Big Island, Small
BIG
ISLAND,
SMALL
PRAISE FOR BIG ISLAND, SMALL
“Maureen St. Clair is a fearless new kid on the Can-Lit block. Her writing is both lyrical and passionate as she pens this unique story of two young women longing for love, and a sense of belonging in a world riddled with judgements. Her voice is true, her writing lyrical, her story intriguing and unique. If it’s one thing I know, here lies the voice of a powerful writer.”
— Donna Morrissey, author of The Fortunate Brother
“St. Clair’s debut novel makes a brave entrance galloping on the scene like her morning sun. The language is real and engaging, addressing social ills like the heat curling our necks. She enters the consciousness of her characters with such skill, channeling their voices with a delicious sweet rawness — it’s like biting into a ripe cashew nut fruit. Fresh. Honest. Rootsy!”
— Cindy McKenzie, Grenadian writer and author of Force Ripe
“St. Clair effortlessly writes Judith and Sola’s complicated friendship into existence, shaped by intertwined personal and structural histories. Relationships are woven in surprising and lovely ways, filled with honesty and vulnerability.”
— Dr. Rachel Hurst, author of Surface Imaginations: Cosmetic Surgery, Photography and Skin
“St. Clair turns on its head familiar dualities: white/black, gay/straight, big/small. In her capable hands the familiarity of these dualisms are used not to lock main characters in but rather to shed light on the complexity of identities. The even, strategic arrangement of characters and setting is as rich and striking as the Caribbean foliage encircling an unfolding story that will stay with you long after the end. If you don’t know who Maureen St. Clair is, don’t worry; it’s only a matter of time.”
— Sobaz Benjamin Founder, Executive Director: In My Own Voice (iMOVe) Arts Association and Director of NFB Documentary ‘Race is a Four-Letter Word’
“What drew me into Maureen St. Clair’s novel: her fiery lyricism and bang-on rhythmic dialogue, a capturing of people and places in deft graceful brushstrokes, and the bravery to delve into the darker aspects of the heart. Big Island, Small is an absorbing work of honesty and originality.”
— Dana Mills, author of Someone Somewhere
“A deeply sensitive and engaging novel. Maureen St. Clair writes the lives and relationships of her characters with rare delicacy and perception. Well worth reading.”
— Jacob Ross, Grenada-born poet, playwright, journalist, novelist.
Author of Pynter Bender and The Bone Readers
“I am delighted to see an author telling a story of two young women, coming of age in such a visual way. The story draws you into a culture and existence that truly exists, but few dare tackle in Grenadian literature.”
— Damarlie Antoine, Writer’s Association of Grenada,
spoken word poet and community activist
BIG
ISLAND,
SMALL
Maureen St. Clair
ROSEWAY PUBLISHING
An imprint of Fernwood Publishing
HALIFAX & WINNIPEG
Copyright © 2018 Maureen St. Clair
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.
Editing: Chris Benjamin
Design: Tania Craan
eBook: tikaebooks.com
Printed and bound in Canada
Published by Roseway Publishing
an imprint of Fernwood Publishing
32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point, Nova Scotia, B0J 1B0
and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3G 0X3
www.fernwoodpublishing.ca/roseway
Fernwood Publishing Company Limited gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of Manitoba and the Province of Nova Scotia.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
St. Clair, Maureen, author
Big Island, small / Maureen St. Clair.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77363-003-8 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-77363-004-5 (EPUB).—
ISBN 978-1-77363-005-2 (Kindle)
I. Title.
PS8637.A4528B54 2018 C813’.6 C2017-907873-9
C2017-907874-7
to Maya
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion
And both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height
Live in fragments no longer
Only connect
— E.M. Forster
You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
— Toni Morrison
And still I rise, I rise
See, I’m hurting, but not broken
Down, but won’t die
I rise, I rise
Soon I will reach the sky
And still I rise
—Etana
BIG ISLAND
July 2010
SOLA
THE FIRST TIME I experience Judith — cinnamon dreads wrapped African style, white t-shirt over tight ankle-length blue skirt, dancing as if the music is playing just for her, as if the music festival was deliberated, planned, performed with Judith in mind — there she is in the middle of the crowd like she’s the only one who matters and there I am at the edge, a nervous buzz in my belly fretting, wondering, scrutinizing over a white woman dancing natural. Refined. Spiritual even.
Two days later, same festival and there she is again walking through the crowd with a bottle of water swinging, dreads uncovered, tied up, a black tank under cream-coloured overalls, brown hiking boots and a red khaki bag strung across her chest. And there I am waiting for Shy, my mother’s boyfriend, who also wants to see the show. We’re by the beer tent and I’m waiting for him to hurry up so I can follow her. Shy’s telling me to hold his glass while he rolls up the cuffs of his jeans.
And there she is: Judith sitting up on a hill lighting a joint, like lighting a joint in a crowd is the most ordinary thing. I watch a Black man with crooked plaits sit down. He gives her shoulder a touch with his elbow, takes two pulls of the joint, leaps up and walks away. I watch others watch her, some with scorn, some with admiration. Me I am floating between the two until she looks up and over. I turn the other way so fast Shy thinks something stung me and reaches to flick it away. When the show starts Shy makes his way to the stage. I keep my eyes hovering while Judith finds a space to free up once again, to move her body like she is claiming the reggae rhythms to be hers and not mine.
The next day I see Judith again, but this time in a mall and she is moving opposite the free-flow pace she had at the festival. She is walking fast, crouched like a cat sneaking through a city park. I hold the door open for her while thanks comes from her eyes and “Jimmy Cliff” from her mouth. “I remember you,” she adds, fast like she might forget. “Steel Pulse is playing tomorrow night. You going?”
And then I blurt out without thinking, “You want company?” My cheeks are burning up, embarrassed for choosing a Small Island cliché. She laughs, holding my eyes longer than anyone would think normal. The night of the show, the night of Steel Pulse, she kisses me. Judith kisses me.
JUDITH
I IN THE MALL picking up Aunt Rachel’s pre
scription when I meet Sola for the first time. She holding the door open for me and I forgetting how much I hate malls. I remember Mom say the Buddhist monk, Thick Nhat Hhan or was it the Dali Lama, love shopping malls. She say one of them say they places to study trickery. Mom say “illusion” but I say trickery. I imagine both maroon-clothed men sitting in the middle of a giant shopping mall smiling at one another like they the only ones knowing the joke.
I meet Sola on my way out. She carrying the same grin I imagine the monks wearing. Sola’s smile the kind of smile I longing for since I arrive on Big Island; a smile real not fake. Mom say Big Island cold, tricky even. And she not mean snow and ice kind of cold that make people miserable on Big Island. She mean the kind of cold that have people all tied up in their fast lives moving from one thing to the next forgetting other people occupying the same pavement. Tricky, she say, ’cause it’s hard sometimes to know who caring or who just trying to please. Sola’s smile feel real. Like she not trying to please, but instead live as close to she self as possible.
The irony: when I recognize she, I recognize she as the woman watching me the first night of the festival. She watching not with care but with judgment. I can feel she eyes on me and I know those kinda eyes, that kinda stare — the stare of people wondering what this white woman doing dreading up she hair, trying to be more Black than white. I can hear one of my aunties talking, “Why they not cut the child’s hair? Why they not grow she like the colour she come out?”
And there Sola doing the same thing at the show even before she know who she watching.
They’re other stares that first night too, but I remember caring about Sola’s the most. Under she gaze I want to be myself, like I am with my good friend Drey back home on Small Island. Sola watch me like Drey’s sister Arlene watch me and I tired being the white person Arlene and other Small Island folk expect me to be. I remember thinking fuck she and fuck everyone else watching. I pull out a splif and sit on the hill. You feel I care? I light my half-saved joint and inhale slow. Like I the only fair-skin Rasta in the world, making some kinda statement. Later Sola tell me lighting a splif in a crowd isn’t a luxury she has. And I tell she, “I not white. I Black too even if you can’t see past my skin.” But I know I not the kinda black she means.
At the mall, we agree to meet each other at the music festival. We enjoy ourselves for real that night, dancing and feeling the vibes, the rhythms of back home. At the end of the show we find ourselves walking through a park lit by a three-quarter moon, a sky full of stars, music still riding up through the ground, our arms swaying, our hands brushing. We stop and lean up against a fence not wanting to hit the pavement toward home. That’s when Sola look at my let-loose dreads and say I need to care for them better. She say they too wild. She say I need to respect them more. “They’re your crown of glory,” she say. This make my head swirl, my belly go soft and my body lean in. That’s when I kiss she. We leaning up against a fence in the middle of the field and I don’t know why, but I lean forward and I kiss she and she kiss me back.
SOLA
COCONUT BREATH AND SKIN. I don’t want her to stop. I want hand on cheek like Ma Tay gently tapping me awake in the mornings. I want sea and sky stretching through open windows. I want the smell of fermenting cocoa in the sun, tea and fried bakes on the table. I want the swoosh of coconut on grader, Ma Tay boiling oil for Saturday morning market. We kiss leaning up against a fence in a field bordering music. Wet grass touching bare skin, cool breeze blowing, a loose dread sweeping across our faces. I tuck the lock back up into Judith’s wrap. She sighs. Damp reaching through soles of sandals settling around my feet like sea licking ankles, begging me to walk farther out, dunk my head and swim. But then the thump of a mango falling, not a mango, rocks landing on the other side of our kiss.
We look up to see a small group of boys and one girl bouncing stones in their hands, one bending down to pick up. Words with pebbles flying, “Fucking lesbos. Get a man.”
I push Judith away, tell her to stop. “I got to go,” I say, thinking the kids will stop once I leave. Just like Mrs. Macdonald stopped tapping her pencil on the desk once I sat down and stopped defending Susie’s and my research paper. When I sat down the pencil stopped and Susie was able to continue presenting the paper I wrote. Things usually stopped once I was removed from the reckoning.
I don’t even think Judith notices the kids because she just keeps babbling from behind. Like, “When we go link up again?” and “Why you moving so?”
At first I think she is imitating MTV, trying to fit the style of her dreads. But that is not Big Island Black people talk; that is Small Island regardless what colour she is. I want to turn around and say, “Where the hell are you from?” First the dreads, then the way her body move to the music and now her tongue, saying things like “Let’s link” and “Why you moving so?” “When we go vibes?” “Slow down nah.”
I can hear the youth up the hill their voices farther away. I want to stop and say goodbye but I’ve never kissed a woman before and need time to calm the pounding in my chest, the feelings getting all messed up with old ones, old messed up feelings from long ago. The pounding in my chest feels like it’s getting stuck in my throat and I’m pulling hard and fast to breathe. So I run. I run away but she’s still in my ear, “Where you live? You in the phone book?”
I manage to shout my mother’s name, “Dolma. Dolma Atwater.”
JUDITH
THE NIGHT WE KISS I lie in bed going over Sola’s features so as not to forget. Hair natural, short but not so short you couldn’t see the tight curls gathering. Drey in my head, “So what colour she? Red like Georgie? Brown like Lydia, or black like Arlene and me?” My thoughts answer, “She the colour of fresh turned soil.” Sola hold a serious soft face. More serious than soft. Eyebrows like they the main feature and a smile that swallow all judgment. When I lean in and kiss she, my friend Melina in my head, “How you bold so? You just kissing the gyal so? You lucky she don’t box you down. You lucky she lips responding. Rejoicing even.”
That’s what I feel from the kiss. A release, a small rejoice like Sola too been waiting for some kind of tender moment. Of course I know nothing. I only know she lips on mine, a piece of tenderness I missing. I think maybe she too feeling it. The kiss make my heart hum like the hum Mom make hanging clothes or drinking tamarind juice. Sola lean in too. Feel like she trying to tell me, “Don’t move let’s just stay right here longer than this night, longer than a week full of music.”
But then those blasted children up the hill. I just suck my teeth when I realize they yelling down at us. But Sola she shove me away like she realize I woman not man. “Come” she say, pulling me through the field toward the road. She let go my arm and I have to jog to keep up. One of them shout, “Fucking lesbos.” Sola act like she fraid these small youth. I not fraid these youth. They nothing to me.
I can’t stand it here sometimes. Here on Big Island. I only here for a couple weeks and already I can’t stand the hypocrite ways. I not saying Small Island don’t have its ways too but back home things out in the open. Here there’s a sort of happiness that don’t feel real. People so nicey nicey so it take you by surprise when the nastiness come out, like the youth up the hill or when you hear on the radio somebody run over a man riding his bicycle and then take off. The man in hospital almost dead and the man in the vehicle don’t even have the decency to stop and say he wrong, say sorry, call the poor man an ambulance.
I can’t understand how Sola fraid. They just children throwing dirt from the parking lot. And then I start to think what if she shame and she run ’cause she think kissing women criminal. I start to wonder if she think I criminal. What if she think I one of those people who does tricks and trick her into kissing me. What if she don’t want me as friend? What if I can’t find she damn number in the book? Dolma. Dolma Atwater she mother’s name. I sure Sola not from here either even if she talking proper English and thing. I can hear
underneath she perfect sentences. I can hear something distant, something familiar.
SOLA
THE KISS STAYS WITH me throughout the week and into the months. I wake most mornings with the kiss on my mind, a warmth like hot tea between cold hands. I stomp those feelings by getting out of bed fast, jumping into the shower without waiting for the water to heat up, reminding myself Judith brushed the kiss away like she was swiping crumbs from her mouth.
When Judith confronts the kiss the next day she turns it into a joke, says the beers must have made her gay, laughing nervously like she is hiding something. She continues to say how she doesn’t drink much, how she is sorry and she hopes the kiss doesn’t come between us, how she wants to be friends, not that kind of friends, just friends, hang-out friends. She asks me if we are still cool and I’m thinking “still cool?” with my heart doing the same kind of heave as it did the night before and my breath quick like I’ve just run to the shop and back. I manage, “I cool” just like my cousin Mikey says “I cool. You cool?” When I think of Mikey my breathing relaxes.
And there Judith is exhaling one long breath that sounds like another apology in another language.
That night I dream of my dad, Thompson. I dream he hurls me through air like a hard ball whizzing toward a cricket bat. I wake thinking of the last fight between Thompson and Dolma. I remember that day clearly. Dolma sidestepping like a spider before flinging her morning tea, cup and all, hitting Thompson on his shoulder. A splatter on the wall like thin fingers stretching. Thompson jumping up so fast I thought he was going to box her down. “Out!” she shouted. I never saw Dolma size up anyone like that before. Shoulders back. Hands fisted. Eyes sunk into Thompson like she meant to do damage. I remember folding my hands tightly around Jude’s tiny foot, my baby cousin shrieking. Dolma’s eyes swinging on me, “What do the child? Stop squeezing the child’s foot so. You and your father same thing you know. Same same thing. You do things for spite.”