Naomi Jackson - The Star Side of Bird Hill

Chris lit their way back onto the main road. And although Phaedra told Chris that she could find her way home from here, thank you very much, when they reached the rectory, he continued to shine his light at their feet. Just as they rounded the last ring of road at the hill’s bottom, there were footsteps on the path in front of them. They ducked into a sugarcane field, afraid to be caught by an adult or, worse, met by a jumbie. Phaedra had always been afraid of ghosts, and being in Barbados hadn’t done anything to lessen that fear.

In the night, Hyacinth was a rustle mostly of air, hurrying along without the aid of her walking stick, like she had important business to attend to. Gone was the white turban that she wore; shocks of kinky platinum hair stood up all over her head. She was freer, too, her hands hanging loosely about her, her gait that of a much younger woman. If hill women had been watching, they might have said that Hyacinth looked freer than before she was baptized.

Phaedra, upon seeing her grandmother, backed up so far into the cane that she hit upon a well. She remembered her mother’s warning that, despite how enticing they seemed, sugarcane fields were as rank as New York City subway platforms and as dangerous too. The year before, a girl was found dead in one of the wells just up the road from Hyacinth’s house, her body disposed of in the countryside by a scorned boyfriend who thought nobody would look for her there. Avril had said, “You think the cane pretty? Well, think so from far. If you must have some cane, then take some from the outside part. You hear me, child? You hear?”

Phaedra recalled the way that rage creased the corners of her mother’s eyes, and she was glad she wouldn’t be seeing her for a couple more months at least. She shook her head, trying to push the thought, which she knew was disloyal, away from her. It was nice, Phaedra thought as the cane scratched her, to have a break from defending her mother, from the pressure to do as Dionne commanded and keep their family business to herself. Where Dionne found ease in making things up to get along, lying about Avril and their life strained the limits of Phaedra’s earnestness. What a relief it was, Phaedra felt, to be somewhere where she didn’t have secrets to keep.

Chris pushed through the thick stalks of cane, looking for Phaedra. “How you find yourself all the way here?” he said when he saw Phaedra backed up against the well like it was holding her up.

“Move from me, Christopher. I’m ready to go now. Stand up in this field too long and soon I’ll have leptospirosis.”

“What’s that?”

“Rat pee poison.”

“Oh. That could kill you?”

“Dead.”

“I wouldn’t like that, Phaedra. I wouldn’t like it at all if you died.”

“What kind of foolishness you talking? Don’t confuffle your head and think that I’m paying you any mind, Christopher Loving.”

“I like it when you try to talk Bajan,” Chris said.

Phaedra was so mad then that she couldn’t speak; she could only draw in air to make one of the epically long suck-teeth sounds she had learned from Avril. Chris was lucky it was dark, so he couldn’t see just how much Phaedra tried to dislike him in that moment.

When both their hearts started beating slower, they left the field and made their way back to the road. Chris walked Phaedra back home, not leaving until he heard all the latches lock.

THE NEXT MORNING found Phaedra nestled in the bluebird bedsheets she loved and her already long face stretched to its limits. The swelling on her head had all but gone away, but the wound was a crescent moon on the right side of her forehead, indigo at its heart with shades of lavender at its edges. A new clover of bruised flesh blossomed on her behind where she’d backed up against the well in the sugarcane field the night before.

Unlike the other hill women, Hyacinth woke up well past cock’s crow and left her bed only when the spirit moved her. Phaedra found it odd that her grandmother would sleep in. But having known her mother, whose quiet struck in the late hours of the evening, Phaedra knew that the Braithwaite women were anything but predictable, and that it was best not to disturb her grandmother’s sleep. Phaedra was nothing if not an expert at making herself small for the sake of other women’s need for peace.

It was well past daybreak when Hyacinth came into the room she shared with Phaedra, bringing her scent of nutmeg, mint, and the cherry chew sticks she kept posted in her mouth’s corners. Phaedra rubbed the sleep from her eyes and searched her grandmother’s face for traces of the woman she’d seen the night before. But there she was, exactly the same as the daytime Hyacinth with whom Phaedra was becoming familiar, dressed in white from the turban on her head to the socks on her feet. Hyacinth pressed a heavy, moist hand to Phaedra’s forehead and neck, checking to see if the fever that rose when Chris hit her had finally broken.

Phaedra took in their room, noticing the table in the corner where she and Hyacinth dashed cold water on their faces each morning. She felt some pride in having finally figured out how to draw water so that she didn’t hold up the line while the other children laughed at her, the Yankee girl who didn’t even know how to make water flow from the standpipe. Hyacinth insisted that Phaedra wash the night off her face and brush the evening off her teeth as soon as she got up each morning. This never made sense to Phaedra since she just got dirty all over again when she ate her breakfast of salt bread and cheese and the Ovaltine Hyacinth made her drink, even when the sun was already high in the sky and pouring heat through the windows, because she said that she needed to have something hot on her belly. Hyacinth said that it was a gift to greet a new day, and that you needed to meet it in a way that showed how grateful you were to have your life spared. Phaedra wasn’t sure what Hyacinth meant, exactly, but she did like the routines and rituals they had, the way they made a kind of container so her mind could wander to the things she thought and felt and dreamed about. The sameness of the days in Bird Hill comforted Phaedra as much as it rattled Dionne.

“You vex with somebody, Phaedra? Or somebody vex with you?” Hyacinth asked, drawing her palm away from Phaedra’s cool brow.

“No, Granny. Why would you say that?”

“Just the way I see you lying down here still in bed. The Phaedra I know would have already had her breakfast and tea, and be bringing me mine by now.”

“I still don’t feel quite like myself,” Phaedra said. Despite everything she knew about the women in her family, Phaedra still hoped that her sickness might elicit sympathy.

“Cuhdear. Well, I don’t think that all that late-night walking about is helping your case.”

Phaedra hesitated, weighing her options. She considered denial, protest, blame, then settled finally on projection. “Well, what were you doing out there? I was surprised to see you out on the road like that.”

“Sometimes I need nightfall to hear myself properly.”

Hyacinth pulled back the sheets to reveal the street clothes Phaedra had slept in.

“Oho. So the thief in the night was too busy to even change her clothes.”

“I was so sleepy when I came in last night.”

“Don’t worry, darling. Just more proof that it’s time for you to get out of the sickbed. You practice being one kind of thing too long, and soon enough that’s who you become. Besides, don’t you want to go play with your friends?”

Hyacinth’s use of the plural, “friends,” was generous.

“The one friend I had did this to me,” Phaedra said, pointing at the bruise.

“Boys are like that. I had one boy who would punch me every day in primary school. When I finally hit him back, he told me that he liked me but he just didn’t have the words to tell me so.”