He looks up at me. Sniffs again and turns the page of his newspaper. “That’s true.”
I think about that story Kalinda told me, with the spot of rage anyone felt if they ever walked through it in the library in Barbados, and I wonder for a second if maybe that ghost got to me now from all the way across the sea—but no, that rage is coming from me, so violently that maybe when I’m dead this very spot will become the same, and anytime anyone walks through here, they’ll wish they could see their father dead.
Mine starts to cry now. I never really expected to see such a thing in my life, but that’s what he’s doing: He’s sitting there and crying and pretending he’s not, as he keeps holding up the newspaper. His hands are shaking and his eyes are filling and I tell myself I’m so angry that I don’t care, he could cry himself to death and I wouldn’t care one bit, but my heart starts to ache too, and then my eyes start to sting.
“Is that why she left? Is that why my ma left us?”
He can’t even speak or nod or shake his head, so I ask again where my ma is, and he opens his mouth and says it so quiet I almost don’t hear the words: “She’s here.”
It should be a relief, and for a minute it is—my mother wasn’t taken by the woman in black. She isn’t trapped in the spirit world, and I won’t have to travel through the eclipse to become stuck there for the rest of my life too. But then the questions start to come. How long has she been back? If she’s back, why hasn’t she come to me? Why hasn’t she come back home to see me? Even if she never wants to see my father ever again, I have done nothing wrong to her. If she’s back in the Virgin Islands, then she should have come to see me and take me away with her so we can start a new and happy life together.
My father only told me that she’s here, in the Virgin Islands, on Saint Thomas—not that she’s alive. I can only think of one explanation for why my mother hasn’t come back for me, and that explanation requires her to be six feet under the ground.
My father doesn’t have to force me to go to school the next morning. I need to get out of the house so that’s what I do. Anise and Marie Antoinette and their friends are waiting for me. Anise starts to yell I shouldn’t go to this school because it’s a Catholic school, and sinners shouldn’t attend Catholic schools, and she says too that I shouldn’t be allowed into the church, because that’s no place for sinners either, but today there’s too much on my mind for me to even listen. Maybe it’s my blank stare—that I’m looking past them, staring at the little dead girl that looks like my sister standing in the middle of the courtyard. I don’t respond. I don’t even look their way. Anise just becomes quiet on her own, and they stare at me silently like I’m a dead girl too, laying in an open casket as they all march past at my viewing.
As soon as Kalinda walks into our classroom, I’m on my feet and by her side and ignoring all the stares that follow. I can only see her face.
She’s not looking at me, but she doesn’t try to push past me as if I don’t exist, the way she acted two days ago—the way I thought she would this morning too. Relief threads its way through me. Kalinda mumbles a good morning.
“Good morning,” I say to her. I take in a sharp breath. “My mother is on island.”
Her eyes snap to me. “What? How do you know?”
“I have a sister who told me, and my father finally admitted it, and now that she’s on island—I have to find her.”
She nods, then looks past me, noticing the faces that are turned in our direction. She swallows and looks away again. “I’ll speak to you after school.” Then she goes to her seat and does not turn to whisper anything to me for the entirety of the school day.
Kalinda is waiting for me after school, like she promised. We walk through town, and at first I think she’s bringing me to her house, but we keep walking right by. I shouldn’t be surprised. She will probably never invite me to her house ever again.
“I’ll help you find your mother, because I know that’s the right thing to do,” she tells me, “but I don’t know if I can be your friend.”
The pain that spreads through me is paralyzing. I stop walking.
“Is it because of that letter?” I say. I try to think of something—anything—to say about that letter. “It was just a joke. But then Anise found it, and she—”
“I know that’s not true,” she says.
I quiet myself.
“It’s wrong for one girl to feel that way about another,” she says gravely. “You know that, don’t you, Caroline?”
I could cry, my spirit hurts so bad. “That’s what I’ve been told, but I don’t believe every single little thing anyone tells me.”
“You’re a Christian, aren’t you? Don’t you believe in God?”
“White people once used the Bible to say that we should be slaves.”
“What does that have anything to do with this?”
“Everything,” I tell her. “It means we should think for ourselves. Decide if something is wrong just because someone says it’s so, or decide it’s right because that’s how we feel.”
She looks me over, up and down. “I wish I could think the same way.” And she keeps walking, and I’m not at all sure what she meant by this, but it leaves my heart stuttering.
“And so your mother is back on island.”
“Yes” is all I tell
