I stare at the cover. Tropical Desserts of the Bahamas. “Sorry, I was just—”
“Pineapple cake or guava pie? How I supposed to decide when y’all keep interfering?”
“Only me and you home—”
“You wanna close the door and give me some privacy?”
What I want is to throw my arms around her, to hold her tight—this proper her, this rare quicksilver fish of a mother, before, in a turn, a twist, the light changes and she is gone. This is what mothers do, right? Pick out cake recipes? Even on the toilet, it’s kind of normal. She humphs, then turns the book upside down.
“It’s not a show, Faith.” She holds my gaze as she reaches for a shampoo bottle, then raises it in the air, launching it at me. I shut the door just in time.
“Sorry.” I press my back to the bathroom door, closing my eyes against the mess of the room. Behind my eyelids, I can see the cookbook, cracked open for good toilet reading. The title inverted as she reads, as if she moves through life on her head. The pie on the front cover set at an odd angle, half upright, half fallen down. No, I reassure myself. Everything’s fine. Everything is just as it should be.
2
EVE
I wipe my feet in the scraggly grass by the front door. I’ve dusted off most of the sand, but I can’t get rid of the low, sick feeling in the pit of my belly, as if I’ve eaten too much green mango at once. I pull my keys off my wrist. I’ve had my own set since I was five; Daddy gave them to me on a string decorated with a long strip of straw he’d plaited, the way his mother taught him to. I used to wear the string like a necklace, hidden under my school uniform, the straw itchy against my skin, the three keys comforting with their metallic cool. When Daddy went out on church business, and Mummy was on bed rest with Esther, I used to let myself in. I’d come in and give her a kiss, then take Ruth outside under the window where Mummy could hear us, and play.
Now I know all the things that could have gone wrong back then—someone could have snatched me from the side of the road, run me over on the faded crosswalk. I could have gone to the beach and drowned in two inches of water at low tide, been attacked by stray dogs that were part gentle potcake, part pit bull. None of that happened, though, because every morning and every night, Daddy prayed for me. I turn the key and ease the door open. I only hope that, all these years, he was praying for our church to be protected too.
“Evie?” Daddy calls as feet thunder to the door. Joe and Esther jostle each other out of the way, green dish towels swathed around their heads. Esther has my comb in her mouth.
“Hey, what y’all doin?” I block them with my arms. Joe ducks between my legs and out the open door.
“Our hair salon on fire, we have to go!” Esther gives me a hug, then wriggles past me after him.
“Why they get to go out in the yard?” Ruth complains from the table, where she’s surrounded by schoolbooks. A stack of church publications sits at Daddy’s spot at the table, but he’s on his hands and knees, Junior bouncing on his back.
“Look, big sister home!” Daddy slides Junior off and sends him toddling to me. “Phew. My knees can’t take this.”
“Tired?”
“I’m fine.” Daddy stands up, rubbing his back. “How was your afternoon?”
“Better than mine,” Ruth cuts in, glaring up at me.
“Where you coming from?” Daddy settles at the table and glances over Ruth’s page. “You missed question eight.”
“Daddy, you see she look like she been on the beach? And I been stuck home—”
“If you had done your work in school, you wouldn’t have extra homework now.”
“This ain no fair!” Ruth kicks a chair under the table, and Daddy snaps his fingers at her.
“Watch that attitude. Take your books in the yard, do your work there if you want some fresh air. But if it isn’t finished to my satisfaction—”
“I know, I know!” She gathers up her books and runs outside.
“Bet you she’s going straight over to her friend’s house.” Daddy shakes his head. I sit across the table from him, then set Junior down on the floor to crawl around. “Something on your mind?” Daddy asks.
Daddy can read me that way. Always has. “We were down by the water. Me, Faith, Nia, KeeKee, and Toons.”
“Oh yes?”
“We got run off the beach.”
“By who?”
“Some guy telling us it’s closed. How is that even possible? I thought it was a public beach.”
“If a thing looks like it has value, someone’s gonna claim it.” Daddy brings a hand down to his knee, frowning as he rubs it.
“What happened?” I ask, almost glad for the distraction. An aching body after a day of work is a familiar problem.
“Just a little twinge. What happened with this guy at the beach?” Daddy leans forward, inviting the rest of my story out into the open. It plays over in my mind: Toons’ eyes meet mine, pause a second. Then he lets fly.
“Toons threw a conch shell at him.”
“Did it hit him?”
“No. He ran us off the beach and when we cut through KeeKee’s yard, Sammy and Angel were there in the truck.”
“That was lucky.”
“Yeah. The guy was mad. Sammy rode around with us for a little bit and when we got back here, no one was on the street or anything. I didn’t wanna go back to the beach and see if he was still out there.”
Daddy scratches his cheek. “Are you worried he’s coming back?”
“Kind of. I mean, who is he? How could the beach be closed, and why’s he the one telling us to go? He didn’t look that much older than me.”
Daddy fiddles with the stack of booklets, tapping them so they’re stacked one on top of the other, neatly. “Well, when you see this person again, best thing is try to make peace with him. Never pays to have an enemy.”
“So you think he’ll be there again?” An uneasy feeling passes over me. Does Daddy know something I don’t? Why is he so dismissive about this? Maybe if he’d been there, seen how this guy was so urgent, so sure, so defensive of one little stretch of sand on a rocky beach with water too rough to be turquoise-clear. He didn’t just chase Toons for almost hitting him with a conch shell. He chased all of us, chased us hard, like someone who had something big to lose.
“I really can’t say, Eve.” Daddy reaches across the table and squeezes my hands. “But try to let this all go, at least for now. You’re home.”
I nod, but I don’t want our talk to end yet. “I don’t know. I feel kinda responsible.”
“Responsible?” Daddy looks surprised.
“I feel like I should have stopped Toons.”
Daddy chuckles. “Well, now, unless things have changed since I was a young man, I don’t think a fleet of stallions could have stopped Toons from throwing that shell, not if he’d already decided to.”
“But he… he kinda… looked at me for a second. Like he needed permission or something. And I didn’t do anything.”
“Ahh.” Daddy smiles, a knowing smile that takes a second to click with me.