A Simple Distance (13 page)

Grampy got most of his estates for next to nothing, bought from the last of the British left on the island, long after slavery was outlawed, and living in the West Indies had started to mean that those who’d stayed had gone wild like the Baobiquens themselves.

But Baobique held on to some of the more primitive customs introduced by the Europeans, wrote them into the island’s laws. Back then, the ways in which land passed from person to person were governed by a set of statutes under which gradations in the pigment of a person’s skin either granted them the right to own property, or took it away, according to a strict hierarchy: white, brown, black.

Years before my mother was born, before my grandfather returned to Baobique with his medical degree from Quebec, one of the coldest Canadian provinces there is, he lived for a long time as the single black man in his town. His landlady only allowed him to see his patients at night, his patients respectable Canadians with unmentionable diseases—communicable only in private. During the day he stayed inside. Slept. But he returned to Baobique with enough money for Tours, Godwyn, and Milieu; he married my grandmother, the daughter of a wash girl from Tete Queue; for three decades he was the island’s only physician; and eventually, he drank himself to death. This much I know about Grampy Pascal.

My other grandfather was Portuguese, gave to my father his fair, fair skin and to both of us our green eyes.

Not so long ago, by virtue of nothing more than the color of my dad, I could have simply stepped in, called upon that Chief Justice who’d recently extolled the virtues of my late Uncle George to my grandmother at the courthouse in Bato, and had him sign over Godwyn to me.

But Baobique was crumbling its old ways into the sea, taking with it my mother’s family, making us fight over land in which I am undeniably implicated.

* * *

We came upon the road of red clay that led down to Tours Beach. Mr. Hill at the wheel of the Toyota, the trees did not part for us. And we passed it by. There for a purpose that day, not a sea bath. Up ahead, Granny’s.

He slowed the car, threw me a quick look from the driver’s seat, and told me this:
Young Pascal, listen close. Words can be sharp as a cutlass. It doesn’t matter if they are true or if they are false, just that they cut. We are going to slice your Granny and Uncle Martin down to their true size. You will have to trust me and remember why you and your mummy flew through all that wind yesterday in that silly little plane with Mr. Petion.

I had to trust him. I had no one else. It wasn’t as if I’d developed a large network of allies and it was up to me to finesse some sort of resolution between my mom and her family. With Uncle George’s passing, Granny’s general may have been gone but his armies were still amassed. And they did not like my kind.

Mr. Petion:
Facts shift fast as storm clouds in Baobique. You watch, Jean.

Just after the coup that brought my uncle’s party into power, an agreement was signed in the House of Assembly appointing Barrister George Pascal to the office of Chief Minister. Liberty’s leader thereafter, Dame Devon, became the first female Prime Minister in the Caribbean. To people in the street, she became
dat steel ’oman
. I do not believe she ever married.

Susan’s uncle, Archibald Hill, succeeded Dame Devon as Prime Minister. His party, Peoples, winning out over her more conservative contingent in public elections. Prime Minister Hill’s heart attack, the one that coincided with Uncle George’s mass effect and occasioned my meeting Susan in Granny’s kitchen over ham sandwiches, came just a year into his term of office. His second-in-line was less radical and better liked by the island’s old-school Parliament.

The late Prime Minister’s brother pulled us up to Granny’s front porch, where she sat on her lawn chair waiting. The mood in the car had shifted, as if the wind had brought Mr. Hill and Mr. Petion the scent of something sweet, like the smell of goat’s blood to my mother’s dogs.

Striding in from the living room, Uncle Martin beat Granny off the porch because she never actually left, never actually rose from her lawn chair. Visitors came to her.

Well, look who we have here.
Uncle Martin was dressed for court, in his gray suit and starched white button-down shirt, leaving off, however, his peruke, for this transaction. He repeated himself,
Look who we have here.

Hello, Uncle Martin.
I exited the sedan, shook his extended hand.

From her chair, Granny yelled into the kitchen,
Valerie! Where is that tea? I told you they would be coming soon.

Hello, Granny. It’s good to see you.
I walked to her chair, gave the obligatory kiss on the cheek, shoulder-hugged with as little contact as possible.

Hello, hello! Martin. Granny Pascal
. Mr. Hill was easy, lithe; repeating my gestures with the enviable ease of the less invested. Mr. Petion silently following his friend’s lead.

Uncle Martin began with the prodding.
I never thought any niece of mine would need an escort to visit Tours.

Well, these are some surprising times, Martin.
Mr. Hill blocked for me.

They certainly are
, Granny added from her seat.

Valerie brought out a tray of tea, cream, sugar, and paper serviettes, making eye contact with no one. Returned to the kitchen at nearly a sprint.

I helped Granny and everyone to their cup, took mine last. We sat and looked toward the sea.

What’s that?
I pointed to the foundation and first floor of a building spanning Tour’s cliff, strands of rebar stretching here and there.

Oh, it’s those Australians. They’re building a hotel,
Uncle Martin answered, apparently as eager as I was to talk about plans other than the one at hand.

Granny, it will block your view of the cove.
I felt a need to state the obvious.

She sipped her tea.

Yes, well. That will take some time to finish. They underestimated the cost of the infrastructure.
Uncle Martin was liberal with confidential information. The Australians were clients of Uncle George.
They didn’t anticipate the depth they’d need to drill to anchor properly in the bedrock. Construction is at a halt until they find new investors.

You’ve developed quite an interest in my land recently, Jean.
Granny’s throat no longer too dry to speak.

Now you’re talking about Godwyn
, quick to respond.
It’s my mom’s interest, Granny. She’s put a lot of work into it.
That day I looked like politics; surprised us all.

Uncle Martin piped up,
Your mother has never been wise when it comes to land, Jean. She puts her whole self into other people’s property. This is just like what she did in California with that man, Harold.

No small tremor, my anger shifted big as an earthquake along its fault.

Messrs. Hill and Petion sat, sipped tea, awaited their turn unruffled.

That is not the case and you know it, Uncle Martin. What do you and Uncle Charles need with another house anyway? Don’t you have enough, you have to bully my mom out of hers?

In my mind, I borrowed my mom’s cutlass, aimed for Uncle Martin’s jugular, swung with all my might. Followed through. Blood boiling, I rose, left the porch to use the bathroom, told them,
I’ll be right back.

On the dining room wall I passed a photograph of my grandfather, and one of my mother that Grampy must have paid for, black and white and gray, yellowing from so much exposure to air over time, one long crease down the middle, accidentally bent long ago. I’ve passed that picture of her a hundred times, but that time I finally saw.

The length of her dress was white lace, embroidered outlines of flowers linked the fabric together, a sash of something resembling silk, a dried flower bouquet. Her arms bent to hold the flowers in their crook, poised in the position someone had placed her, double shadow on the curtain behind from the photographer’s two standing lights. The carpet beneath her feet resembled the one in our old Victorian.

The length of her dress was what I noticed last but mentioned first, because it was easiest. The hardest was my mother’s face, seventeen or so, exactly like mine, even tilted in the way I carry my head to this day, slightly forward, stooped somewhere between a request for permission and an apology, her neck long and thin. I never knew I had my mother’s smile.

I’d never seen her real teeth. Ever since I can remember they’ve been false. In the photograph, her face had not yet let them go and they stuck through her thick wide lips, teeth too large for her small mouth, making her look gangly, like a child playing grownup.

I opened the bathroom door, sat on the toilet where Uncle George spent an entire night when he was sick because the women couldn’t lift him back to his bed, Uncle Martin stuck in Bato due to bad weather.

The morning’s winds had picked up, whistled through the house high-pitched. I didn’t hear their raised voices until I stepped back onto the porch.

I smelled blood, and it wasn’t mine. Mr. Hill was taking his turn, wiped his lips dry.
You know I could take this scandal island-wide by the evening news. To Nassau by noon tomorrow. Think of all those arrogant Americans laughing at our backward little nation, our banana republic. George Pascal the butt of their jokes. You know I’ll do it, Martin. Everyone has suspected it since my brother’s heart attack, and this is key evidence.
He threatened my uncle, not Granny, sitting silent, tea in lap, staring out past the half-built hotel, through her half-left view of Tours Cove and the sea.

Uncle Martin was uncharacteristically quiet, arms folded across his chest. Mr. Hill continued, pointing to the old Toyota parked in front, next to my grandmother’s arching coconut tree,
Everyone knows that’s George’s car. Everyone. Mr. Williams saw Archie in the backseat the same day of his heart attack, two of George’s Liberty men up front. The idiots left George’s Toyota at my brother’s house, Martin! They sent Mr. Williams to retrieve it the next day. He’s had it ever since. George was sick, Martin. His double-faced men thought they’d be attending two state funerals that weekend; so why not pin the Prime Minister’s death on George’s cold body lying next to him?

I stood still at the threshold of the porch.

Hill reloaded.
George’s own party was going to accuse him of killing Archie. They’d sold him out, expecting them to die together. But George’s death took too long; all that damn organic food these women were feeding him, their fresh-squeezed juices. And by the time George passed, it didn’t matter whether my brother’s heart attack was natural or intended. Archie was long dead. His successor less of a thorn in Liberty’s side … But then again, na. Who’s to say George didn’t organize the whole thing from right here on this porch? It was only his movement down at that point, not his mind.

Idle threats, Leonard
. But Uncle Martin’s words lacked a necessary conviction.

We will not have George’s name dragged through the mud.
Granny spoke to her cove, invited a bargain.

What is it you want, Leonard?
Uncle Martin sneered.
Hasn’t your family eaten their fill of ours as yet?

Mr. Hill lost his detachment, and I realized mine wasn’t the only blood boiling. Together we were a volcano, ready to explode.

Perhaps Mr. Petion could read his friend even better than I could, because he rose from his tea to suit the occasion of his cue, spoke to Granny politely as a little boy.
Granny Pascal. An old bachelor like myself always appreciates a good cup of tea. Thank you very much for having us.
He stood firm.
We know how important George’s memory is to you …

Granny wet her lips with milky tea, said to her saucer,
I am an old woman, Mr. Petion, with few things left that are dear to me. My son was very important to this island, as was his father. I have always supported them, and that does not end with their deaths. The house is not important to me anymore. Sophie can have it.
Then, to the half-built hotel blocking her cove,
Good day, gentlemen.

The four of us, children, obeyed. Uncle Martin took Granny’s teacup for her; Messrs. Hill and Petion nodded and turned to the car; I went to her side, pecked her stiff, cold cheek.

* * *

The drive home largely silent, they dropped me off at Godwyn, left my uncle’s Toyota next to the barren plum tree out front, continued toward Bato, carried on with the rest of their morning.

Fatima, busy in the kitchen cooking something for dinner, hadn’t fed the dogs yet. She’d sooner let them starve. She really hated them.

No leftovers to add to their bowls, I gave them dry kibble, filled their water bowl, heard them come running from, undoubtedly, someplace they shouldn’t have been.

My mother was still sleeping.

Except for Fatima in the kitchen, I was alone. My family’s blood on my hands, I felt like a traitor; like I’d burned every bridge to belonging anywhere. Uncle Martin and Granny hated me even more than they did after I’d merely spread their family name in mud, rolling out back with Susan. This time I’d gone too far, taken their hallowed ground, given it to my mother.

And had I really even gone there for her? Or had I gone for myself? Me, too scared to even commit her to my firm’s medical insurance for fear of having a full dependent. Was it she who couldn’t afford to lose another home, bringing me to Baobique? Or was it me, running there on my own to press a desperate finger against a burgeoning leak, my mother and I a cracked dam if I’d ever seen one.

Uncle George’s Toyota, engine still warm from the trip to Tours, was just across from his grave, next to his father’s. In a couple steps I was at the side of Grampy’s cement marker, his epitaph,
All for One and One for All,
weathered down from the years. Next to him, Uncle George’s marble gravestone more expansive, his words cryptic only to outsiders:
CarCom to CarCom
.

It is hard to imagine who I would have become if my mother had never left Baobique for the States, if I would have been more like the Hills or the Pascals. I know my blood is Baobiquen, but every time I go there I want to slit my wrists, drain it out of me—every drop.