Evenings, as a little girl, restless and sweaty, I wander across the verandah of our house, past the metal cistern, to visit Sylvanita. Sometimes we sit on her stoop in silence, slapping at mosquitoes. Other times she fetches her vial of mercury, pouring a puddle into my hand. My skin cools, even in West Indies heat. I press a fingertip against the plump, wobbly surface. I swirl it, small dimes segmenting from the quarter coined in my palm. Or maybe it looks like stars shooting off from a galaxy. I twist my wrist. Oblong shapes shiver toward the cracks between my fingers, seeking escape, until they portage back to safe harbor, anchored in my hand.
I return it to the vial.
Sylvanita grips my hand to study the palm lines where slivers of mercury remain. Her chiromancy itself seems to arise from trade winds, or from the rattle of woman’s-tongue pods, swaying from tree limbs: If mercury trails my life line, I will live to be an ancient woman. If, on another evening, bubbles cling to my love line, I will be rich in romance. I imagine my pockets overflowing with Mercury-head dimes when wealth is promised. All her predictions strike my heart with such vivid lightning and longing that I am drawn again and again to this depthless pool of knowledge.
Other times, maybe the air is too dark, too hot—or maybe too many bat wings flutter spirits from flame trees—but I am reluctant to relinquish the mercury. Its denseness weights me to this island cuffed in foamy lace, while at the same time I feel almost light-headed. The surface of mercury blues as if steeped in the nighttime Caribbean Sea. I dribble it from palm to palm, back and forth, absorbing its properties, as if it seeps beneath the membrane of skin.
“G’won, swallow it,” Sylvanita whispers, as if she reads my mind. She motions her own palm toward her mouth.
I never do, although I can’t imagine the harm in more completely knowing my shimmery, mercurial, otherwise-unknowable future.