A Simple Distance (16 page)

Exactly. She’s lived away too long. I’m showing you how it’s really done. What do you think your mother knows about making ginger beer, na? All you Pascals take a sip of water and claim you’ve discovered the river.

She took the pot of beer from the stove. Poured the entire batch into three standing bottles, capped them tight from air and such.

You are just like your family. You come to Baobique for a few weeks out of your life and tell me how to make ginger beer. It is arrogance through and through.

We were not really arguing about beer; my head was hurting and I felt, yet again, on the edge of tears.

Susan moved to the dining room table, to her left a hole in the cedar floorboards above the crawlspace under the house where Lucia slept; above her head, bats in the attic hidden only by the thinnest veneer.

She finished,
I hate to see them in you
… Then started again.
You expect things to come to you, J. Rest themselves at your feet without any effort on your part. But it’s you that has to take a step or two if you want something, na.

I wanted, more than anything, to go back to that afternoon, when she was just being nice, just taking care of me; or farther, to those nights she’d crawled on top of me of her own free will and her skin shone back brown against the light from all those stars. But between us, things were not so easy as simple touch anymore.

I wanted to kiss her, but instead I apologized.
Susan, I’m sorry I never answered your letters
.

An entire year, Jean. An entire year I had no one to talk to after what happened.

I’m sorry.

I left my home. Why do you think I took that residency in Nassau? I had to leave Baobique! I didn’t think I could come back, your uncles made such noise. And all that time, all that time, na, I was still willing to believe you were worth it … And stupidly, when my father told me you were here again, to see about your mummy’s house, a little piece of me was waiting for you to come running to my door, convince me all over again that we have something—you and I.

Susan, we do. I’m sorry.

That is the first accurate statement you’ve made all day: You are sorry!

Can we never be that close again?
I asked, softly as possible.

Her silence steamed like a tea kettle—no one watching, save maybe Grampy and Uncle George, my mother sleeping behind closed doors.

I held still, on some verge.

Susan kept her gaze off mine, but gave a little.
Perhaps ours was a false start, Jean.

What’s this, then? Another?
I was tentative, where Susan wasn’t.

No. This one here is the real race. If you want me, J, it’s your step forward.

I stepped.
I want to touch you.

Then touch me.

* * *

It was dark in the guest bedroom, the shutters closed tight, tight, to keep us safe from intruders, or weather, come knocking. But the wind, strong against the broken boards of the house outside, made me wonder if we weren’t missing signals Grampy and Uncle George might have been trying to send.

Inside the guestroom, Susan lit a citronella candle for the mosquitoes, unknotted the netting to cascade around the bed, whispered,
At the hospital, I can always tell the foreign-born children from their mosquito bites.
It was too dark to tell if she was smiling or not.

The net was torn. If the mosquitoes wanted to get me, they would. That’s just the way it is for me there.

Inside our tent of ghostly white mosquito netting, its edges tucked tight around the four corners of the mattress, Susan promised,
I’ll rub your skin with aloe in the morning to stop the scars from taking hold.

Every inch
, I told her, finally.
I want every inch of you.

* * *

It’s just that there was something about Susan; some spark ignited, knowing beforehand that when she touched my arm, my leg, my back, gripped tight and pulled herself to me, she was entering a place already familiar, a person built on volcanoes, red clay, and salt. It was a comfort I had felt with no one else that this woman knew trails inside me I could never have found alone.

I didn’t become a Pascal, it seemed, until I reached adulthood. And then, all at once, it happened. I looked in a mirror, doubled-up in some department store, and all over my back—Grampy’s moles. Mostly I pretended they weren’t there. But Susan laughed, our eyes grown accustomed to the dark, she connected the dots, lightly with the very tip of her long, thin finger—sending pictures from her head to my skin, lining me with her touch. And apparently, I wouldn’t have given them up for anything, those thousand and three moles, from my shoulders to the lowest arch of my back.

Silently, I thanked the ceiling, Grampy swirling around somewhere up there, looking down on Susan and me, wearing his skin—marked for eternity.

CHAPTER 21

Morning broke clear and wide.

I was not supposed to sleep, but I woke to the sound of birds just this side of the open window, and to Susan’s soft fingers gently separating my eyelids to get at my pupils.

I wasn’t to let you sleep.
She looked a bit concerned, disappointed in herself for failing me in that way.
But it looks as if you’ve made it through.

My head only hurt to the touch. I leaned it against her, not wanting to start the day.

I’ve got early rounds, J. And you and your mummy should get back to Tours.

I moaned in forced agreement. She was up, and right. The sun had risen whether I liked it or not, inching higher and higher in the sky; and there were matters to which I needed to turn my attention.

Susan leaned down to me one last time, barely graced the top of my forehead with her lips, and smiled.
She’s up this morning, J. She’s made breakfast.

What?
I was slow, still a bit groggy.

But Susan was already out the door, called back to my mom,
Goodbye, Mrs. Souza. You take it slow today, na. Doctor’s orders.

I heard noise from the dining room, rose to investigate: plates to wood, silverware, glasses with fresh juice.

The redness in her eyes had cleared and Susan was right, my mom
was
up—moving, actually, a little too fast for my achy head.

You’re up
, I observed flatly, as I sat down at the table in front of one of the two place settings, poured myself a cup of tea, its tannins golden brown, spreading their color to fill the space of my mug. I sipped. Took a few bites of egg in the welcomed silence. Early-morning birds outside the open door.

But my mom didn’t want to be peaceful. She was up. And angry. Started right in on me.
Jean, I want to talk to you about Godwyn before we go to Tours today.

The egg in my stomach wound itself into a knot, swelled to twice its natural size, impinged on my lungs.

Mom! Please! Can’t I at least finish breakfast in peace?
She was either on or off those days. I couldn’t take it much longer. But by then I didn’t want peace either. Nor eggs. So I let her have it:
All this family ever does is fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Nonstop, Mom. It’s nonstop and I want off!

My whole life, it seemed as if I never belonged to my mother’s family, as if it had been a gift I had neglected to receive, forgotten on Christmas like those many Fridays waiting on the sill of the picture window for my dad to pick me up for the weekend in the Mustang that kept forgetting the way back to our house. Then, just when things started falling apart and the gift turned out to be rotten—like a guava left too long at the bottom of the tree, poked by worms and bugs and birds alike—her family turned into a curse. And I was first in line to catch its hell.

* * *

When Grampy died, his children had little experience with change so permanent as death. They left his body whole; laid it, thick, between sheets of cedar in a casket his boys had built themselves: chopping and sanding and nailing the boards together so tight it would take a long, long time for anything to eat its way through, and by that time Grampy’d be safely in heaven.

They carried his casket on their backs all the way from Tours to the burial plot out back—shrouded in orchids and frangipani under a steady August shower—cutting in from the access road, uphill to his grave.

Thing is, Grampy never went to heaven at all. He stayed right there at Godwyn. Walked its rooms at night.

It’s not like I expected Grampy’s strong hand, or even Uncle George’s, to reach down from the sky, grab me by the collar, and shake, shake, shake me to my senses. But they were in the trees, the floorboards, the salty film on my skin after a sea bath. I breathed them in the air, my lungs expanding, stretching skin marked with Grampy’s moles.

I don’t even believe in ghosts. But those were no ghosts: Grampy, Uncle George, Granny too. They were alive as any living voice—telling me things like who I was and why, and where I could belong should I simply say
yes
.

Even though they couldn’t really kill me, they could—in an instant—blow out the flame that warmed my blood under the guise of a gentle evening breeze.

* * *

Just before midday we got the call from Tours: Uncle Charles had arrived. He wanted to settle matters with Godwyn before driving Granny’s body down to Bato to be cremated. There’d be a lot to do to prepare for the funeral.

They had Valerie make the call.

I was a little unclear, though, about what they meant by
settling matters with Godwyn
. My mom and Granny held title as joint tenants, which meant when Granny passed, all ownership rights transferred directly to my mom. Uncle Charles, Uncle Martin, even Granny from her unfilled grave, had no say in the matter. Neither law nor logic supported their presumptions. They’d not been added as heirs to Granny’s share, so my uncles’ names were not on the deed.

I knew, though, that wouldn’t stop them. I dreaded my role—playing counsel.

CHAPTER 22

At Tours there was a bustle of activity. It was a good thing my mom was up, because even if I had remembered to stop by the police station for a temporary driver’s license, the roads were more of a challenge than I was up for right then. We pulled up in the front yard, under the frangipani, its cascading white flowers. Uncle Martin’s Four-Runner was crooked in front of the porch, the open gate.

We passed through the empty living room and made our way back to Valerie in the kitchen. Uncle Martin and Uncle Charles stood together, arms folded, beside Granny’s big copper, full to the rim from last night’s storm. I knew they’d heard the car, but they stayed rooted—made us wait.

Fine by me. The only danger, imminent idleness. There in Granny’s kitchen, though, my mom was right at home, took up the one good knife and started chopping things. Valerie took pity on me, handed me an empty pot, asked me to return it to the Australians living in the trailer just around the bend, Polly and Eugene of the half-built hotel.

Polly had sent up a pot of beans after hearing about Granny, to help with the company sure to follow. No one had thanked her as yet. The beans went bad overnight, left out. But I wouldn’t tell her that. The first words I would utter to the stranger who lived across from Tours, one of the few but growing number of whites settling in Baobique, would be a lie. I would tell her we all enjoyed the beans very much.

Out on the road I passed a slow walker with a machete, exchanged only stares.

I didn’t know Polly or Eugene’s last name, but there was a truck with a
Koala Construction
decal on its side, on the tarish next to their trailer.

Their dog, a purebred ridgeback, announced my arrival before I called out,
Hello, hello
, and walked up to their little porch area.

Eugene was sitting at a small table: a large, pale man in khaki shorts and a polo shirt, sweating profusely during the mildest part of the day, looking at some plans, architectural drawings.

Although farther away and inside the trailer, it was Polly who greeted me first, rushing out the door at a speed verging on desperation.

I told them I was Sophie’s daughter, come to return their pot, the beans were delicious,
thank you very much.

They would have offered me juice, fresh-squeezed, if they were my grandmother, my aunt, my mother. Accepting their glass of water, I prayed it had been boiled.

I sat with them on their porch, stared out past the edge of the cliff to Granny’s blue sea. Looking away from the water to their faces, only when I absolutely had to, I did the minimum to maintain my welcome, frontloading all those things that would get them to excuse my rudeness and lack of interest:
I am an attorney. I live in San Francisco. I grew up in the States. No, I do not visit Baobique often. I came to visit with my grandmother before she passed
. But enough.

Eugene, a little more forthcoming than me, said they’d moved to Baobique a couple of years ago to do construction work. Koala Construction was his. He was doing relatively well. Their biggest project, a six-story hotel that was now only half-built, would be their home once it was finished. But, of course, I already knew that. When completed, their hotel would block the entire view of our cove from Tours. Polly would run it. They were hopeful that a new wave of white settlers, in need of housing, would give them everything they need, financially, to finish the hotel. They all went to Eugene to build their homes. It just worked that way there.

Polly got a bit more personal, although only about my family, not about herself. Living just around the corner from Tours, she saw a lot of things visitors like myself didn’t know about. Now that Granny had passed, Polly worried about Clara, who, bless her soul, was always losing her house keys. I should really have a duplicate set for both Auntie Clara’s house and Tours made while I was there and leave them with Polly.

Just the other day, Polly had gone over to visit Granny, found her alone, lying on the floor, unable to get up. Polly didn’t have a key to unlock the iron gate and Auntie Clara was in town, so Polly sat outside the house talking to Granny, making sure she was okay, until Auntie Clara got back an hour or so later. Polly should really have a set of keys.