Fingerprints of Previous Owners Page 7

  Tourists throwing pennies away in the sea for luck. Us collecting everything we could for luck before the waves swallowed it all.

  Even Mother, who wouldn’t say whether she’d been one of the kids who’d swam out to wrecks, thought it was good luck. The day Dad first went off to the capital, she waved for Troy and me to follow, and we started toward Junkful Beach, grabbing a ride for part of the trip and walking through the dust and sun for the rest of it. We didn’t just fill our arms but our pockets, and then she found a part of a tarp in the brambles and turned it into a sack that we dragged behind us. Projects in Troy’s eyes as he spread our findings on the front steps.

  There were two men waiting for us at Garrett’s. Their faces were smudges in the darkness, except where Bayard’s glasses caught the half-moon, a silver apple wedge. Would’ve guessed it would be him, even if I couldn’t see those glasses. Bayard always seemed to be everywhere on this island, helping out. He’d been teaching history at the elementary school since Mother and some of her generation retired, and when any of his students mentioned some task going on at home, there he’d be at their houses, pitching in. Heard him say more than once that to teach is the same thing as to plant or to build, to feed or to clothe. Guessed dealing with a cow same as to feed for him.

  Lionel and I climbed out of the truck. The corpse was enormous, probably the biggest one I’d seen caught. It was already dead, but no one said whether they found it that way or made it that way. If they’d shot it, I was grateful it happened before we arrived.

  Bayard was in the middle of telling his brother that some of his students were collecting shells by East Point and could see the resort from there, along the shore. Didn’t used to be you could see the resort from anywhere, but they kept clearing out the flora. Those kids saw the boats arriving from the airstrip key, the whole Columbus burlesque. Which meant they saw me and all the others, caught in it.

  “It’s a distortion of this island,” Bayard was saying. “In history, natural and human, and in name. Disfigurement, really.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Lionel piped in.

  “No good come from kids seeing that,” Garrett said.

  “And they’re not reacting to folks gathering for a day’s work,” Bayard went on. “Even working at something that might be termed demeaning or embarrassing or absurd. Work is work is work. They get that.”

  “And even the kids already know the bullshit about the name,” Lionel said to assents.

  “That’s right, Lionel,” Bayard said, like we were students in his class. Didn’t bother me much when he spoke that way. Used to drive my brother crazy. Lionel didn’t mind, since he would be the next Bayard: telling everyone what he thought but too helpful for anyone to complain about it.

  “They came to talk to me, because they heard a very specific word —native—that we’ve discussed over and over and over again in class, even with the very little kids. The complexity, the connotation. Of course I don’t use the words complexity or connotation with the kids. But that’s what we talk about, things as long and sophisticated as those words. Trading whatever you please or whatever it is they’re saying on those boat puppet shows. I’ll tell you what I trade: knowledge. I’ll tell you what I give willingly: knowledge, food, whatever my neighbors and family might need from me.” More assents from Lionel and Garrett.

  I covered the roughest patches of my uniform, all the places where Claudia had run her hands over me. Though it was too dark, really, for anyone to see the damage.

  Couldn’t even tell Bayard where I’d been, catching in haulback. Bogeyman even to a history teacher.

  The men started moving more, getting going on this cow. All tangled together, I couldn’t see who was doing what. Bayard’s voice carried through the darkness, telling us all the definitions of native that didn’t make any sense on this island, didn’t match up to any of us.

  “And I’m using The Oxford English Dictionary, a book coming from England!”

  The others laughed.

  As my eyes adjusted to the dark I could see it wasn’t one of our cows. Lionel stood between me and it, blocking my view. He knew, too.

  Bayard’s voice didn’t stop as they worked. “Definition one: ‘under Feudal and similar systems: a person born in bondage; a person born to servants... and inheriting their status.’ This one is complicated, I will give you that. But aren’t we quite far ahead, now, of the inheritance? Definition two: ‘a person born in a specified place... whether subsequently resident there or not.’ But that’s not what they mean, is it now? Definition three: ‘a person resident in a particular place; a citizen.’ Resident? Is that what they call themselves when they’re at home?”

  No one seemed to notice whether I was helping or not, so I wandered a little up the road. Came back for what must have been definition nine or ten.

  “‘A member of the indigenous ethnic group of a country or region, as distinguished from foreigners, especially European colonists.’ Distinguish, distinguish, distinguish: that’s what they’re best at in that place.”

  Thought about piping in to tell them about the lineup outside the office today. The natives stealing pennies. My write-up. But instead I just got back in the truck and waited. Like a wave crashing again and again against the dock, wasn’t anywhere for anger to go at the resort. Or on an island. A chorus of insects swarmed in a way I could concentrate on instead of on Bayard’s voice.

  After they’d got it all done, and we took it over to Uncle Q’s, Mother’d been long asleep, all four place settings put away. We’d eat meat the next night and the next and the next after that. The air was cool on my skin as I mended my skirt in the dark.

  The first couple of nights I thought maybe I’d get used to the schedule and find a way to go inland after the day’s double shift. Climb back to that bundle of sticks fenced in by the diamond. But when I finally got off work, I was definitely too tired even to think about finding my hiding spot for had-been-Dad’s machete, my tourist water bottle. Took all my leftover energy to trudge home. And Mother’d been home alone all those hours. She ate dinner without me, and then she sat in her chair alongside the window. Each night when I came in, she was looking up at the sky as if she were reading it.

  When I came in the house that third night of garbage duty, her back was to me—but she was standing upright, not sitting in her chair. Blocking my view of her plate so I couldn’t see right away if she’d eaten. Three place settings around the table for my viewing. The extra two plates used to sit empty, at least then we weren’t wasting food. But more and more lately—especially when I wasn’t home to take charge of dinnertime—Mother would put food on those plates, too.

  As I stepped farther into the room I saw Miss Patrice was sitting in Mother’s seat, head unhinged from her neck as if her jaw had split. Mother was standing over her wearing gardening gloves, peeling back the fleshy shades of Miss Patrice’s lips and investigating with her fingers each nook and cranny of her mouth.

  For as far back as I could remember, Dad had done dentist work for everyone we knew. Sometimes folks came around since he’d died, hoping Mother could help them with what she knew from watching him. She often could; she knew a lot. Miss Minnie said Mother was so good—better than Dad even—that she could get Wayida Callaghan out of her church. It was true: I’d never seen Minister Callaghan’s wife at anyone else’s table, but she’d twice sat at ours while Mother tended to her toothaches.

  My dad used to laugh about counting all the holes on the island: his way of remembering all the teeth he’d pulled. Chuckling and palsying his hand like a craps player like God playing dice: his description both of the dislocated teeth out there and these scattered islands. “Maybe they’ll all come floating back to fill in the gaps when we die,” he’d said.

  “Zombie teeth!” Troy had exclaimed. “That’s morbid, Dad.”

  As a girl, my dreams were full of maps of the archipelago and clou-dy X-rays of mouths.

  If after her examination Mother held up one finger,
Miss Patrice would understand she had a minor problem that could be taken care of at the resort clinic. Two fingers held up, she would understand that Mother was telling her to get to the capital to see a real dentist sometime soon. Three fingers, to get there as soon as possible—emergency airlift might even be in order.

  Miss Patrice’s dog, Catchum, was under the table, sitting on her feet. Still as furniture but breathing loudly. Not disturbing the cracked pedestal of our table, which was held up on two sides by stacks of old books. Two stacks of identical height, collected over a long, long time by Lionel. When Mother held up one finger, Catchum scampered to the door as if he’d timed the whole thing. Miss Patrice waved for me to follow her outside.

  Miss Patrice was one person on the island I didn’t tire of talking to. Loved to hear how she ran her business. Contacts in the capital helped her negotiate with the mail boat to deliver her inventory quicker so the store’s shelves wouldn’t be sitting empty. All sorts of smart stuff that she’d figured out over a long, long time. But I could see from her face tonight she was in pain and couldn’t be calling me out the house just to chat about day-to-day business.

  “How’s your ma been doing?” she asked once we were outside.

  I shrugged. Wasn’t it all the same, since Troy? Same sad puddles of eyes as he had.

  “Same,” I said.

  Catchum worked his head against my calf, and I rubbed behind his ear. His nose kept moving, moving, moving. I smelled like garbage.

  “I don’t know, girl. I need root canal—your ma confirmed it—and she told me just see the clinic. They don’t do that there, you know as well as I do. And she knows better than either of us. Sure used to.”

  Headlights swung around the corner, dragging engine noise with them, and both of our hands hovered by Catchum’s collar until we saw it was a car we knew. We both raised our hands in a brief wave to Bayard even though we couldn’t see him through the blackened windshield.

  “You heard all about that mess? With Picker?”

  Lionel had told me about the passing of one of the dogs that lived by the landfill, Picker. Thought he was one of the dogs fell to a disease that spread across near half the island a couple months ago. But now bits of the real story had been floating to us.

  Most dogs on the island belonged to no one and everyone; some of them chose who would be their person. Catchum chose Miss Patrice’s store and Miss Patrice. Eppie, oldest one around with her all-white muzzle, usually hung around by the Straw Market, waiting for Miss Minnie to pack up for the day and drop some scraps for her. Picker had liked to be with kids—Bayard’s two and Miss Minnie’s grandbaby Angelina. Henry sometimes sat forlornly outside Christine’s house, crabby at his own paws, then hopped ecstatically when she came around the bend in the road. Queen Isa tended to pick me, at least when I came around the dump. Always came running to sniff me out like we belonged to each other, paying attention to no one and nothing else. She’d get to be in dog heaven with me showing up there now, on and off for two weeks as part of my overtime, while I’d be in hell having to skip my own sniffing around the inland.

  “Yes, ma’am. Wasn’t a car hit him, from what I heard.”

  “Tourists, though,” she said.

  Miss Patrice started lamenting what we’d all been witnessing for a while. More and more tourists on bikes not minding walkers or drivers in the road. More and more tourists in cars rented from the resort swooping around like the road was a highway without a chance of a pedestrian or a dog. Barriers around the resort thinned out enough that Bayard’s students caught a glimpse of the arrivals. Heard stories from Christine about tourists and international management alike coming by Thiflae Bar, calling women half-names like “Little Mama,” even “Chocolate Milk.” It made me tired, thinking about the resort leaking out all over.

  I asked Miss Patrice if folks getting out from the resort’s gates more often, though, meant any more business at the store.

  She scoffed. “Once in an afternoon star.” An expression I hadn’t heard since Dad used to say it.

  The whole time she was talking to me, with one hand ready to clutch Catchum’s collar if need be, her other palm never left her cheek. She bent toward him a touch and, even in the dark, I could see the perfect way she always blackened her eyelashes and traced her lips. Face on, even against her palm that held in the pain.

  “Come, Catchum,” she said. “All right, you just keep keeping an eye on your ma and tell me about anything.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  She started to turn away, then hesitated and spoke without looking at me. “And Hebbie was in the store the other day, mentioned her brother’d be visiting. Wasn’t sure I should tell your ma.”

  Nawt-nawt. Click of her tongue, and the dog followed her away.

  Andre and Troy: inseparable all their lives. Even went to the capital together. I hadn’t seen Andre since the two of them had left two years ago. He hardly came back for anything, not even funerals.

  When I went back in the house Mother was looking out the window and up at the sky again. Her fingers lay still in her lap, interlaced and dumb, not revealing what she’d told Miss Patrice and why. No numbers for me. Sitting always made her look thicker around the middle than she was. The way her knee sagged to the side, taking with it the whole left side of her body: just slumped, is how she looked.

  She kept staring out the window, and I didn’t say a word. I hadn’t eaten and, before sitting down at my place, plucked a yam off the plate in front of Dad’s chair. Quick as could be, Mother slapped it out of my hand, onto the floor. Not even going to Catchum to eat, no flickering movement of a dog cleaning up under the table, just a piece of yam sitting there on the floor until I threw it out later.

  I wanted to grab my mother’s head like she’d held Miss Patrice’s and open her jaw. Diagnose with my fingers. But we sat in our seats and ate dinner as always. Went to bed with that yam still on the floor.

  That night the forces of a storm pitched and screeched. I woke several times, grateful for having my dreams interrupted. Dreams of Andre arriving at our house. Couldn’t keep him out. He knew just how to skip the broken step, pull the doorknob to catch the key, rattle it four times, turn it all the way, turn it back until the tiny click. Couldn’t keep his mouth closed, all dream long, no matter how hard I tried.

  The morning was full of the season’s early sunlight. The brackish puddles stretching along the road the only sign the storm hadn’t all been a dream.

  Bench Story No. 9: Angelina Eldon

  The dogs in the picture books have rounded ears, short scrunchy noses. Light pink tongues, tails the same color as their bodies. Bellies a perfect oval of white. Dogs around here have more pointy-ish ears that flap over once about two-thirds the way up. Like this. They have tongues with black around the edges. Their noses are small at the end of long snouts. The colors of their tails almost never match the rest of them. I can’t count all the times I’ve seen tourists pointing at dogs on the road and laughing. Or sometimes they look really, really scared, like they don’t even realize these are just dogs.

  And sometimes tourists tell me all about how their dogs are different from our dogs. Their dogs have stupid names like Sugar and Snowball. And then me and the other kids laugh when they walk away because these dogs are not our dogs! Dogs live on the island, same as people, one or another of them isn’t mine. All kinds of things, Daddy always says, that tourists don’t understand. Do differently, Mom corrects him. She tells me there are things about their home places that I wouldn’t understand. I believe both my mom and my daddy.

  All those tourists who are afraid always use their eyes or sometimes their hands and sometimes their words to nudge me and my friends toward the dogs, like giving us a sign to restrain the dogs or keep the dogs’ attention until they can walk far away. Like they’re scared, but they don’t think we are. Or maybe they think we have some kind of magic power over the dogs. Funny, looking up at them, all grown up. I mean, we’re not scared, sin
ce we know these dogs, but still is strange.

  Picker was the dog who always came from the landfill around the curve to our house. He liked sitting in the shade of our tree and wagged his tail something fierce when anyone from my family came out to the yard. He was called Picker because you’d see him picking through piles of garbage all the time to find food. Or to find smells, too. I didn’t name him this. Everyone called him Picker. Name suited, though. Not like me: people are always telling me that I don’t look like an Angelina. I just laugh at them. See the dirt on my knees? I tell them. See the happy way my eyes squint you up and down? That’s not just like a little angel to you? Then I laugh, and they start laughing, but they don’t know whether I’m laughing at them or not.

  I played with Picker at the landfill all the time. My big cousin Lionel works there and usually has a thermos of lemonade he’ll share with us, or at least some water, and we can run up to the ridges of the dunes around the landfill and see pretty far over the ocean. We like to play a game called Arrival: when we spot something out at sea, whether it’s really a boat or not (and it usually isn’t), we make up stories about who it is, where they’re coming from all the way across the ocean, where they were really trying to reach, what they’d do when they ended up here by mistake. And what they’ll say when they step off their boats onto the beach. My friend Manny is always the funniest at that part:

  I claim this island in the name of Queen Jellyfish of the Underworld! You will all bow to her and call her Your Majesty and wear stickers with jellyfish on your cheeks. She sent me out to find the lowest point on the seafloor, but the coral got in my way and hurt my little feet, and I figured she won’t know the difference if I land here instead because cameras have not been invented yet! I have come all the way from the shark waters of Antarctica where sharks are stuck in blocks of ice, so you can look at them like on a TV without being scared! I have never seen water like this that’s not all filled with ice and sharks inside the ice. What is this feeling on my feet in the water? “Warmth,” you say? I know nothing about it, coming from the underworld of icy sharks at the bottom of the world!