They were left alone waist deep in the darkness, listening to the motor grow quieter behind the sound of the crashing surf. They turned and could see the lights of the hotels along the beach across the expanse, and the sky beginning its first shade of dark blue, then hugged themselves and shook from the cold.
“My wife, she cannot swim,” Paul said to Jacques.
“You don’t know that,” Bahy said. “I’ve never tried.”
Paul kept his eyes on Jacques. Jacques met his glance, but didn’t know what Paul wanted him to do. He looked at the distant beach.
“We shouldn’t try now anyway. I see someone running,” Jacques said.
“What?” Bahy was panicked, and pulled Emania close. “They are running to get the police!”
“No, no. They are running for exercise,” Jacques said.
“What? Who runs for exercise? Paul, what kind of place are you taking me to?”
“Hush up.”
“Do not tell me to hush up.”
“We should go on after that runner, before too many people are on the beach,” Jacques said.
“She cannot swim,” Paul said. His eyes were wide now. He tried to keep his balance against the waves.
Jacques looked at Paul for a few moments. “After I go, please give me at least a half hour before you yell for help.”
“No!” Bahy said. “I am not going back to Haiti.”
“Hush up.” Jacques’s and Paul’s eyes stayed on each other. Then Paul looked at the water. “We will.”
Jacques nodded. Bahy held on to Paul’s arm, darting her eyes between them.
Emania swayed with the water a few feet behind. She pointed to the beach and said, “Look!”
Jacques distinguished a man driving an ATV and scanning the water a few feet offshore with a spotlight. They all dropped to their knees, so that the waves frequently covered their backs or knocked them over. Then they heard the sound of a helicopter, but didn’t see anything.
“Maybe they are looking for us,” Paul said.
Jacques stared at the ATV. He wanted to swim to the beach right then, to get it over with before the sun came. Everybody would see them on the sandbar during the day, the lifeguard, the helicopter, the beachgoers. But the ATV wouldn’t leave. The driver finally parked next to a small dark structure on stilts fifty yards down the shore. He would see Jacques cross the beach no problem now, and might have a radio in there. Jacques supposed he could swim, then crawl across the beach. Or even run — they can’t catch him with a radio. The water looked dark and wild. He was scared of it. He stayed on the sandbar. They all fought the waves in silence, each trying to figure out their circumstances.
Bahy began protesting again and Paul moved her slowly through the crashing waves to the other side of the sandbar to talk things out, which frustrated Jacques. He wasn’t sure he wanted to wait for them, but he couldn’t leave while they were away. It would be rude. He cursed once, then remembered Emania was close. She held her crossed arms against her stomach and Jacques knew she must still feel sick.
“Can you swim?” he asked her.
“I think so.”
“You’d better know. You might drown.”
She was offended. “I can make it. Can you?”
“Yes, but I can’t carry you.”
She was silent. Then she said, “You don’t have to carry me. You don’t have to do anything for me.” She glanced at the beach and rung out a portion of her T-shirt.
Jacques looked at the water. “Your mother can’t swim. Your parents might have to call for help.”
“She’s not my mother. They are friends of mine.”
Jacques didn’t respond. He was curious, but didn’t want to waste time
“I am going to swim no matter what they do,” she said, then looked at Jacques. “And if I can’t make it, you will carry me on your back like a boat.” She smiled. Then she seemed o shrug off her nausea and Jacques couldn’t get her to stop talking.
She told Jacques that she was the citizen of no country; her parents had emigrated from Haiti to Marsh Harbour, Bahamas before she was born, and then conceived her there. She was not a Haitian citizen, in fact had never been to Haiti, and was refused Bahamian citizenship because her parents were Haitians. She had lived her whole life with her mother and father in a one-room plywood shelter in a crowded ghetto west of Marsh Harbour called Pigeon Pea, until eight months earlier when her parents had died from cholera within a week of each other.
Emania told Jacques that over the seventeen years her father was in the Bahamas, he had worked as a gardener for a large vacation estate, and after nine years had saved enough money to get all three of them to the U.S., but was swindled by smugglers who left him with nothing. He found out later that the three men who cheated him were brothers who never even owned a boat, and who used the money to travel to Las Vegas in the U.S. Her father started over and began saving again, but became paranoid. He kept all their savings in their shelter and wouldn’t let his wife and Emania have any friends, scared if anyone found out about the money they would be killed for it. He kept the savings in a steel padlocked box buried three feet deep in the ground beneath the ant-infested carpet, and would dig it up and rebury it every Friday when he was paid. To save money on dinner, he often collected shellfish from the shallow reef on the vacation estate’s property for himself and Emania’s mother, though Emania refused to eat them. For her, he would buy ramen noodle packages at the convenience store on the way home from the estate and she would boil them and eat separately. It was those shellfish that gave her father cholera, and he died before he could again make enough for all three to be smuggled, refusing to pay even a dollar for simple medical treatments that would have saved him, and with his haggard last words told Emania and her mother not to pay for a funeral.
Afterward, there was enough money for Emania and her mother to hire smugglers, but her mother had become paranoid too without her husband and was afraid to approach a smuggler. She fell sick to cholera (spread either from the shellfish or her husband’s vomit) and died before she could arrange anything. The bodies were taken and disposed of by the Bahamian government, and Emania was cleared of having the disease. They wanted to burn her shelter, along with others nearby, but her neighbors had gathered into a mob that wouldn’t let the police near. The Bahamians compromised and posted a sign at the entrance to the settlement warning of cholera. No one else there ever caught it.
Then she was alone and had seven thousand dollars, but was too scared to let anyone know. She kept it buried like her father had, and for eight months would occasionally dig it up in the middle of the night and take only small amounts for ramen noodles and wedding-planning magazines. She spent her nights praying like she had with her mother. During the day, she looked in the magazines at cakes, dresses, flowers, and planned for her day; she was to be married within the rose bush — bordered vineyards of the Ledson Winery in Sonoma Valley on a cloudless day — the groom (as of now, a nameless man who better behave himself) arriving on horseback and situating himself under the arch. Then Emania would appear from the winery’s castle, striding elegantly to his side, escorted by no one. She had the dress narrowed down to six choices and was going to wait to try them on before a decision, but most likely it would be the Alvina Valenta style #AV3159, the pink one with the side slit and deep cowl back.
“The Avrils said they would find me work somewhere,” she told Jacques. “They would help me find a place too. They were able to transfer the rest of my money to Bahy’s cousin in the United States.”