Anything else would have been better than sitting next to Latoya Brown in Miss Johnstone’s sixth grade class. When the bell rang that first day of school, Veronica had taken too long to get into the room, so she was stuck with the disdainful privilege of being stationed in both a front seat and next to Latoya. No one else wanted to take a seat near the girl who smelled of a fisherman’s boat hull. It wasn’t Latoya’s fault she reeked, but rather her chosen method of traversing the village to get to school. Each day, instead of walking like most of the other children, Latoya rode front and center in her father’s bucket seat pick-up truck which also housed all his fishing paraphernalia. The scent clung to her like so many other social disgraces and wouldn’t be shaken free, even with the heavy-duty amount of ignorance applied by its host.
Veronica’s day had already been sullied by her mother who had made her pigtails imbalanced and then left for work so she couldn't even fix them. One ponytail lulled closer to her ear with its cascade of curls spilling out to brush her shoulder. The other rested snuggly on her crown with its tendrils hovering a half inch above the opposite shoulder. And so, on this first day of sixth grade, Veronica found herself looking like the scales of justice removing her carefully sharpened pencil from its new pink zipper pouch and placing it next to Latoya’s on the shared wooden desk.
She looked back over her shoulder at her two friends, Cookie and Edith, who sat tittering in the back of the class like a pair of seagulls. They chanced a wave, wiggling their brown fingers simultaneously in a coordinated gesture only mastered by twins. Cookie and Edith shared the same deep-tanned skin, slicked-back beribboned bun, broad nose, and matriarchal DNA. Their mothers were sisters who had become pregnant at the same time for a pair of womanizing rummers who, after conception, took jobs on a banana boat and were rumored to be somewhere down in St. Vincent now creating a bevy of half-siblings for both Cookie and Edith. A more stereotypical scenario could not have transpired.
The three girls had moved up the grades together and become an inseparable trio. Perhaps if Veronica had stayed with them that day instead of deciding to do something on her own for once then she wouldn’t be sitting next to fishy Latoya, favouring her side and quelling the rising tide of remembrance.
“Good morning, class!” Miss Johnstone bellowed from the front of the room. Her voice blanketed Veronica for the moment and her mind was pulled back into its rightful place, sixth grade. “Let’s start off sharing our summer stories.”
Veronica let her right hand grasp the new pencil and spin lies like graphite cobwebs across the page of the composition book. Her wonderful summer began to take form before her on the paper, a sequence of interlaced untruths woven into the most believable falsehood. She read it over a few times. Her penmanship had improved immensely since the previous year and the story of her fake happy memory flowed across the light blue lines in a swirl of interlocking etchings. Some of it was true, like the part about jumping off Little Lagoon with Cookie and Edith, their plaits flailing behind them like rudders. The missing parts were covered in the gossamer of her mind, replaced with lighthearted schoolgirl wanderings and fabrications. Veronica did not raise her hand when Miss Johnstone asked people to share their compositions.
The remainder of the day was taken up with the typical tasks of school. When the clang of the bell signaled dismissal, Veronica began pushing books into her bag. She was enclosing her writing utensils in the pink pouch when Miss Johnstone came over to her.
“Veronica, I heard you are quite the writer. I’m looking forward to having you in class this year.” Miss Johnstone wore a pleated skirt not unlike the issued uniform bottom sported by the little girls in the school. A strand of pearls clung to her neck, seemingly stuck in her doughy flesh. Her eyes were a startling shade of green nestled in her brown skin referencing the island’s Anglo-Saxon ancestry. Veronica was also supposed to have come from this line of intermingled masters and slaves, but her mother had never traced it back further than one Guinness-loving great uncle. Miss Johnstone reached out her hand to request Veronica’s classwork.
Hugging her notebook to her chest, Veronica practically flattened the buttons on her shirt trying to maintain possession. Miss Johnstone regarded her quizzically. “Something wrong, dear?”
“No, Miss, it’s just that I really should be getting home. My mother is expecting me.” Veronica pushed the rest of her stuff into the backpack.
“Wait, Veronica,” Miss Johnstone called out, “didn’t I see you up near the mango trees by my house the other night?”
The memory flared, threatening to expose everything.
“No, Miss,” Veronica threw her bag over her shoulder and dashed out the door.
She had lied. Her mother wasn’t expecting her; she would have already been at her second job by then and the shift didn’t end until well after sunset. Veronica took her time walking back down to her house so as not to run into anyone else she knew who may pick up on the indiscernible changes in her demeanor. She plucked sprigs off the wild mimosa trees that grew in thickets and made confetti out of the miniature leaves, throwing it in the air and letting it rain down around her. The repetition of this act calmed her. She was in no hurry. There was nothing to go home to. Not even a dog since the last brown cur who had taken up residence in the crawl space beneath their house had disappeared as quickly as he had materialized one balmy morning.
The house was quiet when Veronica climbed the wooden steps to the porch. She sank into one of the rickety chairs and picked at a hangnail. It was well past 4 o’clock, her dalliance into landscaping having slowed her walk home. The verandah offered a view of the gravel road and beyond it, the ocean lavished beckoningly. Sometimes the sea looked as if you could walk into it and just keep walking for as far as you could go. Veronica imagined it occasionally, picturing herself walking underwater, cheeks puffed with oxygen from the world above, fish staring with their eyes glassy until she became one of them.
The traffic in the village had begun to pick up a bit since office workers were making their way back from a day of toil. A woman walked by in a grey polyester suit, seemingly oblivious to the afternoon heat. Trotting behind her was a scant black dog, probably having gone to wait for his mistress at the bus stop using his internal doggy clock as a daily guide. Veronica waved in response to the woman’s “how y’do”.
More people filtered by wearing the trials of the day like rosettes, bantering with one another about who was more exhausted. Veronica wasn’t sure how long she sat there on the porch doing nothing but people-watching. It seemed the whole village must have been home by then, but of course her mother wasn’t with the barrage of town workers who returned on the tap-tap buses.
Pushing herself up out of the chair, Veronica stretched and dragged the backpack inside. The screen door banged behind her and she jumped. Cursing her jitters, she hung her bag on the peg and put her shoes neatly in their spot near the baseboard. Her mother would have nothing to complain about when she arrived home at dusk.
Their living room was modest, but cozy. An afghan hid the worn back of the overstuffed sofa, its mustard and scarlet threads clashing quietly with the deep pink of the old couch. Pictures on the wall depicted Veronica and her mother in various stages of their lives: baby Veronica’s half-moon smile with her chubby cheeks almost blocking her eyes, Veronica’s baby mother sitting solemnly on her own mother’s lap.
Veronica’s stomach grumbled and she went into the kitchen to see what she could do about it. The pot on the stove was still warm from whatever meal her mother had cooked before leaving for her second job. Lifting the lid, Veronica discovered beans and rice with chunks of pork sparingly surfacing. She retrieved a bowl from the cupboard and spooned some of the rice into the dish. A note under a magnet on the fridge said they were out of canned milk and butter. Veronica pulled the fridge open to find a fresh pitcher of passion fruit juice sitting in the center of the top shelf. Her favourite. When could her mother have had time to make this today? She didn’t question it further and poured a glass of the smooth yellow liquid for herself. Dinner. She took it back onto the porch and sat at the little table enjoying the food and the peace of her own company. Unlike most children her age who needed a constant barrage of entertainment, Veronica was used to making do with little to nothing.
The sun sank into the ocean selfishly pulling with it the last tendrils of light leaving in their stead a twilight sky shot through with lilac. Small birds that spent their days flitting in and out of the ocean current found their nests in the seaside shrubs. Nighttime on the island brought with it both peace and superstition. Soucouyant stories filled the dusky Caribbean eves stuffing children’s heads with tales of malevolent, skinless women who spent their days masquerading as harmless, but revealed their true selves in the cloak of night. No one dared find themselves out in the dark least they spy a flying orb of fire, the soucouyant’s favoured mode of transportation. Like the early vampires of Eastern Europe, these night witches could be blamed for any sudden, questionable death or lost soul. Veronica planned on blaming the soucouyant for the bruises that were slowly developing on her body like blotchy mauve reminders of what had happened. Soucouyant was a believable culprit. Everyone knew that if you were out after dark you had an increased risk of being mauled, your blood sucked. It would make for a good excuse.
She got up and put her discarded dishes in the sink. Her mother would be home any minute and expect Veronica to be bathed and in her nightie, ready for bed, not sitting on the porch like some old lady. In the bedroom, she craned around in the mirror trying to see the marks on her lower back and thighs with the insufficient glow cast by the overhead light. There they were, brazen and dark against her almond skin. Would a soucouyant go for the torso? Or the neck? It didn’t matter. Veronica shook her head as if someone had actually made the query.
“Soucouyant did it,” she practiced aloud. It sounded hollow, the sentence falling around her like a drape on her honesty.
It had been Cookie and Edith’s idea to go down to the beach that night. They had pleaded with Veronica to join them, pledging to do her vocabulary sentences for a week if she came along. It was the last night of summer and their tradition was to go dipping into the navy-blue water for one final romp before starting school. Veronica hadn’t felt like it. She had been moody lately which her mother attributed to “coming into her womanhood”. She simply didn’t feel like swimming at night, the threat of sharks no longer a believable taunt to encourage such faux displays of bravery. She was twelve. A woman. Cookie and Edith needed to let go of childish traditions now that they were entering sixth grade.
Nevertheless, they were able to convince her to go. This was why she had been on the road in the darkness to see her mother leave their house through the side door. It had given Veronica pause to see her mother departing, especially since she never went anywhere on her nights off, moreover since her mother had no clue Veronica had snuck out herself. It meant that her mother was also sneaking out, leaving her supposedly sleeping daughter behind, alone.
Cookie and Edith didn’t see Veronica’s mother moving up the road in the opposite direction to the bay. They were singing the harmony sections of one of the year’s popular soca songs, Cookie’s clear soprano weaving into Edith’s alto like a braid. The girls were halfway to the beach when Veronica made up her mind to follow her mother.
“I ain’t feel like goin’ again,” she threw over her shoulder, turning back in the direction of the village.
“Gyal, wha’ wrong wid you?” Cookie sucked her teeth and Edith waved her off.
“Nica t’ink she big woman now, man.” Edith picked the song up again and Cookie joined as they skipped toward the beach.
Veronica made sure the cousins were not turning around before passing her own house and running in the direction her mother had gone. She saw the shrinking shape of her skirted figure in the distance making its way up Ginger Hillock’s main street. There were not many things in that direction, just the mango trees, a field and Miss Johnstone’s house. It was after ten at night, so too late for a call on Veronica’s soon-to-be teacher. Where was she going?
It wasn’t unheard of to pick mangoes at night, but Veronica couldn’t picture her mother pilfering the fruit in the cloak of darkness since she was a big woman. The road itself offered few choices this far out: continue straight toward town or turn off on the dirt lanes that led to Miss Johnstone’s house and the field. Veronica saw her mother take one of the dirt roads. If she followed her, it would be just the two of them and surely her mother would hear her footsteps no matter how quiet she tried to be. Veronica made a quick decision to cut through the mango field.
The mango trees created a canopy almost obscuring the inky nighttime sky as the flowers leeched their sickly-sweet scent into the atmosphere perfuming the twilight with the promise of ripe future mangoes. Cool grass licked at Veronica’s ankles while she gently crept through the rows. Lights in the distance winked in solidarity with her trek. Her mother had come off the main road a few turns up and, from years of sitting in these same trees eating her belly full of sticky mangoes with Cookie and Edith, Veronica knew the area flawlessly. If she continued in this direction, she would meet the field where the dirt road her mother had turned down ended.
A dog barked somewhere back in the village. The noise startled Veronica as it pierced the silence. She shook off her nerves and continued. The rows of mango trees ended abruptly, standing like sentries at the opening to the field. To the left was Miss Johnstone’s house, but directly in front of Veronica was the empty grass field and its loose red dirt. She could see, but the grass was high in some areas muddling her view. Calculating her movements, Veronica hoisted herself into a mango tree and sat in the cradle of its branches to spy on her mother’s clandestine mission.
At the center of the field, as if on display under the starry sky, was the shiny hull of a large, black sedan. Veronica watched as her mother crossed the field, the high grass parting slightly in her wake. A man’s form emerged from the car. Something on his wrist picked up the moonlight and threw it back in a spark toward Veronica. She instinctively crouched lower in her hideaway. It seemed as if her mother and the man were having a conversation. Their body language was off. Somehow familiar, yet still standoffish.
From the dash of the car, the man produced a sheath of papers and offered them to Veronica’s mother. Her mother hesitated and then tucked the papers into the band of her cotton skirt. She turned as if to leave, but the man caught her wrist and spun her around toward him. Veronica didn’t even realize she wasn’t breathing. Something burned in the pit of her stomach, but it wasn’t from lack of oxygen. She watched her mother tilt her head up to the man. He savagely bent into her, his mouth on hers as their bodies blended into one silhouette.
Veronica had never seen someone kiss her mother before. Her father was a story not told; he had left for England when Veronica was one and never returned. The view of intimacy between her mother and a man was a new image and Veronica felt dirty watching it. Her mother’s hair disobeyed its bun and the man ran his hands over it, smoothing her mother’s stoicism. His mouth was all over her. Veronica wanted to look away but couldn’t. She watched as her mother traced the man’s jaw with her index finger using the same touch she employed when selecting scarlet ripened fruit in the market. The man’s hand with the shiny thing was at the small of her mother’s back and he pushed her up onto the vehicle.
The dog barked again, far away back in the village where Veronica’s mother did not straddle white men’s hips on the hoods of cars. Her skirt hiked up against the man’s thighs and Veronica saw them both fumbling with something between them. Passion spun out dancing in the closing space. Veronica watched, lips parted, as her mother eased her shirt over her head and leaned back on her elbows right there, exposed in the middle of the field, her dark nipples pointed up at the stars. The man tore his own shirt off and the moonshine grabbed his upturned face for the first time. Air flooded Veronica’s lungs. The wave recognition hit her and just as swiftly left as her body flailed briefly suspended in the fragrant air before hitting the ground below the mango tree.
***
Veronica had mulled over the situation with her mother for three days. She suddenly went from having a routine to feeling mildly suspicious about every move her mother made. Now, she turned the thoughts over in her mind like dough. Cookie and Edith were sleeping in the womb of a blanket’s wrap. The mosquito net tucked in around the edges of the mattress to protect them from insects created a filmy filter over the pair. Veronica was watching them from a makeshift cot on the floor. One of their mothers had pushed three couch pillows together to create the bed, wrapping it in a checkered pink and white sheet. She was sleeping over because her mother was working a nightshift.
But Veronica couldn’t sleep. A mosquito buzzed around her head along with the musings of her mother’s midnight mango shenanigans. She was certain that her mother was not working a nightshift at the hotel. Throwing back the covers, Veronica quietly got out of bed. Cookie shifted in her sleep and threw one arm over Edith as Veronica made her way to the door. The night air carried the sounds of nocturnal animals over to the little porch where she stood looking out.
The whole village was asleep, so it was easy to spot the lights disturbing the quiet darkness at the end of the road. The two orbs grew as the distance closed. Veronica shrank back against the porch pondering the possibility of twin soucouyants. The car passed and stopped five houses up. Her mother came out and leaned against the porch rails illuminated by the overhead light.
The white man who alighted the vehicle had an accordion file pushed underneath one arm and a briefcase in the other. He made his way up the steps, stopping at the top to look in a sweeping glance up and down the street. Veronica knew she was safe in the shadows of Cookie and Edith’s porch, but she still felt exposed. Her mother pecked the man on the lips and under the light their shadowy figures looked like the ceramic topper of a wedding cake. Veronica scoffed at the irony. Her mother and the man went inside. She yearned to know what was going on.
For as long as she could remember, it had been her and her mother against the world. Now this white man had snuck in and suddenly her mother was lying and farming her out on impromptu school night sleepovers. She went down the stairs and stole across the pavement to her own house. There was a light on in the living room and through the window she could see her mother and the man sitting on the pink couch, long neck beer bottles in hand surrounded by the contents of the briefcase.
Veronica knew who the man was. On the days she had accompanied her mother to the hotel, she had seen him sometimes. He stood in the lobby looking like part of the scenery in his pastel chinos and linen shirt. What she couldn’t wrap her mind around now was the fact that the owner of the resort was sitting easily in the living room on her cheap couch with his arm flung around her mother, who worked in his hotel for $4.75 an hour and would never be able to afford clothing constructed from the fabrics he wore.
She moved down the swept dirt path to the back of the house where the Dutch door in the kitchen hung open. There would be a clear line of sight to the living room from there. As she rounded the corner, she felt it. The new sticky feeling between her legs. Veronica swept her hand swiftly along her crotch. Womanhood in its red glory had chosen this moment when she was being a spy to arrive. It coated the tips of her fingers and she felt the fluttering feeling inside her throat that meant she was about to cry. Here she would now bleed out on her own kitchen steps while her mother cared of nothing more than smiling with a man who didn’t belong on their sofa.
Veronica looked at her crimson pink fingers and an idea formed in their stain. She jerked open the Dutch door with her clean hand and let the hinges scream an exaggerated announcement. The pair on the couch startled into a tableau. Her mother’s face silently underscored their discovery. Veronica imagined her mother retreating into a pearlescent shell like a soldier crab avoiding danger.
“Who dat?” she called out as Veronica came through the doorway.
“Mama?” Veronica responded, “I thought you was work. Who’s dat?”
The white man arranged the papers on the table in a studious way, careful not to look up. His expensive linen shirt made him look easy and relaxed.
“Don’t ask me no question, Nica. Wha’ you doin’ here? Why you not by Cookie dem?” Her mother ushered her away from the room.
“I needed to get my woman t’ings…” Veronica let her red fingers peek from behind her back.
Her mother rushed air through her nostrils in an animalistic way and grabbed Veronica by the arm.
“Mama, who dat man? Why he on our couch? Why you not workin’?”
Her mother thrust her into their tiny shared bedroom like a stowaway. Veronica waited for her answer, but the woman just stood in the doorway like a guard looking out toward the living room. Veronica busied herself pulling out her accoutrements. She wanted to say something again, but she knew her place. If she continued to question her mother, she would get snapped at. Reminded that she was a child. Like she wasn’t almost a woman and entitled to knowing things.
She fixed herself and waited for her mother to move from the doorway.
“Excuse me, please, Mama.”
“You head on back over to Cookie’s, see,” her mother propelled her through the kitchen.
Veronica stalled a bit on the steps toeing the concrete with the rubber front of her slipper. Her mother wasn’t hers anymore. She could feel their partnership ebbing away, a dinghy unhooked from a yacht. Sighing, she pushed open the door to Cookie and Edith’s and made her way back to her bed on the floor.
***
The sun danced its fingers over Veronica coaxing her from the comfort of her dreams. Cookie and Edith were still asleep. Veronica didn’t know anyone who liked sleep more than those two. She checked her watch. Her mother had definitely departed to her actual job by now, because there was no way she could fake two shifts. Veronica imagined her in the starched hotel uniform making her way down the winding road. She threw back the covers and silently moved through the house, careful not to rouse any adults who would make her go to school.
Back in the confines of her own wooden home, she stood carefully in the middle of the living room trying to conjure up a hiding place. Her mother was getting papers from this man, but Veronica never actually saw them anywhere. She surveyed the space for suitable spots. A bookshelf, a desk. The drawers of the latter provided nothing but receipts and Veronica’s vaccination booklet from the village clinic. The bookshelf held worn copies of romance novels and old composition books chronicling Veronica’s primary experience. In the bedroom, she rifled through some dilapidated boxes under the bed which provided dust and dead cockroaches.
Veronica returned to the living room. There was a stirring in the middle of her body between her heart and her stomach that made her feel like she should look at the bookshelf again. She wondered if she was becoming an obeah woman. She reached out and ran her fingers across the spines of the romance novels, trying hard to shove the image of her mother and the man’s ardour to the back of her eyes. There was a patina of dust on all of the shelves except the one which housed the exercise books. Timidly, the stirring in her abdomen propelling her, Veronica reached a finger out and plucked a book from its brethren.
Where she had expected the front to proclaim her name and a grade long passed, it didn’t. Instead, in her mother’s hand she saw written a series of numbers that meant nothing to her. Veronica opened the book. The air in the room seemed to stall as she scanned the page. Stapled evenly to each lined sheet were documents. Her mother was disguising paperwork as old schoolbooks. Veronica smiled at the floor because her mother had almost outsmarted her.
At first the legal language tangled in her mind, but familiar terms soon sprouted from the page. The paperwork was about land. Hotel land to be exact. The sun stole across the pages with Veronica, taking in the secrets and revelations as her brown eyes spent the morning falling over the words.
When she heard the jangles of her mother’s bracelets announcing her presence at the front door, Veronica was ready.
“Mama,” she said boldly.
Her mother schlepped her purse onto the small end table without looking in Veronica’s direction. “What you doin’ waitin’ on me like a dog, nuh? Why you not at school?”
“Mama,” she said it again, punctuating the utterance by slamming the notebook against her hand.
Her mother looked up at the stab of clout in Veronica’s voice. The book was like a talisman for her undoing. Veronica held it with the grip of a child who was mistakenly given an extra Christmas sweetie. Her mother pushed air out through her teeth and sat down on the couch with finality.
They both said nothing. Veronica’s knowledge was a blemish. She felt marred by her mother’s secret. The images of the white man pulling her mother to him like a belonging swirled in her head along with everything she had just read.
“Mama,” she said again, this time with more history behind it, her lips massaging the second syllable in order to tighten her mother’s maternal pull. For a second Veronica thought her mother was going to turn her serpentine tongue on her. Her mother’s face arranged itself in the grim set of closure, mouth drawing in until her lips were thin and contained.
“Nica,” her mother’s voice belied the firm look of her face. There was a softness to it that was almost thankful. “Come sit here. Let me tell yuh what yuh read.”
“I know what I read, Mama.” Veronica said, sitting down next to her mother on the mismatched couch.
“No, let me really tell yuh.”
“I know what I saw, too. By the mango trees.” The words tumbled out like goats from a gate in the morning time. Veronica slammed her hand against her mouth fast to push them back in.
“What yuh see?” Her mother’s eyes narrowed.
“I see you and the same white man. Who he be to you?”
Her mother was still. Everything was still. The air had gone back to waiting.
“The man from the hotel. My boss.” Her mother said the last part with the speed of a secret.
“Your husband.”
Her mother looked at the book in Veronica’s hand no doubt suspecting the wealth of information it had afforded her. Veronica sat with her eyes closed letting the words cloud the room like smoke.
“Yes. My husband.”
“You love this man, Mama? How?”
“Is big people business, Nica.”
“Mama, I big now. And all of this is my business, too, when you lying to me sayin’ is me and you all the time. Now is me alone and is you and a white man. He my stepfather now, Mama? Why you gotta see him in secret? Who is this stranger?” The torrent of queries exhausted Veronica. She had never spoken as candidly or as brashly to her mother as she was now and the spice of it settled on her tongue like curry.
“He not a stranger to me. Is business.” Her mother smoothed her hotel uniform.
Veronica looked at the embroidery of the hotel’s logo on the front of the unflattering pinafore. The incongruency of what she had read stayed there in the red threads of the emblem. How could a woman who wore an apron to work be the wife of the hotel owner?
Her mother must have read the thought from the pages of Veronica’s mind.
“Love ain’t limited to stations, yuh know. It don’t matter where yuh be in life. Sometimes love just come and snatch yuh straight up like a fishhook.”
“It wasn’t just love, though, Mama. I see what he did with the land.”
“The man love me. The land was just another part.” Her mother’s defense was a hackle.
“Mama, dem papers in this book. You own all the land for the hotel. Is your hotel, nuh?”
“No, baby. The land in my name because is better for the company. It’s just a paper t’ing. The taxes dem lower and whatnot.”
“So what was he over here doin’ the other night when you make me sleep by Cookie dem?”
“We was goin’ over some paperwork for me to sign.”
“Mama. This man don’t love you. This man want money.”
“I don’t got no money, Nica.”
“You don’t see, Mama? Is not money you have. Is money he don’t have to give. That’s money earned for him. Big hotel man. Big white man. And you is what? One maid. He just turn you over and make you into somet’ing on paper so he can keep money. Keeping money is making money.”
The slap came down like a hard realization that Veronica was indeed not a woman after all. Her mother’s hand imprinted on her cheek, a brand.
“Mama, I’m sorry. Is the truth though.” The scorch of submission took residence in Veronica.
“You hush. Andrew love me. Andrew gonna move me and yuh out of this foolish small house. Yuh don’t t’ink I want better for yuh than one maid for a mother?” Her mother’s voice vibrated with emotion.
“But Mama, you ain’t gotta. You ain’t gotta sell yourself like that and be cheap. You said don’t never be cheap.”
“Is for you I do this, nuh. So yuh don’t gotta be cheap. You and yuh big college dreams. How yuh t’ink yuh gonna get dere? Yuh t’ink dem big country schools got scholarship especially fuh one little black island gyal?”
Veronica blinked slowly. She had been so caught in the net of her mother’s sneaky behaviour that it hadn’t seeped in that the woman might have been making a sacrifice for her.
“I want my daughter to be somet’ing big. Somet’ing that not working in a hotel every day for small money like some new slave,” her mother said.
“But you marry him, Mama. You his wife for what? So he don’t pay no tax. Where your benefits?” Veronica bolted up from the couch unable to stop the image of the man pulling her mother to him on the car hood.
Her mother stood up and pulled Veronica to her chest. She felt her mother’s heart fluttering beneath the same breast she had seen the man dip his face to that night.
“My benefits is for you. Dey right dere in the bank.” Her mother reached down and slowly removed the worn notebook from Veronica’s hand. She flipped to a page near the back. “Look, see here.”
There was a carbon slip from a bank deposit stapled to the page. The figure did not match their scant furnishings or the rice and beans in the pot in the kitchen. The figure felt like a rounded numerical future, the zeros pregnant with possibility. Veronica stared at the numbers until they blurred from tears.
“You brighter than me, Nica,” her mother said finally. “You know more about t’ings than I had ever know. I want you to know more t’ings.”
“I will, Mama.” Veronica laid her head against her mother’s chest. She didn’t feel like a big woman anymore. She felt small and young in spite of the thick pad between her legs sopping her rite of passage.
“No more secrets,” her mother said.
“No more secrets,” Veronica echoed.
Contributor Notes
Vanessa Croft is an Anguillian-American writer, spoken word poet, and creative living on the island of Anguilla. She holds a B.Ed English Literature and an MA English Language from the University of the West Indies. She has been featured twice as a national representative and spoken word performer at the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA). She is a longstanding winner of the Malliouhana Poetry Competition and has had her poetry published in Where I See the Sun: An Anthology of Anguillian Poetry. In 2018, Vanessa received the National Youth Award for Outstanding Performance in the Literary Arts. She was nominated at the same ceremony for Recognition in Volunteerism for her work teaching Literature to inmates at Her Majesty’s Prison as well as her pioneer efforts in promoting reading for pleasure amongst adolescents. Vanessa currently teaches English Language, Literature, and Humanities at the Omololu International School. She also lectures at the Anguilla Community College and teaches a course in Creative Writing at the University of the West Indies, Open Campus. In her spare time, she runs her lifestyle blog VanessaExplainsItAll.com. She plans on completing her debut novel this year.
