How to Escape From a Leper Colony (3 page)

But we were not building honeymoon quarters. We were going to build an altar to the goddess Kali. Kali who dances and spins this Kaliyuga world. Bringing the destruction we asked for when we didn’t know what we were asking. “Dear lordess,” I said as I nailed and Lazaro carved. “We is your servants. I drag this wood on my back to show you that we ain no better than dust.” For by then I was resigned to the fact that when I died I would not be buried.

It felt as though we were playing a game. But I knew it was not a game. We would be punished, though we would not be lashed or starved. Hurting our flesh was not something our nuns would ever do. They were of a peaceful order that believed in punishing the mind. We would be forced to do penance. Perhaps we would be separated. Perhaps we would have to spend days in church, he in the Protestant, me in the Catholic, where we prayed and prayed all the prayers we could remember and then were forced to learn others. This was not a small crime. This was blasphemy. They would tell us we were building false gods; though I knew Hindu gods could not be fake, since they were around before Jesus. But my mother had washed my mouth with soap when I said such things. Even she had wept that perhaps my leprosy was a curse, for the things my father had taught me.

From my mother I learned that Christians love leprosy. Christians are not so passionate about polio or cholera. But Jesus had touched lepers. Jesus cured lepers. Leprosy gives the pious a chance to be Christ-like. Only lepers hate leprosy. Who wants to be the one in the Bible always getting cured? We want to be the heroes, too. We want to be like Jesus. Or like Shiva. Or like whomever you pray to.

And then we were caught. We had built Kali out of wood. She was rough and less attractive than we knew her to be. But we painted her and a little color made all the difference. We took flowers from the graveyards and placed them at her feet. I did not know how to worship her. I only knew a few Tamil words. My father had taught me the names of the gods and had taken me with him for Diwali celebrations, but both he and my mother spoke only English to me. My mother, I believe, did not want me to learn Tamil. She did not think there would be any need. Perhaps my father felt that since I was Madrasi I would know my language as I knew myself. And yes, I knew some things. I knew how to say please, auntie, and thank you, uncle. I knew how to ask for water or the outhouse. I did not know how to pray.

Though his mother had been half Indian, Lazaro also knew only English. First we prayed the Hail Mary. Then we chanted some words in Ibo that Babalao Chuck said were holy. “Sometimes we going call her Yemaya,” Lazaro said. “I want she to have many names.” Then he went on his knees and swept the dust from her feet with a son’s tenderness.

We were caught one night because we had not returned to our huts. We were caught because we had decided, without really deciding, to spend the night with our Kali. We took our bedding and slept at her feet, under the same one blanket. I had grown taller in the almost two years I had been in the colony. Lazaro had remained small. I wanted him to hold me but it was uncomfortable and awkward. So I held him. We slept with his back to my chest. I was aware of my breasts breathing into his shoulder blades. I tried not to cough or sneeze.

To the rest of the colony, lepers and nuns and volunteers, it would be okay for us to marry. But to release our bodies to any pleasure without God’s blessing was a sin. They came for us with torches. We awoke to what felt like a dream. We saw the light before we saw their figures. Sister Theresa, a covered volunteer, and Tantie B.

“It is worse than we thought!” whispered the young nun loudly. “It’s the occult.” She backed away—her skin darkening with the night.

Tantie B looked around at what we were. Two young people. An altar. The forest. She shook her head but said nothing.

“Better if you had just been fucking,” said the volunteer quietly as he leaned his torch into Lazaro’s face. His body was covered in a white bedsheet. I held on to Lazaro, feeling the heat on my skin and thinking that this was not a dream.

Lazaro blinked furiously. Perhaps he still thought he was dreaming.

“Do it, for God’s sake,” said the nun.

“Yes,” said Tantie. “Then let them come home.”

Under the face wrappings and dark salve, the volunteer’s face twitched. He looked as though he was smiling. Tantie B and the young nun stepped back with what seemed like instinct. Perhaps the volunteer knew he was completing a history as he flung the torch to hit our Kali with the force of someone knocking down a city’s walls. To be certain, Lazaro knew.

Lazaro wrenched away from me. He flew like smoke. The fire seemed to catch him. Then there was a high-pitched screaming and a deep adolescent howling. I saw Kali rock on her base. I saw the bushes go up in flames. Then there was heat and darkness. Someone began a furious Hail Mary. Then there was nothing. I woke up in Tantie B’s house, in my cot against the wall.

“You done sleep through the night,” she said when I opened my eyes. “You been in the surgery.”

I did not think I responded. I was aware that my face was heavy.

“Took the whole night to get the fire down. Then when folks return we find the phone lines all dead. Been cut.” She cleared her throat. “And he missing.”

“Who?” I asked, and heard my mouth make a noise that was muffled. My tongue felt dry, as if it was coated with cotton.

“They both missing.”

“Who?” I tried again.

“Lazaro and the nun.”

I lifted myself off the cot and went to the mirror. My face was covered in gauze. “You been burnt, my daughter,” she said quietly but without looking at me. “The idol fall on you. Smash your face and knock you out.” I did not feel pain, but I could not shake off the feeling of dreaming. “It going be okay. Maybe for the best,” she said more loudly. I pinched myself where my neck was exposed. I looked behind me and then quickly looked back again. If what was behind me changed then I would know I was dreaming. When I whipped my head around there was a shout: “The beach!” I looked over at Tantie. Her face looked heavier than mine felt. Since we’d lived together she had lost two toes. I’d grown more than two inches. She nodded at me. We stood and walked slowly to our door.

Some people were shouting, calling to each other. Most were huddling forward in whispers. We lepers all walked to the beach. There was already a small crowd forming a circle at the shore. It was easy for Tantie and me to slip in and see. We were on the lepers’ side of the beach and there was Sister Theresa’s body—the hands and feet sparkling in pure white. Her nunnery uniform in pieces and sticking to her smooth body in its fuller places. But she was mostly naked. And she was entirely dead.

“Have mercy,” gasped Tantie. “Next, he coming for me.”

And there was no Lazaro. I thought he might come to me. Give me a sign. Tell me that he loved me. That he was seeking revenge for the injuries I had suffered. I sat on the shore and watched the day unfold. My bandages were due to be changed that evening.

Some of the other lepers sat with me. Perhaps we have a sixth sense. When lunch was cooked Tantie brought it to me and then didn’t leave after we had eaten. I faced inland. I mostly watched the trees and studied the howlers to see if any of them was a boy instead of a monkey. I kept alert so I could decipher any signs from him. Anything that would tell me what to do or where to go. But he did not come to me, after all. It was not me he was avenging. Instead, word came that the boats had all been punctured with large holes and the radios had disappeared. Then I began to watch the big island—the continent of Trinidad—and I wondered how anyone would know to come save us.

I watched the first nun leap off the dock at dusk—right after supper. She had made sure she had a full belly. Then they all lined up to jump. Oh, to see them. Their white robes flapping like wings, then their bodies hitting the water like birds hunting a fish prey. Then see them swimming. Swimming as though they were the hunted ones. And Lazaro, my Lazaro, was still missing.

None of us lepers had left Chacachacare since we arrived. An island can be a world. We knew that the Americans had built a Navy base on Trinidad because there was a war going on somewhere. We’d heard that the Marines were there, too. We might as well have been going to the moon. It was as dangerous and as crazy. We did not line up on the dock like the nuns. We just walked into the ocean. Until we couldn’t walk and we had to swim. And we took only ourselves. It was as if we thought we were coming back. As though we were so powerful we could go to the moon on vacation. Both my arms were strong enough. I treaded water and imagined I heard gunshots and the dancing of boots on stone. My face bandages came off in the water. The sea seared into my cheeks and mouth and the soft part around my eyes. Tantie did not come. She stayed behind on the shore and watched me soak into my real life. “I can’t swim,” she called and then went to our house without looking back at me.

Now when you sail by on your ships you will say the island is haunted. You will visit the places where we bathed and played our pickup soccer. You will take pictures of our houses, our beds made up stiffly like war bunks. The sheets still on them and the pillows well placed. You will see the plates and bowls sitting on the table, the pots and pans lying dirty in the sink. In the surgery, all the records resting open for any curious boaties to rummage through and know that someone’s leg had been chopped off, someone else’s penis. Someone’s arms were too ruined to hold her baby, someone else had been cremated. Someone had begged to be killed in his sleep. The X-rays will still be up on the X-ray machine. Our medicines, the early salves that only soothed but didn’t heal and the more modern penicillin, all exposed. Now the government says they will tear down everything and build hotels and casinos so that your ships have a reason to stay in the region and spend money. Or perhaps you will only walk along the shore and swim in our beach.

But if you go deep, you will also find our goddess, rough and elegant. I left her behind. You may visit her if you wipe the dust from her feet. I left for the sea. I swam in the soup with everyone. Nuns and volunteers holding on to lepers for dear life. The dark protective salve running off their faces and revealing them to be of every race. Lepers hoping a shark would come and eat their leg off so at least they’d be lighter and their bodies would stop being a dead weight.

1

The people wore little bridges around their necks. And when couples married they hopped over a little bridge. Everything was good.

There was a bridge maker. He made bridges that people put in their earlobes and around their fingers. Tiny little bridges. Decorated and beautiful and perfect. He decided that when he died he would request a thin bridge fixed to his casket helping to connect him to his dead family under the ground.

His living family insisted that he leave a real legacy. He was famous for small things. They wanted him to be known for big things. So he built a real bridge. Paid for by the Yankees—not to honor his memory, but really for their own convenience. Like everything new. Huge and stretching from Guyana—the place in the world most south—to Miami—the place in the world most north. Before allowing the public to walk on the bridge he gathered all his family onto it for a picture. But the bridge was built like his others, the only way he knew how, delicate and pretty but not able to bear weight.

When the picture flashed—a big, beautiful, blinding light—the bridge fell apart. And not only in that spot but in places all over the Caribbean, so that the many families who had gathered to take pictures (without express permission) also went into the ocean. And though they were surrounded by the sea no one in any of the communities had bothered to learn to swim. The water never seemed as important as the land.

2

Margo was a kind of ghost. A living ghost. She’d been living in St. Thomas for a decade but she had just up and sailed back to Dominica years ago. She couldn’t continue to suffer the lack of dignity she faced here in St. Thomas. Oh, yes. Right here. Her husband, Rashaad, living in St. Thomas like a proper Muslim man. Working even now that their children were grown. Their grandchildren almost grown. It was a sham.

Back in Dominica their house was small and old and rolling down the hill inch by inch every year. No plumbing, she pissed in a pot. She did her business in a hole. Cooked her own food and withered away. This was okay. This was living. Going to mosque every Friday—walking all the five miles on her own. She passed waterfalls and rivers and waterfalls; symbols of life, she knew. She walked fast—she felt she could live forever. In St. Thomas she’d felt she would die. In the small mosque in Dominica there was no separate place for men and women. And women could speak. Ask the Imam questions in Patois during the middle of his speeches. Margo asked the same question every Friday.

“Does a woman sin by not living with her husband?”