How to Escape From a Leper Colony (5 page)

Salli was in the bedroom. The linen bedspread that he parents had give them arrange neat over the bed. She lying on top of it. Fully clothed. Heels and stockings. Calf length skirt. White blouse. A nice purse at she side. Clothes he ain never seen before. That’s a woman for you. She turn her head just so when he enter and watch him in the face.

“I goin with Mr. Kenny. I can’t live off a fisher man’s salary no more.”

“And Pete?” Tony look at he wife, too pretty and lying out on their bed. He wanted to walk to her and unbutton her shirt slow. But he smell of fish. He know she hate that. She watch him hard.

“Pete’s a grown man. Going to college in the States soon. He’ll stay with you or us. No matter.”

Tony leave the room before she did. If I were he I woulda swallow some cold Heineken. But Tony just walk out to the dining room where dinner for he and Pete sitting in plates covered in aluminum foil. He sit down at the tail of the table and begin to eat. He hear her heels clink behind him on she way out.

Pete didn’t come home that night. The next day was school but he turn up at eight in the morning to he father’s house. He find Tony in bed, wrap up in the linen bedspread, bloat up and sick from all the food he eat. Not just the dinner Salli leave but enough food for at least three days. Pete stand over his old man.

“Ma say you not my real father, Dad.”

Tony roll around in his linen cocoon. See the man! Flinging heself onto the floor, onto the tile he had lay he ownself. The tile she had picked out. He fighting now, tearing the linen and old lace until he get free. He son watching from the doorway.

“Dad. Let me know what’s true.”

Tony reach a hand to he son and together they get Tony onto the bed. Pete sit down beside him. Tony look into he son eyes.

“Your mother is the devil.”

“Don’t say that, man.”

“She a lying devil.”

“Chill, Pops. Chill out.”

Tony thought they should go fishing. At times like these that is what a proper Frenchy father and son should do. But Tony can’t take Pete to Frenchtown—it already crowded down there. So they decide to wait until July 3. So long aways. And Pete leaving two days after that. He get into a nice-up school in the States but they require him to do some summer classes cause he ain so good at maths.

So the father and son wait all that time. And at four in the morning of July 3 they roll up their pants. They have their spear gun and dagger just in case, but really they only want to do some leisure fishing. Maybe bring something home for dinner so they don’t have to eat the cooking Salli keep bringing in plastic tins. They push out their boat, and the bridge there gleaming. They see it stretching out across the ocean. They have nets and poles and flashlight and a bag of small live bait.

At the docks there weren’t no other men. The other Northside Frenchies thinking to wait, thinking that the fish wouldn’t come back so soon. Thought maybe the fish would never come back. Some had already moved from Northside permanently. You seeing them in town. Haunting the place looking for sea jobs, land jobs—anything. But those don’t have a son going away. They don’t have a wife who leave them for a better man.

The boat engine make a soft noise and though they just heading out to sea it seem like they heading toward the bridge. They wasn’t. Not really. It only seem so cause the bridge feel like it everywhere. Like it a haunted rainbow, hunting you round the city. I have felt the feeling. The moon was out and shape funny, like a smile almost. They even see one or two people on the bridge.

“Yeah, Dad. I think we goin catch something, man. I think the fish must be curious to see a boat like ours after all this time.”

“We counting on it.” But the father didn’t really think so. Not really at all. He only want to be with he son like this. Pete been living with his mother and Mr. Kenny all this time because Mr. Kenny could drop him to school while his father went fishing first thing in the morning. But Pete was still his son and Tony love-love he son. More than fishing even. More than life.

“Jesus. Pops, look.” Pete was staring past he father shoulder. “Pops, she’s frigging jumping.” And sure nough. A woman standing on the railing of the bridge with her arms spread wide.

She tip forward and Pete scream—like he mother’s own son. A high-pitch thing. And the woman above them spread her black wings and begin to fly like a crow diving to the ocean. But Tony ain even see she cause he busy going blind from a light bright like a saint. It was just then that the bridge begin to collapse. And the water around their little boat begin to swell. And their boat itself begin to shake. And boulders of the bridge crash into the sea causing waves that lift highhigh. And then the sound like hell opening its dirty doors—loud like it coming from inside the chest somehow. The boat rip apart before it could capsize. Son holding on to the one half and spinning off into a whirlwind. Father grabbing on the next half rushing toward ragged land.

Tony Magrass knock on Mr. Kenny door that very morning. The easel hard and heavy under he one arm. The palate of paints dainty in he other. Salli open the door and look at her husband of seventeen years. The father of she dead son. She don’ know for sure yet that she son gone, but she know this man ain come cause he hungry. Mr. Kenny not home as yet, so she watch the art ting hard. She look again at she husband and they lock eyes even harder. Despite their distance, there never been a thing but love between them. “Set it up in the corner, Tony.”

4

Guadeloupe did it for love.
Obviously.
As they say in all the movies, nothing else is enough. Of course she wanted to kill herself. Attempted suicide is, like, so in vogue now. Though she did more than die, of course. Juan Diego was a real man who knew not to ask about her past. About how she really won (well,
almost
won) all those teen pageants. He knew not to question anything that had happened before him, not even to question what was happening while she was with him. If it did not stop her from loving him, if it did not rack her with guilt, if it did not make her different, then how could it matter to him? Yes, girl. Guadeloupe was a little whore.

When she said she was a virgin, he agreed. He accepted her with the illusions she presented. Loved her and didn’t care about the lies. You know the type. He was a real college guy, mature about that kind of stuff. Dark skin and tall. Those sweet ones are hard to find, and then the wrongest girls are the ones who find them, yes.

Anyway, she wasn’t like him. She wasn’t mature bout those things. Still in high school and one of those stupid girlie girls.
I
would have known better. Anyhow, she found a love note, dated like three years before she’d even met him. And she just crumbled from the thought that he’d loved someone besides her. Stupid, hey? Crumbled from the realization that he too had a past, that maybe she was not his greatest love in the whole wide world—I mean he had saved the note for
three years
and she would have been like a freshman in high school then. And like all girls who don’t know how to forgive themselves—she could not forgive him. So she decided to win the crown, a tiara really, without the usual aids of her body and obeah-magic.

But it would be hard. Because she was Puerto Rican and light skinned and straight haired, though at least her hair was brown. Miss Emancipation, the biggest title in St. Croix, was supposed to be a woman who celebrated the freedom of slaves. Guadeloupe decided to win the crown for the few slave-descended ancestors she had. To show Juan Diego that she could be whatever he wanted. Because when she found the note, she realized that he didn’t think her pure, did not think he had her virginity, did not think her a girl who’d first-runnered-up pageant after pageant by her own merit. But that he’d known all along that she was a fraud. And he’d loved her a fraud, when she’d thought she’d had him loving her pure. Thinking that his love made her pure, because he said he loved her as if she was like the Virgin Mary herself.
Anyway.

Well, you saw it. She won. She’d sung for the talent competition something about God, and our people love that. And for the historical segment she’d been the bridge, the thing to connect us; friends to family. While the other girls wore masks of famed teachers and religious leaders on all sides of their heads or boxes of the legislature building around their waists, the judges and the audience thought Guadeloupe was so innovative to bring the present into such significance by making it history. In the question and answer portion she talked about connectivity, diversity in unity. Despite her light skin, despite the obviousness that more of her ancestors had owned slaves than had been them, how could she lose? We’re open like that. We like to know that people love us; we don’t care how they look.

She’d competed without aid in pageants before. First with Carlos McEntire, when they’d been Carnival Prince and Princess. You remember that? Then in middle school she’d been Miss Junior May Fair Queen. Who could forget that one? She mimed for her talent. She was good, too. But then winning became serious, the prizes became substantial. She’d done what was needed to place first runner-up in Miss Talented Teen, Queen of the Band, Miss Parks and Recreation, Lady Alpha. Incantations, meditations, all kinds of
tations
to win, to
not lose.
She competed in things she didn’t even qualify for, like Mistress of Housing, though she didn’t even live in the projects. And now she’d won Miss Emancipation. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t prepared, like, her whole life. All the singing lessons, and the walking lessons: until she figured out that learning to walk and learning to sing were the same. (Both required breathing and a straight back and hands clasped before the torso. Like so. She could tell a singer by the sway in the hips, though if you ask me you can tell a slut by the same thing.) Finally, she’d won all by herself.

They sat the skimpy little tiara on her head and her first walk as Miss Emancipation was announced. Her blue gown was covered in sequin stars and she really looked good, as if she was a piece of the sky. Her arms shimmered with the glitter her chaperone had applied carefully before releasing her to the formal gown segment. Strutting down the catwalk she was only aware of herself. The spotlight does that. It blinds you, you know. So bright she couldn’t see the audience, not even Juan Diego, in the front beside her mother. Both of them looking at her so proudly. She could only clutch the red roses tight in her hands, letting the few thorns prick her fingers but not the delicate dress. She felt her chest swell with heat while the darkened faces below smiled—well, they seemed to smile.

Backstage, the other girls congratulated her stiffly, their lips not touching her face at all. And somehow winning without seducing a judge or casting obeah on the other contestants still felt fraudulent. Maybe, like being a fraud might be her
true self?
She got kinda crazy thinking about that then. She took off her heels in the changing room and put on her sneakers, still in the panty hose and sequined dress. And she ran. No joke. The people parted as she ran by because no one recognized her without her tiara on. She ran to the last place she should have. The Bridge. She had no food and no water but wanted to make it to the other side. She didn’t know how long it would take. She didn’t know why she chose this as a symbol. She didn’t know that when you don’t eat or drink for a whole day you
forget
to be hungry. That hunger doesn’t matter. Only thirst. It rained the morning of the second day; this is the Caribbean after all. She tilted her head back and kept walking. The worn makeup streaking down her face, then off her face completely. She realized, once the rain had stopped, that her face hadn’t been so clean since she was
seven years old.

A full day on the Bridge. Not on the land, not in the sky, not in the water. She saw the sun set and then rise on this limbo life. Between the night of the second day and the morning of the third she could see the other side of the bridge. The land of the other island just there past the length of her tongue. The thirst for it like, I don’t know, like mother love. Scratching at the back of her throat. There was a black sack figure crossing the bridge too. There were two figures in a boat just below. It was late, dark. The moon was high and crescented. She wanted to be on top of that moon. She wanted it at her feet—like a boat to get her across anything. She was such a frigging drama queen. She couldn’t know what she had in common with these three figures. But she felt she had to choose one set or the other. The weight of her absent crown solid on her head. She knew that if Juan Diego was with her he would hold her up with his two hands like the angel he was until she became something holy, something to make these lands pure and able. His Guadeloupe.

Anyway.
She walked toward the figure on the bridge, but the black-sack woman actually seemed to move farther away, climbing the railing away from her. Perhaps Guadeloupe looked a little off, mad you know, a beauty queen in sneakers, hair looking like crap because of the rain and the ragged days of walking. Guadeloupe looked down where the woman was looking and saw the moon below, at her feet. Saw the little brown boy in the boat stand up to hold her. She felt the tingle of the glow. The halo covered her entire body. Not like a tiara; not even like a crown they gave the boys who won for Mister this or King that. The halo coming from her very bones and protecting her. She was pure. She could save lands. She was the most pure and the most good. A human bridge.

The other woman on the bridge looked now like a huge black crane steadying itself for flight. Guadeloupe, this mixed-up girl who was just getting to know herself, watched on in her new state of grace, and the lovely crane leapt into the air, with its wings wide and open to the wind. Guadeloupe pressed her hands together so gently that her pinkies crossed and missed each other—she felt something glorious come from her and go out into the world. And,
I kid you not,
that was when the miracle of miracles happened. The bridge began to crumble. She was not afraid as the air opened and took her in.