Timothy of the Cay Read online

  It was Timothy who'd figured out what had glanced off the back of my skull: a piece of timber that had come loose when the lifeboat was launched. It had hung up awhile, then fell on me when I was in the water.

  "How much swelling was there?" Boomstra asked, speaking with a thick Dutch accent. He sounded elderly. I pictured him with white hair, a white mustache, a big nose, and thick glasses.

  I said there was a big lump for a few days, and I'd had bad headaches.

  He finally asked all of us if he could speak frankly. He knew how old I was. I wasn't a child. Even before my parents answered I said, "Yes."

  He nodded and chose his words carefully. "If you want to see again I think you face a very serious operation by a neurosurgeon. And there is no guarantee that it will be successful."

  My mother gasped. "No guarantee?"

  "The optic nerve is in the back of the head. I believe it was damaged by whatever struck the skull."

  My heart beat faster. I'd had my tonsils out when I was eight. "You said serious..."

  "Phillip, any operation where the body is invaded has risks."

  Always to the point, my father asked, "Where would you recommend we take Phillip?"

  "Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, in New York. There's a specialist on staff who is world famous for this type of procedure."

  "Tell us about the operation," my father said.

  "I'd rather let an expert explain it."

  My mother's voice wavered as she asked, "Has he done this before—to a child?"

  I didn't feel like a child anymore.

  Dr. Boomstra replied, "I don't know. But he is world famous. Lars Pohl."

  After a silence, my father said, "We need to think and talk about it."

  Boomstra said, "I understand."

  We thanked him and a few minutes later were on our way back to Scharloo.

  As we drove along, all of us thinking of the same thing—the surgeon's knife—my father said, "If Dr. Boomstra was right, the final decision will be yours, Phillip. We'll both tell you what we think but it'll be your decision."

  "We'll get other opinions," my mother interrupted.

  "Of course," he answered.

  "Where?" I asked.

  "Anywhere," my mother said. "And other doctors may not agree with Boomstra. They may have other ideas. It may be just a simple operation."

  Or I might never see again, I thought.

  We talked back and forth for days, and then, in October, made the decision to go to New York. My father called Boomstra, asking him to contact the "world-famous" neurosurgeon Dr. Pohl.

  "When will we go?" I asked.

  "As soon as possible. We'll fly," he said, making it sound like an order.

  I'd noticed he seemed more forceful since the Hato sinking. He didn't let my mother push him around. This time she didn't object to flying. She had no desire to end up in the sea again.

  A while later, after Boomstra called back, my father phoned Pan American Airways and booked a flight for my mother and me the next week. Only two seats were available; he'd follow two days later. Stew would have to be boarded in a kennel.

  10. New York City

  New York City had always sounded exciting. I'd seen it in photographs and picture-show newsreels. On the radio I'd listened as the announcer said: "From our studios in New York, we bring you..." Now I could only feel it, hear it, smell it, on this cool October morning.

  Rush hour, footsteps, people around us everywhere. Traffic starting, stopping. Horns blowing. Squeaks and rumbles below us as we walked over subway gratings. Exhaust fumes mixed with food odors. Constant noise, so different from the quiet of the cay.

  Living in sleepy Virginia, I'd always wanted to take a train to New York. See Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall. See Times Square at night. Walk along Fifth Avenue and Broadway.

  Now I was here. Our hotel was the Commodore, on Forty-second Street, by Grand Central, in the middle of Manhattan.

  That first morning, Mother decided to take a walk before we caught the subway to Dr. Pohl's office at Columbia Presbyterian. I think she wanted to take my mind off what might be said. I held her arm tightly, bumped now and then by pedestrians.

  She'd been to New York before and described things as we went up crowded Forty-second. When we crossed Fifth Avenue, she said, "Look, there's one of those big double-decker buses..."

  Like others, she kept forgetting I couldn't see.

  Ever since that afternoon in the refinery clinic I'd thought a lot about what the neurosurgeon might say: "I'm sorry, Phillip, an operation won't help." Then I'd go to a school for the blind. Learn braille. Be sightless forever.

  So I wasn't very much interested in double-decker buses. Going to Dr. Pohl's, holding a large envelope with the Curaçao X rays, I was frightened of the unknown.

  Soon we went down the steep stairs into the subway tunnel, me taking uncertain steps, bumped again by people. The thick air smelled like battery acid. The trains screeched. The platform shook. I wanted to go back to the street.

  I'll forever remember that long ride, sitting there swaying side to side, listening to the harsh noises. Uneasy as the train jerked and burrowed underground, I hoped we could ride a bus back.

  Aboveground thirty minutes later, we were told that Dr. Pohl was in surgery but wanted more X rays before talking to us anyway. The ones taken in Curaçao were probably okay, his nurse said, but he wanted his own. He'd talk to us after looking at them and after my father arrived. That would be tomorrow. The nurse escorted us downstairs so my skull could be photographed.

  Another twenty minutes with the technician saying to move my head this way or that way and we were back out on 168th Street, soon to board a bus for midtown.

  Crazy as it sounded, there was something I wanted to do this humid day. Every since I'd seen it in a magazine I'd wanted to go up in the Empire State Building, the tallest in the world. A hundred and two stories, I remembered, over a thousand feet up. The magazine said that on a clear day you could see in a circle for two hundred miles.

  When I said I wanted to go up there, my mother said, "But, Phillip, you can't see anything."

  That I well knew, but we could take the elevator up just the same, and she could tell me what was out there—New Jersey, Brooklyn, Connecticut; the rivers, the ocean. "I want to feel the wind."

  "Feel the wind? That doesn't make sense, Phillip," she said.

  I was silent a moment, then said, "Haven't you ever done anything that didn't make sense?"

  "I try not to," she said.

  ***

  On the eighth floor of the Commodore, the night sounds from below were muffled. We'd had dinner two hours earlier and the nine o'clock news had just finished, the announcer saying that the marines were fighting a desperate battle against Japanese troops on Guadalcanal Island, in the Pacific. The war was always present these days.

  My mother switched off the radio, and I heard the click of her bedside lamp. Then she said good-night.

  I said good-night too, thought awhile, then added, "I want to go back to the cay."

  I'm sure she was frowning over at me. "Back to that island? I should think you'd never want to see it again."

  "I didn't see it, Mother. I couldn't see it. That's why I want to go back—if the operation works."

  "You can't be serious."

  "I am. I want to walk around it, see where our hut was. See where I fished and dove for langosta. See Timothy's grave..."

  She was silent a moment, then said, "His grave? It would seem healthier to me if you put it all out of your mind. Think only about getting your sight back. That's the main thing, not some tiny, remote island and a grave."

  I doubted she'd ever understand. I said, "Mother, I want to thank him again."

  She said, "You can't thank a dead person. You have to say thanks while they're alive..."

  I kept silent.

  "Phillip, he's dead—gone! There are no such things as guardian angels. There is no communication from heaven.
Or from hell. Maybe you need another kind of doctor." There was anger in her voice.

  I didn't answer.

  Then she let out a long sigh and said, "When I unpacked your bag last night I found that knife in the bottom of it. Any reason you brought it along?"

  "For luck," I said.

  "A knife will bring you luck?"

  "Timothy's knife." I thought it might.

  "I think you're possessed by that man. You know how many times you've talked about him this past week?"

  "I loved him," I said. "I love him now."

  "You loved a Negro?"

  "Yes."

  It was as good a time as any, up in that hotel room, far from the Caribbean, to ask, finally, "Why don't you like black people?"

  There was a moment of silence. She seemed about to explode. Then: "Did I ever say that?"

  "You've said it in many ways, Mother. You'd make a face when I mentioned them. You told me to stay away from them..."

  "They're different, don't you know that? My grandmother knew it, my mother knew it, and I know it. They have their own way of life. That's why they live in a separate part of town."

  Her grandmother knew it, her mother knew it, and she knew it?

  "Maybe it's because we don't want them to live in our section," I said.

  "That's nonsense. Most don't have the money to live in our area. And they wouldn't live around us even if they could."

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "They have their own music, their own food, their own way of dressing, their own way of talking, and they live happily in their own sections. Do you think Timothy would want to live in Scharloo?"

  I had no idea. "He might." But I didn't think he'd want to live next door to my mother.

  "Are you afraid of them?" I asked.

  "Let's just say I'm uncomfortable around them."

  "Why? Did any black person ever do anything to you?"

  "Phillip, don't question me," she flared, the old tightness back in her voice.

  "Timothy said that under the skin we're all the same."

  "I'm not interested in what Timothy had to say about this subject."

  That ended the conversation.

  11. Obeah

  OCTOBER 1884—In early morning, still thinking about what Tante Hannah had said the night before about slavery, Timothy was fishing in Wobert Avril's rowboat. They were anchored near the coral reefs off Galosh Point, hand-lining for grouper at about thirty-five feet. Also down there were snapper, jack, mackerel, barracuda, and bonito. But fat grouper was what they were after.

  Later, when the sun was fully out, they'd be able to see the fan-covered reefs and the fish.

  Though he was sometimes foggy headed after a night with Demon Rum, old Wobert knew more about fish and birds and the sea than any man alive. Timothy was sure of it. He knew the winds and the stars and the reefs. He knew the islands and cays all the way south to Trinidad and Tobago, west to the Morants and Providencia. Timothy wanted his knowledge.

  Tante Hannah had told Timothy, "Lissen to de ol' mahn, all de ol' mahn, iffen dey wise. Den yuh be wise."

  Timothy thought of Wobert as his grandfather. He looked like a grandfather and talked like a grandfather. He often said, "Riddle me dis, or riddle me dat..."

  Wobert told the best stories about fish and jumbis, the evil spirits. Timothy both believed them and didn't believe them at the same time. Once, Wobert told him about catching a "barra" that was seven feet long. Timothy didn't think that any barracuda could be seven feet long. Four feet, maybe even five. Never seven.

  Wobert showed him the palm of his right hand where the line had cut an inch deep until the barra broke it. And one morning about ten o'clock, Wobert said, breathlessly, "Look downg, look downg!" Timothy looked down and there was a seven-foot barracuda swimming slowly by them, one big eye cocked at the boat.

  Wobert's best story about jumbis was the one where Mama Geeches battled a jumbi under the stairwell of Hotel 1829. She was the "obeah" lady who lived in Back o' All and cast spells. The smoke jumbi was threatening to burn the hotel down until Mama Geeches, who was less than four feet tall, fought it and killed it with ground up butterflies. Her throat and private parts had gotten scratched. Wobert had seen her throat scratches but not the others.

  Until he'd gotten a knee busted in a storm off Barbuda, Wobert had sailed the Caribbean and offshore Atlantic for forty-four years. "Fo'ty-foe," he reminded everybody. Now his right knee was about as stiff and useless as a gravestone. He walked peg legged, like his right one was wooden. He could no longer get around a sailing-ship deck.

  Timothy liked to sail into the harbor when they had a good catch, Wobert blowing his conch shell, A-ooouuuu, a-ooouuuu, to announce they had fish for sale.

  Timothy wanted to talk about being a slave, but Wobert had just accidentally hooked a goatfish in the gill and was taking great care in getting it off the hook, using a cloth to protect his hands from the sharp fins.

  "Nevah eat dis feesh. Don' eben let 'im stick yuh."

  Timothy had heard Wobert say that every time he'd hooked an unwanted goatfish. Wobert had an old man's habit of repeating himself. As he was expected to do, Timothy asked, "Why not?"

  "Pozen. 'E meks whot yuh call 'gut-rot.' Dere's a Sponish word for it, ciga-somethin', dat means de same. Mek yuh veree sick."

  Then Timothy knew that Wobert, who had a wizened face like a dark brown nutmeg, and crinkled gray hair, would tell him, once again, that goatfish could be poison off St. Thomas but good to eat off Guadalupe. Wobert had an idea that goatfish nibbled sour coral on some reefs, not on others.

  Timothy listened him out, then said the Amager had sailed without him.

  Wobert, looking sharply from under his straw hat's brim, said, "I heerd so. Mebbe yuh better off stayin' here. Doin' land wark. Lookit whot the sea did to me." He slapped the busted leg. Though he was sixty-odd, his eyes were those of a young eagle, sharp as knife tips.

  Timothy shook his head to disagree, then said he'd keep trying and changed the subject. "Yuh eber a slave, Wobert?"

  Clouds were drifting in and the sun had come up, dropping yellow patches over the waters east of Galosh Point. A vagrant easterly breeze notched the blue surface, rippling it, causing tiny waves to slap against the boat's port side with a hollow sound.

  Wobert's sound was a half chuckle. He said, "Oh, yass; oh, yass..." Strange, like Tante Hannah, he'd never talked about it before, as if it was something to be ashamed of. He had been twenty the year of Emancipation, he said; it was the same year he'd gone to sea.

  Timothy jerked on his line and soon landed a three-pound grouper that drummed the boat's bottom with its tail. Unhooked, it still flapped as Timothy angled the stringer cord through the gills and out of the mouth, then tossed it back overboard.

  "Why yuh ast?"

  Timothy said Tante Hannah had said how it was with her.

  Wobert said, "We all de same. Me an' her jus' got lucky we didn't 'ave to mek the trip across. We born in Saint Thomas."

  Timothy said he wanted to know how it was with Wobert when he was a boy. Wobert laughed again. "Dey made me tend chickens when ah was five. Ah had caca 'tween my toes till I was twelve."

  Caca was chicken dung, Timothy knew.

  "Den day put me in de feels, holing. We dug holes 'bout four feet square, an' nine inches deep, wid heavy hoes. By noon, mah arms ached. But Ah'd git a kick in mah behin' if Ah slowed up. Next we forked manure into de holes, den planted cane cuttins..."

  "Yuh do dat ebry day?"

  "Only at plantin' time. Res' o' de time de chillun weeded till de cane was cut. Den de fires begun in de boilin' house, to make molasses..."

  "Yuh warked all de time?" Timothy asked.

  "Sunup to sundown 'cept on Sunday. In boilin' time, de mahn warked ebry day."

  Wobert talked about how it was to be a slave almost until noon, when they sailed back toward shore. The last thing he said about it was, "Yuh lucky, bein' born after Freedom Day."

  That was
true, Timothy realized.

  Wobert added, "One ting I larned when I was a chicken boy—black hens lay white eggs," then he cackled and cackled, slapping his useless leg. "Riddle me dat."

  Timothy wasn't sure what he meant. He'd ask Tante Hannah later.

  He trudged to Back o' All with two fat groupers. One to give away, one to cook.

  ***

  A layer of floating whitish wood smoke made a roof over Back o' All just before sunset and trapped the rich food smells that came from the open fires outside the huts.

  Tante Hannah was almost ready to take the boiling maufé sauce—diced pork, tomatoes, and onions, and cooked flaked grouper—from the embers and pour it over fungi, cornmeal shaped into balls. She stirred in some of her own handpicked bay leaves and ginger, then took a sniff. Nodding, she went back into the hut and brought out two plates.

  The fair dawn weather had continued into the twilight, the trade wind picking up a cool edge in late afternoon. The heat of the charcoal would feel good once they sat down to eat.

  Soon, Tante Hannah served the simple meal, saying a blessing over it before they took their first bites.

  While they were eating, Mama Geeches came over uninvited and sat down by Tante Hannah. The birdlike, tiny woman, always dressed in lavender and wearing silver rings on her baby-sized fingers, was paid to chase jumbis. She was also paid to bring good luck.

  It was said that Loupgarau, the man-spirit who took off his clothes and flew by night in a ball of fire, sucking blood from his victims, played with Mama Geeches just after she was born. He introduced her to the world of spirits, including Soucayant, the female Loupgarau.

  Mama Geeches lived two huts down. She stared moodily into the fire. She shook her head when Tante Hannah offered her some maufé and fungi.

  Timothy had always been afraid of her, tiny though she was. He was afraid of her old-country spells and magic. There were many stories about Mama Geeches. She was neither young nor old, neither living nor dead. Even bukras came down from their mansions in the hills to visit Mama Geeches for one reason or another.