Episode laughed and said he is happy that the church ain’t cure my mouth and continued to cut up chadon beni for the pigeon peas he was making. Sarya floated out of the room, long dreads swinging near she ankles. She got skin that is dark like melongene and just as smooth and shiny; she look like she could be a model from Nigeria or Senegal, but she is Trini 2 the bone, like we is. She returned and laid out oils before me. I read the names as I picked them up and smelled individually, trying to find something just right. Cool Water smell like a man who want to be cool; Kush smell sweet but not the same sweet of Neri; Frankincense remind me of Catholic church, which isn’t quite what I was going for. I sniff Opium, J-Lo, Beyoncé, and they all smell beautiful but still not right for Neri.
I picked up one of the oils, turned it around, and read, “Hot Pum-Pum.” Sarya smiled with pride at me. “That is a good selection! I see ya cousin got taste, Epi! That is a Sarya original, special and limited-edition fine oil! You ain’t gone find that one nowhere, but watch out,” she said, then leaned in to whisper, “it drives all these stchupid men out here crazy.” I put it down quick. I saw one that said Ocean Love. I smelled it and felt something in my heart.
When I gave it to Neri the next Sunday, she gave me a real nice, long kiss.
And that last Sunday on the beach, I should have realized that the clouds was talking. Neri and I feeling sweet and full of love, yet I was feeling something in my spirit. Neri was laughing loud at the sky.
“And, gyal, I get up in de tree and I ain’t realize how high I reach.” Her head was thrown back as if she were looking at herself up in a tree. I couldn’t take my eyes off her beautiful neck. “Yuh see, I scaaared! I looking down and imagine me foot slip, me head bus’, and me granddaddy have to give a sermon for he granddaughter, who dead over mangoes, trying to get this one real up high for you.” Neri leaned in close to me and our eyes almost crossed we focused on each other so tight. “But I ain’t care. I know it was sweet and of course you deserve the sweetest.” She had brought it in one of her yellow scarves. Once Neri and I was out of church, she was herself too—funny and weird and more free and willing to say anything she want.
“Before I kiss anyone,” she told me once, “I used to practice on mangoes. Especially the sweet juicy ones. I would sneak them in my room and pretend it was someone I was liking. If you see the mess I did make,” she told me, and we giggled about it. I asked her if she ever love a girl before, and she looked at me and smiled and nodded and we ain’t say nothing more.
I thought of her kissing practice as I peeled the mango skin with my teeth and lips leaning over the sand to not spill on me self—it was juice, soon as you bite. I took another taste, she took a bite, and then we drinking from the fruit, from our own fingers, and then from each other’s lips. Everything slow with tenderness. If I close my eyes now, I can see it.
Our garments open up. Arms slide out of sleeves and around each other. Neri lays me down, and I look up at her and see the sky beyond her head. She takes off my glasses and places them to the side of us, carefully in my bag, like she always does. She kisses my eyelids and I touch her face. She starts humming a song from church and I start humming with her. Neri get me to feel the beauty in them gospels. My breath catches in anticipation of her movements, how she will touch me and where. I love how her body feels, rocking into mine, blooming into mine.
She starts to kiss me, her lips and mouth warm and tasting of mango, and I exhale out like I was drowning in air until then. She lets her kisses travel to my cheek, linger at my chin and neck. My body is trembling and moaning, by the time I feel her lips on my collarbone, my underarms, licking my nipples, she delighting all places of me soft and cover up to everyone else. I roll into her sweetness, her touch relaxes me into the sound below us and she becomes ocean, kissing my skin, like she always know how to love me. I roll on top of she and I return love to her by gliding my lips along every part of she skin. She feels so soft and I longing to taste she. I move my lips down she neck, shoulders, she chest, waist, and belly button. She places her hand on top of my head, and my lips move slowly across her navel and her hip bones, which make she giggle.
Suddenly, my hair is being pulled and I is being dragged backwards.
“JESUS! GET THE DEVIL OUT! YUH DISGUSTING! YUH IS so SICK, Audre! Why you bring this shame to God? God, why you give me this SICK GIRL?!!!”
With each lash of she hand, I tried to cover myself, my mama like a hurricane around me, pushing me down into the sand. She ain’t care. My face, back, shoulders, breasts, ass. She lashed all the places that Neri just kissed. I was crying and shaking, I ain’t know how I even got moving. In remembering it, I still feel this shame, this torrid feeling.
Neri was crying and screaming, grabbing for my mama, begging her to stop cuffing me down, please, that it was she. My mama screamed for her to put on she clothes and go into the car and stop lying. She yelled she knew I influence this. Neri protected me from my mom’s lashes by standing in front me and me mother hit her chest once, before she grabbed me from behind. We were all scuffling in the sand. I was thinking if we should run to Queenie’s, but my spirit, my body, everything was paralyzed. My mother screamed and took us both by our arms and command us back down the path, back to she car, commanding Neri to get in. I got in the back seat, crying and feeling her licks on my body and the one on my heart. Neri and I in the back seat, and I couldn’t even look at her.
When we got to the pastor’s house, Neri quick squeezed my hand, like we were in church, but now the gospel is screams and sharp and afraid. My mother seemed to be in the pastor’s house for all of time and no time at all.
When we get home, the yelling and lashes start back, and when she get fed up with me, I was sent to my room. I hear her and Rupert talking in the other room when he get home late from work. He barely seem like he around but you feel his influence nonetheless in this house. I felt alone in my house. I felt like I was her enemy and not she only child.
The next week, after she and Rupert return from church, she told me her decision: That I is to live by my father.
* * *
• • •
Queenie was already waiting outside the house in her vintage white-and-chrome Mercedes-Benz convertible. With the top down. I don’t know if my mama called her or if she just know. I slid myself in the front seat and we roll off. I was numb and felt like myself was all poured out. We drove in silence for a while. Finally, she asked the verdict. I whispered. “She sending me to the States by my Yankee father who I barely know,” I say and my throat thickens with each word. “My mother don’t want me anywhere on the island to shame she with my nasty ways,” I say, sinking further into the red leather of she car.
We pulled up to the wood’s entrance that leads to the beach. Queenie put the car in park and before I knew, she swung to the passenger side, pulled me out of the car into her body. “Stop calling it nasty, dahlin’,” Queenie said. I was in she arms, and I instantly collapsed into tears. I felt like I did as a little girl, when I would be hurt and she would swoop me up and hold and rock me.