The sun was sinking in a pink and orange sky, and tall, overhanging Flamboyant and Sweet Almond trees cast their shadows across her path. It was August, the tail-end of the rainy season, and the yards were cloaked in dark, velvet green, the leaves releasing the last shimmering pearls of water to the sodden earth. Leaving behind the shuttered houses, she turned into a wide street leading into the city center. There was political unrest in the city, and Angelita could hear the voices of protesters from the quiet of the street. Just ahead, the Royal Palms and white picket fence, which girdled the green lawns of Government House, came into view. The police sentries were lowering the British Flag and standing beside them was the Governor. The flag was being lowered earlier than usual, in expectation of trouble. Angelita lingered before the Royal Palms and the white fence of Government House, not because she wanted to watch the lowering of the flag but because she wanted to see the Governor. Two girls, passing by, shouted out, "Waika di kohn," then ran away, laughing.
There was a melancholy air about the governor and Angelita put down her croaker sack to better inspect the man in a white shirt, tie, and shiny black shoes. Their eyes met and he turned away from her. The woman's audacity astounded him. The steady gaze, like many of her countrymen, dismantled him, piece by piece. His fishing trip had been interrupted by news of impending riots and he was in an irritable mood. This, one of the last colonial postings had come his way by accident and although there was little to do, as his responsibilities had been reduced to defense and public order, he was grateful. The posting would see him to retirement.
"Waika", the two girls shouted from the distance. The word carelessly flung in his direction peaked his interest, and ignoring the brazen woman, still staring at him, he went to the fence and looked down the street. In the distance, the approaching protesters were being intercepted by the police. He could see lit torches, a symbolic gesture from the past when the focus for demonstrations was the colonial administration. He had received reports that government buildings were being stoned by angry mobs. Yes, he thought, the Waika were indeed coming and history was in the making. His mind turned to his dinner, it was getting cold and, with the flag lowered, he returned indoors.
Angelita walked through the crowd of protestors, drinking in the anger, letting it rekindle her own. She steered through police blockades and onlookers, then turning off the main street, and the last vestiges of middle-class wealth, she walked down the narrow lanes hedged by wooden houses, timbers gray and wet with patches of rot. They leaned towards her as if trying to escape the flooded yards. Ahead of her, a family, a young mother and five children, each with a plastic bucket in hand, made their way to a pipe stand. People in this part of town had no access to sewage services and water was distributed via pipe stands. Eventually, she came to a narrow bridge which spanned a dark, murky canal. The canal, overhung by a corrugated-iron latrine, ran alongside the bus terminal. Crossing the canal she saw a bloated cat mired in the blackened sludge. The last bus to the town, some ten miles from her village, was pulling out in a cloud of diesel fumes. People were milling about the terminus and food vendors boarded stationary buses, carrying covered pans and tubs filled with johnny cakes, meat pies, conch fritters and fresh juices. Angelita, seeing that she was stranded at the terminal, found a seat in the waiting hall on a bench shared with a family. She closed her eyes and listened to the shuddering and shaking of the Yellow Bird buses, motorized truck frames attached to bus bodies constructed from thin, sheet metal. She knew the inside of these buses like the back of her hand; they were a tenuous link to her mother. Seated beside her mother, she had rattled down potholed roads and highways to attend the births of babies in towns and villages right across the district. Before each journey, her mother would carefully select marigold flowers and basil leaves from her garden and tie them into two little pouches, one she put into her brassiere and the other she attached to a string and hung it from Angelita's neck. The protective function of her mother's charms was no different to the protective function of the pictures of the Sacred Heart or Blessed Virgin which the bus driver hung at the front of the bus. On stepping into the bus, everyone knew that they were placing themselves in the hands of fate.
The buses, purchased second hand from North America, were in danger of rattling apart on the roads. Pinned together by rivets, their sheet metal skins offered no protection in collisions and when, as often happened, the bus ran off the road, sometimes overturning, they opened up like a can of sardines, the jagged edges cutting through flesh with the ferocity of serrated carving knives. Yet, notwithstanding the dangers, the buses were part of the fabric of life's fragility. Death was a familiar face at one's door. Angelita, sitting in the bus terminal, had stepped into her mother's world and already she could feel the freedom of the road. She wanted to feel the breeze, from the open bus window, washing over her face and to be mesmerised by the shadow of the bus hurtling along, keeping pace on the sun baked roads; to hear the scream of cicadas from the jungle's edge. She wanted to be empty.
Through closed eyes, Angelita detected the motion of people by the shadows they cast. When the family with whom she shared her bench left, she sensed that someone had taken their place. She was touched on her hand and, opening her eyes, she saw that it was Lazario. He had brought her some food but she did not want him there and turned away. He talked quietly to her, telling her that the apartment above the liquor store had been painted white. He had put up, as she had requested, green and white awnings outside the windows. He told her how fresh and pretty it looked. But she did not have ears for the plans they had made for their first home. Eventually, he fell silent and she closed her eyes again and then got up and moved to another bench. She lay down, placing her croaker sack as a pillow under her head. She took off her shoes not caring that Lazario saw her like this. She would never see him again, so what did it matter.
Lazario watched over her, while she slept. He saw that her clothes were too small and that she had pinned her blouse to stop it from opening. Her plastic shoes, on the cement floor, were stretched and misshapen. He suspected that these were the clothes she had worn when she first came to the city many years ago. She had filled out since then. When he pictured her, in his mind's eye, it was always in bright floral dresses, which she sewed herself. She had taken to arranging her hair with clips and velvet bands to match her dress. It pained him to see her looking so impoverished and alone. It pained him even more that she would not accept his protection. At five in the morning, he was still sitting on the bench alongside hers, and when she boarded the bus, he stood watching it maneuver the narrow street and disappear out of sight.
*
The afternoon sun was low in the sky when Angelita stepped down from the bus onto the roadside. It was a new experience to be delivered almost to her door. When she had left the village, the only conveyance to the town, which served as a transport hub for the northern district, was the back of a truck. The truck service had been replaced by a bus which had raced along the newly paved highway. Her village was one of many strung along the highway. Dirt roads ran off in all directions. The dirt road to her house was just after the humped-back bridge crossing a dry, seasonal creek bed. She headed in the direction of the bridge, noticing how the village had changed. Where there had only been one shop there was now a bakery, restaurant, gas station, grocery shops, and a bar. Tall, wooden, electricity poles supporting street lights and power lines were evidence of progress. As she turned into her road, she saw that the wood and thatch houses had been replaced by single story cement homes. Chickens scratched in yards planted with hibiscus and bougainvillea, and children played beside pickup trucks parked on grass verges. As she passed the last house, someone called to her, "Miss Angelita, Miss Angelita". A woman carrying a baby waved her down, telling her to wait. She returned holding up a set of keys. "Nobadi deh hoam," she called.
She approached Angelita with a big smile, "Yu memba mee, Miss Angelita? "
Angelita nodded and gave her a hug. She remembered her well. Miss Martha had an asthmatic daughter. She was not from the village, but she had married a village man. Miss Martha gave her the keys and explained that the house was empty because her father was now living on the coast. He had remarried and had two sons by his new wife. She accompanied Angelita to her house, all the while, rocking the fretful baby.
The garden was overgrown but the marigolds by the front door were blooming. When Angelita opened the door, Miss Martha warned her that everything was not as she had remembered. Her father's new wife had emptied the house of anything of value. She showed Angelita around the hollow rooms and said that she often visited just so as to feel the presence of her mother. It was always peaceful in the house. She handed the baby to Angelita and opened the back door. The rainforest rose up behind the house and a flock of parrots flew across the clearing. Miss Martha indicated with her chin, "Dehn beri yu ma dong bai di krik soh."
Angelita did not look to where Miss Martha indicated. She knew exactly where her mother was buried. Keeping to the shade of the house, she blew over the baby's head. Miss Martha smoothed down the damp tendrils of hair on the baby's forehead and, pulling a handkerchief from her bosom, wiped away the beads of perspiration. Then turning to Angelita, she asked softly "Miss Angelita, wai yu neva kohn hoam."
Angelita gently placed the baby back into Miss Martha's arms, still blowing over his face. The baby had stopped his fretting and was closing his eyes. The sun cast a last reddened finger of light through the open door and then slipped away. With each passing minute the house darkened and the sounds of the forest grew louder. Angelita stood outside the door and looked towards the sky, directing her answer to the Milky Way and to her mother, "As Gaad da mi witness Miss Martha, di news neva reach mi."
Miss Martha explained that after her mother's death, her father went looking for her in the city. He found the house where she was employed but was turned away by a woman. The woman had no time for him because he was drunk. He never even got to say who he was, she closed the door in his face. He stayed drunk for weeks, and, during that time, Miss Martha had cared for her little brother. Angelita wiped away a tear, the first she had shed since coming home. One after the other, the tears fell, and she wiped them away with her shirt collar. She had no one to blame but herself.
Angelita left Miss Martha, standing in darkened doorway, and headed for the creek where her mother was buried. The creek was fed by a spring which emerged from a stone cistern. At certain times of the year, great numbers of large shimmering blue butterflies came to the spring, settling on the earth and stones along its path. The spring was also where her mother harvested wild basil and rue. Angelita skirted the fruit orchard, passing her mother's healing hut, standing on a low hillock, then took a path, beside the hut. But something was wrong, she could not hear the sound of water. She spied her mother's grave, a discolored, rectangular cement structure with a lopsided wooden cross at its head, bearing her mother's name; but the stone cistern had disappeared. Her mother had always said that this little spot of ground was a special place. She would bring Angelita here, tired after a day of attending to the people who came to her for treatment, a day which started at four in the morning with the ritual stoking of the fire hearth, of making tortillas for breakfast and feeding the animals. This was the place where she recharged her body. She would point up to the night sky, showing Angelita the Milky Way, and then pointing to the stone cistern, she explained that both were white snakes, watery paths traveled by the dead. The snake in the sky was connected to the snake on the ground. Her mother told her that if she looked carefully at the stone cistern, she would see that it resembled a snake's head. The stone was the head of the snake and its tail touched its mother up in the sky. The water coming out of the stone came straight from the stars. That's my healing water, she would say, and when I die I will travel up that little snake and journey with the stars.
The grave stood amidst secondary growth forest and Angelita had to beat down the bush with a stick to reach it. It was warm to the touch, the cement still holding onto the heat of the day. She swung the stick close to the ground, drawing small arcs as she walked in ever widening circles around the grave. The stick hit something and her feet began to sink in the wet, muddy ground. She had found the snake's head spring. Returning to the house, she made her way to the lean-to kitchen. The fire hearth was as she remembered and reaching up to the rafter over the hearth, she found what she had come for. With machete in hand, she chopped at the brush around the snake's head stone, then knelt and began to clear leaves and mud from a depression at the side of the stone. Bit by bit she revealed a small cavern just big enough to reach into with her head. She pulled out a partly decayed branch, large stones, and more mud. A loud sucking sound preceded a sudden gush of water, so strong it pushed her to one side. She washed the mud from her skirt, face, and hair and continued digging away at the soft earth in front of the stone. The darkness was lit by a big, round, full moon. The water belching from the snake head shone silver and, in the sky, the Milky Way had moved to an overhead position. Angelita kept digging away at the earth helped along by the force of the water. She was looking for something with her fingers but fatigue took over, and finally, she gave up and made her way back to the house. She would look in the morning.
At the house, Miss Martha was waiting for her on the front porch overlooking the moonlit road. She had a parcel wrapped in cloth which she handed to Angelita. It was a bowl of Caldo and a stack of tortillas. Angelita sat in the plastic chair Miss Martha had brought out from the front room and placed the bowl of soup on an impromptu table constructed from two upturned wood crates, stacked one on the other. While Angelita ate the Fish Caldo, Miss Martha updated her on the village news, the marriages, and births. It was not just her father who had married a woman from one of the coastal villages. Many such marriages had taken place, strengthening age old ties between the two communities.
"Miss Angelita," Miss Martha placed her hand on Angelita's shoulder as a way of demonstrating the importance of what she had to say, "nowadayz pipl rong ya gat latta moni. Gyal, tings dehn betta eena di vilij dahn di siti rait now. Wach how yu pa drive rong eena red pick-up chrok an ih aalwayz blayd up ih self. Miss Angelita dis da yu hoam! Stay gyal, wi need ahn midwife roun ya. Di pikni dem di suffa widowt yu ma."
Miss Martha's description of her father did not fit her memory of the man in a torn shirt, muddy boots, and machete who worked the land from morning till night. This man, well-dressed, who drove a red pick-up truck, was a character from another story. Miss Martha explained that tourism on the coast had opened a new income stream. She rubbed her fingers together and mapped out with her hands the thin trail of cash falling into empty pockets. With the money, people had built a home and bought a truck, and now farmers transported their produce to the local town market and also provisioned the guesthouses and hotels on the coast.
Miss Martha gathered her things and left. Angelita watched her disappear along the moonlit road and then shut the door. A deep, endless weariness had settled over her, and by the yellow light of a single bulb, she rummaged around a trunk in the bedroom for a hammock. She fixed the hammock to the hooks on the sitting room wall. The trunk was the only thing of value left in the house. Made of cedar, it was carved with two interlocking hearts bearing the names of her father and mother. On the lid, painted flowers surrounded two love birds. The trunk held her mother's clothes, shoes, blankets and three hammocks. Angelita put on her mother's night dress and,wrapping herself in the hammock, fell into a deep sleep.
It was still dark when she pulled her legs free from the hammock folds and touched the cement floor with her toes. The birds were just beginning their morning call. Barefoot and dressed in her mother's clothes, she made her way to the snake's head spring. From the path, the splashing of water greeted her. The place where she had dug was hollowed out into a small, clear pool and at its center was the thing she had been searching for, an ancient, frog-shaped, lidded vessel. She had first seen it as a child and had run to her mother to tell her that there was a pot in the stream and that it was croaking. Her mother had grabbed her by the arm and demanded to know whether she had touched it. She hadn't. She must never open it, as it would cause the spring to dry up, and she must never reveal what she had seen to anyone. It was after that event that her mother had started to teach her about plants. Her seeing the pot had changed things.
Angelita sat at the edge of the pool watching the sky catch fire. Fingers of gold and orange lit the darkness. Someone was burning bush not far away and the smoke rose high then drifted away. But then the wind changed direction and the smoke began to roll across her in thick clouds. Mingled with the smoke were voices. She followed the voices back to the house and saw two figures, partly hidden by the smoke; a boy and a man. The boy was so familiar that it had to be her brother and she ran to him and then drew back. It was Samuel. Confused, she looked up at Lazario and then again at Samuel.
Her mother's words came back to her, "Noh matter where you run Angelita, you kyaahnt run away fram yuself." She was caught like a fish on a hook and no amount of struggling would set her free. The back door was open and she could see across the sitting room to the windows overlooking the front yard. The sky blue Chevrolet was parked on the road and Miss Martha has headed up the path with her daughter in tow.