“Ria, your dog’s eating my child!” But it’s okay. Play. The two of them in love with each other as soon as we arrived — a puppy for her, a bear for him. The two of them, sprawling round on the floor of my sister’s house.
“Cheryl’s coming up the hill!” my sister shouts.
Dog saliva’s sliding into Oliver’s mouth, will get in his eyes too. He’s fumbling, pulling big black leathery nipples, sitting up. “Tot-tots!”
The car sounds, scrambles Sheba up and away. I grab Oliver and wipe his face on my skirt, before he tugs off after the dog, running to the gate.
Cheryl had had her baby too. Anika, a cuddly chunksie little girl, almost the same toddler age as Oliver.
“Bella, girl!” Big and warm as ever, “Long time no see! And this is yours?” Anika’s legs try to clamp round Cheryl’s large waist as the dog comes for a pat. “Look at his state!”
And we’re laughing. Oliver laughing, trying to catch the wagging tail, all his hair plastered down, slick with saliva. “Is a real little Indian you have here, girl!”
Filing in together. In the open veranda — living room of Ria’s home. Laughing but keeping an eye on Sheba and Oliver on the floor. Anika stuck in horror to Cheryl’s chest. Filling in the last three years between us. Ria never preached to me yet about I told you so, or what do you expect from a Caribbean black man. But she held the reproach in her neat, pretty features, in sentences stopped just short of it. Never believed me when I said he didn’t hit me. Suspected the violence that I had to save my baby from. Suspected the shouting, cussing abuse.
“What you expec’?” Broad-smile Cheryl must tease. “They only good for one thing. And even dat, sometimes, huh!”
“Just come,” my sister had said. “You know we’re here.”
Maracas Beach we’re heading to in the middle of the week. Just us and the babies and our lucky, good-to-be-women selves. Including my reeling, recovery, begin-again self too.
Now the hills, the hills. Beach. North coast. The road curving, curving. They have you, in controlling heights. Up through the saddle mouth, climbing. Green leaves close in then drop away, swooping back down to the valley. Closing in and carrying us on. Now Trinidad is flaunting, flirting slips of exotic dress. Lipstick-red slivers of chaconia and balisier between wet green. Orange immortelle lace canopy, flickering. Scanty. In the dark shade, pale heliconias bud peach, white lily tongues are wagging. Twisting and winding, the hills rolling a bellè dance. Fertility. Sliding you down a spine, they fling you, catch you breathless in the dip of a waist, hold you close. Clinging to moist, mossy skin. And suddenly, way below, the shiny silver-sea edge of a petticoat flashes, dazzling. Keep crawling along the bank of a neck, tree ferns dripping rain dew, pulling you secretly into intimate island plumage. Driving, slipping through bamboo, between quills, against the skin of a peacock. Sloping along the coast. Further. Drugged with mountain-soft damp breath, the lingering pungence of a cedar tree, we slow to a stop. And taste fresh cocoa flesh again. The jewel pods have been catching the sun. Sweet white pulp, in thick autumn-colored cups. Warm as blood.
A hip of the land lazes against sea — La Vache. And the beaches start pounding the names Maracas, Las Cuevas, Blanchiseusse, marching sleepy villages on and on. Deaf vultures soar high above river mouths, looking for scraps through hazy surf light.
“We reach, Mommy! Beach!” Oliver said.
“We know you had to come back,” the hills said. And they laughed soft. “You see, we accustom. You might as well had eat the cascadura, because you keep coming back. Is okay. Go ahead.” They waved us down the road past the police station, past the food stalls, flagged us into the old public-beach car park. And them hills stayed behind there looking, the whole time we spent on that beach.
An empty day for Maracas though. No weekend piles of cars and picnics, bellies and bikinis parading all shapes and sizes. No vanload of country coolies, with Auntie, Uncle, beti, and fine-fine pickney hiding to eat curry and roti. No fat “Putt’a Spain” people talking loud and stuffing chicken pelau. No hot chicks suntanning, rubbing lotion on their buttocks, pretending to ignore the gold-chain black guys pumping music close by, waving hi to the bleachy surfer boys passing. Not even a beefy bodybuilder in a Speedo or a hairy Syrian, carpet-world on his chest, passing today. The whole long beach almost empty, only the sleeping lifeguards, the red warning flags, and a couple of other people scattered further down.
The hills stayed. And they watched how we went to buy bake-and-shark with chadon-beni sauce and pepper. How we handled the children, trying not to get pepper on them, keeping sand from their mouths. My sister Ria could have fed them much neater if they were hers, but she helped anyway. Cheryl spread out, comfortable with her big size, red skin, and glasses, eating, feeding Anika double. In Ria’s bikini and wrap, I tried to keep Oliver still for a few minutes to eat, to stop him from running off to the water or throwing sand. Feeling a little more breastful cause the bikini fitting good, proud of my flat belly but clumsy still, not sure where to put my legs on the rug.
Or how preoccupied with mothering I’m supposed to be. Ria noticed. And the hills. And Cheryl said let’s take the children for a splash cause Oliver won’t stay. So we headed for the greedy rolling water. Anika not so sure. My boy squeaking and hopping, charging straight into the fizzing foam. While further out, in the big bay, the waves never stopped chanting, pounding blue drums and spume. White foam surging and coasting in, tickling and floating us shallow.
“Jump, Mommy, now!”
The dark hills watched how we held our babies’ slippery limbs, how we coaxed Anika off her mother’s chest over to me, how we let Oliver bump-along tumble onto the beach. Bobbing. Dipping. Little head bouncing, gulping salt. Shrill shrieking, more waves coming noisy and fast. Till we were all shivering and fidgety as the water. “The body of a nine-year-old girl was found this morning among the cocoa trees in...”
Currents kept nipping, tugging at my feet, digging ambush holes in the sand, pulling, “Come deeper. Bring your child out here.”
“Let’s get back to the beach,” I told Cheryl. “The kids are getting cold.”
Ria agreed.
And soon as we came out, that treacherous sea calmed down. I damned sure. Drummed smooth, peaceful, with a steady breeze till the sun joined in, slowed down to meet it. Slow afternoon heat. Then we dusted dry sand off sleeping fat cheeks, pulled on warm T-shirts and unhooked bra tops, packed ourselves into the car, and climbed back up into the hills’ bosom again.
PMS day in the art department. Angelica Diaz is the madam of her girls.
“Seven women. Who needs men?” she laughed, gold tooth glinting, crashing bracelet arms and ring-heavy hands onto her desk. “You know what I mean? We manage quite well. Have a seat. And you, Carla, stop passing up and down outside my door! Where is your PMS badge?”
Her desk, like I imagined the inside of her car — a box of tissues, fresh-scent potpourri, a little dog with his head on a spring sitting on a doily. Her office, like the inside of her house — slim gilt-framed cheap prints of stylized flowers; a pink curly vase with an artificial bouquet and two proud photos of perfectly handsome children, of course in graduation hat and gown.