Naomi Jackson - The Star Side of Bird Hill

Dionne settled into the hard blue seat in the waiting room, and tried to drown out the women’s clucking. She fixed her ears instead on the ticking clock above her head.

• • •

“EVENING,” DIONNE SAID when she’d made her way from Mrs. Gumbs’s car to her grandmother’s front steps.

“Evening,” Hyacinth said, more fact than greeting.

Dionne looked up at her grandmother and held her gaze. She’d never really noticed the blue-gray rings around Hyacinth’s irises before, and she thought the cataracts had their own kind of beauty. She could tell that Hyacinth was too tired to argue. Since Mrs. Gumbs was in the car idling behind her, Dionne knew that Hyacinth wouldn’t say much of anything, lest she give the self-righteous cow any material for her performance of Dionne’s downfall. Dionne put her dirty sneaker on the whitewashed front step, as if to come inside the house.

“Eh eh. If you think you coming in here with those filthy clothes, you must have left more than your good sense out in whatever place you washed up from,” Hyacinth said.

Dionne stood with her head hung low, awaiting instruction.

“Go behind the house and take off those clothes before you come in here.” And Dionne, who now knew every inch of her grandmother’s property in the same way that she knew the apartment she’d shared with her sister and mother in Brooklyn, walked to the back, past the chicken coop and the hydrangea and the rosebushes and the goats watching her from their perch beneath the house. She stripped down to her underwear and put the rags in the rubbish bin. When she’d finished bathing and put on the nightclothes Hyacinth had laid out for her in the bathroom, Dionne went to her room and was startled to find her grandmother there, sitting on her bed.

“Sit down, pet,” Hyacinth said, patting the bedspread.

Dionne eased onto the bed, wary because her punishment was so long in coming.

“Granny, I—”

“Don’t start, child.”

“It’s just that, if you let me explain—”

“I already heard everything I need to hear.”

Dionne was quiet then, because even though what had happened had happened in town, she knew that the island was small, and news traveled fast, and Hyacinth had eyes everywhere.

“So you know what happened to Jean?”

Hyacinth nodded.

“And you’re not mad at me.”

“You did the most honorable thing you knew how to do.”

“Daddy left.”

“Did you think he would stay?” Hyacinth said. She went to smooth the thin cotton of Dionne’s nightdress against her knee, and Dionne jumped a bit with surprise, so rare was the gift of her grandmother’s touch.

“I thought he was going to take me with him.”

“Of course you did, darling. And now?”

“I don’t know. I mean. Seeing him do what he did, it’s like I hardly knew him.”

“Or at least you only knew the side of him you wanted to know. You know that they say that everything done in darkness—”

“Will come to light. I know that. But I didn’t think he’d do something like that.”

“I knew that you would have to learn for yourself. Your sister, now, she can watch and wait, and see how things go. But you, you’re not taking anything to be the truth unless you have the living proof for yourself.”

Dionne smiled and then squirmed a bit. It was strange to be so clearly seen, no judgment, just description.

“Maybe the next time you might listen.”

Dionne went to protest.

“Or not,” Hyacinth said, and wearily heaved herself up and off the bed. “I’m just glad you made it home. Night, darling.”

“Night, Granny,” Dionne said. She lay down and closed her eyes, though she knew it would be some time before sleep found her.

THE LAST FEW WEEKS of August came and went quickly, the end of summer passing by in a blur as Hyacinth called upon her army of hill women to help her get the children enrolled in and then ready for school. There were uniforms to be fitted for and sewn, placement exams to be written, headmistresses and teachers to be met with, bus routes to be drawn and tested.

On the Sunday night before Phaedra and Dionne were set to start their new schools, both girls were in bed by seven, where their grandmother had sent them. Hyacinth bustled about the house, double- and then triple-checking their uniforms, which were pressed and hung in the hallway outside their bedrooms, looking to see whether their school shoes needed another polish. She was in the kitchen washing the dinner dishes when she heard Ms. Zelma call to her.

“Look here a minute, Hy-cee,” Ms. Zelma said. Hyacinth smiled at her friend’s pet name for her. Since Avril died, Ms. Zelma’s living room had become an extension of hers, the girls going back and forth to bring herbs from Hyacinth’s garden or return a dish. Weeknights, they watched television together until the signal went off. During the day, Phaedra and Chris flew kites in the field next to Ms. Zelma’s house, the same field that made Dionne think about her mother’s red shoes landing and taking root there. Now, as they each lay in their beds imagining different versions of their first day at new schools, Phaedra and Dionne felt darkness press down on them, but they couldn’t sleep.

Hyacinth heard Ms. Zelma’s feet shuffle across her kitchen floor and she smiled at the fact that her friend had never learned to pick up her feet when she walked, a habit no amount of nagging or teasing could break.

“Hy-cee, you ain’t hearing me? I said come,” Zelma yelled. Hyacinth wiped her hands on a dishrag and went next door.

“Only the good Lord knows what has you screaming bloody murder,” Hyacinth said when she came through the back door of Ms. Zelma’s house. Her friend patted the sofa beside her but Hyacinth wouldn’t sit down.

On the TV screen there was a police car chase along the south coast road just past Oistins. The same clip played over and over again, a white car leaping over the promontory at Miami Beach, before falling straight into the sea.

A man with a snorkel pushed off to the side of his face, spoke into a microphone. “We’re all experienced divers,” he said, pointing to the men in wet suits behind him. “We still haven’t found anything yet, but we’re not giving up hope that we might find something soon.”

The news cut back to the CBC studio where Taryn Weekes, a woman whose neon lipsticks always matched her scarves, filled the screen, her brow furrowed with practiced concern. “An attempt was made today to arrest Errol Rose, a Bajan national living abroad in New York and Florida for many years, on charges of exploitation of minors. Rose, a onetime jazz guitarist, is accused of throwing several parties during the Crop Over season at which girls as young as thirteen years were made to have sexual encounters with much older men. Upon being found at his cottage hideaway, Rose tried to escape in a rented vehicle. The police gave chase as you saw in that last clip at Miami Beach, and divers are still searching for Mr. Rose and an unidentified woman. The police apprehended several of the men who attended Rose’s parties today, many of them prominent members of Bajan society who were arrested at their homes or places of work. They are being charged with various crimes, including indecent sexual assault and having sex with a minor.”

The newscaster’s eyes twinkled as the names and pictures of the accused men appeared on the screen beside her.

“Divers continue to work around the clock to find the car and the bodies of Mr. Rose and the woman who was said to be with him. We’ll have more news on this story for you as it develops. For now, good night and God bless.”

Ms. Zelma turned down the volume on the set and the weight of what they’d seen bore down on them.