The Appetites of Girls (8 page)

O
n Saturdays, we visited the market in the center of town. For these excursions, Mother laid two or three sundresses on her bed, holding them against her one at a time before choosing. She donned her large-brimmed straw beach hat and round, black sunglasses. Before the mirror, she arranged the hat at various perches until she found the prettiest angle. Then we strolled along the road by the water, following the path lined with palm trees to avoid the swelter of the midday sun.

“‘Oh, the fisherman’s daughter, she cry, she CRY . . .’” I sang out the words I’d learned from the White Heron’s cooks.

“Is this performance for the benefit of the whole island?” Mother joked when my voice swelled.

At rickety stands under the tree branches, local women sat beading coral bracelets. “Lovely ladies! Something pretty for your wrists? Just five U.S. dollars for such lovely ladies.” I waved as we passed, wishing I had a pair of heeled sandals like Mother’s that clicked on the pavement.

Some Saturdays we browsed through the boutiques. My favorite was called Lusanne’s by the Sea. It was where my mother had bought her straw hat and two sleeveless blouses with frills adorning the chest. Everything in the shop flashed with bright colors—purple shell pendants that hung in the windows, gauzy skirts printed with birds or giant flowers, beach wraps that stirred on their hangers in the breeze from the open door. One morning the boutique bustled with tourists from a Norwegian cruise ship. Pale women fondled the trinkets and garments. In the doorway leaned three boys who looked close to my age. They were laughing with open mouths, taunting each other, pointing to some of the women and teenage girls in bikinis who sauntered up from the beach. I smiled at the tallest boy and gave a quick flutter of my eyelids. But he didn’t seem to notice, and I suddenly longed to be wearing something other than my baggy shorts and flat shoes. At the back of Lusanne’s was a small selection of sandals, all with cloth straps and thick, angled heels like Mother’s. I slipped my feet into one of the sample pairs and studied my reflection in the full-length dressing mirror, then strode across the room toward the boys, swinging my hips from side to side with each step.

“Sexy girl,” hissed one of the boys in his Nordic accent, bobbing his chin at me. His eyes trailed from my waist to my feet, and I sucked at my cheeks to keep from grinning.

To my delight, Mother agreed to buy me the shoes as well as a checkered halter top with gathered pleats in front, which gave me, for the first time, the illusion of a tiny bust. That evening, I allowed extra time in readying myself for dinner, adjusting my halter top until its folds fell in the most flattering places, winding the straps of my sandals high above
my ankles. When Mother disappeared into the bathroom, lathering her legs with scented lotion, I asked if I could try applying her lipstick on my own.

“Ooh, quite the little lady tonight, aren’t we?” she said, but though I waited, she added nothing further, only shook the contents of her lotion bottle.

So I fished through her cosmetic bag until I found the tube, then, with careful strokes, coated my top and bottom lips with a thicker layer than I had worn before.

Downstairs, while Mother attended to the dinner guests, I leaned against one of the wooden pillars dividing the dining area from the bar. A family with two boys my age or slightly older sat at a table to my right. I spun the ice in my ginger soda, checking my halter top now and then to make certain the pleats had not shifted. With each lull in the family’s conversation, I gently kicked one of my sandaled feet into the air, flexing my calf, the bare skin of my neck and shoulders prickling as I imagined their eyes on me. But it was one of the men at the bar who noticed me first, a Carib Indian whom I had seen at the Passionflower once or twice before.

“Enjoying your drink, missy?” He cocked his head to one side, staring, so that I felt he absorbed every bit of me from the silver barrette in my hair to the wedge heels of my new shoes. Like other Carib Indians on the island, he had high cheekbones, dark eyes, and such a smooth, brown complexion that it was impossible to tell his age.

I nodded and sipped from the thin straw in my soda, trying to remember Mother’s dainty way of swallowing.

“What do you have there? A Coca-Cola with rum?” He motioned with two fingers for me to take a step closer.

I smiled as I did so, pleased with his assumption. “No, just a soda,” I said, as though it were simply my choice for this particular evening.

He grinned so that I could see the pink crescents of his gums and lifted his Hairoun beer to his lips. “Do you have a name, miss?”

“Opal,” I told him, lowering my voice to a half-whisper as my mother did when introducing herself to men.

“Ah, a pretty name for a pretty girl.” His mouth glistened wet from his beer. I flushed from the flattery, not knowing what to say.

He told me that his name was Donavan and asked what he could buy me from the bar, pointing to my nearly empty glass.

“Another soda, please,” I said, swinging my leg so that the overhead lantern light caught my sandals.

As he handed me the glass, his fingers grazed mine for an instant, just as I had watched men do who offered drinks to Mother.

That night, under the cool of my sheets, I silently recited Donavan’s compliments. He liked my shirt, he’d said, the way it didn’t quite meet my shorts. He liked the strand of coral beads around my neck, which, he’d declared between swallows of beer, looked very grown-up. For hours I watched the wind twisting my curtains and the honey-yellow moon gleaming through my open shutters, wakeful with eager thoughts.

The following week, I convinced Mother to buy me a second halter top and a fitted red miniskirt with a calla lily painted on the pocket. And I began while dressing to take scraps of toilet tissue from the bathroom and fold them into two wads. These I arranged under the cotton of my blouse so that two small mounds protruded. I was learning the right clothes to wear, the way to stand with my hip askew and smile in order to draw attention. I was discovering the womanly manner of chattering nonchalantly that invited approving, winking eyes.

No longer did I eat my suppers in solitude on the bamboo love seat in the corner, finding that if I lingered near the bar, pointing my toes, glancing every so often at the crowd, it was only a matter of time before Donavan or one of his friends approached me with a soda and soft phrases that seemed to seep through my skin. “Looking so lovely in your skirt tonight, missy.” “Such a nice smile you have, miss. Sweet like sugar.”

One evening after Mother finished her shift, I announced to her the
many attentions I had received that night, tossing my wrists as I spoke as though these were things to which I had grown quite accustomed.

“Oh, Opal,” she said, sweeping her fingers through her hair so that it fanned behind her neck. And she shook her head, her lips curling as though I had made some silly mistake. “Lord
knows
how many drinks those men have had!”

No! No! She didn’t understand how their eyes had glittered as they talked to me, how their voices had crooned with meaning. But before I could tell her, Mother was joined by some visitor from a neighboring table. Within minutes they were deep in conversation, their shoulders brushing, no longer aware of my presence.

Midway through the summer, a group of twelve Americans arrived at the White Heron. They would stay for five weeks, we learned, in the guest bungalows at the far end of the courtyard. Among the twelve were two middle-aged couples, a family with three small children—white as the guinea fowl in Ezra Dupree’s coop, two young women who wore matching hair scarves, and a graying, olive-skinned man who reminded me of Cary Grant, the old movie actor. Raymond Mordue, we soon discovered, was his name.

“
He’s
handsome, isn’t he,” Mother said, spotting him across the restaurant patio as we descended for dinner.

“Oh, yes,” I agreed, repeating her enthusiastic tone. “Very handsome.”

She shook her head with amusement as if she hadn’t really expected me to respond. “A little old for you, my pet, don’t you think?” she laughed.

I smiled as broadly as I could in case she should suspect the lump tightening in my throat. Then I watched as she glided off to seat the first table of guests, the diaphanous rose of her skirt fluttering behind.

Late into the third evening of his stay, after dining with his friends,
Raymond Mordue meandered toward the dimly lit table where I had joined Mother, and asked if he might pull up a chair. He wore a thick cologne that tickled my nostrils, like the scented incense coils that burned in some of the local shops. He had just returned from traveling through all of Asia and much of Africa, he said, having recently retired from his job in advertising. He traced his tanned fingers over the tabletop as he spoke, outlining a map of his route. In the autumn, he would be joining a friend’s wine import business, but a few decadent weeks in the Caribbean seemed a perfect conclusion to his time off. Unlike the other men whose company Mother had accepted, Raymond addressed his every word to
both
of us. As he told of safaris in Kenya, mountain hikes through Tibet, he gazed into my eyes as well as Mother’s, was pleased, I thought, with my interest as much as hers. I nodded as he talked and propped my hands on the table edge, displaying the iridescent pink with which I’d polished my nails earlier in the day. Every few moments I peered at Mother, wondering if she recognized the way I was being included.

Soon Raymond began to join us not only for drinks but for meals. In the afternoons, too, he would find us on the beach and, removing his terrycloth shirt, stretch in his swim trunks alongside our towels. Always he arrived bearing some special food that he had purchased from one of the vendors in town—papaya juice, lime-colored breadfruits, guava jam, pumpkin bread.

“One should always experience new tastes, don’t you think?” he said in his smooth voice that seemed to match the hush of the waves.

“I couldn’t agree more.” Mother smiled, then bit into soursop ice cream or a custard apple, allowing shining rivulets of juice to trickle down her chin, giggling and licking her lips as Raymond dotted below her mouth with the corner of his shirt.

At our luncheon table, Raymond would tell us to close our eyes, then would present unusual dishes he had ordered from roadside stands or convinced the kitchen staff to prepare—salt fish fritters, curried figs, broiled eel.

“I’ll try some, too,” I said, watching as Raymond lifted forkfuls of eel for Mother to swallow.

She shook her head so that the shell earrings in her ears jingled. “Trust me, Opal, you wouldn’t like it. Wait a few years. In the meantime, finish your soup.” Then turning to Raymond, she laughed. “Quite precocious, if you know what I mean.”

I crossed my legs as elegantly as I could, my heart throbbing, hoping my voice wouldn’t choke. “Yes, I
would
like it. I eat all
kinds
of things!”

Mother only shrugged her shoulders, and Raymond did not look up from his plate. But a moment later, when she excused herself to the ladies’ room, Raymond, to my delight, scooped a bit of the fish onto his fork and leaned toward me.

“Oh, thank you,” I said, trying to use my most careless tone, as though being fed by men were an ordinary occurrence for me. I straightened in my chair to make the profile of my padded bustline more prominent.

“Do you like it?” I could tell that Raymond watched me carefully as I chewed, awaiting my reaction.

“Delicious,” I nodded, though I had not truly tasted the food; I could concentrate on nothing other than Raymond’s outstretched fingers patting my knee, just as I’d seen him sometimes cup the roundness of my mother’s shoulder. And as perspiration threaded down the center of my back, I tried to memorize the position of his hand, proof of my sophistication.

There were other occasions, also, I believed, that confirmed Raymond’s appreciation of me, verified my initiation into adulthood. Once, while Mother was napping, I caught him standing ankle-deep in surf, gazing at me as I swam in the water, his sunglasses pulled low on his nose. So I glided with my longest strokes through the rippling waves, careful not to smack the surface like the young children splashing near me. When I emerged onto the sand, Raymond strolled toward me, my towel draped over his arm.

“What a natural swimmer you are,” he said, grinning as he folded the towel around my shoulders. “As pretty as a little mermaid.”

And not long after this he showed his fondness, too, through a ritual he began of hiding treasures for me in his breast pocket. Whenever Mother disappeared to order a drink or have a word with the hotel manager, he would rub the front of his shirt so that I could hear some secret thing inside snap or crinkle. Then he would bend forward, pulling at the edge of his pocket for me to reach in. There I would find a cellophane bag of sugared pecans, sweet-smelling tamarind candies wrapped in foil, a heart-shaped molasses cookie. “Just for you, Opal,” he would pronounce as I reached into the cotton material to retrieve my gift. After savoring my treats, I would smooth the bits of ribbon or shiny paper in which they had been packaged and lay them in the straw dish on my bedside table, creating a growing display. Just as Mother kept on her bureau top an amber-colored bottle of perfume from Raymond and two pearly white stones he had found for her on the beach, I had my own evidences of his favor.