How to Escape From a Leper Colony (23 page)

“What about it?”

“Rabbits are white people,” he said.

“Are you serious, Dutch?”

He smiled and nodded. “Don’t come to Jou’vert. Don’t come to the village or the parade. Dread, you better stay home until Monday.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“What you mean?”

“Kill the rabbits.
Do you think they’ll kill us for real?”

“Man, who the hell is
they
and who the frig is
us?
”

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into but I could see that Dutch was no longer congenial.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“The
tourist
color. I ain no tourist. I’s a Frenchy—a island man. Rabbits don’t mean me.”

“But you’re white, too, like me.”

“Not that. The song means you.”

“Not me either then. They mean tourist then. Like those assholes.” I pointed to a white couple who were dressed in shorts and walking into a café. I didn’t know if those tourists were assholes. I didn’t know anything about them.

“You are them,” said Dutch.

“No. I live here. They’re tourists. I’m local.”

“You live here for two years. They live here for two weeks. What’s the difference? You’re all going back.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said.

He shook his head. “You’re a belonger to up there. That’s where you’ll run if there’s a hurricane or a revolution or something.”

“So would you. You’re a hypocrite.”

“I wouldn’t belong up there. I’d be running around with a piece of this place on my back; this is my home-home. It might be home to you, partner, but when you think of home-home you don’t think here.”

“Damn, Dutch. You’re a racist—against white people. Against your own kind.”

“You ain my kind, Herman. You are not my kind.”

Then he walked away and the smell of fish being chopped up yards away was suddenly so high that phlegm came up my throat and I turned and spat.

I’d been on the island for almost a year, since my parents had moved from D.C. I’d been traveling since high school. Trying to find a place I could settle into and feel good about. I wanted somewhere where there was English because I wasn’t good with languages. But I wanted somewhere warm. Now I worked in my parents’ bar in St. John. Maybe I would live here in the Virgin Islands. Maybe I had found my paradise. I was not planning on going anywhere. I did not want to be a tourist. Not anymore.

4.

When I’m not staring out at the sea I lime in the library. I prefer the salt air to the library’s a.c. but sometimes I like the quiet. I like the hard wooden chairs with firm backs. It’s a small quiet place, like a vault with precious gold bullion. A vault inside the jail. The tile on the floor is scrubbed shiny and clean and my shoes squeak when I walk. They only let three of us in at a time. And we have to sit at different tables. There are only three long tables in the library. There’s a computer in the corner that connects to the Internet. I surf, looking up the newest magic tricks. Now I can make plastic forks and spoons disappear. I’ve been looking up rabbits. How to make one disappear. Turns out those magic rabbits die at a higher rate than pet or even wild rabbits. All that disappearing. I wish this place had classes. Not magic classes necessarily. I wouldn’t mind a painting class or even just water-colors. But the one problem with this small local jail is that they don’t have things like that. I’ve sacrificed education for a view of the ocean. I laugh when I think this. I sound like someone who has a choice.

What I find out about “kill the rabbits” or “the rabbit is dead” grinds in my chest and in my head. It’s called the Bitterling Test. What a name. German, I think. From before anyone cared about planning a family or about women shoving hangers up their twats. The Bitterling Test was the first pregnancy test—a thing rich women used to check if they were pregnant, so they could decide if they wanted to have the baby or not. If now was a good time. Inject the urine into the rabbit. If the rabbit died then the woman’s having a baby. I think of my Xica in the yellow dress. I think of her and how many rabbits she’s killed.

I was sixteen when my little brother was born. My mother thought it would be good to have the Christening during Carnival time because of convenience. A lot of family would be down from the States. There were the days off from work and school that could make the whole affair a family reunion. Plus my mother and her new husband had met during a Carnival and everyone laughed that the baby had been conceived during Carnival—though I didn’t want to know about that. I always thought my mother worked during Carnival. They needed more cops because of the crime. But my mother didn’t believe in any connection between crime and fêting. She always said that there was more sex during Carnival and more drugs during Carnival but there wasn’t really more crime. It made good sense to have the Christening then and it was romantic—even though it was such an island thing for them to do.

It was the Carnival of
Legal,
so the fact that my mother preached her no-crime speech at every opportunity the weekend of the Christening was not to be misunderstood. Everyone expected crime that Carnival. The song was calling for a revolution. A kind of Carnival revolution. The authorities and church people were always demonizing Carnival for its slackness, its degradation. Social workers on the local TV station talked about the great disservice we did our children by showing them how to cock up and wind in the middle of the street. But that Carnival Jamband had come out with
Legal,
a song that told all the stuck-up people to go to hell. “They tell us: Be on good behavior, for the tourist color. All they want is: stand in a circle spin all around, do-si-do when you come into town. Stop! Who say we wild? It’s the Jamband style. Boom, boom, bam, bam. Hands in the air!” Don’t try to impress the white people was the directive. Don’t imitate their dancing and their ways just to make them feel comfortable. This is our Carnival. Obey your own culture. Be wild. Let loose. Throw your hands in the air.

For Christ’s sake, it was the year I was sixteen. The song was telling us that stuck-up people wanted Carnival to be a legal affair. But legal meant proper. And proper meant fake. And we would not be fake or proper or legal. I understood that they meant a cultural revolution. I allowed myself to misunderstand.

Carnival break started on Wednesday, with a half day of school that nobody attended. Wednesday was food fair and if you waited until even noon, all the best conch in butter sauce would be sold out. But the Sunday before that I had met Xica. She’d been at the Christening. She was related to my brother’s daddy somehow. I didn’t notice her first. Really. First, she noticed me.

We were at the Cathedral downtown. In days the Cathedral would be locked up as Carnival revelers stamped through the street. Obeying the song that would be the road march. Be wild, it commanded. We own this Carnival, it declared. But now “I am the vine and you are the branches” was being sung by the choir. The priest called for the child to be brought up. The microphone wasn’t working and so we couldn’t hear the godparents respond to the sacred questions. My mother was wearing a big cream-colored hat and a fluffy dress. I thought she looked silly but hadn’t told her so in the morning. Her husband, who had only been her husband since the baby but was now living in our house, told her she looked fabulous and kissed her on the mouth. I didn’t like him. His mouth was always greasy and I knew he wouldn’t stay.

In the Cathedral I held the Body of Christ on my tongue seeing how long it would take to melt if I didn’t chew it. I stared at the Stations of the Cross on the walls, studying the story it was telling. Finally, on the station where Jesus falls for the second time, the wafer slivered into nothing and melted away in my mouth. “Abide in me as I in you.” I closed my eyes thinking that in the front pew only God and the priest would see me taking a rest. And I must have dreamed about a girl because when I felt someone slide up against me in the pew I didn’t flinch out of my sleep. I just nestled in. A song was playing. My boy cousin was kneeling on one side of me. My mother’s husband was on the other side of him. The baby, who hadn’t taken the water on his forehead well, started crying and I woke to my mother rustling out of the church with her new son in her arms. The girl next to me was kneeling with her head down like she was praying. She lifted her head to stare at the altar. Then she turned to me. “I stare at the paintings,” she said. “I like to look at pretty things.”

I nodded. She was older than me, but she didn’t look like the religious type. Her yellow dress was grabbed around her waist, and she was wearing big gold hibiscus earrings. But with these girls you never knew. They want diamonds and Jesus at the same time, forgetting that Jesus walked Palestine barefoot with only bread and wine to eat.

“We will be one in love.” The song finished. She leaned into the seat but stopped before her back touched the pew. She was perched, ass alone holding her up. She whispered to me. “I like Simon Peter best.” Her face was the sweet color of brown sugar.

The recession song came on, “Give me joy in my lamp, keep me burning,” and the girl slid out. I followed her. She didn’t just dip her finger in the holy water. She cupped it out and splashed on her sign of the cross. Outside the beads of water were still on her forehead and spotted on the chest of her dress. An interesting yellow dress. Tight on top with puffy shoulders and like skin on the bottom. The dress was glittering somehow, like maybe it was done up with gold thread or something. Like something old-timish, like a hand-me-down or costume. People were mingling and taking pictures of my mother and the baby. The baby was wearing a long white dress. The family was supposed to go to brunch at some hotel out East End that was expensive and reserved for such occasions. A car drove by shaking and blasting the song that was the anthem:
Legal.
The hook was playing. “Kill the rabbits! Kill the rabbits! Kill the rabbits …” All the adults pursed their faces and flipped their hands as if fanning the car away. The car drove on but the song stayed in the air.

“Paul is the one who carries the pen. He’s the scholar. But Peter carries the keys. To the Church. Which do you think is more powerful?” Now she was walking back behind the church. She walked with her back erect. Like a model. I wondered if I knew her. It seemed like I’d seen her around. But St. Thomas is a small island. Everyone looks familiar. I followed her to the side of the church, where the stone wasn’t painted over. She nestled behind these big winding stairs that went up to the place where the priests lived. It smelled like pee. I’d never followed a girl to a small smelly corner before. I kept looking back to see if my mother would forget me and go to the Baptism brunch. But this girl said “I’m Xica” and before I could tell her “I’m Cooper, but call me Coop” she had pushed up against me and was kissing me and we were clutching each other and our mouths were wet with their own juices and different parts of my body were going limp or stiff. And then she pulled away, but I pulled her back because I wasn’t done with this brown sugar. Our faces were right up against each other. She looked at me hard. She must have been a woman, really. She must have been eighteen.

“That’s it,” she said. “It was nice.” And she pulled away so quickly that her chain busted off in my hand. “Shit,” she cursed, then crossed herself. “Keep it.” Then she snapped away. I was in love. That was it. I was in love with Xica. And all she had done was kiss me. She didn’t come to the brunch. She wasn’t close family.

That Carnival I was overtaken by the slapping of steelpan and the clanging of cowbells. The food fair was so rammed that it was easy to stick my hand in a white woman’s pockets and take her money as she pressed her puffy twat against my hand thinking I was looking for something else. I stole from tourist women, mostly. It was easier than magic. If you had asked me then why I was stealing I would have said to buy a better necklace for Xica. One that wouldn’t break so easily.

I hadn’t ever been like this before. Before I just stole to know I could do it. Now I stole and stole and I told myself that this was the Carnival for revolution. Love was a revolution. And stealing was part of the war. I was part of a movement. Anarchy is the word for it. I didn’t know that word then. Then I would have said that I was just obeying the song.

At Jou’vert I tramped behind Jamband, holding on to the truck, swinging to catch the bottles of spring water they threw to the crowd. They played their oldies which made the girls bend down low with their hands on the ground. Whenever they struck up
Legal
the whole crowd, thousands of us there in the street, would go jump and prance and lose our minds. They must have played it five times. A long version that lasted for fifteen minutes. When it was dark everyone sang along loudly and put their hands in one direction and their backsides in the others. “Take off you shirt and wave it!” And in the light of the moon girls took off their shirts to reveal sports bras worn for the occasion. As the sun came up on the Waterfront me and my boys found each other and moved through the crowd like a pack of dogs. Our elbows out and faces hidden by handkerchiefs. We weren’t stealing or anything. We were just making room for ourselves. Watch us, we were saying. The sun is up on this street party and you better know that we’re here.

Two days later I was a wild clown in the Carnival parade. I tramped with a crew of my friends and I looked for Xica. I saw many women I thought must be her. I touched them. I smelled them. I told myself I would find her after Carnival when we were without masks. I would present her with a new necklace. But that was my last Carnival.

I still have Xica’s broken necklace. I had it made into a hand chain and it’s the one vanity they allow me—though I only wear it during Mass. It’s my talisman. And now I look forward to spying on the thick crowd of revelers of Jou’vert morning as much as I look forward to the one martyr on Easter night.

5.

I wish to blame my mother. It is the thing we all wish to do and Dr. Freud has given us license so now we are taught that this desire is natural—even though nothing about blame is natural. I have simply made a decision that my pain is inherited. In which case, it is from her. But that still does not make it her fault. Notice that I do not mention my father—since I did not know him at all and so can credit nothing to him. Not even abandonment, because in truth he may not even know that I exist. Fatherhood is a thing that is assigned and accepted.