Ways to Die in Paradise

(Continued)

I start flipping through pages, proudly giving Arianne a rundown of what I have. But she is not paying attention to me. She’s transfixed by a few photographs that my grandmother has tucked into the inner pocket of a binder. We were a family who took a lot of photos, and these are nothing special to me; they might even be considered the outtakes — the ones that didn’t make it into family albums, or were tucked behind the better versions. No wow factor whatsoever.

For example, there’s a family portrait. Like most of our family portraits, it’s me, my mother and my four younger half-siblings, minus their father, who was missing from most aspects of our lives. Also minus grandmother Isabelle, since she was usually the one taking the photos. There are pictures of me and the kids, playfully sprawled out in the living room on a summer day. There’s a portrait of Isabelle as a college student. Ari holds these photos contemplatively, like a psychic might hold an item of a deceased loved one, reading it for unseen information. I wave other, more enticing relics in front of her nose — letters from my great great Russian Jewish 2nd cousins who lived in Brooklyn. Binders of photocopied Ellis Island and U.S. census records with family names highlighted. Certificates of military registration. Proof of our predecessors, from both my mother’s side and my father’s side, all thanks to Isabelle’s research. I’m so pleased with my collection of hard evidence, this validation of my lineage, of my right to exist.

But Ari’s like, “Uh huh, that’s nice,” and continues to gaze at these few random photos with such understanding, love and compassion, ultimately offering me validation of the deepest and truest kind: that of truly seeing me. Within minutes she has decoded and announced the most nuanced aspects of my family dynamics — things that nobody in my family has ever admitted out loud to each other. Namely, that I am my grandmother’s favorite, and that, of all her grandchildren, I am the one most like her. This she gathers from a photo of us standing side-by-side, and from my body language in the family portrait, which mimics Isabelle’s pose from the 1940’s portrait. Slight hunch, slight tilt of the head back and to the side. Also, that I am at odds with my mother, that she has failed us in some way, and that I take on the role of a parent. This she discerns from our position and actions in the photos —  my mother and I are never next to each other, always on opposite ends of the group, herding the children, whom I am embracing, gathering them up like little lambs, like a bunch of bright flowers. I stop waving the other documents at Ari and start to tune in.

She holds another photo now, won’t take her eyes off it. It’s nothing special looking — a  quick and casual snapshot of my mother, father and me, taken at night, with a flash. I’m standing between them with an arm around each of them, grinning from ear to ear. Ari doesn’t just stare at the photo, she marvels at it. 

“Alisha,” she says, “This is incredible. Look at you guys.” 

She can’t possibly know this, but she holds the only photo I have of me and my parents. I mean — aside from pictures from my infancy.  It’s the first photo taken of us together in 35 years. The only photo I remember taking together. In fact, it’s the only memory I had of being together with both of my parents. It was 2011. I was 32 years old.

That’s when I ditch my plan to show Ari the pages upon pages of documentation and start telling her about how my parents met. Janet running away at 17, hitchhiking across the country, island hopping until she gets to St. Croix. Llewellyn growing up in Nevis, his wild mother leaving him behind when he is a boy, and later his younger brother sending for him from St. Croix, where there is work and you can get a green card. 

The rest of the outlandish facts  come tumbling out of me — that my mother worked at a hotel where she got room and board, that she got fired and kicked out by her racist friend who reported her for fraternizing with locals. That she squatted in a burnt out house with two surfers, bartended barefoot, sold some of Isabelle’s gold jewelry for cash, and eventually got a job at a shell shop where she slept on the floor at night. That my father worked and lived at a place called Grapetree Bay Hotel, which was the spot to be in the 1970’s, at at the peak of St. Croix tourism.  He lived in the hotel dorms with other co-workers and snuck downstairs to the kitchen at night to eat deviled eggs. His brother Inglore was actually the first one to meet my mother, and when my father found out about her, he went to introduce himself at the shell shop. She had a studio apartment on the east end, near Grapetree, on a hill overlooking the Yacht Club and Teague Bay. When I was born, my father moved in to her place. 

1979-1983. This is when we spend our only days together, as a family. After this, my mother will move away, refusing my father’s offer of marriage, and for good reason. We will move from place to place, island to island. My father will remain on the East End for the duration of his life. Although, as I said, I have no memories of us being all together. I remember being there with my father, but not with my mother. But this apartment is where our lives converge for a brief time. The apartment is owned by the woman who lives upstairs. Elaine. She was a divorce from the states — 

Ari stops me there. She can’t move on from Elaine. She’s like a water witch, dousing for clues to my history. “You need to speak to Elaine,” she says. 

I shrug. “Ok. She lives on St. John now. I can reach out to her.”

Ari squeezes my arm. “I just feel like she knows things that nobody else knows. She knew your mother and father. You need to talk to her, and ask her to tell you about them.” 

Belonging

There is no beginning to this story, and because of this I feel like I have no origins and I grasp for them. Mine is a lineage of centuries in Europe and Africa, displaced, abducted, uprooted, emigrated. In a sense, those are my beginnings. My mother wore stylish, loose-fitting clothes while she was pregnant with me and then one day I just appeared and nobody believed I was hers. In the years before I grew to recognize our shared laugh, the same hands — and that I had her mother Isabelle’s crescent-shaped eyes when I smiled — I suspected and secretly wished I was adopted. Except that from the start everyone could see that I was my father’s. I had a miniature version of his straight nose, his broad shoulders, his lean thighs and calves, his high, round forehead. So I knew I had to be his at least. But still, the circumstances were suspicious.

There were no witnesses to my birth — at least, nobody I know and can speak to.  Nobody was there with my mother at the hospital. She labored for 24 hours, believing her life was going to end, as a nurse sat outside the door, knitting. Perhaps it was some young girl in unfortunate circumstances who underwent the labor, all but forsaken by her family who refused to be present but had made arrangements, and my charitable mother was there to receive me when the ordeal was over. Or maybe it really was her and who suffered through it alone, because that was how it was done in those days. 

That was how it was done, wasn’t it? Leaving a woman to labor alone, nobody else allowed in the room? For most of my life I took this as the truth, and somehow it made sense, that the birthing experience would be terrible on island in the late 70’s. 

But then I started learning about birth, and doulas, and all the ways wise women help other women in childbirth. I learned about midwifery, and babies’ spines, and ways to make birth easier. I learned about air passageways and the importance of  palatal development for health later in life. And I started thinking, surely some of the women of the islands had this wisdom. 

I started thinking how not normal — how strange, actually, that they would leave a young woman — a girl barely in her 20’s — to birth alone, and for that long. How strange that there wouldn’t be more nurses on duty. That the doctor wouldn’t have looked in on her more than once. That the nurse would at least knit inside the room and not station herself just outside the door like a sentry, lips pursed, shooing away any concerned personnel who happened to walk by and hear the young woman’s cries of pain.

Unless, of course, there was reason to neglect her. Janet Susan Rapaport. Age 24.  Rapaport? Never heard it. Who was  this yankee girl with no family? Or maybe they knew exactly who she was — she was a statesider who walked around in shorts that went up to her ass, wore skimpy crocheted bikinis with her bush poking out on the sides, smoked on the boardwalk while selling trips to Buck Island, went barefoot everywhere like some savage, and was friends with the local men. Maybe they didn't want to look between her legs. She was the girl who stole Llewellyn from Clementine. 

But no — if they had known Llewellyn was the father, they would have given her better treatment. “Tell them who your father is,” my dad says, when I’m trying to deal with notoriously difficult island bureaucracy or customer service. I stubbornly refuse. I shouldn’t have to drop his name to be treated fairly. But when someone inevitably guesses, from my ID or the family resemblance, the question always follows: “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” 

She could have said something to a nurse. She should have said, “Llewellyn is the father of my child, and he’ll be coming here as soon as he’s in from sailing. I don’t care about your rules, I expect you to let him in.” I just don’t get it. Leaving someone alone for all that time. She said that she thought she was going to die. 

Llewellyn Remembers

Getting back to portraits. Imagine this portrait of seven people.  Dennis, a bespectacled janitor who hid his true nature. Jay, a curly headed skater whose generous smile will break the hearts of his loved ones. Veronica, an ageless, black-skinned botanist with a well-kept secret. Donnie, a blue-eyed woodworker who squanders his talent. Jimmy, a chubby blonde boy in dirty shoes. Arthur, a Nevisian boatman with a booming voice and a knack for communicating. And me. A wide-eyed woman who wants to save us all from disappearing. 

If I had one year to live, I’d probably spend the first half building a treehouse in the rainforest and “getting right with god”. The second half I’d spend helping people in the best way that I could: as a spirit medium. Because there’s no greater gift than the gift of peace. And what greater peace is there than knowing that love transcends dimension, and that we live beyond our bodies, beyond our lifetime?

I think of mediumship as part personal hobby, part remedial skill. I’m still shy about it, because I still suspect that I’m making it all up. Over the years I’ve channeled a band of brujas, a friend’s father, another friend’s grandmother. They speak quietly, and quickly, and I worry that I’ll hear them wrong or my thoughts will get in the way and and distort the message. Which is probably why I’ve never tried to channel my own ancestors. 

“Dad, what was your dad’s name?”

“Arthur Ivan Westerman.”

Where’s the name ‘Westerman’ from?”  

“I don’t know.” 

“Well… why did they name you Llewellyn?”

“I don’t know. It’s Welsh.”

“Were there Welsh people on Nevis?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did Arthur die?”

“I don’t remember.”

I know very little about my grandfather Arthur Westerman. In the only photo I’ve seen, he is tall and handsome and serious, with a delicate mouth, killer cheekbones and light, silky looking cottony hair. He’s wearing a suit, sitting in a fancy chair like a gentleman of leisure. But he was never that. He was a sailor. A fisherman. And a street performer, it turns out. This is news to me.  

“He was a performer?” 

“Yeah.” 

“He performed in the street?” 

“Yeah. At Christmastime, for Sagua,” says my dad, like I shouldn’t be surprised. 

“Sagua? Sagwa?” 

“Don’t ask me how to spell it. We didn’t spell shit, we only spoke it.” 

A reminder that much of my history is unwritten. Soon after realizing I was a storyteller, I began to see that the most important stories I would tell would involve deciphering the mystery of my ancestry. I’d be unwrapping centuries in Russia, and then tracing an escape from Anti-Jewish pogroms to New York City beginning in 1901. I’d be sifting through a sweeping history of imperialism, slavery, colonialism, religion and commerce throughout Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. And I’d be going in blind. 

Because there is no ancient family photo album. No safety deposit box. No bible with a family tree on the inside cover. I had to let go of this fifth grade fantasy of sitting down with a grandparent for thirty minutes to fill in the blanks for my class report. No, this is detective work. Knocking on doors. Questioning strangers. Visiting cemeteries and historical societies. Pouring over archives. Hoarding hints and clues, and acting with urgency, because time is of the essence. Because the people with the clues and the people who can point me toward clues are disappearing. 

Up until recently, my father has given me some names and anecdotes — the same ones, every time I ask. The names of Arthur’s siblings: Rebecca, Amelia, Jim, Walter, John and Victor, who killed a man on the shipping docks and fled town. Mistress Woodley, an aunt who baked pastries, and whom apparently I resemble every time I put on an apron. And Great Uncle Nathan, who left island and died some years later, never having written home. The family data dries up there; my father claims his memory is shit. 

But my observations tell me otherwise. He memorizes the names and hometowns of his favorite waitresses and boat passengers going back decades, to the point where I get annoyed at at him for it. He recites The Rhime of the Ancient Mariner from memory. And having recently recovered from a minor surgery, he recounted the names of all his nurses and doctors. Somewhere in the crags of his memory is a rich store of information. He’s holding out on me.

Then late one fall night, I get a call from him. St. Croix is four hours ahead of LA and the crickets have already gone to bed in his timezone. His voice is deep from slumber. He has just woken up, and it’s as if he has just come out of a dream where he was given specific instructions to pass on an important message to me. 

“There was a man I called uncle,” he begins, with a bit of incredulity in his voice, as if he’s only now realizing just how odd it all sounds. “Uncle Pinkin. Not too tall. Wore glasses, and overalls. He was a carpenter. Made his coffin years before he died. Kept it under his bed. I think he might have been Jewish.” There is a crack in the dam. The past is opening up to me. The world is opening up. 

“Hang on dad, hang on. Let me get a pen.”

“Uncle Pinkin. Pinkin Scarborough.”

“What makes you think he was Jewish? Is the name Jewish?”

“I don’t know. There’s a Jewish cemetery in Nevis, you know.”

“Is he buried there?”

“I couldn’t tell you.” 

Over the next two hours, he recites a succession of first and last names, occupations, spouses, relations, places of birth and deaths, who enlisted in the military, who emigrated to Jamaica, Cuba, New York, etc. The info keeps coming like ticker tape and I just scribble for dear life with no time to be mad or wowed or amused, stopping him here and there to clarify a detail or get a proper spelling. 

I get a couple phone calls like this. Whenever I see his number come up, I grab headphones and pen and paper or my laptop before even picking up. Then I answer the call and settle onto the couch, tuning in to the deep timbre of his voice, the linguistic patterns and contexts of alternating Queen’s English and patois. 

The opacity of our family history comes away in layers. One call, he has a mental placeholder for a name he can’t remember. A night or two later, he produces the name. During one particular download there was so much info that I just had to get up and start whiteboarding that shit like the protagonist in a psychological thriller. When we hung up, I looked up at the notes in awe, this web of details assuring me that I am a part of other, older worlds. Promising that I will reconstruct our fragmented legacy.

Eventually, my father goes back to calling me for less deliberate reasons — casual hellos from the boat while chartering visitors on weekends afternoons, or from the noisy bar he goes to after sailing. And if family history comes up I glance up at my whiteboard and finish his sentences with an announcement of marriage, death, the names of relatives. Even over the phone I can sense his satisfaction. 

Channeling Arthur

One member of my detective team is my maternal grandmother Isabelle. She is a 90-year-old woman from the Bronx. She has done some sleuthing on her family, who came from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century. So she’s in good practice when I bring her this first wave of information from my father. Using the names and approximate ages and places of birth, she finds some of my Nevisian family members in Ellis Island and the U.S. Census records. 

I text my step-mom these scanned images so she can show them to my father. I want him to see these people he knew, whom he thought had disappeared forever. Here are their names, ages, occupations and New York addresses. Death and birth certificates, even a photo. And it’s public. Surely, this shows my father that our work matters. That any foggy details are worth trying to remember. That we can piece this together, no matter how broken it is. 

Around the time that my father has started speaking more about Arthur, I feel compelled to try channeling Arthur. I lay in bed with my journal and pen. I should probably sit up. Light a candle. Do a ritual or something to set the mood, but I don’t want to make too big a deal. In case nothing happens, in case I get it wrong. I just start writing. 

Dear Arthur, are you there? 

I am here, my dear. 

I miss you, Grandad.

I am with you, my dear.

I would love to hear from you. 

I would love to speak with you. 

What would you like me to know?

What would you like to know?

About you, your life, your world.

As I write I hear a deep voice in my head — deeper than my father’s. But the exchange comes too easily and it reads too simply. I decide I must be making it up… except that there’s this accent. It’s not Crucian. It sounds… less contemporary. Closer to the fork in the road where Queen’s English and Nevisian went their separate ways. It rounds in the mouth. ‘Dear’ sounds like ‘dierr’, ‘eye’ sounds like ‘oi’ and ‘you’ sounds closer to ‘yoh’. Could I have made this up?

Who knew you woulda come to me like dis?

I wish it could have been in person. 

If I coulda seen you wit me own eye…

Then?

Den I nevah woulda had to die. 

What do you mean?

I coulda pass de spahk on to you. 

Spark of what?

The pride. To nevah hide. 

I’ve done a lot of hiding. I’ve struggled with visibility as a woman of color, a non-binary person, a trauma survivor and a performer and a creative. And two generations before me was Arthur — an Afro-Caribbean man born in a British colony at the start of the 1900’s. Who went to New York in his twenties where he worked as a truck driver before moving back to his home island. In what ways was or wasn’t he able to choose to be visible, or invisible? What boldness might I have inherited by meeting such a powerful predecessor? What confidence might I have simply by looking into Arthur’s eyes? And have I lost my chance, or is there still a way to receive the transmission? 

I sit back and look over this channeling, this exchange, trying to figure out if it’s real or if I made it up in my head. I sense a shape, a feel to our dialogue. I feel that Arthur sees me as his own. I sense warmth, and love. I cry like a child, missing the grandfather I never knew. 

My father jokes that he reads the obituary every morning to make sure he’s not in it. George Burns said that, but now it’s my dad’s joke too; after suffering a heart attack while sailing, he got word while in the hospital that newspapers on his native island of Nevis had reported him as dead. He took it lightly, and has earned the nickname Lazarus. In my song Anchors Aweigh, the third verse says:

Arrested was the heart of my dear old dad. 

He sat up in bed, said I’m not dead yet. 

And you can tell that it all of the worried ears. 

I’m sticking it out for a star-studded grip of years.

I traveled from LA to St. Croix to shoot a music video for this song. My father makes a cameo, on his boat. The song is a mantra, my prayer for my father’s life. Because I don’t want him to die, ever, and it’s a fear I entertain daily. For a while I was sure it was his gruesome, noble destiny to get eaten by a shark while leading snorkeling trips. I feared this was inevitable, the way it was inevitable that Timothy Treadwell who studied and lived with bears was killed and eaten by one. 

Then I feared he would be killed by a tsunami. Or swallowed by the Bermuda triangle, its southern corner inching east from its position at neighboring Puerto Rico in order to include St. Croix. I also imagined how easily he could die by getting struck by lightning while sailing. But then, just yesterday he told me the story of getting struck by lightning on his boat and he didn’t feel a thing, so I’ve put that scenario to rest. 

It went something like this. They were anchored at Buck Island (Buck for short), and a friend who was down in the cabin offered my father a joint. He declined. A moment later, the entire deck was buzzing with an unearthly energy. From down below, the friend pointed out that he was literally glowing. And then it was over.

“On second thought,” he said, “I think I’ll take that joint.” 

Nobody in St. Croix has been killed by a shark, but there are occasional tsunami warnings, when sirens blare from quaint, 1950’s style public megaphones that you can only hear if you’re downtown. It would be the first tsunami to hit St. Croix since 1865. But the island is bordered by the deepest water in the world — two underwater ridges that could split open and swallow my father at any time.

The second night of channeling Arthur, I hastily light a candle. My small, impatient gesture of ritual. 

How are you tonight, grandad? 

Me good, man, me good. 

What’s good?

Rainbow Wood. It rain fah days. 

What’s it good for?

Clothespins Hangers. Stays.

Where did you see Rainbow Wood?

In the cemetery by de table, and de dry creek...

This could be my imagination filling in the blanks based on what I know of small town, island life at the turn of the century. Knowing that, back then, any commodities you could get on a 35-square-mile island either came by boat or were made locally. I’ve got to verify this information. 

“Dad, do you remember what hangers were made of when your were a boy?” 

“Plastic, I think.” 

“Really?” I say. “In the 50’s?”  

“I don’t know,” he says. “I never hung anything.” 

I envy his childhood — one where you never hung anything, and never spelled anything. 

“Well, Arthur said they were made of rainbow wood. Oh yeah — by the way, I’ve been channeling Arthur.”

“You’ve been channeling Arthur,” he repeats in an even, nonchalant tone.

I know this tone. It means ‘I hear you, I’m amused, and I’m withholding judgement until I have more information.’ It’s the same response he has had in the past to all my bluntly delivered important life news: “I’m still a virgin,” while he’s driving me to the airport one summer;  “I’m moving to St. Croix,” after not visiting him for ten years; “We’re getting married in Connecticut,” when he hates flying and hasn’t left island unless it was to see a specialist doctor.

My father has never heard of Rainbow wood. I do some research. It’s a nickname for Eucalyptus deglupta, also known as the rainbow eucalyptus, Mindanao gum, or rainbow gum. Not native to Nevis. He can’t recall ever seeing a Eucalpytus tree on Nevis. 

Dennis Carved Canoes

One of the most prized trees on St. Croix is Lignum vitae, or Guayacan. It’s the world’s densest wood. So dense and rich in oils that naturally seal it from the saltiest ocean water that was used in ship parts before cast iron pieces were a thing. Thus the nickname ironwood. 

Lignum Vitae is one of Brian Bishop’s favorite topics. He comes from a large family of white Crucians, with one sister and ten brothers. He’ll talk for hours about anything related to the island - flora and fauna, history, and fun trivia. He was an underwater ship welder before becoming a goldsmith in the 70’s. I love the idea of this transition as he emerged from cloudy, shipyard water to the dry, dusty serenity of an artisan workshop.

When I lived on St. Croix, I worked at Brian’s gold shop in Christiansted. In his shop cases, we displayed the gold alongside natural and found local items. Seed pods, broken antique china, giant leaves, a hibiscus picked fresh outside every morning. In one case was a very heavy, dark cylinder made of Lignum Vitae. It was an old ship part that had been found in Christiansted harbor during a dredging. Probably underwater for decades, but it was as smooth and rich as anything that had sat in a temperature controlled case in a museum. 

Five miles East of Christiansted Harbor is Teague Bay, and the St. Croix Yacht Club. Dennis was the yacht club custodian for 30 years, until ten days before his death — the details of which are very sad. He was from Dominica and was part Carib Indian. A small man with a Chaplin mustache and 1950’s thick black-rimmed glasses. Every single time I saw him he was in a trucker hat and head to toe uniform that perfectly matched his skin — the red-brown color of coconut husk. It was as if someone handed him the uniform on the first day of the job in 1972 and he wore it until the end- long after the formality of uniforms was no longer required — and became one with it. 

He and my father were the only two brown men, other than the occasional bartender, to be found at the Yacht Club on a daily basis. My father tells me,  “He used to fish off the beach. Loved to fish off the beach. But a lot of people who knew Dennis never knew he was a sailor.” I don’t remember ever seeing Dennis near a boat.  

“How did you find out?” I ask. 

“Some people had a little boat and we had a little sail in it up above [north of] the yacht club. Me say, ‘Dennis, come man.’ I put him at the helm. And me see Dennis at the helm and me ask, ‘Yeh sail?’ He say, ‘Yeah man, I used to make me canoe.’” My father has effortlessly gone from a Crucian accent to Dennis’s higher register and lilting Dominican accent.

“In Dominica, they dug canoes from solid tree trunk. They put fire in it to expand the center. And they used to sail dem tings out in the ocean. The damn tings were narrow. They were very narrow. And when they used to catch tuna, big tuna — over a hundred pounds — and they couldn’t lift dem in de boat, they would swamp de canoe ‘em, swim the tuna in de boat, and bail it out.” I can hear the admiration in his voice. I imagine Dennis’s small frame squeezed into the hull beside the giant, gasping a fish.

“They used to smuggle rum and cigarettes from Guadeloupe to Dominica,” he continues. “They would leave in the night. But there’s a lot people who knew Dennis, who never knew that about him.”

What he means isn’t that Dennis had a well kept secret about trafficking contraband. He’s talking about the skill and strength required to maneuver those boats on the  open sea, in the dark, between islands, and carrying fish as big as him. “To sail dem friggin tings you have to be a very good sailor.” He switches subjects. “You know what he used to call you?”

“Yes,” I answer, dutifully. “Sucooloong.”

He repeats it, slowly, affirming. “Su-coo-loong.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s one a dem Carib words. And your mother was Tall Tree.” 

When Dennis didn’t show up to work one Saturday, my father knew some rhythm of life had been disturbed, the way he knows when a wind in the morning will affect a sail in the afternoon. When Dennis didn’t show up on Monday, our friend Moose stopped by and knocked on Dennis door and got no answer. He and my father urged the Yacht Club to report Dennis as missing and send someone to enter the house. The Yacht Club made an inquiry with the police and was told that they’d need a search warrant. 

On Tuesday, Moose broke in and found Dennis face down on the floor. He had suffered a stroke, but was still alive and had been lying there for who knows how many days. Because of how he was positioned, Uncle Glu thinks he was trying to reach the phone. He had no family on island. He passed away days later in the hospital, having never regained consciousness. I learned all this while in California, and I wept. 

Not because we were close; we never said much to each other aside from pleasantries. I wept that he didn’t mean more to more people. I hate that nobody with the big boats knew what a good sailor he was, and that he lay alone on his floor for days before anyone found him, dying slowly, like a fish out of water. If more people knew and cared about him, he might still be alive right now. This is the tragedy of having no witnesses, nobody to remember you. It means death. 

That’s why I collect scraps of stories from my family, from the island, and beyond. I’m trying to save everyone, and myself.  

Attending Funerals

I often think I’ll die a dramatic, horrible death. By some giant machinery, or falling from a great height. I used to think it was my jumpy, neurotic Jewish side, but now I think it must also be an influence of the islands. The stories I hear of people I knew, or knew of, are impressively tragic. Death by hurricane while on a boat moored in a harbor. Dragged out to sea during a flood. Beheading by machete. Set on fire. Knifed on the wharf. Caught in the throat by a ricochet bullet. Disappeared while fishing, boat never found. 

Every so often I hear another one from my father, or my mother who keeps in touch with people from her life down there. She also updates me on the deaths of people I grew up with at Community Bible Church in Orange County. But she always tells me after they’re long gone. So the wakes, memorials and funerals, flowers, condolences happen without me, while I sit in a glass building in Hollywood, working on ad pitches and social media strategy. 

“I told you Jimmy Debbie’s son died? Drug overdose. I went to his funeral on Wednesday,” my mother mentions one day when I call her during my work break. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. Jimmy, who I used to babysit when he was a chubby kid. Being at this job has been feeling empty and meaningless. It feels worse knowing I could have been with her and Jimmy’s family for a day.

“I figured you wouldn’t want to come. I guess, because I’m not a christian anymore, she thinks I was traumatized by church. I am, but not as much as she thinks I am.  But my memories of CBC aren’t bad. What I remember most is playing the grand piano and sitting in the creaky oak pews. None of us kids really wanted to be there — it was so small and quaint and boring. But when one of us dies, I want to know. 

Because I want to be the kind of person who shows up at the funeral in appropriate dress and pays my respects and says a kind word if it’s fitting. Like I did for Jay Walker, tall, curly-headed older brother to my childhood friend Bethany. His mother and sister were so touched that I was there. I didn’t know it would mean much to them. I want to be that one additional attendee who somehow comforts the family a bit more, simply because I knew the deceased and thought it worthwhile to show up. I want to be that for people like Jay. And for Dennis from Dominica, who, with his own hands could carve a boat from a tree trunk. 

The Drunken Woodworker

I don’t really understand the glory of Lignum Vitae. It takes forever to grow. The smooth, twisting branches stay small for many years - only a few inches in diameter - yet are nearly impossible to bend, break or even chop with a machete. The trees are not particularly beautiful, they have no edible fruit, and I don't even think you can make tea with the silvery green-grey leaves. But though I secretly don’t get it, I’ve adopted my father’s reverence for the trees. In place of wedding rings, my husband Francis and I wear two matching machete pendants. The miniature, blades are copper. Two gold pins bind blade to its tiny Lignum vitae handle, which was masterfully fashioned on a wood lathe. They were designed by goldsmith Brian Bishop and made by his son, to whom he has passed on the trade.

There was one memorial I was able to attend on St. Croix. Brian’s brother Donnie Bishop. Donnie had been a woodworker of tremendous talent who drank himself to death. He was a charming man who flirted inappropriately with me whenever he stopped in at the gold shop. He had three sweet, intelligent daughters who came down one summer and impressed me by seeming to spend their entire vacation reading. 

Donnie passed away before I came down one winter. The family had a short service and potluck at one of the covered picnic areas down by the lagoon. Francis and I stood in the back during the service, then said hello and were urged to fill plates and eat. There was a table with a display of photos and albums. We flipped through the photo books. I couldn’t believe how handsome Donnie had been. Like, movie star handsome, with golden curls, a killer smile and oceanic blue eyes. I had only known the watery-eyed, red faced, pot bellied version of him. And the only woodwork I ever saw of his were these hack job teak pedestals he had made, which we bought for our gallery space on St. Croix. They were heavy, uneven and treacherous with protruding screws. Nevertheless they were very useful, and we used them for every show to display work. We never stopped marveling at how such a talented woodworker could have made something so awful. 

When a Baobob Dies

After a week or so of casual research, I still can’t find any mention of Eucalyptus on Nevis. I check blogs, a site listing flora and fauna and end up going off course reading about giant eucalyptus uprooted in British graveyards in England. Getting web search results for a term like  like “Eucalyptus in Nevis” isn’t as easy as it would be for the states, or places more heavily traveled. Sometimes it seems like nothing  in the Caribbean aren’t documented, preserved or observed unless someone is paid to come down and do so. 

Veronica Gordon would have known. Veronica knew all flora on island —  the latin, local name, and uses and benefits of bark, roots, stems, leaves, flower and fruit. When I first met her she was a cheery artisan at local festivals with a story for every piece that she carved and crafted. Instruments, jewelry and decor handily fashioned from wood, pods and seeds. I still have a few prized items she made. One worn coconut shell spoon (its mate got trashed by a someone at my office), a few calabash bowls and plumrose wood claves. The claves, which have a brilliant resonance, are silky smooth and charred to a dark brown. After she carved and sanded them, she smoked them, she had explained, to seal them from bugs.

My sister Nikki and I once took an island bush tour with Veronica. She introduced us to Baobab, the mystical African tree that can live up to 1500 years and whose limbs look like those of humans. Veronica knew the quantity and location of all baobabs on island. Brought here via seeds hidden in the hair of African abductees, she postulated. On our tour she cracked open a giant velvety green baobab pod to reveal a web of seeds buried in a tasty, tangy peach colored powder. It has like a million super beneficial properties and is perfect for smoothies. The pods hang from the tree attached by long, thick vine-like stems, which is where the nickname Dead Rat tree came from. Some say the spirits of deceased Africans live in the trees. 

When a baobab dies - this is the word Veronica used - it disappears within 2 years, collapsing into itself. This is because they’re 76% water - more than the human body. She showed us where one had stood not long ago. All we could see was a depressed circle in the grass. From up to 82 feet high, with a trunk diameter of up to 45 feet, this tree disappears without a trace, as if it got a call from the motherland - or the mothership - and made an exit by collapsing in a slow motion puddle of tears. 

  Being a bushwoman is tradition in Veronica’s family. The knowledge is passed down orally alternating gender with each generation. She learned from her father, and passed it on to her son. She wouldn’t allow people to record her during interviews, so as to keep the knowledge in its intended oral form. But I remember asking if i could record her on my phone once when she was giving a demo at the botanical garden, and she welcomed me to do so. Maybe she liked me, or trusted me. 

When my sister was sick during her pregnancy, I called Veronica, who prescribed herbs and even met Nikki at the supermarket to give her the herbs with instructions. When my father had his heart attack, I called and asked how he might remove plaque from his arteries. (A clove of garlic in a gallon of water everyday). Veronica looked decades younger than her 50-something years. Not a line in her skin. She once mentioned having arthritis, for which she’d slap a piece of stinging nettle on her wrist to relieve the pain. Bee stings worked just as well she said. She had a remedy for everything. 

Veronica’s was another funeral I missed. She died of lung cancer. It was a shock to everyone. Apparently, she had been a closet chain smoker. I imagined it was her way of coping with some trauma from her past. I remember her telling me that when she lived in New York, she slept on a bed she made out of stacks of newspaper in her apartment. To me, this was a sign of some odd survivor’s behavior. Although, it could have been some instinctual urge to sleep closer to nature - wood pulp of newspapers being the best she could do in the city.

She behaved so strangely the last time I saw her. I was visiting St. Croix one early summer. It was a hot day. I saw her at Frederiksted pier, selling her wares to the cruise ship crowd. She usually wore traditional Caribbean and African garb for fairs and festivals, but this time she looked more like a witch doctor. She wore a mesmerizingly intricate patterned dress and pants, and colorful mask that covered her whole face. It had slits for eyes and no mouth. She even wore gloves - not an inch of her skin was showing. From her whole costume hung countless strings dotted with tiny triangles of paper that swung and rustled every time she made a move. It reminded me of a wood spirit a character finds peeking at them from behind a tree in an anime movie. Something that isn't evil, but doesn't feel good, either. 

Though she was friendly as she spoke, she’d occasionally utter an ominous phrase in a light-hearted voice - I can’t remember any of them now. And n addition to her customary dried calabash bowls that bore carvings of hearts, the shape of St. Croix and adages like “Positive is how I live” there were now pieces warning shoppers of unhealed wounds and scars. When I stopped later to say goodbye, there was an older tourist woman taking a video of her as she peeked out from behind a palm tree, flipping the woman off with white-gloved hands. I was more upset by the tourist than by Veronica’s behavior. This woman knew nothing about Veronica, her wisdom, her kindness, her legacy. But I guess even those of us who knew Veronica didn’t know enough.

After more searching, I find one mention of eucalyptus on Nevis. In a travel blog, a guy describes his hiking guide scraping gum from the trunk of a Eucalyptus. They hold it to their noses and deeply inhale its astringent, menthol aroma. Their guide explains that it brings mental alertness.

Long Live Hyacinth

I couple of years ago I started an account on ancestry.com. With the names and information my father gave me and information from my grandmother’s research, I created a family tree, to try to preserve and piece together what nobody else in my family has pieced together. Yesterday, I received the following message in my account:

Hi, 

I’m trying to trace my paternal grandfather’s ancestry. Ancestry says we are third cousins. My grandfather’s relatives were in St. Kitts, Barbados, and Trinidad I believe. His last name was Ottley. Does that ring a bell? 

Carol

Hi Carol,

My father doesn't recall a relative named Ottley, but he did have a teacher named Ottley. He described him as quiet, and he remembers that he married a girl from Nevis, though was not from Nevis himself. 

Alisha

Hi Alisha,

Thanks. He’s probably talking about my uncle Desmond. My dad is pretty sure his dad had relatives in Nevis. I’ll dig a bit more.

Carol

Interesting! My father couldn't confirm his first name. But he now recalls that he walked with a limp, and that his wife was named Hyacinth.

Alisha

Yes. That’s right. 

Carol

Hyacinth lived. She married this man. She died and was buried. And 100 years later we’ve excavated her. She has bloomed again. And I can find the rest of them. I can somehow find more photos and proof of the people who carried our DNA through the ages. 

The Rainbow Wood Vow

Six months after channeling Arthur, after a trip to Mexico and Peru, during which my plan to work remotely and live the glamorous life of  a technomad has fallen apart, I find myself on St. Croix with a greater sense of urgency than ever to understand my family ancestry and legacy. Who the fuck are my people? What did they do? Where did they come from? What have we created? What is our legacy? 

One of the first things I do when I get to my father’s is call Elaine over on St. John. It goes to voicemail. I stand on the balcony, which has a north-facing view of the ocean. “Hey Elaine, I’m down for a while. Just calling to say hi and see if you’d be interested in talking about old times with me.” If visibility were better today, I’d be able to see St. John across the water. 

Here’s what I’ve decided. If I can find evidence of Rainbow Wood in Nevis, then Arthur really did come through. Arthur  lives on. And if Arthur lives, then I can let go of my lifelong fear of my father’s death. Because my father will never really die. None of us will. 

Death in Tropical Climes

I’ve always found obsessions with death and darkness to be boring and tired and best left for those who are ungrateful, privileged, lazy, and who can afford to wallow in depression and despair, while having all their comforts taken care of, all their needs met. It’s a rich person problem. A white suburban youth obsession. Not to say there aren’t black goths. It’s just that the ancestral memory of enslaved Africans is deeper and darker than the worst nightmares any hot topic shopping brat could ever fathom. 

The reason I’m obsessed with death on St. Croix is because it’s often not until someone dies that I get to learn about how they lived. It is when the tropical spell of timelessness is broken and people wake up to their light and their legacy. But for my father, I don’t want to have to wait until he’s dead to see him fully recognized for his work and his contribution and his importance as a cultural relic. And I don’t want to give up solving the mysteries that would die with him. 

Death is an omnipresent theme in the Caribbean. On an island of 64 square miles, death cannot go unnoticed. You can’t ignore it, the way you can in big cities, where it gets boxed up behind the walls of all the buildings. When a deer is struck on the road we all smell it. When a carpenter trips and falls one night in his home and hits his head, the next day his seat at the bar is empty.  But we have no holiday, like the Mexicans, no book, like the Tibetans. 

As far as the indigenous people of the islands, I don’t know anything about their relationship to death. I’ll have to ask my father what he knows about that. When European colonists came, many of them were destroyed the heat, the humidity, their corsets, insect bites and stings, “exotic” tropical illnesses. And they brought death with them, by bringing bodies. Bringing people against their will. They brought Chinese. Who died in the heat. Then they brought the Indians, who smoked their hashish and ganua (later adopted by Rastafarians), and whose work ethic was not compatible with and could not be recast by slavery. They brought the Irish, but because of their white skin they freed them after seven years. And they brought Senegalese, Ghanian, Nigerian, Cameroonians, and more. They all live on via their DNA, traces of their language, their music and dance, their gods and spirituality, their food. Each island is a unique ecology of these elements. A different mixture. People survived. But everybody died. 

 Once colonized, the islands were a resource, an option for physicians who prescribed climes to cure European conditions and diseases. The warmth and sunlight. The fresh air. And Nevis has the sulfur baths, of course. It was an alternative to spending a season soaking in the springs of Bath in Somerset, England. So people came here to die, or to try to avoid dying. Once a  friend and I met for lunch in Frederiksted and then wandered over to the old cemetery across the street. Not looking for any particular thing, mostly fascinated with the quaint plots, the aging  of the stones. It was the first time I saw the cause of death engraved on stones. “Amelia Stuart. Born 1784. Died 1798 of Ricketts.” Come to think of it, I don’t know of any cemeteries or burial sites for those who were in slavery. Whether they were buried or burned, it happened somewhere here, within 64 square miles. What became of their dead bodies?

Weathered

I get different types of culture shock when I visit St. Croix. One year while visiting from college it took me a week to understand anything my father was saying, steeped as I was in Standard American English. On my last visit, coming straight from Los Angeles, I was struck by the shabbiness of everything I saw. I saw deterioration and decay everywhere I looked, and it caused me overwhelmed and despair. Mildew, peeling paint, rotting wood, the rapid decomposition of all things, even steel and stone. And the insects, spiders, centipedes — the pervasiveness of creatures in the house — it took two weeks for me to stop feeling trapped and suffocated by it all.

This time, I’m jarred by how weathered white people look. Bronzed and leathery, cracked and wrinkled, with impressive scars and thick, meaty fingers, some with missing tips. Six weeks in, I don't see them as so different from myself. I've been initiated with cuts, scratches, gouges, bruises, sunburn, rashes and stings. I’m spending way more time using and being in my body, and way less time tending to it. Which must mean that I'm only vain when I'm bored and shut in on the mainland, and that when the sun and sea and wind and grass speak to me, I find it so much more important to be with them that I can hardly recognize my own skin. Even my frog medicine scars, which I was tending to so closely while in Mexico City, are healing more slowly, since I can’t be bothered to apply lavender and neem twice a day. I don’t bother with moisturizer or washing and combing my hair either. I'm in the water half the time and the other half — well, who knows, I might dive in again. 

I decided years ago that I would not lock my hair — that my curl pattern wasn’t tight enough to hold locks without a bunch of maintenance, that it wasn’t authentically me. But a day without a comb and it’s already locking. Maybe I wouldn't mind, if I was living down here again. I wouldn’t be concerned with the hygiene of it, the way I would have to in a city. While here my hair may catch ash from Montserrat or sand from the Sahara, it won't collect brake dust from LA freeways.

I watch the weather, watch the clouds and days roll by and before I know it, people are contacting me, asking “When are you coming home? Are you ever coming back?” In the past co-workers have confessed to suspecting that I might never return from my vacations. Now, without a boss or a team or an office to report to, I'm less sure than ever. It’s not that I have no intention of returning, it’s that I don’t know when. Those absolutes aren’t in place, the sand erodes around any stake I put in the ground. I’m here to do the work, and do whatever it takes.

There is nothing is so alluring  as this mission to solve the mysteries of my lineage. There’s no greater adventure. Because I’m discovering not only the land, but the layers of time. So I’m going going back and forth, in, out. I’m time warping. I start working in 5D instead of 3D, and it takes all of me and it requires more than a normal timeline that we’re used to in the West. I'm in a looking glass world.

My dad recounts this story from being a little boy in Nevis:  “One day I was walking down the road wit me godmother — you know, she was the one who raised me — and she said, ‘I want you to go to school, go to college and become a doctor or a lawyer.’

“And I said, ‘Yes, Goddie, yes Goddie, and I gon catch you fish too.’ I knew I wasn’t going to go to college. I knew from Javian’s (his grandson) age I wanted to do two things — sail and fish.”

Brothers Llewellyn and Inglore Westerman knew from a young age that fishing was their calling. It was more than a way to make a living. It was a vocation and lifestyle choice, and integral to being a good seaman. Around 1950/1951,  they both leave school. Llewellyn has completed the 8th grade, Inglore the 4th grade. They both give fishing with their father as their reason for leaving.

Uncle Glu

One morning I come upstairs and find my father’s younger brother Inglore sitting on the couch.

“Uncle Glue!” 

“Hi darlin,” he says, joyfully. We hug and then he grips both my hands with that steady, firm grip you hope to always get from your respected elders. We sit, still holding hands. It’s just a sweet moment of pure joy. Uncle Glue truly loves family. He operates at a pace from an earlier era, with his greetings and salutations and social courtesies. He eludes such a sweetness. Over the years, this side of him was hidden, when alcoholism, health issues or women problems made him bitter and ornery. He’s now married to an overbearing go-getter named Winifred Loving. He never refers to her by name, it’s always “We” or ‘She.”

“I’m going on a cruise,” he says. “First I’m going up to see my kids in Florida and South Carolina. Then we leave from there and we’re taking a cruise to Italy.” I swear they’re on a cruise every four months. He always shares this information innocently, as his wife has made all the arrangements (and probably picked out his clothes as well.)

“When do you leave?”

“Thursday.”

I realize I must speak with him as soon as possible. I’ve never thought to ask him about family stories. If my father has as many as he does, surely Uncle Glu has some as well. “Can we take you to lunch tomorrow? I’d love to talk to you about family history.

“Of course, darlin.”

“What time?”

“Whenever you would like.” He has the flexibility of a man who has no car, works flexible hours maintaining someone’s boat, and moves at that slower island pace. He goes when others are ready to go, or else he walks. Many times we’ll pass him walking down the road and stop to pick him up. 

We fetch him the following morning at his house in Mt. Washington. A papaya tree laden with giant green fruit leans against the outdoor stairs leading up to his front door. Small pots of herbs line the stairs. We go to Cafe Christine’s in Christiansted. It’s in an historical one-storied structure, tucked away in a courtyard. Colonial era danish bricks and debris from the hurricane are piled to one side. 

Our waitress is a pretty, plain-spoken white girl with a short bob. She talks us through the handwritten menu. Francis and I order chicken salad. 

“Just tea for me,” says Glu.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” I ask.

“I have to eat up what’s in the fridge, since we’re leaving town. I had ham for breakfast. I’m stuffed.” 

The waitress brings us tall glass bottles of hibiscus tea. I begin. “So, do you remember much about Arthur?”

“Of course. I lived with him.”

“You lived with him?”

“Yes I lived with him.”

“So do you remember when and how he died?”

“I was there when he died. Your father was too”

My jaw drops open. I can’t close it. I can’t believe it. All these years my father would barely answer my questions about Arthur or anyone, and not once did he suggest that I ask Glu. And not once did I think to ask Glu. Now, he recounts the whole story in detail. It unfolds as if from the scene of a crime — what Arthur did the evening before, his complaints of feeling not well, where he was when the heart attack hit, and, heartbreakingly, my father’s dissociative response. Which is not to say that Arthur and my dad were on bad terms after Arthur’s passing. Because, as it turns out, I’m not the only one whom Arthur has communicated with since his passing. But I’ll get to that. 

Over the next two hours of conversation at Cafe Christine’s, I eat my chicken salad, sip my hibiscus tea, scribble notes and volley between elation and tears. For each question I ask, Glue responds with a stream of information. Names, dates, details that either compliment or challenge my father's stories. What was a detailed but foggy picture of my family’s life on Nevis becomes more clear, more detailed, and a slightly different shape than what I’ve pieced together from my father. And he delivers it all with a Zenlike serenity, as if it’s the holy spirit pouring through him. I’m in awe. 

Not only has he had more sailing adventures than I knew, I add on top of that that he has also traveled the world later in life with Winifred. All the while my father has been the local celebrity on island and probably seen as the more successful one. To be honest, I always saw my father as the more successful one. The one with newspaper clippings. The one whom the white people loved. The performer. The tourist attraction. The leading man. All the while, there was Uncle Glu, walking down the road with his penknife and his bit of wood, carving pieces for miniature boats, full of stories.

But I know better now. In the screenplay and tv series I’ve been concepting, Glu will be depicted as the one who plays second fiddle ends up being more solid, more dependable, more decent, more able show up for the women and children in his life. And isn’t that the real measure of success? Who we are to the people who need us, rather than how we show up for the people who admire us.

Glu offers facts and stories that, when I later mention to my dad, he contradicts and clarifies. And I am cautious in mentioning their stories to each other. I don’t want to pit them against each other. They already have a built in rivalry that is currently dormant. They’ve have a number of falling outs and done without speaking for years. But they’re getting too old for that. And I don’t care what one thinks about the other, or who is telling the real truth. I want all the stories in their purest form: as they remember them. 

I ask Glu about Eucalyptus on Nevis. He has no recollection of any. He ponders it. It doesn’t ring a bell. Then he says, “I seem to remember someone had a big tree in the yard. And he dug it up, I can’t remember who it was, and he had a lot of trouble after he dug one up. A lot of trouble. Tings was never the same.” He can’t seem to remember who or the details. He says he’ll think on it. Two weeks later while traveling driving to South Carolina to see his son, he has a seizure and is hospitalized. 

A Detective in Paradise

One of my favorite tropes is that of the detective in paradise. With the odds stacked against her, a detective unearths the secrets of some quaint small town or village — secrets that have been baked into the layers of history by time and the elements. Over the course of a winter holiday or summer season she manages to drag a tangle of  dark stories out into the glare of the equatorial sun, and passes away the balmy nights chasing down moonshadows amongst the swaying palm trees, all while navigating local customs and lore. The right setting is essential — it must be a place where life seems wholesome and simple, and everyone is identified by their vocation, the role they play in their community, and their idiosyncrasies, which may point to their guilt or innocence. With the fishbowl effect, a writer is able to brings the affluent, the working class, and the poor all under the same scrutiny.

My father loves this show called Death in Paradise. It’s about a bumbling, English detective officer working alongside a team of local officials to solve murders that happen with alarming regularity on the otherwise idyllic fictional Caribbean island of St. Marie. I grew up watching Murder, She Wrote with my grandmother. Retired English teacher-turned successful mystery novelists resides in the fictional small coastal town of Cabot Cove, Maine, where she helps local law enforcement crack cases. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil takes place in eerie splendor of Savannah, Georgia, where I once visited for a wedding. There, the trees drip with Spanish moss and even on a sunny spring day there is a gloomy charm to the whole city. It reminded me a lot of St. Croix. Carryover culture of Antebellum South is close cousins with post-colonial Caribbean. People are set in their ways. Scandals are widely known and largely ignored. In fact, everyone seems complicit in this for the sake of maintaining a tranquil day to day life.

The Bashful Psychic

I’m in the truck with my father. We are headed from the East End to mid-island,  to his physical therapy appointment. On the way into town, he stops at the bakery — the bakery — the one owned by Nevisians. It’s a clandestine operation; there never seems to be much on display in the cases. But if you get there early enough in the day, you can leave with the best hot lunch found on island — stewed oxtail, conch, or curried goat in a styrofoam container, wrapped in a brown bag. 

I wait in the car, leafing through my journal. I want to get his take on my channeled messages, whether or not he thinks they’re believable. He gets back in the truck with a brown bag, in which are two small torpedo shaped loaves, known affectionately as ‘tittie bread.’ He tears off a hunk of one and starts the truck.

“Do you want to know the rest of what Arthur said?” I ask.

He pulls carefully out onto the main road. He’s extremely suspicious of oncoming traffic. “Yeah.”

I open my journal. “Arthur said, ‘Rainbow wood. It rain for days…’ I’m too embarrassed to try to read it in dialect, and too shy about the whole thing to allow the poetry of it to breathe. But my father is listening, as he makes a left onto the bypass, chewing on the bread, so I march through it like minutes from a meeting. “...and then I ask him what is was good for and he says ‘Clothespins, hangers, stays’ — I have to write this down for you so you can have it and think it over.”

The bypass, the island’s newest snippet of highway,  is simply a brief arc of road that cuts through a mountain and allows you to circumvent traffic in town. It has a spectacular view of Christiansted Harbor, and always makes me wonder what the harbor looked like 100 years ago. 

“So then I ask him, ‘Where did you see rainbow wood?’ and he says, ‘In the cemetery, by the table and the dry creek.’ And I said ‘Who is buried there?’ and he said, ‘Rebeccah and Sinclaire.’”

“Sinclair...” my father says.

“And then I said, ‘Where are the rest of the family?’ and he said, ‘Sunkind, sun port, sunland? Something with the word Sun… and then he said this poem.” I bumble through the while my father drives, dropping any attempt to recreate Arthur’s accent, and interjecting awkward narration, even referring to Arthur “it” at one point, embarrassed by the whole thing.  

I was on de radio reading the evening prayer. 

Reciting poetry and commercials for pomade for hair.

I rode horses as an infantryman. 

I buried meh coin to save it fah me son. 

I left Dorris the day it rained. 

I lost a bet with Sampson, but my freedom I gained. 

I loved your [father’s] mother when the Queen reigned. 

I worse spectacles, I had migraines. 

I soaked in the mineral baths. My mother made cakes. 

The rain- the brick wall of the cemetery, you’ll find in the moss traces of me. 

Stars and stripes - I was decorated, you know. 

I wrote letters to Candy/Candace by lamplight from my tent in Kodiak/Curacao. 

“Something with a ‘k’ or a ‘c,’” I interject.’

The letters mention a friend named B_______.

“…and then I said, ‘Where can I find these letters?’ And it said, ‘Under the porch. She hid dem from  she muddah.’” Only, I lamely say ‘She hid them from her mom.’ I wait to hear his thoughts. 

He honks the horn four times. A black arm waves from the driver side of an old Toyota truck. “Phillip,” he says. “Meh countryman,” meaning, Phillip is from Nevis. 

“So that’s what I got,” I say with a yawn. 

“B______. Beatrice,” he says. 

“Who’s Beatrice?”

“I don’t know,” he says slowly, and clears his throat. “There’s a Beatrice that was married to a businessman in town, Archibald. And I think Beatrice liked Arthur.” 

“Is she the one that had the general store, and the picture of him in the rum shop or whatever?” I ask. 

“She had a rum shop,” he confirms. 

“Remember you said there was a picture of him in the shop, like, in a little display case?”

“I don’t remember that.” 

He definitely told me that. But I let it slide. “Beatrice had a rum shop and you think she liked Arthur.”

“Yes, I kinda heard dat.”

“Where did you — ”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think maybe he wrote her letters —”

“Maybe he did,” he says before I even finish my sentence. “He sounds amused. Perhaps this detective work pleases him. 

“Did they know each other when they were younger?”

“I guess that’s when they knew each other.” His intonation his hard to describe, since it’s not characteristic of Standard American English. The rise and fall lands in places I would never put them. It reminds me of the way French intonation might sound.  It essentially it translates to, “Yes, what you’re saying must be the case.”

“I mean, I could be making this stuff up,” I say, giving him an out.

“You probably are.” The bypass has come to an end. He merges back onto the old road. But I know there was a Beatrice and she was married. And I don’t know if I got it from Miss Woodley or what that… she used to like him.”

Leaving Narnia

 It’s the day before I leave island. A breeze blows through leaves of the mahogany tree as I’m taking my laundry down from the line. My father drives up in the truck and heads up the stairs, not bothering to stop and talk with me is because it’s his naptime. I turn and watch him for a minute. He moves much more slowly than he used to. His feet hurt and his legs are stiff. I wonder if he’ll always be able to climb the stairs to the front door. He’s carrying a brown bag, which mean he’s been to the bakery. I hear him pause at the  landing to rest. He opens the door and goes in, but then sticks his head back out.

“Oh, and, by the way, dem at the bakery say that, yes there is Eucalyptus on Nevis. And they call it Rainbow Wood.” He shuts the door and disappears into the house to put his feet up. 

There is Rainbow Wood on Nevis. I’m stunned. A rush of energy goes through my body. I continue to pinch open each clothespin and feel the clean cool dampness of each piece of laundry. I feel both wholly reassured and utterly helpless. Now that I have confirmation, I have so much work to do. How and when will I get back here? How do I know I’ll live long enough? How do I know my father or Glu will live long enough? What if I get stuck at a job in the states and never get back to my real work? Excitement. Elation. Relief. Surrender. And despair. I have the confirmation that I’m looking for, but in a sense, all it is is confirmation that there’s so much more to discover. I’m being shown the most marvelous thing I can’t have. I’m being told that yes there is a Narnia in your wardrobe in this mysterious mansion, but now you must go back to London. You’ll have to find a way to return and pick up where you left off. And who’s to say the trail leading from the wardrobe won’t have disappeared, erased by weather or covered in leaves or cow dung? For this is indeed a wardrobe which leads to what is, indeed a Narnia all my own. A place where I am queen, heir to some kingdom I have yet to discover. A place where many established modern rules of society don’t apply, and money can’t buy everything, and time does not and can not impose its strictures, and the elements rule. The warped, weathered clothespins are a small reminder of that. I hope this breeze doesn’t mean rain — these clothes need to dry so I can pack them. 

Although, here it’s an inverse of Narnia. In C.S. Lewis’s books, the children spend decades and come into adulthood in Narnia, but then return to England and are still just children. Whereas, St. Croix seems to reverse aging. Because the days fly by, time melts in the sun, life’s pace is molasses, and nothing gets accomplished in a rush. Time warped by the island’s intense magnetism and I’m just beginning to learn how to time travel. So much to do, and I’m just getting started. Laundry is done. I feel triumphant. Arthur spoke to me. 

“HAHA!” I shout into the valley. Arthur is real. Rainbow Wood is real. I am real. And clearly this is my real work. It takes all of my time and all of my love. This takes all of me. There’s no way to understand what it is I’m trying to understand — no way to really see this place — without getting completely lost in it. No way, other than to step fully into the wardrobe, disappear behind the moth eaten coats and show up in broad daylight in an unidentified timezone and be wholly willing to be here for what seems like years, even though it may be only a few hours. I haven’t even left yet and already I must get back.