People With Life

14.

The following morning, I woke up, the sun just coming up, to see John sitting on the side of my bed. He glanced down at me, smiling soft and warm. He swept the back of his hand lightly across my cheek. I reached up and held it there.

"Good morning," he said.

I smiled and he leaned over and kissed me.

"Everyone's in the kitchen arguing over what to do today."

I chuckled weakly at that, still stirring from sleep.

Eventually I got up and we went to the kitchen and made breakfast all together.

"How about we go out today?" Mike suggested energetically. "We'll see the town, get some things at the market and shops. Connie wants us to check out a river spot this evening."

"It's too hot to do anything today," Katie said sitting under the fan, her face wrinkled in discomfort.

"Nonsense! It's never too anything to do something! We can even walk around, or maybe take the bicycles since it's so hot."

"Is that really safe here Mike?"

Afraid of the crime, some Jamaicans never made a habit of walking on the streets, being lucky enough to afford other means of transport. I often sat in the back of my parents' car being driven to school and looked out at other school children walking hand in hand on the roads wondering who was there to protect them. As if in answer to my question, Mike said:

"Nothing in life is really safe. We'll protect each other." Yes, they were protecting each other, I thought.

I decided to spend the morning in. As much as I had enjoyed being led into the liveliness of the past few days, I wanted a minute alone, to pause, think and recharge.

Out on the patio, I heard heavy footsteps coming down the gravel path that connected the two houses. Miss Patt caught my eye as she climbed the steps of the deck.

"Ani? What happened? They leave yuh?" ending with a small laugh.

I laughed with her. "No, I just decided to sleep in today."

She took a seat next to me, resting from her trek.

"So you taking off and leaving too?" she asked, patting my leg affectionately.

"Yes, end of the summer."

"Lawd, I don't know how yuh parents goin manage. It already hard not having Diane here and now Gracie want to leave mi too. Says she will get scholarship to study away so she can practice dance." She sighed heavily. "I wish she would just do as her sister did. Stay here, practice medicine or something and get a good job. There's no good opportunities for her here if its dance she truly love." She smiled and looked at me. "You young people don't understand, but is hard to have your children so far away from you, where you can't protect them. Connie want to go away to play football too. I tink Nelson would like him to go too but to study Business or Finance or someting, if only to get him away from di same crime that tek him first son. But at the same time, it hard, to just let your one child leave."

I also understood a similar feeling of being torn between the love of your country, your family, your home, and wanting the world and all it had to offer that home couldn't. A classic battle of hope and fear. The push and pull of emotions that left one at an in between, feeling lost and confused, and for a minute I envied people who wanted to live where they were born. I wanted more, but it felt like betrayal to leave the place that had given me everything so far. It felt like giving up, like losing hope, like running away. It felt like being ungrateful for what I already had; like walking that thin line between progress and greed; like being selfish; like choosing myself over my country; like I had lost pride in my own home.