How to Escape From a Leper Colony (4 page)

“You should do nothing that hurts your family. Always doing what is best for them is best for you.”

She was never satisfied. I wouldn’t be either. Seems like Imams and priests aren’t so different.

What was best was for her to stay in Dominica. Her family had moved on. Her son was Rasta and had exactly three wives—two of them were Ethiopian Orthodox and the other was a teenage devotee of an Egyptian faith long dead in Egypt. Her daughter had converted to Christianity. Her husband had become more devoted to Islam as his children were swept away. But now Margo was returning. She’d heard about the bridge. Who hadn’t? All of the Caribbean was talking about it. The next stretch was planned for the British Virgin Islands, though the ferrymen complained and complained that they would go out of business. Proposals were in motion for the Bahamas and the ABC islands. A bridge soon to be under construction between Trinidad and Tobago. Next St. Kitts and Nevis. Bridges connecting the whole region.

She would see the bridge. Then she would go back to her husband. She was ready for the indignity. Urinating in a pot and moving one’s bowels in a hole was not indignity. Indignity was her husband’s house that was so ornate when there were so many poor in St. Thomas. Indignity was the black curtains he’d laid over all the windows to hide his shame at having children gone astray. Indignity was the burka he suggested she wear even in the hot Caribbean sun.

Their house in St. Thomas was at the very top of the island, at the tip of the highest peak. They’d bought it from the government. How, she’d never know. They’d left their nuptial house in Dominica, left it to slide down the little hill. Dominica was where her son had been born. Then her son had left and finally her daughter. And then she too, gone back to Dominica for eight years.

Margo walked to the corner store—two miles down the small Dominican hill, leaving her door unlocked so that anyone could get in if needed. She begged someone for money to buy a calling card. No indignity in being a beggar—Muslims were required to give alms.

“Rashaad?”

“Margo.”

“I am coming home.”

“Good. I have been waiting.”

“Are the curtains still black?”

“They are more of a dark blue.”

“Is there another woman?”

“Never.”

“I’m coming soon, then.”

“Come soon, then. Come soon.”

She’d left for Dominica on a whim. Just walking by the cargo ship of bananas in her burka. She’d been a shadow as she climbed aboard. Eating the sweet bananas as the vessel island-hopped, dumping its fruit cargo, filling up with parcels of books and clothes from aunties in Tortola to favorite nieces in Grenada. With the new bridge, of course, these waterways would be obsolete.

But what had kept her away all these years? Was it really Rashaad’s fanaticism—something he used to steady himself as his children converted? Islam so in vogue, every kid in St. Thomas wearing a “Go Aya-tollah!” T-shirt. Was it her son with his eleven children? No. For mothers it’s always the daughters.

Ayana was engaged to be married when the Catholics got her. Yes, we Catholics are always where the blame falls. She was engaged to a good Muslim boy whose parents were from Atlanta. Ayana said she was visiting him after school. But that was a lie. Margo knew that now. Ayana was actually staying after school in Catholic classes. All was revealed one Saturday evening.

“Mommy, come with me.”

But what does that mean, really? Come with me down the street? Come with me so I can show you something? Come with me into the bosom of Jesus?

It was a trick either way. Unfair, really. Margo had to sit in the back pew as her daughter let go of her hand and walked down the aisle. And the priest placed a white square on her waiting tongue. “I’m happy, Mommy. Be happy for me.” And then Ayana kneeled right beside her mother and prayed. The indecency of that child. Didn’t even think of her mother.

Poor Margo had breathed in deeply, that horrible incense filling her nose, and kneeled beside her daughter. “Darling. Jesus never said he was God. You mustn’t pray to him.” Ayana didn’t even nod at her mother. She seemed to have turned to stone. Margo left her daughter kneeling in the church. No energy to drag her out. Ayana was an adult in the eyes of God now anyway. Margo spat on the steps of the Cathedral. And cursed out loud the day that she’d sent her daughter to the parochial school.

“She’ll find her way,” said her son. “She’s just exploring.” But what did he know? He was lost too. His dreads all down his back. Dozens of illegitimate children swinging on his legs.

Her husband had taken her head to his chest. “Trust in Allah.” But Ayana did not come home. Rashaad put his trust in Allah and darkened the windows; buying the burka Margo refused to wear, praying five times a day. Attending mosque every Friday, at least. And they heard nothing from Ayana. Nothing. Until she arrived one day. No longer stone—now habited. Nunned! In the full nun regalia, a brown rope hanging from her side. Oh, darling. Even I don’t trust those costumed types. Well, Margo slapped her at the door. Ayana turned the other cheek. Margo slammed the door. She wore her burka after that. Always ready. Ready to face her daughter on even terms if she ever came back. But she didn’t. And then Margo, burkad, had slipped onto a boat headed for Dominica.

Now she was flying back to St. Thomas. Rashaad had insisted on flying and not hitching on a barge again. He’d even sent her the money. The plane was small but it took a long route, circling the north side of the island so the passengers could see the bridge. Steel and cords and everything known to man seemed to have gone into it. It could hold elephants, a whole tropical jungle. It looked so strong. Like the hand of God stretching over the sea and saying “come, come.” Margo began to weep.

Her plane arrived late and at the airport she had to wait a long while for her one bag, which couldn’t be found at first. When it was finally unearthed it was clear that it had been opened. The wood carving of a rounded thinking man with his head in his lap had been stolen. She had brought it as a gift for her husband. Now she was going home with nothing but herself. She took the burka out of her luggage and put it on right there in the baggage claim area. This would make Rashaad happy. She was being watched in such a way that putting on this extra cloth felt oddly as if she was stripping naked.

It was quite late and the airport was almost deserted, but as she walked to the taxi stand the remaining drivers looked uneasy on their bench. She was a woman, but she was also a ghost gliding toward them. She announced her destination in her French island–accented English. The two older men slapped the younger one on the back and pushed him forward.

The house was out Northside and they drove in silence through town where there were lights on and bars still open. There were no lights on the country roads. Just the occasional high beams of another car. When they reached the hills the young driver began to talk.

“They opening the bridge tomorrow. Well, today, seeing as it done past midnight.”

“Yes, I have heard.”

“Tomorrow is Emancipation Day here. You know? The day the slaves get free when Buddoe blow his conch shell.”

“Yes, of course.”

She didn’t want to talk to this boy. She wanted to get home and talk to her husband. Start a new life before they died.

“The bridge is that way.” The driver turned away from the direction he pointed and made his way up a steep hill. The car revved angrily, jerked and obeyed. They made their way slowly. She hadn’t seen the house for eight years. But it was still too large. Still too ridiculously ornate. Three stories on an island where two stories was already an excess. There were lights coming from the ground, lighting the driveway as they made their way. The columns at the entrance were emblazoned with light, making them look even more stretched than they were. There was darkness from the windows.

Margo opened the passenger door. The young driver carried her one bag to the steps of the grand house. Together they waited as she knocked. As she rang the doorbell. As she screamed out her husband’s name, causing wings to flap and a distant dog to respond.

“Maam. I have to head back to the airport. My dispatcher is calling.” And perhaps he was. Perhaps that sputtering from the car was the boss. Perhaps it was a lover or his mother. Or perhaps it was just static.

“Young man, you can go. This is my house. My husband will come home soon. He’s expecting me.”

“Yes, but I need to get paid.”

She couldn’t pay him. She’d counted on her husband being home. Rashaad had Western Unioned only what was needed for the plane.

“Well, money or no money, I can’t just leave you here at night. You like my grandmother or something.”

Margo stared at him through the opening in her veil. He could see the wrinkles around her eyes. “I’ll find you tomorrow and pay you. Now go.” She watched the young man walk backward, get in his car, and then drive slowly down the hill. She wasn’t afraid of the dark. She’d lived without electricity for eight years. She wasn’t afraid of loneliness. She’d lived alone on a little hill for eight years. She was afraid that her husband was not coming home. She walked down the big hill. Still hearing the very end of the taxi’s growl in the night’s silence. It was a very bright night. The half moon was out, and the house was so high up that the only thing above her was the stars. She would see the bridge up close. She would walk on it. Perhaps she would walk all the way to St. Croix. Live there. Where the land was flat and there were no hills to walk up or down. Where people had to face each other on level ground.

Gravity helped her along, pulling her down the hill toward the magnet of the bridge. She had once felt unsafe in a burka. No peripheral vision. No easy way to get hands out in defense. But in the days that she’d worn it, ready to face down her daughter, she’d found a safety. A safety to be hidden. In the dark now, rushing toward the sea, she felt unseen. The walk was a long one and she kept expecting the sky to get lighter into the morning but it didn’t. She thought about her children when they were little. How smart they’d looked in their Catholic school uniforms with dark blue socks pulled up to their knees. She thought about her husband when they first married and he’d built that house in Dominica with his own bare hands. He had promised her he would install plumbing and electricity. But then their son had been born and moving seemed easier. She thought of her own mother, who didn’t trust Rashaad because he wasn’t Pentecostal. How she had told her father that she loved Rashaad, even though she’d only brushed hands with him in the Juan Diego burial grounds where each had gone to mourn a different forgotten family member.

How could Margo have known then that she would leave behind her own faith and become Muslim to marry him? She’d only been seventeen. How could she have known anything?

By the time Margo reached the bridge she realized that she had seen her whole life in her mind. She was grateful. Now the bridge was towering above her, dwarfing the house on the hill that she had hated for so long. She stepped onto the bridge; there were sidewalks for pedestrians and she ambled along these for some time. Aware that she was high above many things. She paused to lean over a railing and then consider the distance she had walked. She could still see where she was coming from, but where she was going was lost in the darkness. Far below her was a little boat with two figures lying languidly beside each other. One figure was a bit larger than the other.

She knew what it was. Margo leaned deeper over the railing to get a better view of her husband and his other woman. They did not see her. She placed her feet on the railing, one after another until she stood there and screamed, her arms flying about. The young girl much farther along on the bridge watched the woman tip. Heard her screaming: “You said you were waiting!” The couple in the little fishing boat saw Margo as a sparrow in flight. The bridge began to shake. Margo had the flighting feeling that she had been a little wrong, but as she soared she could not remember what she was wrong about. The water rose to meet her life like a wall.

3

Pour me a greenie. I like my Heineken in a glass, damn it. I’m a gentleman. And I tell you here and now that Tony Magrass wasn’t no cheapster. He never weigh down the scale by leaning on it like some does do. His fish always fair and always fresh. He love the water. I mean is love he love the water. Spear fishing and all of that. The little wife is a waitress for a tourist food shop. She old now, but still good looking. Not wrinkle up at all. She the type that too pretty for she own good. She been horning with the manager of the restaurant where she work for years. Years! Salli, that’s she name, wasn’t even sure that she and Tony son was really Tony son. The manager wasn’t good looking, now. Just rich. Just keeping she in she job. Just helping she send Pete to Catholic school.

Pete make alright grades but he fish with his father more than he study books. Giving his teachers fish for free on Sundays. Going to Mass out Northside like good Northside Frenchies. But no one had been fishing on the north side for two years. You know, because of building the bridge and all. Less fish for the locals. Less fish for the tourists. Less fish at Salli restaurant. Tony had taken to fishing in town with the Frenchtown boys. They tease him but they pity all the Northside Frenchies. Their piece of the ocean take away by the bridge that supposed to help everybody—connect all the islands. St. Thomas to St. Croix goin be just a car drive away. Set up a toll in a year when it get popular and needed. Bring in money for the government. Money for the islands. Right? Well. On July 3 the bridge would be opened. On July 3 people would be able to walk even to their sister islands. But to Tony July 3 don’t mean bridge open, don’t even mean Emancipation Day, don’t mean the day before U.S. independence. It just mean he could fish again. But now it was March still.

He wife calling him. “Tony. Tony, baby. I leaving.”

He come home and meet the house half empty. The mahogany short leg table, for coffee she’d told him, gone. The rusted beveled mirror that her father self had brought during their first year of marriage, so they could hug up and stare at each other as she belly grow, gone. The art books that she buy secondhand, hinting and hoping for the easel and paints he
never
buy she, gone. In the kitchen there was food in plastic containers they didn’t own before. Meals done cook and freezing in the freezer. She’d gone shopping. She’d cooked. But the coal pots and iron pans that her mother had hand down, gone too. In the bathroom her little soaps. Her sweet smelly shampoo. The towel with Minnie Mouse from their trip to Orlando back when money was good—gone. Only the Mickey Mouse one hanging alone.