sat directly behind them.

“Granny, was this the same bus Mommy used to take to school?”

“Not this one exactly, but one like it.”

Phaedra closed her eyes and tried to imagine her mother riding the bus in the gray school uniform she’d seen pictures of Avril wearing.

“And how long would it take, Gran?”

Hyacinth craned her neck to look at the man in the back of the bus, whose eyes she could feel on her. She threw a “Morning” and then “Do I know you, sir?” over her shoulder. The man, his voice smoother than his salt-and-pepper hair would suggest, said, “I would like to think you do.”

Phaedra looked at her grandmother, and tried to see what the man saw. Hyacinth kissed her teeth, and Phaedra realized from where Avril had inherited her fantastically loud and long suck-teeth.

“What you saying now, pet?” Hyacinth said, returning her attention to Phaedra.

“I was asking you how long it is from here to Mommy’s school.”

“About an hour, maybe more, maybe less, depending.”

“That’s a long way to go to school.”

“It was the best one she could get into.”

“Was she smart?”

“The brightest.”

“Was she sad?”

“Sorry?”

“I mean, sometimes Mommy would seem so down it was like she couldn’t get up if she tried, and it just makes me wonder if that’s how she always was.”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes what?”

“Sometimes she was sad. There was a whole term when she was in second form that I’d have to force her to eat breakfast and then walk her down to the stop myself and watch her get on the bus.” Hyacinth looked out of the bus as it traveled past an old sugar plantation where the rusted hands of a windmill stood motionless. As silly as it was, she found herself searching for Avril on the street outside the window. “Months she was like that and no amount of anybody asking her what was troubling her helped. Just when we were thinking about sending her to my cousin in England, that dark thing lifted and she was almost like herself again.”

Phaedra looked out the window and saw a desert rose tree with all its flowers skirting the bottom of its trunk, as if someone had made it their business to steal its beauty.

“So there was nothing you could do to make it better.”

“I wish I could say there was.” Hyacinth sighed and motioned for Phaedra to move closer to her, since the bus was starting to fill with people; Phaedra let herself sink into the cushion of flesh at her grandmother’s side. Hyacinth spoke again, as if Phaedra had asked her another question. “There’s nothing like wishing someone you love well, and knowing just wishing isn’t enough.”

Phaedra nodded and felt the bus roll past the signal station at Gun Hill. A few minutes later she drew in air when the water came into view. No matter how many times Phaedra saw it, the sea exploded her sense of wonder, especially when the dense tree cover gave way to the blue-blue water lapping against the shore. Watching the women walking by on their way to run errands, the fishermen strolling along the beach, she wondered at their nonchalance in the face of such a marvelous sight. Phaedra inched toward the windows, burying her bony elbows in Hyacinth’s ample lap. And then she watched as the south coast blurred by and the sea got gobbled up by the hotels and resorts, only peeking out between openings in the concrete. She turned back to stick her tongue out at her sister, but Dionne was so deep in her own world, she didn’t even slap Phaedra in the back of her head like she usually would.

They got off the bus at the depot in town and Hyacinth gripped Phaedra’s and Dionne’s hands. Each of the girls could feel their grandmother’s fingers, sharp-nailed and gnarled by bursitis. Dionne tried to shake out of Hyacinth’s grip, but she settled instead on holding her head down. It was nearly impossible she’d run into anyone who knew her, but just in case, Dionne had spent hours trying on, selecting, and then ironing two possible outfits. Dionne was the kind of girl who always wanted to be prepared for the event of someone else’s judgment, even a stranger’s.

They crossed the street, careful to avoid the slimy hunter green sewage that snaked down the gutters between the sidewalk and the street. Phaedra shaded her eyes so she could see the boats lined up at the careenage at Independence Square. They went inside the market and Phaedra dropped her free hand from her forehead, felt Hyacinth’s hold on her loosen. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark, her nose to the damp, dank smell, her ears to the sounds of people shouting prices and engaging in friendly arguments Phaedra thought were hostile until she saw her grandmother walk up to one of the vendors, inspect her pawpaws, and then start a shouting match that ended in laughter and the woman giving her extra fruit that weighed down Phaedra’s left hand. This ritual was repeated at the stalls where each woman greeted Hyacinth by her first name or, more often, Ms. B. Sometimes her grandmother would walk away in the middle of a negotiation, occasionally enticed back by the offer of a good price; sometimes she moved on for good. Phaedra loved the drama of it, and seeing her grandmother for the proud, powerful woman she was there. She smiled broadly when Hyacinth introduced her as “the little one for Avril,” hoping her extra teeth would make up for Dionne’s sullenness. They shopped for sweet potatoes, Phaedra listening intently as Hyacinth showed her how to check for hairs on the tubers’ rough brown skin, which was how you knew they’d be sweet. Hyacinth was about to pay for one when she noticed that Dionne, who had been lagging behind them, was gone.

Hyacinth and Phaedra looked around, and then saw Dionne standing at one of the stalls off to the side of the market. Its sign read HARD TUNES & TRICKS and it was blasting Jamaican dancehall music, all of which Hyacinth considered abominable, one song’s beat to which Dionne was now freely swaying her behind. Phaedra walked over, leaving her grandmother talking to the sweet potato vendor, who had enough dirt under her fingernails to prove she’d pulled them from the earth that very morning. Hyacinth’s head was tilted to the right. That meant that she was listening, and Phaedra knew from the way their shoulders almost touched that they were talking about something not meant for her ears. She walked past rows of christophine, eddoes, and cassava piled high above her head, all the while watching Dionne, whose elbows were draped over the glass case where cassette tapes and Walkmans were displayed and sold for three times the price in the States.

“Who’s this little princess?” the guy behind the counter asked when Phaedra entered.

Phaedra drew back toward the lip of the stall that led into the market.

“I don’t bite,” the guy said, and Phaedra saw his gold tooth shining. She remembered Hyacinth’s pronouncement on gold teeth — she still had all the teeth the good Lord gave her and jewelry was for the body and not for the teeth.

“Granny sent me for you, Dionne,” Phaedra said, looking away from the spectacle of his mouth.