I awoke the next morning with Mike's face just inches from mine, smiling like an anxious child, his cheeks and the tips of his ears were boyishly blushed red. I could tell that he had been up for a long time, running around the beach in the sun. His shirtless body gave off shimmering warmth in the cool, shaded room. His skin radiated the heat of outside, as if he had been drenched in it and I could feel it against the soft sheets and my cool skin.
It reminded me of times at my uncle's house on vacation running inside from out of the hot sun and the bright light and the rough ground into the cool, dark room with soft, slept in sheets and crumpled, silken, worn pyjamas and novels on bedside tables and suitcases flung open. There was something so appealing about cool pyjamas and bedroom sheets and a dimly lit room after being out in the striking sun. It was that beautiful contrast of peaking day and life, and slow life just calmly beginning. Like midday catching morning.
"What is it Mikey?"
"It's a beautiful day down here in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. The sun is bright, the weather is hot, the water's warm and the people are alive!" Then as he backed away and out of the room, "So get up!"
"What time is it?"
He shouted back to me, "Eight o'clock. Feels nice to see the morning light doesn't it, Ani?"
I rolled over reluctantly, then pulled myself out of bed. Him waking me up might have made me upset, except that I liked all different kinds of people – even the happy, peppy, morning ones.
Walking down the hall to the kitchen and living room I could smell breakfast being made already. Coffee, bacon, pancakes, ackee and saltfish, dumplings and fresh fruit covered the small island in the middle of the kitchen. Miss Patt had been cooking. Katie sat on the couch with a magazine in her hand, Marley was also just getting out of bed, John was standing out on the deck looking at the ocean and Mike was god knows where by now.
"Morning everyone," I said.
Katie smiled and Marley looked up in awe.
"He actually got you up this early?"
"Mike is a puppy that doesn't stop crying until he gets what he wants."
Marley, still stirring, plopped down on the couch next to Katie. I walked outside and hugged John from behind. He turned slightly, smiled sweetly, and put his arm around me.
"Hi," he said, and I smiled up at him.
Mike came running in then with Connie and what seemed like the whole kennel of dogs. "Let's eat!"
We sat on the patio outside and ate and discussed our plans for the day, Muffin's nose to the ground, looking for scraps. The weather was perfect and the water calm enough so we decided that it would be a beach day and that we would try to go canoeing.
The beach on this side of the sea was a massive expanse. The sand bank came right up to the house and stretched far back to where it met with the sea. Not only was it wide, but also long, stretching up and down for what seemed like miles, lined with several other beach houses, villas and cottages as well as tourist resorts.
Boats bobbed in the clear turquoise beside dark purple reefs and against a background of green mountains. The sun shimmered off the ocean and white sand. Sea gulls dived in the water and flew against the wind overhead and the waves crashed in the distance.
Already, the beach teemed with life. Jet skis moving blindingly fast skipped the water like pebbles, an alternating rhythm of buzzing and pounding as they skimmed and beat the waters. Fishermen lazed across the horizons in the far distance. Men worked in tedium, clearing the beach of seaweed washed ashore, slowly sweeping it into small mounds, the tide creating an unending task. Boats shuttled parties of people out into the seas or pulled tubers and para-sailors alike and winds whipped gliders into the air. A way down the beach, tourists at resorts stomped around the sands, stirring up clouds of white in their bright swimsuits and red skin. Mike's many kid cousins ran up and down the beach property with the dogs barking at their heels singing, shouting, chanting:
"Let's jump in the "wah-tah",
To get out the "sum-mah
Sun!"
I watched as the light glimmered golden off drops of the ocean on their wet skin and made their eyes sparkle in the effortless beauty of youth. They built castles in the sand, swung on tire swings and swings made of nothing more than a wooden plank and two ropes hung from tree branches between the main house and cottage and dived with Mike off the water trampolines. They took buckets of sand and saltwater on the reefs to collect snails. The house keepers yelled when they were caught running into the house, their clothes wet and their feet coated in sand.
Grace, Katie and I set towels and beach umbrellas out on the sand and brought out the coolers of drinks and food. We lay on the beach, letting the sun soak into our bodies and relax us. I meditated on a kaleidoscope of refracted light through the slits of my squinted eyes, the sun shining directly on my face, breeze in the wings and birds soaring high up in the bright blue sky.
For a while I heard nothing but the sea moving back and forth and the wind in the trees. Then at the water's edge the sound of a ball being kicked and splashing in the water and the excited yelling of children as they and the boys kicked the ball back and forth.
We watched them for a while and then challenged them to a race along the water's edge. I wasn't sure if it was the extra tennis I had been playing or the fact that I felt more energetic, but I beat them all out, running faster than I thought I could, willing myself forward. I sometimes surprised myself.
John caught up to me at the finish, laughing and panting in breathless excitement like a child. He scooped me up easily, grinning from ear to ear and gave me a kiss. "Fast little thing you are," he said, at which I laughed.
"So she's good on land, but how does she fare in the water?" he said before throwing me in.
I gasped in shock, surfacing and trying to catch my breath but finding it hard due to my laughter. I splashed John and pulled him in with me. Floating on the water on my back, I closed my eyes, seeing nothing but the brightness of the sun, feeling nothing but its warmth on my face and with my ears half submerged, hearing nothing but my even breaths.
For the rest of the morning we went snorkelling and shell collecting with the kids. Mike tried not so successfully to help them fly a kite in the sea breeze. When we thought the boys were swimming too far out, we frantically called them back in. They'd come back to shore soaking wet and laughing unconcerned, playfully shaking water onto us like dogs as we lay on our towels.
"Jerks," Katie scolded while I stuck my tongue out at them.
John plopped down next to me on the towel, pulling me into an embrace and making me wetter. He smiled mischievously like a boy, then intensely, like a man, and wiped a bead of water off my cheek while I stared into his sapphire eyes.
We went to the main house for lunch. It was large and decorated less casually than the little cottage. The stone steps and old wood floors reminded me of hauntingly old cobbled architecture. The food was laid out buffet style in the formal dining room. I saw John's father again briefly as he fixed plates of food for the twins and chatted brightly with other members of John and Mike's family. I sat and ate with Connie, Grace, Marley and John and his little brothers who were as energetic as ever and had to be coaxed by us to sit down and eat something before running off again to play. Katie spoke with Mike's brother and his friends. Mike was nowhere to be seen.
After lunch, we took the canoes out on the water. I sat with Mike in his canoe and he paddled out like his life depended on it. After a while I stopped paddling too.
"Mike! We're going too far! The others are way back."
I turned to see them standing in the canoe, Katie looked concerned, Marley looked like he was chuckling slightly and a little worry were at the corners of John's squinted eyes.
"Ani, relax! I go further out than this all the time."
"What about sharks?"
"No sharks...well I may have seen one once but..."
"Mike! Take me back!"
He laughed and said, "Okay! Okay!" and then under his breath as he turned us around. "Baby."
I smacked the back of his head lightly with my hand which made him laugh more.
As we were paddling back I thought about how my sudden sense of terror had little to do with the fact that he had mentioned the possible sharks. It was that we kept moving forward, further away and I didn't know to what, worried that we would eventually lose sight of the shore.
"How'd you like that?" John asked when we got back to them. I couldn't help but notice that he looked slightly amused.
"Keep that maniac away from me," I said, looking at Mike.
He grinned wide. "Ah come on Ani!" and he laughed.
I rolled my eyes.
Later that night, we all took cool showers and washed the salt and sand off, our bodies still hot from the sun and then sat out in the cool night air under the high fan on the patio and ate dinner.
Against our tanned and pink skin, our eyes glowed bright and our lips glowed red in the soft moonlight. We were exhausted but relaxed. Our soft clothes felt protective and comforting against our bodies which had been left exposed all day in just our swimsuits. The lingering smell of coconut sunblock on our skin reminded me of being young and my mother rubbing sunscreen all over me at the beach or before playing tennis and feeling embarrassed or impatient and squirming out of her hands.
With full stomachs, we sat in silence on the couch, pleasantly entwined in each other and just listened to the sea. I wondered what it was about the night that brought people together. Perhaps our vulnerability in the darkness. Perhaps the intimacy of our honesty. For it was the night when we were most open and honest with ourselves, I thought, and the morning when the fears and inhibitions crept back in. The night when our hearts spoke to us, and the morning when we no longer listened. It was so often at night that people showed you what was really inside of them; in the day, they pretended they were okay again.
When we all started falling asleep, we finally headed to bed.
A sharp scream from Katie as she was brushing her teeth in the bathroom had us all huddled into the hall just outside, watching her run out, toothpaste still dripping down her chin.
"A croaking lizard!" she blurted out, jumping up and down and shaking her hands as if to get the image of the transparent grey, slithering creature out of her mind, eyebrows knitted in disgust and fear, forehead creased in deep concern.
The only creature hated more than mosquitos in Jamaica were those lizards that made a strange croaking sound.
"Mike you have to get it out."
"Oh my gosh," Mike said, exasperated. "Do I have to do this every time? It won't hurt you."
"Please, I don't want to look at it or have it anywhere near me in case it decides to jump on me."
Mike sighed and went into the bathroom where we heard banging. He ran out soon after, as if chasing something on the ground and we all scattered from out of the hall.
"Shit," Mike said, his eyes scanning the floor. "Where did it go? Little fuckers are too fast."
Everyone was silent, waiting, Grace, Katie and I up on the chairs. Then suddenly Mike jumped.
"Fuck! It's on me!"
And there it was on his foot and we all screamed and scattered away and Muffin barked and jumped around excited not knowing what was going on and the poor thing terrified skittered around the room and finally ran outside. But Mike, still thinking it was on him ran outside shaking his clothes like he had ants on him, moving too close to the pool and Muffin jumping on him in excitement pushed him in. We had all been watching from inside and gasped. His head bobbed up and all I heard was a loud, "Rass!" And then he kissed his teeth. For a second we were all frozen, waiting for further eruption. It was John's howling laugh that broke the silence and we all started laughing half hysterical from the ordeal, until we couldn't breathe. Mike got out and stalking to his room said, "if you had just let me leave the god damn thing alone" and went to take another shower leaving us in tears.
Katie and I left the windows open in our room and allowed the warm cool breeze to drift in through the window shutters, swaying the thin curtains gently. Outside I could see the moon reflecting off of the black sea, giving it a slightly blue shimmer. Thin clouds washed over it like the tide. The palm trees swayed slightly and brushed the side of the wall and the tide moved in and out calmly, stroking the shore at the speed of our breath. I felt so relaxed, my body limp, at ease, as if in a trance. I closed my eyes, my skin embracing the cool sheets after warming in the sun all day, my muscles pleasantly worn out and tired. I fell asleep so easily to the feeling that my body was still floating on water. My legs felt airy, light. I could feel the waves on my body still, coming and going, pulling and hugging, pulling and hugging, embracing.
That night I dreamt that the sun soaked warm through my skin and reflected off my pale white bones that for some reason, strange and unexplainable except through the logic of unconsciousness, I could see, and so I glowed and glowed and glowed like the moon into the dark night.