“No, not like that!” I protest, but it’s too late.
“So you got a little crush!” he whispers, looking over his shoulder.
“Daddy, no. It’s not like that.”
“Okay, okay.” He grins, then turns serious again. “But Toons has a girlfriend, right? If anyone was gonna stop him, it would have been Paulette.”
The house phone rings and Daddy starts to get up.
“I got it,” Mummy calls from the back. He settles back down and looks at me, expectant.
“Paulette wasn’t there. Anyway, he was focused on Faith.”
“The plot thickens.”
“It’s really not like that. I just felt like I should have helped him do what’s right.”
Mummy pokes her head out of their bedroom. “That’s Mr. Collie for you.”
Daddy nods. “I’ll take it up here in a second.” He drums his fingernails on his stack of booklets. “Eve, not everything is your responsibility. You set a good example and try your best to be a positive influence. When it comes to what other people do, sometimes you have to know when to let go. Listen, let’s not mention this business with the beach further.” He glances down the hallway and I understand. I won’t say anything to Mummy.
“Here come my little ruffians,” he says louder, his tone playful as Esther and Joe race into the room, rounding the table for the kitchen and stampeding toward the back door. “Stay in the yard,” Daddy calls as they scamper outside again. He pushes his chair back. “Anything else on your heart today?”
It still bothers me. I think of our church—the building old but dignified, the porch always swept clean, the sand around it clear of garbage and fallen leaves. If something’s happening with the beach, what does that mean for us? Daddy looks at me, patient, expectant, but also tired, the skin under his eyes dark. He’s been out in the sun all day, on his feet all week, and he has to take that call. If the church there was in danger, he would have heard. He would have said. As if he can read trouble on my face, Daddy smiles, a shimmer under the fatigue from his day. I try to push the worry out of my mind, to grab hold of that glint instead.
“No, Daddy,” I say, making it true as I smile back. “Nothing else.”
NIA
On the bus, Mummy sits ramrod straight, as if good posture will earn us a cheaper fare.
“You read today’s newspaper?” she asks me.
“Yes… there was a shooting off Blue Hill Road. Mall renovations are almost finished. The minister of health says people need to be more active to reduce the incidence of diabetes.” I rattle off the headlines without even thinking, but she nods, satisfied. I turn to the window. As we head down Soldier Road, my mind goes back to another time I took this bus downtown.
I am ten. It’s spring break, KeeKee’s by her grammy, Eve is at the church with her dad, and I’m stuck in the house all day, sticky with boredom, while Mummy tutors kids all day. At the table, she explains a math problem to Mr. Rahming’s granddaughter, Paulette, for the third time. I ease a handful of change off the counter, then slip out the front door.
On the porch, brisk sea air urges me onto the grass, up our dead-end street to Queen Elizabeth Drive, and onto the first bus that comes. I drop my coins into the driver’s hand and sit near the front. I ride to the end of the line, then follow an old woman with hair the pale lilac of periwinkle blooms. She goes into the library and I sit on the benches that circle the old trees outside. Two policemen lead a boy—he has a man’s height, but his face is soft and scared and scattered with bumps—up the sidewalk to the courthouse while a woman wails after him, “He didn’t do it! Y’all listen to me!” I glimpse his hands behind his back. Silver cuffs glint beneath the sleeves of a long T-shirt; his fingers curl up limp, like he’s asleep.
I follow the street down to the water. Tourists meander across the road without looking, as if brightly printed T-shirts and flip-flops can stop oncoming cars. In the straw market, women, wide, thin, and in between, call out invitations: “Straw hat for the beautiful lady!” “Get your hair braid?” Their voices are cultivated, sunny and high. When the visitors are out of range, their tongues revert to the rhythms I know, gossiping, cackling, confessing, sighing.
A barefoot man peddles early scarlet plums by the bagful and I dig in my pocket for a dollar. He grins with a perfect set of gleaming white teeth and tosses me the bag of fruit, breaking into laughter that lifts like a kite when I fumble the catch and the bag spills its treasure onto the split sidewalk. He springs between stopped cars to hand me another bag. The whole world is music: a Mack truck’s horn blares bass as it glides through a red light; a spat breaks out between two girls who toss intricate freestyle cusswords (carry ya crusty panty—at least my ma taught me how to squash out my shirts, with ya cheese and onion armpit) until a woman sets down her half-woven basket and steps in, scolding them for rowing in the street like both of them are her own children. The air dances over the hot asphalt and it seems only I am still, blown here like a leaf following the orders of that sea air. In Parliment Square I lean into the cool concrete base of the big white statue of the woman on the throne, suck the yellow flesh off scarlet plums and spit out the knobbed seeds till Mummy finds me, her face a whole summer storm.
Mummy nudges my foot with hers. “Head in the clouds.” Her tone only scolds a little.
“I was thinking about that time I took the bus down here.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know what got in your head for you to run away.”
“I wanted to get out and see,” I say.
“See what?”
“Anything. Anyway, if I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have made me start doing Pinder Street Press.”
“Look at you, trying to get credit for acting out,” Mummy says, but she smiles. Then she leans closer, scrutinizing my face. “Those glasses are way too small, you know. And the lenses are so scratched.” She sighs, and the lightness between us is in danger of being weighed down. I switch topics fast.
“Guess what happened today?”
Mummy turns to look out the window. We’re stopped on Shirley Street now. The roads are always busy on a Friday afternoon, especially late. “What?”
“This guy showed up on the beach and told us to get lost.”
Mummy’s head snaps back as she stares at me. “He showed up where?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have opened my mouth. At least she’s not thinking about how we’re short on money. “Right on the beach by us,” I say, and brace myself for Mummy to call me on lying about how I lost my glasses.
“What did he look like? What did he say exactly?”
“I dunno, just a regular guy. Twenty or something? He just showed up and started shouting for us to get off the beach because it was closed.” I roll my eyes. “Like you can close something that’s in the open air.
“Who else was with him?”
“Nobody. It was just me and KeeKee with Eve and Faith and Toons, minding our business. Why?”
Mummy presses her lips together. “You’ll see soon enough,” she says as the bus swings onto Frederick Street. We clamber off and hustle along Bay Street.