Iron Balloons (16 page)

Anita climbed the ladder. When she reached the top, she turned her head to the right and to the left as Joseph had done, and noticed something extraordinary. The pool, which minutes before was crowded when she, her husband, and her daughter had arrived, was now completely empty.

Moira McShine, who was lying on a plastic chaise under the shade of an umbrella, as her mother had advised her, since her skin tended to tan faster and darker than her lighter-skinned friends, had witnessed the retreat from the pool. She had not seen when Joseph Streeter dove into the water, but she was aroused from her daydream by Mrs. Forester’s querulous voice as she passed in front of her, dragging her two protesting children: “A big black man like that! He doesn’t care who’s in his way. He just dived in. Didn’t care if the children were there. He could have killed them. That’s why we don’t want their kind here. Why we have
rules
.”

Moira sat up in time to see Anita Streeter poised on the diving board. Below her, mothers and fathers clapped their hands and called to their children to come out of the pool. Barbara and Helen, Moira’s best friends, who had invited her to join them at the Paradise Country Club, were sitting at the edge of the pool dangling their feet in the water. When Mrs. Streeter dove in, they got up, wrapped their towels around their waists, and walked toward Moira.

“You see that?” Barbara said, and rolled her eyes.

“What?” Moira asked, genuinely puzzled.

“That big black woman. They always spoil everything.”

And the Streeters did spoil everything. Children were whimpering petulantly, some shrieking, as parents pulled them to the changing rooms. Sunbathers grumbled as they slipped on dresses, pants, and shirts over their bathing suits, and teenagers rushed to line up behind the two wall telephones in the foyer to call their parents.

“Coming?”

Barbara had to ask the question twice, for Moira was still entranced by the photograph her eyes had taken of an elegant dark woman in a red bathing suit that showed a figure that her father would describe as “hourglass”: an ample bosom, a well-defined waist, hips that flared and tapered into perfect thighs and legs. A woman who in no way could be styled as big. Full-figured, but not
big
. A woman who seemed uncommonly attractive.

Before Moira could turn away, her eyes locked with those of Mrs. Streeter’s teenage daughter, who was not in the pool. She was standing next to her father near the diving board, lips curled, eyes filled with more disdain than Moira had encountered in all her sixteen years.

The next morning, the story was plastered all over the daily newspaper. Mr. and Mrs. Streeter were painted as two thoughtless black people, too lazy to take the long drive over the mountains to the public beach, and “boldface too boot,” in the words of one eyewitness. Just because they saw “decent people” bathing in the pool, and because the pool could be seen from the street, they figured they could stop their car and take a dip.

“Americans!” a reporter wrote indignantly. “They think they own the world. Those two and their daughter didn’t care one cent that they were disturbing the peace and tranquility of our families trying to spend a quiet morning with their children. They just jumped right in the pool without so much as a ‘Beg you please,’ splashing water all over the little children and frightening them.” He quoted one mother who said her daughter was crying so hysterically she had to take her to the doctor. “Tourists,” fumed the reporter, “some of them have no respect.”

But the reporter could not have been more wrong. By the time he had discovered his mistake, the printing press for the newspaper had shut down and it was too late for the editor to recall the stacks of papers that had already been picked up by the deliverymen for distribution the next morning.

What the editor, a French Creole in his fifties thinking about retirement, was told that evening as he was polishing off a rum punch in the Red Lion Pub, was that Mr. and Mrs. Streeter were not ordinary Americans, not ordinary black people either, not even regular tourists. They were guests of the U.S. Ambassador to the island, now a republic since it had gained its independence from England some twenty-five years ago. They had not found their way accidentally to the swimming pool in the Paradise Country Club. They had not stopped their car because they had noticed people bathing in the pool and decided to take a dip too. They had gone to the club intentionally, at the invitation of the U.S. Ambassador, who had taken the precaution of indicating so in writing on a note that he had given to Mr. and Mrs. Streeter. When the family had entered the club, there was no one at the reception desk, so they had gone directly to the pool, assuming that no problems would arise if they showed the note when asked.

There was more that the editor found out. He found out that Mr. and Mrs. Streeter were important people in the United States. Mr. Streeter was a well-known and respected Civil Rights lawyer and his wife was a professor at Princeton University, a member of the Ivy League.

The apologies came swiftly and abundantly. The radio blared them on the hour. Before the newspaper arrived at the doorsteps of houses and shops the next morning, everyone on the island had formed an opinion on what had happened at the Paradise Country Club the day before.

“Bet those stupid people thought their black skin was going to dirty the pool,” Horace McShine said to his daughter. (Horace McShine was considerably darker than his wife, from whom Moira had inherited her light skin.) “You’d think with Independence, now we own our own island, people would forget all that nonsense about who light and who white. Sometimes I think we harder on our own black people than the English.”

But the Americans were not satisfied with apologies. They wanted the truth, plain and unadulterated. They wanted no pretense about frightened little children, or stories about mothers trying to pacify them. They stated their position clearly in the statement they gave to the newspaper: “Those people came out of the pool because we are black. They did not want to be in a pool with black people.”

The manager of the Paradise Country Club was foolish enough to be defensive. Interviewed on the early-morning news, he argued that if Mr. Streeter had shown the staff the note from the U.S. Ambassador, there would have been no problem.

“Mr. Streeter said there was no one at the reception desk,” the interviewer countered. “And he had seen other people walk right into the club.”

“Of course. They were regulars.”

“Mr. Streeter said he waited for the receptionist, but nobody came.”

“We plan to fix that. The receptionist will be disciplined. But you just can’t walk into a private club and go in someone’s pool. I’m sure you can’t do that in America. I think Mr. Streeter was projecting.”

“Projecting?” asked the interviewer.

“All of us live here together good, good. We are a cosmopolitan people. We have Indian, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, French Creole, English, and black people living good, good together here. We don’t have all that racial trouble they have in America. I really didn’t appreciate Mr. Streeter’s insinuations. People were frightened. They thought he was an intruder.”

“Like a thief?”

“Well, not exactly like a thief. But how would you like for someone to just come in your house and swim in your swimming pool? We’re sorry for the mix-up. I myself would have come out and greeted Mr. Streeter if he had shown us the note from the Ambassador. We’re not like the United States,” he said again. “You know our slogan. ‘All ah we is one.’”

And most of the people on the island agreed. The Streeters should lighten up. “Foreign people take things too serious,” was the general consensus of many of the passengers in the dollar taxis on their way to work that morning.

By lunchtime, talk radio had taken over. “Come on,” said the radio host. “Skin color not like cheap cloth. It don’t bleed in the water. You could mix black and white and pink and yellow and they don’t stain one another.”

His sidekick chuckled. “I tell you, if skin color does bleed in water like cheap red cloth, it have a lot a people go jump in the water hoping that the red color stain out their black.”

“Or the white bleach it!” the radio host roared.

The Streeters were incensed. That black people—for they were certain the radio talk show host and his callers were black—would speak so disparagingly of their own kind in public, on the air, enraged and confounded them. They shot back with terse, angry statements that were printed in the press. If they were white, they contended, no one would have left the pool. Yes, perhaps they could have waited longer for the receptionist, but it was a very hot day and they had a note from the Ambassador. It was reasonable for them to conclude that when the receptionist finally arrived, it would be easy enough to show the note. But it was because they were black that the receptionist did not give them the courtesy of inquiring if they had permission to swim in the pool.

Mr. Streeter went on to add that he was certain that many of the white people in the pool that day were foreigners who did not have membership in the club. But the management
presumed, presumed,
without any other evidence except skin color, that because those people were white they belonged in the pool, that they had to be guests of the members. He had no doubt that the receptionist was the one who sent out the alarm for the people to leave the pool.

About the comic banter on the radio, Mr. Streeter said he was deeply hurt and disappointed in his black brothers and sisters. He expected more from people who had got their independence from the white colonial powers. He said he expected them to be as outraged as he was. He ended his interview with the reporter with a show of erudition. He was not a psychologist, he said, but he was an educated man. He read. And if his black brothers and sisters had read what one of their black brothers from another island had written, they would understand that they were still in prison, in the prison of their colonial minds. Read Franz Fanon’s
Black Skin, White Masks
, he said, flinging out the words derisively at the reporter, who recorded them precisely. Try to improve yourselves.

Never judge a book by its cover. Little children learn this adage with their ABCs. The Streeters heard none of the pain and frustration submerged beneath the jokes that crisscrossed the island all day. Had Mr. Streeter limited his criticism to the management of the Paradise Country Club and to the idiots who came out of the pool, the people would have trusted him. Eventually they would have admitted him into their circle, and he would have discovered how they had survived. How, through years of brutal slavery, how, though their island was used as the seasoning station before Africans were shipped to America, they had not merely survived but had excelled.

They would have explained to Mr. Streeter what they meant by seasoning, assuming he would not understand. For they knew that in the big countries, people did not season their food before cooking it. That it was reputed they took raw chicken, just as it was in the package from the store, and cooked it like that without chive and thyme and lime and garlic and so on. So unless they explained seasoning, the Streeters would not understand how you could season a man or woman and change people’s smell and their taste so that when they reached America, they would behave just so. They would plant cotton, haul wood, fetch water, and you would only have to add a little salt and black pepper to get them to remember how the red pepper and green onion and lime used to cut through their open wounds.

If the Streeters knew what went on at the seasoning station, they would understand that you had to be strong, you had to be smart, smarter than the seasoners themselves, to outfox them. You had to know how to cover up your own taste and your own smell, so though they rub you down with garlic and shado beni, and on the outside you smelling like you seasoned, on the inside you haven’t changed at all. You still the same thing. You still the same original man, the same original woman.

But Mr. Streeter had presumed to know more about them than they knew about themselves. He had taken it upon himself to be their teacher and to give them advice. So they concluded that he was like every other foreigner—never mind he was black—who thought he was better, superior to them, who looked at the sun and sea and reached the same conclusion: This was a playground, home to light-headed men and frivolous women.

And it was true that the island was like a playground. The sun shone brightly almost every day, bathing the trees in flashes of gold. And they never had those hurricanes that devastated the other islands, for the island was situated in the doldrums, neither too far nor too near the equator, between those latitudes where the winds died down and the ocean subsided. A playground indeed: long, white beaches at the base of thick, verdant hills. Sky bluer than the sea and sea blue as the veil on the statue of the Virgin Mary on the side altar of the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Clouds most of the time whiter than the alabaster statues of those white Catholic saints. If God had planned to design a playground where people could relax and be happy, He could have created no better.

But people spoiled it. People from the cold places in the North. First, they killed the fighting Caribs and infected the peaceful Arawaks with their nasty diseases. Next, they dragged the Africans over in chains and seasoned them. When they had used up the Africans, they seduced the Indians and Chinese with promises of land for labor. Then they abused them too. It took two world wars to stop them. After that, there was nothing else for the people to do but to make a callaloo.

All ah we is one
. But everybody knew where his place was in that straight line of one.

Things eventually got so out of hand with statements and counterstatements from Mr. Streeter and the management of the Paradise Country Club appearing daily in the newspaper, with the radio waves virtually cackling as hosts and callers tried to outdo each other with their witty remarks, with everyone, even children, seeming to have an opinion, that on the fourth day, when calypsonians began to sing about “the commotion on an island in the ocean” and “black stool in the pool,” the Prime Minister was forced to intervene.