The Star Side of Bird Hill Read online

  How she longed for her best friend, Taneisha, who could make a walk to the corner store exciting, stopping every few steps to say hello to the boys who were hypnotized by Taneisha’s green eyes and something else, not aloofness, exactly, but a way of broadcasting magnetism without need. Whenever Dionne tried to emulate Taneisha’s cool, she ended up seeming standoffish or mean. After years of being on the periphery of the popular girls at her school, she had finally broken through because of Taneisha, whose tongue never got thick in her mouth when she was nervous the way Dionne’s sometimes did. It helped that Dionne had scored Darren as her boyfriend, and that soon after they started dating, flesh and muscle started to fill out her lanky arms and bust and behind. The spring when Dionne and Darren started going together, there was a temporary pouring in of sunshine through the cloud that generally hovered over Avril, and she asked which boy was touching Dionne’s bubbies under moonlight. Dionne was taken aback by her mother’s directness, but then she answered that she didn’t know any boys who would be touching her like that. Some part of Dionne was annoyed by how quickly Avril dropped the issue, ready as she was for a fight, and desperate as she was to feel the unfamiliar prick of an adult’s concern.

  Dionne didn’t feel bad about lying to her mother. She knew intimately the precarious nature of their life, the way that it depended on a series of carefully constructed lies, the ones she told to get meat on credit at the butcher at the end of the month when her mother’s money ran out; the ones she told to fend off her and Phaedra’s teachers’ suspicions; the ones she told to keep her friends from coming over to her house, and seeing her mother. Avril didn’t move around much, so Dionne knew she could probably get away with shepherding any visitors into the back bedroom she shared with Phaedra. But there was still the problem of the smell—the scent of eucalyptus from the humidifier Avril kept going all day and all night, the stench from the stinking bush teas Avril bought from some woman on Church Avenue and that she was convinced might heal her, although months and then a year had passed and Avril still showed no signs of getting better. Dionne and Phaedra held their noses every time they came home, lest they choke on their mother’s sadness. The more lies Dionne told to protect her mother and herself and her sister, the easier it was to lie to her mother, to anyone, really. And by the time Dionne arrived in Barbados, lying was less a moral dilemma than a means of getting by.

  Despite the difficulties of life back in Brooklyn, Dionne preferred the predictable chaos of life there to the monotony of life in Bird Hill. To say that she was disappointed to be spending the summer in Barbados would be an understatement. She was furious. On this particular afternoon, Dionne was contemplating the relative virtues of a quick death—a plane crash, a car accident—over a long drawn-out one, exacerbated by a church’s prayers that held you precariously in the land of the living. Today, the radio was looping a story about the death of Barbados’s oldest living man, at 113 years old. While everyone on the radio marveled at his fortitude, Dionne couldn’t help thinking that 113 years was just too many years to live, especially here. She sighed to herself, and went back to the book she was reading to Phaedra.

  Phaedra was lying in the bed she shared with her grandmother, draped in her favorite bluebird bedsheets while Dionne read to her from the well-worn pages of her favorite book, Annie John.

  In my small room. I lay on my pitch-pine bed, which, since I was sick, was made up with my Sunday sheets. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. I could hear the rain as it came down on the galvanized roof. The sound the rain made as it landed on the roof pressed me down in my bed, bolted me down, and I couldn’t so much as lift my head if my life depended on it.

  Phaedra fancied herself like Annie John, sick for days upon days, coming in and out of dreams while her body repaired itself. She sighed and nestled herself further into the sheets. Overhead, the ceiling fan whirred slowly, swirling air thick with the smell of rain.

  Dionne marked her page, and then stretched the paperback across her knees.

  “So how long are you going to work this sick thing?”

  “What do you mean? I am sick,” Phaedra whined.

  “I had some patience and even some sympathy for you before. But it’s been a week now. And you look fine to me.”

  “You’re just mad because you can’t use me as a cover anymore for your rendezvous with Trevor,” Phaedra said. She sat up in the bed.

  Dionne closed the bedroom door and moved until she was within an inch of Phaedra’s face. She knew she would only have a few minutes before her grandmother asked which grown people lived in her house and were bold enough to lock her doors. The people on the hill held privacy as a luxury not to be extended to children.

  “Phaedra Ann Braithwaite, what business is it of yours what I do with boys?” Dionne said. Her hot breath formed a bridge between her face and her sister’s.

  “I know what I see. And you know Mommy said that if you don’t keep your pocketbook shut tight, you’re going to find yourself in the family way soon.”

  “I swear to God, Phaedra, I will cut your bony ass in two.”

  “I’ll tell Granny about how you curse at me and sneak out of the house at night.”

  Phaedra paused to let the force of her threat land.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Bring me Chris,” Phaedra said.

  Dionne flung the book at Phaedra, catching the very center of her right breast, which was budding in a way that their grandmother called force ripe. On the hill, becoming a woman was like that—shared with all the women who witnessed you coming into yourself, becoming one of them. Phaedra pressed her hand to the tender place where she’d been hit, but did not grant Dionne the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

  • • •

  “COME, NUH,” DIONNE SAID, nudging her sister awake. Dionne was dressed in her only pair of Lee jeans and an orange-and-white-striped tube top she found in the back of her mother’s closet, a treasure trove of risqué clothes Avril hid from her mother when she was living there. Dionne smiled when she found it, struck by how similar it was to the stash of clothes and makeup stashed beneath her bed at home. When the girls landed at the airport that June, Hyacinth took one look at Dionne in her miniskirt, leggings, and tank top and said, “Lord, Jesus, please have mercy on my soul. I don’t know how me and this child going to make out.” Dionne pretended to be annoyed when her grandmother said that Dionne seemed intent on giving her the same series of heart attacks Avril had given Hyacinth when she was a teenager. But secretly she liked the steadiness of Hyacinth’s concern for her, which was comforting after so many years of Avril’s absentmindedness. She enjoyed hearing stories about the troublemaker her mother was and how much Hyacinth loved her despite her antics.

  Dionne complained at first about sleeping alone in the back room that was once her mother’s bedroom. No matter how many times Phaedra wet the bed or thrashed during her nightmares, Dionne took comfort in having her sister’s body beside hers in the room they shared in Brooklyn. Right around the time that Avril began her downward spiral, Dionne started double-checking all the doors before she went to bed at night; she couldn’t sleep if the closet door in her bedroom was open even an inch. Avril had been gone to them for some time by then, a ghost who sometimes left a jar of peanut butter open on the kitchen counter or feces floating in the toilet or who abandoned a knitting project she’d gotten excited about in the middle of the night that was an unsalvageable mess by morning. As Avril retreated more and more into herself, Dionne took comfort in the familiar annoyance of Phaedra’s moaning, tossing, and turning, her body dampening the bedsheets. Between her sister’s nocturnal theatrics, the bass that pumped from the club across the street, and the garbage trucks that rumbled up Flatbush Avenue as dawn peeked through their apartment’s windows, in Brooklyn Dionne had noise to lull her to sleep and, more important, to distract her from the insistent worry that she’d wake one morning and fi
nd her mother gone, and not just for a trip in her mind.

  Eventually, Dionne came to be soothed by her grandmother’s heavy snores, which rose above the walls that stopped just short of the ceiling to let the breeze pass through. It was a comforting layer of sound alongside the frogs that chirped and croaked and occasionally made the nights in Bird Hill seem louder than the nights in Brooklyn. Soon, Dionne enjoyed having her own room, which was impossible in Brooklyn, where everything that was hers was also Phaedra’s.

  Now, Dionne nudged her sister again, pressing her bony knee into Phaedra’s rib cage, which was puffed up with sleep.

  “What?” Phaedra moaned. She felt for her grandmother in the bed bedside her, but her spot on the bed was cool. Phaedra was startled at first, and then she remembered that she’d sometimes stir in the middle of the night and find Hyacinth gone, or wake in the morning to find her grandmother deep in sleep well past sunrise.

  “Get up. Don’t you want to see Chris?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Don’t worry about the time. Just come.”

  Phaedra took in the time on the digital alarm clock, 3:05, and looked up again at Dionne, whose figure she could make out better as her eyes adjusted to the dark. She pulled on her favorite pair of black jeans, an indigo t-shirt, and a sweater she’d brought for chilly nights, but hadn’t yet worn.

  They walked to the back of the house. Dionne undid the locks on the door that led to the backyard. Once they were outside, the chickens started to rustle their feathers, but stopped when Dionne sprinkled feed for them. The girls skirted the edge of their grandmother’s garden, wetting their ankles with hydrangea dew. And then they found the road.

  The night was brighter than Phaedra expected, brilliantly lit by the full moon and stars that seemed close enough to pluck from the sky. Phaedra stuck close to her sister as they rounded the first ring of the hill road. She wanted to reach for Dionne’s hand, but she knew she was too big for that now.

  The girls passed a pink chattel house that Phaedra knew was the halfway point between her grandmother’s house and the church. The hairs on Phaedra’s arms stood up. Suddenly, she felt a hand grab her right elbow. She yelped and her sister stopped a few strides ahead.

  “What kind of time you looking tonight?” the voice rasped in Phaedra’s ear.

  Phaedra could feel the man and his breath and then his grasp as he ground his hips against her.

  “Let me go,” Phaedra said in a voice that was half whisper, half scream.

  Dionne stepped between her sister and the stranger and said, “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

  “I just want a dance,” the stranger said. Dionne could see the man’s glassy eyes and smell the liquor on his breath.

  “Does she look like she wants to dance with you?” Dionne asked.

  “All right, all right, all right. No need to get upset. I was just trying to have a good time.”

  Mr. Jeremiah let Phaedra go and stumbled down the hill, in the opposite direction of his house. He sang, his voice rising above the cricket chorus, “Long time we no have no nice time. Do you, do you, do yah think about that?” He punched the air for emphasis on “that” and Phaedra and Dionne stood watching his retreat until he was too far gone for their eyes to follow or their ears to hear.

  “Next time walk closer to me,” Dionne said.

  Phaedra nodded. She was too focused on the damp rings of sweat Mr. Jeremiah’s hands had left on her wrists to speak.

  The front steps of the church at the top of the hill were always lit for travelers on their way home. Phaedra felt some of her fear drop away as they approached it, her heartbeat descend back to her chest from where it had taken residence inside her eardrums. When they came closer to the Lovings’ house, the rectory next to the church, Phaedra felt her heart quicken again. Trevor leaned against the metal gate and Chris did the same, imitating his older brother’s ease. The girls met up with the boys and then split off into their usual pairs, Dionne and Trevor holding hands, Phaedra’s and Chris’s arms grazing.

  Phaedra and Chris climbed over the railing that enclosed Phaedra’s great-aunt’s grave. Chris pulled out a flashlight and a handkerchief to wipe the dusty wet. Then, he indicated that Phaedra should sit down. Phaedra, suspicious of this extra attention, chose to stand.

  “It’s cold,” Phaedra said. She felt the cool of the night’s small hours travel beneath her layers and make contact with her clammy skin.

  “You want my jersey?” Chris asked.

  “No, I do not want your sweater, Christopher. What I do want is a reason why you thought it would be a good idea to try and kill me with the biggest rock you could find.”

  “I just wanted to know.”

  “Know what? Know what I looked like lying unconscious? What exactly is so interesting about that?”

  “I’m not saying that. I just was curious about . . . you know.”

  “No, I do not know. What are you talking about?”

  “I wanted to know if it’s true what people say about your family. If it’s true that you can’t die.”

  “Who told you that?” Phaedra grabbed the flesh on Chris’s arm and pulled, wringing it until she felt his skin grow hot.

  “Nobody. Nobody told me,” Chris said, trying to wrestle out of her hold.

  “Besides, how could you even believe that when we’re sitting on the very real grave of my very dead great-aunt? How stupid could you be?”

  Phaedra waited for Chris to say something. When she heard nothing, she turned to step out of the grave, which was enclosed by a knee-high ring of intricately wrought iron. She tripped and Chris caught her before she fell.

  “You all right?”

  “I’m fine. Glad that it was my own two feet that tripped me this time and not you.”

  “Come on, Phaedra. You’re fine now.”

  “Tell me who told you.”

  “It’s not just one person. Everybody knows.”

  Phaedra felt the weight of this truth as another blow to her already fragile sense of belonging. She shook her head, not wanting to believe that she was as much an outsider here as in Brooklyn.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Wait. I wanted to give you these,” Chris said. He pressed three blue marbles into her palm.

  “Why?”

  “I wanted you to have something of mine . . . something almost as beautiful as you.”

  Phaedra grunted, a sound that was halfway between dismissal and thanks. Then she closed her fingers around the marbles.

  Phaedra and Chris used the beams from Chris’s flashlight and the murmurs of Dionne’s and Trevor’s voices to lead them to their siblings’ hiding place. Chris cleared his throat as they approached, giving Dionne and Trevor a chance to untangle themselves from each other. If she’d been on the hill longer, Dionne would have known that years of experience had taught Chris not to interrupt his brother’s flow with girls who let him touch them. But Dionne was new to the hill, and her relationship with Trevor depended on her believing that she was his first or, at least for this summer, his only.

  “Yes?” Dionne said from the cocoon of Trevor’s arms.

  “I’m going to walk Phaedra home,” Chris said.

  “You know the way?” Dionne asked, although she was unlikely to leave the comfort of Trevor’s embrace to give directions or lead them anywhere.

  “Of course,” Chris said.

  “I’m only letting him walk me because he asked,” Phaedra said.

  “That’s my boy,” Trevor said. He went to give his little brother a high five, but their palms missed each other in the dark.

  “That’s my sister, you ass,” Dionne said, and then started play-punching Trevor.

  Phaedra, who knew that, for Dionne, anger was often a prelude to affection, understood that they’d been dismissed. She tugged at Chris�
��s elbow to indicate it was time to go.

  Chris lit their way back onto the main road. And although Phaedra told Chris that she could find her way home from here, thank you very much, when they reached the rectory, he continued to shine his light at their feet. Just as they rounded the last ring of road at the hill’s bottom, there were footsteps on the path in front of them. They ducked into a sugarcane field, afraid to be caught by an adult or, worse, met by a jumbie. Phaedra had always been afraid of ghosts, and being in Barbados hadn’t done anything to lessen that fear.

  In the night, Hyacinth was a rustle mostly of air, hurrying along without the aid of her walking stick, like she had important business to attend to. Gone was the white turban that she wore; shocks of kinky platinum hair stood up all over her head. She was freer, too, her hands hanging loosely about her, her gait that of a much younger woman. If hill women had been watching, they might have said that Hyacinth looked freer than before she was baptized.

  Phaedra, upon seeing her grandmother, backed up so far into the cane that she hit upon a well. She remembered her mother’s warning that, despite how enticing they seemed, sugarcane fields were as rank as New York City subway platforms and as dangerous too. The year before, a girl was found dead in one of the wells just up the road from Hyacinth’s house, her body disposed of in the countryside by a scorned boyfriend who thought nobody would look for her there. Avril had said, “You think the cane pretty? Well, think so from far. If you must have some cane, then take some from the outside part. You hear me, child? You hear?”

  Phaedra recalled the way that rage creased the corners of her mother’s eyes, and she was glad she wouldn’t be seeing her for a couple more months at least. She shook her head, trying to push the thought, which she knew was disloyal, away from her. It was nice, Phaedra thought as the cane scratched her, to have a break from defending her mother, from the pressure to do as Dionne commanded and keep their family business to herself. Where Dionne found ease in making things up to get along, lying about Avril and their life strained the limits of Phaedra’s earnestness. What a relief it was, Phaedra felt, to be somewhere where she didn’t have secrets to keep.