Children of Paradise: A Novel (19 page)

Trina jumps out of bed and hits her head on the top bunk. She brings her hand to her nose again and stares hard at it in the dark with the expectation that blood might shine above everything. She runs on her toes to Rose’s bed. But Rose is not there. Her bed looks bulky with her pillow tucked in to replace her body. Trina decides to leave the dormitory and find her mother. She steps with care as if injured, afraid that if she walks, she might worsen her injury. She feels faint, thinking about her blood exiting her body.

—Trina. Trina.

She hears her name but fails to recognize the voice. She feels confused at the thought of her blood spilling from her body. She feels giddy.

—Trina.

The dark appears to thin, and minute by minute a gray veil becomes apparent. She thinks the smell of her blood spreads with this veil, her blood mixed in with this light. Everyone must smell it and, if awake, see it as well.

—Trina.

Her name again, in a voice she has never heard. She stumbles and falls, and two strong arms catch her and tip her back up onto her feet, and she sees Adam standing in front of her, steadying her, and his body that is big and broad and dark makes him look as massive as the night. Trina’s eyes darken and she topples.

Ryan circles back on himself, not to dodge panther or jaguar but to find the compound. All the trunks of trees look the same. All the vines hide the face of the trees. The leaves decorate the giant body of the forest like scales. The scales shine green and iridescent in the changing light. Ryan laps up condensation pooled in a large leaf, and for a moment he sees the features of the man he will never become on the face of the boy he was never allowed to be. What are Rose and Trina up to now? And now? His parents must be worried. They stop being his parents out here among the trees, and he ceases being their son. He marks the trees to try and map his wanderings and comes back on old marks and makes new ones, sets out in a new direction. If he finds the compound, he will enter it a stranger to everyone and to himself.

He no longer runs from jungle noises. He stops hiding. More of him hungers to meet something inescapable and final, much more than any yearning to find the one place left that he can call home: the commune he ran from that now hides from him.

Trina opens her eyes or thinks the words, eyes open, and realizes her body is being transported. Her head lolls to the rhythm of walking, but her feet hang off the ground. She lies curled in the crook of a pair of arms. In the distance, a single jet trail scores against the sharpening blue. No sound makes it from the jet, and the tail of the plume disappears as soon as the front unfolds. She thinks the end of the jet trail must be tucked back into the beginning, and the lingering middle section of the trail represents the unending forward propulsion of a wheel. The white changes to red, and she jerks her head forward to check on her body.

Relax, young lady. We’re almost there.

The sight of the nurse makes Trina relax. She is in the good hands of someone qualified to worry about her condition. Her mother runs to them, and the nurse eases Trina to her feet, and her mother hugs her. The nurse takes Trina’s pulse and says it is fine and looks into Trina’s mouth and peels back the lids of her eyes and pronounces her slightly anemic but otherwise shipshape. Joyce and Trina thank the nurse, who advises Trina to take a good shower.

—You have to be aware of time and your body from now on.

—I don’t have a watch, Mum.

—Your inner clock, Trina. You’ll have to listen to your body. You’re a young lady now. We need to get you cleaned up.

—And my anemia?

—Nothing some spinach and greens won’t cure.

—Chocolate contains iron, right?

—Less than prunes.

—Yuck.

In the washroom, Trina’s mother tells her that she smells just like Adam on account of sleeping under his blanket.

—Did you sleepwalk to his cage?

—I was carried there, Mum.

—Who carried you there?

—I don’t know. I’m not sure. It’s a bit hazy.

Joyce shows her how to position a piece of cloth in her underwear to catch the blood. She advises Trina to pick long dresses, dark colors, at this time of the month and to take the pain in her womb as a sign to be prepared for her period. Trina should be proud, and much will be expected of her since she is no longer a girl but a young woman. Trina nods.

—What about my bed?

—Don’t worry about that, someone will take care of that. This is not like wetting your bed. This is special.

—I feel tired.

—You never sleepwalk.

—I heard my name. Ryan calling me. He looked like a beast.

—That’s some dream.

—It felt real, Mum. Why would I sleep on the ground covered by a stinky blanket next to Adam’s cage?

—You tell me. Did you lose a bet?

—No, I—Never mind.

Joyce leads Trina past the dining hall and into the kitchen. Trina looks on as her mother boils a pot of water and reaches up to a shelf, extracts a clay jar fastened with a cork, pulls off the cork cover, and removes a handful of leaves. Trina cannot read the handwritten label. Joyce says it is an Indian remedy for women’s troubles. Trina likes being seen as a woman even if she is in trouble. Her mother pours the leaves into the pot of boiling water, stirs the contents for a while, then hands Trina the job of stirring and says she hopes and prays that she will live long enough to see Trina do this same task for her own daughter someday.

Joyce ladles some of the greenish liquid into a cup and sweetens it with honey but does not add any milk. She says the milk would curdle. She hands Trina the cup and tells her to drink it all up to cure the pain. Trina holds the cup in her hands and blows on the steaming concoction and sips it and savors the honey and the peculiar bitterness of raspberry leaf, black haw, chasteberry, kava kava, and ginger. She takes her time, to keep her mother with her for as long as she can. The pain below her stomach disappears, and hunger moves in. Her head feels light. She drinks more and cannot help smiling. She stares into the cup and wonders what her mother just gave her. Her bones feel hollow. She thinks if she pushes off the ground, she will float to the ceiling. Her mother smiles at her, and Trina tips the rest of the cup into her mouth.

The only time on the commune is the present, the here and now that the preacher pours his derision on, that deserves nothing of the people’s inner selves. Trina dreams, but not in dreamtime or dream space, she acts not in or through space. Awake or asleep, all her thoughts and actions on the commune feel the same.

She dreams herself a spider. To turn into a spider, she runs on two legs and those two beanpoles double into four sprightly things, and those four whirl into six, and the wheel of six sprouts another two so that eight legs operate like spokes on a wheel, they spin so fast, and that child converts wholesale into a prickly spider.

Joyce sees the transformation in Trina over and over. In the commune’s kitchen, as Joyce takes her turn to cook for one thousand hungry mouths, she speaks to Trina as she tends to her pots and pans.

—Don’t hang your mouth around me.

Trina’s mouth is always hungry for something. Joyce finds ways to feed that mouth without drawing rancor from the other cooks on duty. That is the last thing she needs. She does not want them to accuse her of showing favor to her child over all the other three hundred–plus children who belong to all the commune’s men and women equally and without rank by blood.

—Open your mouth and take in a morsel, but don’t chew, and try to look busy with it.

—Yes, Mother.

Joyce feeds Trina a piece of chicken. She holds it in two fingers and stuffs it into Trina’s open craw.

—Now clamp your little beak tight and swallow.

—Yes, Mother.

Joyce fancies that she sees the meat travel in a lump down Trina’s neck. Trina says something, anything, to show her mouthful of words, which are nothing, and so an empty mouth that contains nothing of meaning to anyone at the commune.

—That child can talk.

The women in the kitchen are talking within earshot of Joyce as a way to goad her to say something about their insult, calling Trina talkative. Hearing nothing from Joyce, they give up and turn after a slight pause to congratulate Trina on her first time.

—You’re a young lady now.

Trina knows this about herself and does not care, or she cares but does not wish to show them that she does. She wonders if, in her light-headed spider condition, she can float above the trees and find Ryan. Why not just change into a creature with higher concerns than the talk of cooks in a kitchen? Trina finds little room left for her among the giant ovens and outsize pots and a nest of knives that chop and dissect. No room for a dreaming spider.

She waves her arms as she talks about her spider’s view of a flock of parakeets chasing a giant hawk. She steps around Joyce. Her arms and feet move so fast, they become a blur and double in number, and she turns into Anansi, the trickster. Her mother playfully sprinkles some black pepper over Trina’s head, and the granules settle on her and resemble stubble clothing her body. Joyce tells Trina she must do this very spider thing if trouble meets her and her mother is not there to help her fend it off. Joyce says she must busy her arms and feet and talk fast and she will stop whatever harm is about to befall her.

—Just like the spider in the captain’s tales.

Trina smiles at the comparison her mother makes of her with a spider, and she smiles at her mother’s mention of the captain.

Joyce notes how Trina’s lips look just like hers but smaller. So her act of stuffing Trina’s mouth amounts to Joyce feeding herself. The piece of chicken that Joyce scoops from the pot while she pretends to stir must cool for a few seconds before she grabs it and feeds it to Trina. Trina’s tongue will burn and her eyes water if the food is too hot. She has to clamp shut and swallow no matter what Joyce stuffs into her mouth, so Joyce makes sure it is free of bones and spices and that it is cool enough for her child with a mouth like hers. As one hand busies itself by stirring a pot deliberately and lifting up and replacing a lid, Joyce’s other hand grabs a morsel and feeds it to her daughter. As one hand reaches for another pot cover, the free hand steers to Trina’s open mouth, agape as if about to speak or draw on air to launch words, not wait for food, not pause for longer than a second, which is all Joyce needs to feed Trina. Trina knows not to linger too long.

Trina must leave the kitchen soon. Joyce knows her daughter will return before too long unless she decides to help Rose finish a chore. The spider Trina becomes in front of Joyce’s eyes turns Trina into exactly what Joyce thinks her daughter needs to be at a commune, a trickster just like Anansi. She reminds her daughter to be alert at mealtimes, to chew her food before she swallows, and to look carefully at what is on her spoon before she puts it into her mouth.

—What should I look for?

—Not all of what adults offer children is good for them.

—You mean poison?

—Not every cook means well or offers what’s good to those who depend on her.

A guard intrudes on Joyce and Trina.

—Joyce, you put something in that child’s mouth?

—No, sir, I just brushed a fly from her face.

—You just swallowed something. Didn’t you, child?

—Yes, I swallowed the fly that my mother brushed from my face.

—All right, little miss spider. Out of this kitchen.

The guard marches off toward some other perceived infraction of commune rules. Joyce takes off her apron and tells the women nearby that she needs to do something, just one thing, for her daughter. Trina skips out of the kitchen ahead of Joyce. A child. A spider. Whatever of Joyce lives in Trina, Joyce wishes it to protect her daughter. Whatever remains of that trickster spider, Joyce hopes it helps Trina find her way alone, if need be.

—Trina, one day you’ll have to find your own food. Remember the captain’s stories? The spider always escapes from trouble.

Joyce thinks these things, and Trina hears them as if they are her own thoughts.

—Because I’m part of you.

It does not occur to Joyce that she will never feed Trina in this illicit way again. Joyce thinks that Trina will grow into a young woman capable of feeding herself who positively insists on finding her own food, and as her mother, she will eat from the same pot and at the same table.

Trina leaves the kitchen with her mother’s lips on her face. Her body belongs to a spider. The captain’s stories about Anansi the spider guide her just as the captain guided his boat from the capital to the settlement in the interior with Trina and her mother on board.

The preacher sends Joyce to the capital, to help organize the office and meet with ministers to discuss transactions between the government and local businesses and the commune. Trina accompanies her on most of these trips.

—Use that business-admin degree of yours to make this commune rich.

—Yes, Father.

As Joyce walks away from him, she feels his eyes on her back and a memory of his hands on her body from a time long gone and seemingly belonging to another life, not hers, not the one she lives in the commune away from everything she knows. Yet here she is, still answerable to the preacher she once worshipped and now simply wishes to keep at arm’s length, a man whose wrath is the only incentive for her obedience. And if it were just a matter of her own safety, it would not matter, but she thinks of Trina’s well-being in every move she makes and in all her dealings with the preacher. Trina first. Trina’s life that is ahead of her. Trina above all thoughts of Joyce’s own safety. Her child’s life, to be lived not here in this remote jungle, under rules that rob children of their youth, but some other as yet unknown place for Trina to flourish beyond the strictures of the commune under the preacher. Joyce decides for Trina’s sake to serve and bide her time and hope for some opportunity to arise, one she can seize with Trina that would transport both of them to a better place.

T
he commune business that takes her to the capital affords Joyce an alternate sense of time conjured by the river, a clock not of hours but of gestures, rainbow flocks, the seconds measured by the engine of the
Coffee
and its movement in the current. Joyce and the captain talk, and she rarely sleeps, just so they can. During a stop to stretch their legs along the riverbank, she joins the captain and other passengers for a swim in a tributary, and the captain says she has to see this great place a little way along. She walks with him on a trail with a towel wrapped around her swimsuit. They meet frogs the color of leaves, discernible only because of the peep-peep that makes her stop and stoop to give a closer look. He offers his hand and helps her over limbs fallen across the path. She hears the noise of water dropping from some height, and she strains to catch a glimpse of it and speeds up her pace in air that is now so full of moisture, it balms the skin. Into this gradual increase of water noise, she follows the captain and enters a clearing with him, and she looks and there it is, dropping from a promontory that resembles a giant skull with this water for waist-length hair. Mist rising in plumes, surrounding vegetation doused in it, no room in the air for anything but water. The next thing he asks her to do scares her, but he reads her face and slight hesitation and promises her it is safe. They will climb next to the falls about halfway up. For this he asks her to place her foot exactly where he places his, and she follows him up, and where she thinks the rocks must be slippery with moss, he finds a certain handgrip and foothold that provides a solid if somewhat clambering ascent. She watches him, his legs, his back, his arms and shoulders, to keep from craning at the height of the cataract. At the top of a ledge, he holds out his hand and helps her up beside him, and they step through the falling water and end up behind it and simultaneously move into a cave—just air and mist—with a feeling only of the cave’s quiet hush and the tingle on their skin after being pummeled by water. And there she wants to stay and do nothing for the rest of her days but only if Trina can be by her side.