I was changing the album on her portable record player. Her question was a thing I ain’t know what to do with. It stayed in the air for a second and I acted like I focusing on the Ma Rainey LP in my hand. Queenie felt like hearing some blues that morning, and she was in a Ma Rainey mood. She said, “Dis wine we is making is for drinking slowly, for contemplation and healing emotional weight that is and ain’t yours, like the blues women.”
I decided to play it cool with the question and slowly looked up at her. When I see she face smiling her big gap, I couldn’t help but smile a little, ’cause in my heart I was thinking of Neri and I is so happy.
“I find Jesus,” I said, and look back down in the crate of records.
“Eh-heh, I bet you find he all right.” Queenie stop short and bus’ out a wild laugh while holding she belly at the thought of me being a church girl. She let out a big, loud sigh when she recover from my comedy. She was wearing a maroon-and-turquoise African-print dress with skinny straps and buttons down the front. Her lipstick was glittery purple, and her gray hair was clipped low. Her body was perspiring and strong, and she dabbed her chest and neck with a handkerchief the color of a piece of sky. She topped off the last bottle, corked it, put it in the carton on the ground with eleven others and took it into the house. I put on an Anita Baker record and put the Ma Rainey one back in its sleeve.
“Anita is a good pick for new love,” she said when she come back out. She snuggled me while she giggled.
“Ugh, Queenie, wha’ new love? I tellin’ you I is save. Jesus and me real cool now.” And I started smiling, even though I was trying hard to stay serious. We was looking out at her Queenieland, with its zaboca, mango, guava, plum, plantain, and cherry trees, dasheen bush, bhaji, cassava, sweet potato, and several chickens who she let me name. And out beyond Queenieland was Yemeya, the ocean, the goddess of me and Neri’s C.H.U.R.C.H.
“Mmm-hmm, you used to tell me more ting, but lips tight today. But that is what it feel like to be in love for the first time I guess. You wan’ feel like you did discover a ting, no one else know,” she said pretending she was trying to figure me out, but I knew she already at her conclusion. I could tell.
“Hmmm, I wonder if is someone I know . . . ,” she asked, bumping she bum bum into mine.
“It no one you know,” I bust out, and leaned on to her shoulder, wanting to tell her every little thing about Neri, but not feeling like I could either.
“Oh, so there is a someone. Hmm. Someone from church it seem, then. Well, your mother will like that, maybe . . . I never know with she,” she said, holding back she mouth. Then she find a next thought to share with me. “Good for you, my dahlin’.” She smiled. “You is smart and strong. I ain’t worry about you, but always be safe, yuh understand? You must protect yourself.”
“Queenie, it ain’t even like that, if you think I is going to get pregnant,” I started to say.
“I ain’t just talking pregnancy. Protect your heart and spirit. You is open and that is powerful but also vulnerable. I had to say something ’cause anything can happen in the world of love,” she said. I remember I nodded, but I ain’t really know what she was talking about. I looked around not wanting to look in her eyes and tell her too much. I felt a furry slither around my ankles and looked down to see Bastet, her cat, wound around my ankles. I picked her up and cuddled her, and then as usual, she escaped after a couple moments to hunt lizards in the garden. Queenie came close to me, more soft and less preachy.
“And listen, Audre. I want you to give attention to every second of this moment, this feeling. Enjoy love.” She stroked my head as she said this. “You will lose yourself in it and then find yourself in a new way. That is just how it work and maybe supposed to work. So be strong in who you are, eh? Don’t be a bobolee for nobody, you understand?” she said. She turned to me and looked me in the eye. “Remember you is the granddaughter of Queenie. You is my royalty, okay? You can always talk to me, eh? I was young once, and I know things. All kind a things.” She smiled, looking mischievous and a little sly. From that smile I knew I ain’t telling she nuttin’. She wise and is good with secrets. But what if she decided to talk to she sisters and then everyone from Laventille to Chaguaramas would know by the evening, including my mother, and that would put shame in she eye. But even though I feel I wanted to keep it for me, I appreciated that she even noticed I’m different. Because I feel I was too.
* * *
• • •
That last Sunday, I woke up early and was ready for church before everyone. I opened my eyes, looking forward to seeing Neri and getting to be with her all by myself. But first, I was sitting with her in the pew all morning amongst her granddaddy’s sermons on the deeds and stories of the Bible and the Lord and Jesus and Mary and the disciples and the wife of this one and the son of this one. I listened and applied his stories to my life in whichever way I could, which is what Queenie said I should do. But I also mostly daydreamed about Neri, who was next to me in a chapel of perspiring aunties with baby powder on they chests, their perfume warm and lingering; a chapel of pious uncles of the church who are hard-backed and in white and pastel colored button-up shirts with their eyes wet and their souls weary for the Lord. Children was there too, memorizing the instructions for their holiness and to become obedient to the Bible and the Lord. No matter how I felt about some of the beliefs of Christianity I ain’t agree with, how I didn’t—and don’t—understand all of the things about church, I loved (and still love) the village feeling when I was there and the music always touched me until I would cry. I was feeling love and current in the space between me and Neri’s shoulders as we prayed and stood and sang and praised in her grandfather’s house of God.
Afterwards, Neri and me went to our private church, where the sky was thick with clouds moving towards us, levitating above our bodies like Goddess herself. The water crawled up and saturated the sand as though she was paying attention to me and Neri’s worship. The sky wasn’t too much expanse for the water and the water wasn’t too much deep for the sky. They were reflections. I slid through the sand closer to Neri. I sat behind her and just held her, smelling her neck before I kissed it right on the place where her thick hair was lifted from her neck.
I waited all week for Sunday, for this sweetness. For when I could be by Neri and feel like myself. Neri was wearing a beige blouse with tiny yellow daisies and a yellow skirt. And I was feeling proud, ’cause she smell like Ocean Love, the perfume I got her last week, when I went by Episode and Sarya’s apartment for a scent for she. They was all in my business trying to understand, why all of a sudden this ragamuffin want to smell sweet.
“For what stchupid, dirty-pantie-boy you wan’ impress? He know I is ya cousin?”
“Epi, no one studying you. And ya tink anyone scare of a skinny-ass Rasta? Yuh wan’ meh business or no?” I asked, able to block his nosiness better than Queenie’s. I was sitting on the couch in the living room connected to their kitchen.