Pum Pum Rock

1. Dear God

Adorned in her private school uniform, twelve-year-old, Nate Williams stared out the luxury sedan's window as her mother, Cassia Williams weaved in and out of Montego Bay traffic.

"Just because they say I like girls, doesn't mean it's true," the preteen spoke with a sweet Caribbean twang that interrupted the car ride's deafening silence.

"Have you seen yourself?" Cassia scoffed. Her accent was just as thick. "Most days you look more like my son than a daughter." She sucked her teeth.

"It's not like that," Nate whined as she turned to face her mother. She then removed an ice pack from her mouth revealing a fat, bloodied bottom lip. "I hate dat school and everybody there," she sulked remembering the conversation that they'd just concluded with Nate's school principal:

"I've told Natalia this a thousand times," Nate's principal continued, "her bandmates would stop teasing her if she simply changed how she dressed, and acted a little more, well, normal." By normal, the principal had, of course, meant girlie. Nate shook her head in disgust as her mother's nagging jarred her from the principal's office and back to the passenger seat.

"So obstinate!" Cassia rolled her eyes. "I just hope our new addition don't give as much problem," she said, rubbing her belly. You couldn't tell it by looking at her, but the woman was three months pregnant. "Sometimes I feel like some duppy done curse me." After years of high priced fertility treatments, several miscarriages and trying the old fashioned way, Cassia was finally with child. "You will be my saving grace," she said rubbing her belly.

Nate stared at her mother's burgeoning baby bump as Cassia accelerated and made a hard right turn.

"Don't you care what people think?" Cassia quizzed as Nate took note of the speedometer. Cassia had clocked in at twenty miles over the legal limit.

"There are places we can send you," Cassia's tone softened. "Places that will fix you."

"I'm not broken!" Nate protested emphatically.

"You know it's a curse, Natalia. A curse and a sin!" Cassia swerved around an SUV into what would have been oncoming traffic, had the road ahead not been clear.

"You don't understan—you never will," Nate grumbled under her breathe.

"You can be cured. We can correct this," Cassia protested.

"Why can't I live with Auntie Earlene?" Nate pouted as Cassia grew quietly humiliated that her daughter preferred the company of her sister-in-law.

"You must be mad," Cassia said cutting her eyes at Nate. She then veered around a slow truck, only this time she ran directly into an oncoming passenger van. Moments later, the mangled sedan lay head over heels in a nearby ditch, belching flames and exhaust into the baby blue sky.

"Mom!" Nate screamed for Cassia who had already unbuckled her seat belt and slid out of the car. Although battered and bruised Cassia made absolutely no effort to save her firstborn from the smoldering, wrong side up vehicle. The last thing Nate remembered was trying to free her self from the fiery wreck. "I'm safe. I'm breathing. I got this," she said, whispering the calming phrase through gritted teeth.

When Nate awoke in the hospital bed, her thighs were bandaged due to the second-degree burns she'd endured, and Auntie Earlene was by her side to deliver the heart-wrenching news.

"She lost the baby, Natty." Auntie Earlene gently rested her heavy body atop Nate's as they grieved the life of a child they never knew. "He's with the angels now."

***

Haunted by the memory of her childhood, 28-year-old Nate Williams tossed and turned in bed as she relived the tragic accident that had claimed her unborn baby brother's life. Since his death, Nate's relationship with her parents had grown even more strained than it already had been. Now, with fourteen years and nearly three thousand miles of land and sea between them, distance was a condition they'd grown to accept.