I turned into the labyrinth of roads that led to Joshua's house and passed a group of schoolchildren walking home. Two older girls were holding the hands of little ones who couldn't have been more than three or so. They had to take two steps for every one of the big girls in order to keep up. I found Joshua and Evelyn sitting in their living room, listening to a radio that looked as though it was from the 1940s. It sat on the bookshelves between two porcelain dolphin figurines. A framed picture of Evelyn standing under a palm tree hung on the wall next to the radio. We had taken the picture five years earlier and sent it to them for Christmas.
Evelyn eyed me up and down and said, “You comin' nice.”
I just smiled.
“You comin' real nice,” she said again, hoping for more of a reaction.
“It's nice to see you,” I said, knowing it wasn't quite the right answer.
Joshua helped me out. “She mean you put on a few pounds. You look good.”
“I don't think it's nice. I feel fat,” I said as I patted hips that were a little plumper than I would have liked.
“No, you ain' fat. You healthy.”
Had I been visiting my own grandmother, I'd be getting advice on weight loss. She'd tell me of the latest diets she'd heard about on TV and list my options: high protein, low protein, high carb, low carb, ignore calories, or count calories, with, of course, all of the diets promising I would never be hungry again. If worse came to worst, I could always go to a spa and hide out until I was presentable again.
Evelyn, I was sure, had never heard of a spa and would never consider going to one even if she had. Why would anyone spend money to be skinny?
We talked for a while about Uncle Waddy and about traditions lost and times gone by. Evelyn explained that in the old days, when times were less prosperous for Anguilla, you hardly ever saw heavy people. Sometimes fish was the only thing to eat, since long droughts were common, and the already meager crops would die. “It hard to get big with only fish to eat,” she said.
Driving to The Valley was a daily challenge made infinitely more interesting by the various obstacles encountered along the way. There were animals, speed bumps, tourists forgetting to keep left, and, just like everywhere else in the world, a younger generation of hot-rodders.
Rawldy, on the other hand, drove too slowly. Top speed for Rawldy was 15 mph, and his rattletrap station wagon could often be found at the head of a long line of cars. Rawldy was Anguilla's own traveling salesman. He drove around with a selection of handcrafted brooms made of gnarly sticks and palm fronds tied to his roof rack. From the back of his car he offered mangoes, sweet potatoes, bananas, christophines, coconuts, and papayas.
Prospective customers would hail Rawldy, and he'd stop in the middle of the road to discuss a potential sale. With his tailgate open, entire neighborhoods would gather around his car to squeeze mangoes or inspect brooms for weight and balance. Meanwhile traffic piled up behind him. Sometimes cars would inch around, but usually everyone just waited.
If we came to a slow crawl in an endless line of cars, or if traffic was stopped entirely, Rawldy was usually at the front of the line.
Island time,
we'd remind ourselves.
Bob and I settled into the leisurely pace, breathing deeper and walking slower. Always in shorts and sandals, we pictured friends up north coping with sleet and slush. Accustomed to the bright blue sky and mornings of intense yellow sunlight, we even began to find a welcome relief in the occasional rain. Tourists, on the other hand, had not come for rain. A morning drizzle was tolerated in good spirits by mostâafter all, what's so bad about spending a morning on the balcony reading a good book? A little respite before an afternoon of sun could easily be accepted.
An entire day of rain was pushing it, though, and two consecutive days brought out the cranky side of visitors. “What's with the weather?” they'd ask Bob in the dining room each night. “Does it always rain in Anguilla? We went to St. Barts last year and had perfect weather.” He'd explain that St. Barts was only fifteen miles away and usually had the same weather as we did, and actually, it was even a little rainier there because of that island's mountains. He assured them that if it was raining in Anguilla, it was most likely raining in St. Barts as well.
Far worse than the occasional shower, however, were Anguilla's infamous Christmas winds. Anguilla's weather is usually constant, with an average temperature of eighty degrees and annual rainfall of thirty-five inches. It's the most northerly of the Leeward Islands, with a gentle trade wind blowing from the east. But just as Provence is visited by the cold, relentless wind of the mistral and California has its Santa Anas, Anguilla was occasionally plagued by the Christmas winds, which sometimes lingered into January. The trade winds, usually from the east, would shift around to the west, pick up speed, and turn into a gale. Glasses and flowers blew off tables in the dining room, and we would have to lock all the shutters, closing out the gardens and fountains, making the restaurant feel cramped and claustrophobic. Rain pounded against the building in cold gusts and seeped through the louvers, soaking tablecloths and seat cushions on the western side. Customers were hostile. Cancellations and no-shows were rampant, and tempers were short among the soggy souls who did turn up.
After a week of Christmas winds, the entire island sank into a melancholy funk. The open-air restaurants closed, taxi drivers had few fares, and disappointed guests were forced to stay in their rooms.
Even the Blanchard's kitchen crew sulked. Bug came to work in a wool hat. “Too mucha water,” he grumbled. “I gonna build an ark if this keep up.”
But ten days after the winds began, they blew themselves away abruptly one night during dinner. As we cautiously opened the shutters the mood in the restaurant turned cheerful. The next morning dawned crystal clear, the sun started to dry the island out, and a wave of contentment swept over our thirty-five square miles of paradise. Tourists went back to lolling on the beach and told horror stories about the weather to naive new arrivals. Anguilla returned to normal, and Bug put aside his boatbuilding plans.
Crisp Thai Snapper
One of our best-selling items on the menu turned out to be the crispy crusted snapper with a Thai citrus sauce. Luckily, it was also one of the easiest dishes to prepare, so anyone in the kitchen could help as orders came in.
For the snapper, just spread a thin layer of coarse-grained mustard on each fillet. Then press a layer of shredded (uncooked) Idaho potato firmly on top of the mustard. Sauté in a little olive oil, potato side up, for about two minutes. Turn over carefully and cook until potato is crispy and brown.
The sauce is just as easy. For four servings, whisk together 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice with 1/4 cup honey until the honey dissolves. Add 1/4 cup soy sauce, 2 teaspoons minced ginger, 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic, and mix well. Whisking constantly, add 1/2 cup vegetable oil in a slow, steady stream until well blended.
Conversation in the kitchen one night centered on the news of the first cruise ship to arrive in Anguilla. “She a new brand boat,” Shabby said, glowing with excitement. “From Germany. She gonna leave Santo Domingo and come every other Sunday. We all gonna have to learn German 'cause next year we be full of German tourists. Once these people see how beautiful it is here, they'll go home and tell all their friends 'bout Anguilla.”
The taxi men who came through the kitchen that night were ecstatic about the new ship. I gave Nell a Caesar salad and Teddy a piece of cheesecake while they made their case. No more hanging out under a tree waiting for business, they said. They were ready to provide island tours for the masses. A few even debated ordering larger vans to accommodate the anticipated hordes of people. Merchants were going to set up temporary stalls for T-shirts and gifts, and the beach bars in Sandy Ground prepared special lunch menus in German.
Twelve hundred people arriving on this tiny rock was big news indeed, and though many islanders saw it as a real breakthrough for business, there were skeptics as well. “Who will clean up their litter on the beach?” people asked. “Whose bathrooms will they use?”
But to me, the most important question raised was “What about all the tourists who come to Anguilla to get away from cruise ships and crowds?” The debate intensified, and we heard the pros and cons repeated all over the island. Everyone had an opinion.
The first big Sunday arrived, and we joined the crowd of locals perched on the cliff overlooking the sleepy harbor of Sandy Ground. There it wasâa white monster of a boat that appeared to be half the length of the entire bay.
“It's huge,” I whispered to Bob. “It's like an invasion.”
“Mel,” he said, “you can't deny the people here their right to expand their economy. Think of what this could do for the taxi drivers alone.”
“But I'm worried about the tourists who love that there are so few people here; they'll stop coming. It'll make Anguilla more like St. Martin.”
I caught bits and pieces of conversations around me in the crowd as everyone eyed the giant vessel. Some looked on with admiration, others sounded apprehensive. We decided to drive down the hill into Sandy Ground to get a firsthand look. A banner hung from posts on the beach: WILLKOMMEN AUF ANGUILLA.
But where were the twelve hundred tourists spewing onto the beach, and why were the taxi drivers still just hanging around? Only a few cruise passengers chose to come ashore, and they were examining the T-shirts for sale; other than that, not much was going on.
Over the next few weeks local enthusiasm for the German cruise ship faded. Bob and I felt bad that hopes had been dashed and plans for German lessons were no longer in the offing. Secretly, though, we were relieved. The cruise ship experiment ended after the initial trial run, and Anguilla, for the time being at least, remained a quiet hideaway.
Our lives had settled into an Anguillian rhythm during the day. Each morning on the way to the restaurant Bob and I waved to Elbert the goat herder. We put in about four hours of prep work in the kitchen along with Marcus, who always arrived a little late. Marcus had no concept of time and no structure in his life except for the few hours a day he worked with us. We'd given up trying to make him come on time, and since he continued to break most pieces of equipment he touched, his duties had been restricted to shucking corn, peeling and chopping potatoes and carrots, and washing pots and pans. Sometimes Marcus was so late that we were just finishing our work as he arrived. Rather than wait for him to do his job, we left him there to lock up when he finished.
After cooking each morning, Bob would drop me off at home to do my ordering, pay bills, and add up the receipts from the night before. I juggled phone calls from London, New York, and Düsseldorf, taking dinner reservations from people I'd never met. They'd either heard about Blanchard's from customers who had just returned home or read about us in the articles that were starting to appear in various publications.
Bob would head for The Valley in search of the inevitable missing ingredient. I'd send him on a mission to find tomatoes or perhaps some cream. If a boat had just come in, the undertaking was relatively easyâtwo or three stops and he might have what we needed for that night's menu. More often than not we would either do without or make a quick trip to St. Martin.
Lunch became the high point of our day as we rotated our way through all the restaurants on the island. Sitting at the beach bar at Cap Juluca with a swordfish sandwich topped with grilled onions and local hot sauce, or at Uncle Ernie's eating grilled chicken and ribs, we felt as if we were on vacation for an hour or two each day. Uncle Ernie's was just the sort of place we'd had in mind when we first thought about opening a restaurant on Anguilla: two Weber grills, three tables in the sand shaded by Heineken umbrellas, and chicken, ribs, or fish with fries for $5. Ernie served lunch only and had an easy life. I often wondered how different our lives would have been had our rent allowed us to have a simpler business. We'd probably be bored.
An afternoon nap became an essential part of our routine if we were to make it through dinner without yawning. We'd sleep from about two to four, and then our alarm clock would remind us it was time to confirm all the reservations that had been left on the answering machine. By five o'clock, we were back at the restaurant, getting ready for another curtain call.
Every Saturday Roxana's parents earned some extra money by setting up a tent by North Hill Road and serving lunch to passersby. Vi, Roxana's mother, and several of her friends from church spent two days preparing bull-foot soup, salt fish, conch stew, johnnycakes, and sweet-potato dumplings; her husband, Bernard, organized the tables and chairs, grills, and ice coolers.
I consider myself an adventurous eater, but it took some coaxing from Garrilin and little Roxana before I sampled the bull-foot soup. The two of them laughed when I grimaced and told them all I could imagine were giant brown bulls with hooves the size of footballs. But I joined them at the tent one Saturday specifically to try the sweet-potato dumplings. Roxana rubbed her tummy and said, “Mel, you gonna love these. Everybody in Anguilla love these.”
As Garrilin brought our dumplings to the table, she confessed, “Mel, you seen these leaves before.”
I couldn't imagine what she meant.
“See, the potato wrap with sea grape leaves. Bernard and Roxana pick these from in front of Blanchard's. They
your
leaves.”
“That's great,” I said. “We have lots more they can have.” I looked at the green bundles. They were bigger than I'd expectedâabout six inches long and almost three inches around.
“These are huge. Are we each really eating a whole one?” I asked Garrilin.
“They big, yes. Each one weigh a pound. But you gonna love it, man.”
“Tell me how they're made,” I said.
“We take two, maybe three leaves, dependin' on size, and roll them around the filling. Our sweet potato not like yours, you know. It white inside. Anyway, then we chop up the boil potato with spice and butter and nutmeg. If the potato ain' sweet enough, we add a little sugar.”
“What kind of spice?” I asked.
“You know. Spice. We grind up those little brown sticksâthey look like bark.”
“You mean cinnamon?”
“Yeah, man. I forget you call it cinnamon. We jus' call it spice.”
Roxana interrupted, “Garrilin, you forget to boil the leaves. Mommy boil the leaves before she roll 'em.”
“Oh, yeah.” Garrilin stood corrected. The sea grape leaves were too stiff right off the tree, so they had to be boiled to make them pliable, she explained.
“Then,” she continued, “we take strips of clothâusually from ol' sacks a flourâan' we tie the leaves 'round the potato so they hold when they cook in the water. That all we do.”
I carefully unwrapped my dumpling, hating to pull apart such a perfect package. Three big leaves unfolded like a flower, revealing the sweet, steaming log inside. The spice, as Garrilin had called it, made the white potato brown, and it was smooth as silk on the outside with a few tiny ridges formed by the edges of the leaves.
Had I not known it was a potato filling, I'm not sure I would have guessed. I'm a big fan of cinnamon, so I loved the flavor, and the texture was like a firm bread puddingâanother one of my favorites.
While I was eating, Garrilin went back to the food table under the tent and brought back more things for me to try.
“Here, Mel,” she said. “This pigeon pea soup. You see the peas dryin' out in people's yards or on cisternsâanywhere they have space. We dry the pods in the sun and use 'em in rice or soup. Everyone in Anguilla eat peas in somethin' most every day.”
I had eaten rice and peas at Cora Lee's often and was familiar with the fact that what were called peas here would be beans back home. Tiny brown flecks, similar to lentils, floated in a broth with carrots, onions, and celery. There were dumplings in the soup as well, these made from flour, cornmeal, and water, and shaped into two-inch torpedoes that reminded me of matzoh balls.
“Where's Mac today?” I asked.
“I dunno wha' keepin' he back. He say he meet us here. Musta got a puncture in he tire.”
Then came the moment of truth. Garrilin placed a bowl in front of me. She and Roxana fell silent. There was no way I could get out of giving it a try. “It's just the name I don't like,” I explained. “I wish I didn't know what was in it.”
“Try it,” Roxana urged.
I've never been able to refuse the pleas of a six-year-old with big black eyes, her long lashes fluttering a little flirtatiously. In the end, the bull-foot soup was quite goodâa bit like beef and barley, but instead of the barley, it had more of the same flour dumplings as the pigeon pea soup. There were red and green peppers, lots of onions, and a few pieces of the dreaded bull foot itself. It was very good, I admitted, but the name would probably still keep me from ordering it too often.
At work that night Garrilin announced in the kitchen, “Mel eat like we today.”
Bug said, “She comin'. She comin'.”