Mama always said, “Talk real sweet and you can have whatever you want.” This is true, though it does not hurt to have a nice bust either. Since I was blessed early on in both the voice and bosom departments, I got the hell out of eastern Kentucky at the first opportunity and never looked back. That’s how Mama raised us, not to get stuck like she did. Mama grew up hard and married young and worked her fingers to the bone and wanted us to have a better life. “Be nice,” she always said. “Please people. Marry rich.”
After several tries, I am finally on the verge of this. But it has been a lot of work, believe me. I’m a very high-maintenance woman. It is not easy to look the way I do. Some surgery has been involved. But I’ll tell you, what with the miracles of modern medicine available to our fingertips, I do not know why more women don’t go for it. Just go for it! This is my motto.
Out of Mama’s three daughters, I am the only one that has gotten ahead in the world. The only one who really listened to her, the only one who has gone places and done things. And everywhere I go, I always remember to send Mama a postcard. She saves them in a big old green pocketbook that she keeps right by her bed for this very purpose. She’s got postcards from Las Vegas and Disney World and Los Angeles and the Indianapolis 500 in there. From the Super Bowl and New York City and Puerto Vallarta. Just this morning, I mailed her one from Miami. I’ve been everywhere.
As opposed to Mama herself, who still cooks in the elementary school cafeteria in Paradise, Kentucky, where she has cooked for thirty years, mostly soup beans. Soup beans! I wouldn’t eat another soup bean if my life depended on it, if it was the last thing to eat on the earth. Give me caviar. Which I admit I did not take to at first as it is so salty, but now have acquired a taste for, like scotch. There are some things you just have to like if you want to rise up in the world.
I myself am upwardly mobile and proud of it, and Mama is proud of me too. No matter what kind of lies Darnell tries to tell her about me. Darnell is my oldest sister, who goes to church in a mall where she plays tambourines and dances all around. This is just as bad as being one of those old Holiness people up in the hollers handling snakes, in my opinion. Darnell tells everybody I am going to Hell. One time she chased me down in a car to lay hands on me and pray out loud. I happened to have a new boyfriend with me at the time and I got so embarrassed I almost died.
My other sister, Luanne, is just as bad as Darnell but in a different way. Luanne runs a ceramics business at home, which has allowed her to let herself go to a truly awful degree, despite the fact that she used to be the prettiest one of us all, with smooth creamy skin, a natural widow’s peak, and Elizabeth Taylor eyes. Now she weighs over two hundred pounds and those eyes are just slits in her face. Furthermore, she is living with a younger man who does not appear to work and does not look American at all. Luanne claims he has Cherokee blood. His name is Roscoe Ridley and he seems nice enough, otherwise I never would let my little Leon stay with them, of course it is just temporary until I can get Larry nailed down. I feel that Larry is finally making a real commitment by bringing me along this weekend, and I have cleared the decks for action. Larry has already left his marriage psychologically, so the rest is just a matter of time.
But speaking of decks, this yacht is not exactly like the Love Boat or the one on Fantasy Island, which is more what I had in mind. Of course, I am not old enough to remember those shows, but I have seen the reruns. I never liked that weird little dwarf guy, I believe he has died now of some unusual disease. I hope so. Anyway, thank goodness there is nobody like that on this boat. We have three Negroes who are nice as you please. They smile and say yes ma’am and will sing calypso songs upon request, although they have not done this yet. I am looking forward to it, having been an entertainer myself.
“Well, baby, whaddaya think? Paradise, huh?” This is my fiancé and employer Larry Marcum who certainly deserves a little trip to paradise if anybody does. I have never known anybody to work so hard. Larry started off as a paving contractor and still thinks you can never have too much concrete.
This is also true of gold, in my opinion, as well as shoes.
Now Larry is doing real well in commercial real estate and property management. In fact we are here on this yacht for the weekend thanks to his business associate, Bruce Ware, one of the biggest developers in Atlanta, though you’d never know it by looking at him. When he met us at the dock in Barbados wearing those hundred-year-old blue jeans, I was so surprised. I believe that in general, people should look as good as they can. Larry and I had an interesting discussion about this in which he said that from his own observation, really rich people like Bruce Ware will often dress down, and even drive junk cars. Bruce Ware drives an old jeep, Larry says! I cannot imagine.
And I can’t wait to see what Bruce Ware’s wife will have on, though I can imagine this, as I know plenty of women just like her — “bowheads” is what I call them, all those Susans and Ashleys and Elizabeths, though I would never say this aloud, not even to Larry. I have made a study of these women’s lives, which I aspire to, not that I will ever be able to wear all those dumb little bows without embarrassment.
“Honey, this is fabulous!” I tell Larry, and it is. Turquoise blue water so clear you can see right down to the bottom where weird fish are swimming around, big old birds, strange jagged picturesque mountains popping up behind the beaches on several of the islands we’re passing.
“What’s the name of these islands again?” I ask, and Larry tells me, “The Grenadines.” “There is a drink called that,” I say, and Larry says, “Is there?” and kisses me. He is such a hard worker that he has missed out on everything cultural.
Kissing Larry is not really great but okay.
“Honey, you need some sunscreen,” I tell him when he’s through. He has got that kind of redheaded complexion that will burn like mad in spite of his stupid hat. “You need to put it everywhere, all over you, on your feet and all. Here, put your foot up on the chair,” I tell him, and he does, and I rub sunscreen all over his fat white feet one after the other and his ankles and his calves right up to those baggy plaid shorts. This is something I will not do after we are married.
“Hey, Larry, how’d you rate that kind of service?” It’s Bruce Ware, now in cutoffs, and followed not by his wife but by some young heavy country-club guy. I can feel their eyes on my cleavage.
“I’m Chanel Keen, Larry’s fiancée.” I straighten up and shake their hands. One of the things Larry does not know about me is that my name used to be Mayruth, back in the Dark Ages. May-ruth! Can you imagine?
Bruce introduces the guy, who turns out to be his associate, Mack Durant, and then they both stand there grinning at me. I can tell they are surprised that Larry would have such a classy fiancée as myself.
“I thought your wife was coming,” I say to Bruce Ware, looking at Larry.
“She certainly intended to, Chanel,” Bruce says, “but something came up at the very last minute. I know she would have enjoyed being here with you and Larry.” One thing I have noticed about very successful people is that they say your name all the time and look right at you. Bruce Ware does this.
He and Mack sit down in the deck chairs. I imagine their little bowhead wives back in Atlanta shopping or getting their legs waxed or fucking the kids’ soccer coach.
Actually I am relieved that the wives stayed home. It is less competition for me, and I have never liked women much anyway. I never know what to say to them, though I am very good at drawing a man out conversationally, any man. And actually a fiancée such as myself can be a big asset to Larry on a business trip, which is what this is anyway, face it, involving a huge mall and a sports complex. It’s a big deal. So I make myself useful, and by the time I get Bruce and Mack all settled down with rum and tonic and sunscreen, they’re showing Larry more respect already.
Bruce Ware points out interesting sights to us, such as a real volcano, as we cruise toward Saint-Philippe, the little island where we’ll be anchoring. It takes three rum and tonics to get there. We go into a half-moon bay that looks exactly like a postcard, with palm trees like Gilligan’s Island. The Negroes anchor the yacht and then take off for the island in the dinghy, singing a calypso song. It is really foreign here! Birds of the sort you find in pet stores, yachts and sailboats of every kind flying flags of every nationality, many I have never seen before. “This is just not American at all, is it?” I remark, and Bruce Ware says, “No, Chanel, that’s the point.” Then he identifies all the flags for Larry and me. Larry acts real interested in everything, but I can tell he’s out of his league. I bet he wishes he’d stayed in Atlanta to make this deal. Not me! I have always envisioned myself on a yacht, and am capable of learning from every experience.
For example, I am interested to hear Bruce Ware use a term I have not heard before, Eurotrash, to describe some of the girls on the other yachts. Nobody mentions that about half the women on the beach are topless, though the men keep looking that way with binoculars. I myself can see enough from here — and most of those women would do a lot better to keep their tops on, in my opinion. I could show them a thing or two. But going topless is not something which any self-respective fiancée such as myself would ever do.
The Negroes come back with shrimp and limes and crackers, and so on. I’m so relieved to learn that there’s a store someplace on this island, as I foresee running out of sunscreen before this is all over. While the Negroes are serving hors d’oeuvres, I go down to put on my suit, which is a little white bikini with gold trim that shows off my tan to advantage. I can’t even remember what we did before tanning salons! (But then I do remember, all of a sudden, laying out in the sun on a towel with Darnell and Luanne, we had painted our boyfriends’ initials in fingernail polish on our stomachs so we could get a tan around them. C. B., I had painted on my stomach for Clive Baldwin who was the cutest thing, the quarterback at the high school our senior year, he gave me a pearl ring that Christmas, but then after the wreck I ran off to Nashville with Mike Jenkins. I didn’t care what I did. I didn’t care about anything for a long, long time.)
“You feel okay, honey?” Larry says when I get to the top of the stairs, where at first I can’t see a thing, the sun is so bright, it’s like coming out of a movie.
“Sure I do.” I give Larry a wifely peck on the cheek.
“Damn,” Mack Durant says. “You sure look okay.” Mack himself looks like Burt Reynolds but fatter. I choose to ignore that remark.
“Can I get somebody to run me in to the beach?” I ask. “I need to make a few purchases.”
“Why not swim in?” Bruce suggests. “That’s what everybody else is doing.” He motions to the other boats, and this is true. “Or you can paddle in on the kickboard.”
“I can’t swim,” I say, which is not technically true, but I have no intention of messing up my makeup or getting my hair wet, plus also I have a basic theory that you should never do anything in front of people unless you are really good at it, this goes not just for swimming but for everything.
Bruce claps his hands and a Negro gets the dinghy and I ride to the beach in style, then tell him to wait for me. I could get used to this! Also I figure that my departure will give the men a chance to talk business.
There’s not actually much on the island that I can see, just a bunch of pathetic-looking Negroes begging, which I ignore, and selling their tacky native crafts along the beach. These natives look very unhealthy to me, with their nappy hair all matted up and their dark skin kind of dusty looking, like they’ve got powder on. The ones back in Atlanta are much healthier, in my opinion, though they all carry guns.
I buy some sunscreen in the little shack of a store that features very inferior products, paying with some big green bills that I don’t have a clue as to their value, I’m sure these natives are cheating me blind. Several Italian guys try to pick me up on the beach, wearing those nasty little stretch briefs. I don’t even bother to speak to them. I just wade out into the warm clear water to the dinghy and ride back and then Larry helps me up the ladder to the yacht, where I land flat on my butt on the deck, to my total dismay. “It certainly is hard to keep up your image in the tropics!” I make a little joke as Larry picks me up.
“Easier to let it go,” Bruce Ware says. “Go native. Let it all hang out.”
In my absence, the men have been swimming. Bruce Ware’s gray chest hair looks like a wet bath mat. He stands with his feet wide apart as our boat rocks in the wake of a monster sailboat. Bruce Ware looks perfectly comfortable, as if he grew up on a yacht. Maybe he did. Larry and I didn’t, that’s for sure! We are basically two of a kind, I just wish I’d run into him earlier in life, though better late than never as they say. This constant rocking is making me nauseous, something I didn’t notice before when we were moving. I am not about to mention it, but Bruce Ware must have noticed because he gives me some Dramamine.
Larry and I go down below to dress up a little bit for dinner, but I won’t let Larry fool around at all as I am sure they could hear us. Larry puts on khaki pants and a nice shirt and I put on my new white linen slacks and a blue silk blouse with a scoop neck. The Negroes row us over to the island. I am disappointed to see that Bruce and Mack have not even bothered to change for dinner, simply throwing shirts on over their bathing suits, and I am further disappointed by the restaurant, which we have to walk up a long steep path through the actual real jungle to get to. It’s at least a half a mile. I’m so glad I wore flats.
“This better be worth it!” I joked, but then I am embarrassed when it’s not. The restaurant is nothing but a big old house with Christmas lights strung all around the porch and three mangy yellow dogs in the yard. Why, I might just as well have stayed in eastern Kentucky! We climb up these steep steps onto the porch and sit at a table covered with oilcloth and it is a pretty view, I must admit, overlooking the harbor. There’s a nice breeze too. So I am just relaxing a little bit when a chicken runs over my foot, which causes me to jump a mile. “Good Lord!” I say to Larry, who says, “Shhh.” He won’t look at me.
Bruce Ware slaps his hand on the table. “This is the real thing!” He goes on to say that there are two other places to eat, on the other side of the island, but this is the most authentic. He says it is run by two native women, sisters, who are famous island cooks, and most of the waitresses are their daughters. “So what do you think, Chanel?”
“Oh, I like it just fine,” I say. “It’s very interesting,” and Larry looks relieved, but frankly I am amazed that Bruce Ware would want to come to a place like this, much less bring a lady such as myself along.
“Put it right here, honey,” Bruce says to a native girl who brings a whole bottle of Mount Gay rum to our table and sets it down in front of him, along with several bottles of bitter lemon and ice and drinking glasses, which I inspect carefully to choose the cleanest one. None of them look very clean, of course they can’t possibly have a dishwasher back in that kitchen, which we can see into, actually, every time the girls walk back and forth through the bead curtain. Two big fat women are back there cooking and laughing and talking a mile a minute in that language which Bruce Ware swears is English though you can’t believe it.
“It’s the rhythm and the accent that make it sound so different,” Bruce claims. “Listen for a minute.” Two native men are having a loud back-slapping kind of conversation at the bar right behind us. I can’t understand a word of it. As soon as they walk away, laughing, Bruce says, “Well? Did you get any of that?”
Larry and I shake our heads no, but Mack is not even paying attention to this, he’s drinking rum at a terrifying rate and staring at one of the waitresses.
Bruce smiles at us like he’s some guy on the Discovery Channel. “For example,” he lectures, “one of those men just said, ‘Me go she by,’ which is really a much more efficient way of saying, ‘I’m going by to see her.’ This is how they talk among themselves. But they are perfectly capable of using the King’s English when they talk to us.”
I make a note of this phrase, the King’s English. I am always trying to improve my vocabulary. “Then that gives them some privacy from the tourists, doesn’t it?” I remark. “From people like us.”
“Exactly, Chanel.” Bruce looks very pleased and I realize how much I could learn from a man like him.
“Well, this is all just so interesting, and thanks for pointing it out to us,” I say, meaning every word and kicking Larry under the table. He mumbles something. Larry seems determined to match Mack drink for drink, which is not a good idea. Larry is not a good drunk.
But unfortunately I have to go to the bathroom (I can’t imagine what this experience will be like!), so I excuse myself and make my way through the other tables, which are filling up fast. I can feel all those dark native eyes burning into my skin. When I ask for the ladies’ room, the bartender simply points out into the jungle. I ask again and he points again. I am too desperate to argue. I stumble out there and am actually thankful to find a portable toilet such as you would see at a construction site. Luckily I have some Kleenex in my purse.
It is all a fairly horrifying experience made even worse by a man who’s squatting on his haunches right outside the door when I exit. “Oh!” I scream, and leap back, and he says something. Naturally I can’t understand a word of it. But for some reason I am rooted to the spot. He stands up slow and limber as a leopard and then we are face to face and he’s looking at me like he knows me. He is much lighter skinned and more refined looking than the rest of them. “Pretty missy,” he says. He touches my hair.
I’m proud to say I do not make an international incident out of this, I maintain my dignity while getting out of there as fast as possible, and don’t even mention it to the men when I get back, as they are finally talking business, but of course I will tell Larry later.
So I just pour myself a big drink to calm down, and Larry reaches over to squeeze my hand, and there we all sit while the sun sets in the most spectacular fiery sunset I have ever seen in real life and the breeze comes up and the chickens run all over the place, which I have ceased to mind, oddly enough, maybe the rum is getting to me, it must be some really high proof. So I switch to beer, though the only kind they’ve got is something called Hairoun which does not even taste like beer in my opinion. The men are deep in conversation, though Mack gets up occasionally and tries to sweet-talk the pretty waitress, who laughs and brushes him off like he is a big fat fly. I admire her technique as well as her skin, which is beautiful, rich milk chocolate. I laugh to think what Mack’s little bowhead wife back in Atlanta would think if she could see him now! The strings of Christmas lights swing in the breeze and lights glow on all the boats in the harbor. Larry scoots closer and nuzzles my ear and puts his arm around me and squeezes me right under the bust which is something I wish he would not do in public. “Having fun?” he whispers in my ear, and I say, “Yes,” which is true.
I am expanding my horizons as they say.
This restaurant does not even have a menu. The women just serve us whatever they choose, rice and beans and seafood mostly, it’s hard to say. I actually prefer to eat my food separately rather than all mixed up on a plate which I’m sure is not clean anyway. The men discuss getting an 85 percent loan at 9 percent and padding the specs, while I drink another Hairoun.
The man who touched my hair starts playing guitar, some kind of island stuff, he’s really good. Also he keeps looking at me and I find myself glancing over at him from time to time to see if he is still looking, this is just like seventh grade. Still it gives me something to do since the men are basically ignoring me, which begins to piss me off after a while since Mack is not ignoring the pretty waitress. The Negro with the guitar catches me looking at him and grins. I am completely horrified to see that his two front teeth are gold. People start dancing. “I don’t know,” Larry keeps saying to Bruce Ware. “I just don’t know.”
I have to go to the bathroom again and when I come back there’s a big argument going on involving Mack, who has apparently been slapped by the pretty waitress. Now she’s crying and her mother is yelling at Mack who is pretty damn mad, and who can blame him? Of course he didn’t mean anything by whatever he did, he certainly wasn’t going to sleep with that girl and get some disease. “Goddamn bitch,” he says, and Bruce tells Larry and me to get him out of there, which we do, while Bruce gets into some kind of fight himself over the bill. These Negroes have over-charged us. Bruce’s behavior at this point is interesting to me. He has gone from his nice Marlin Perkins voice to a real J. R. Ewing obey-me voice. Thank God there is somebody here to take charge, I’m thinking as I stand at the edge of the jungle with a drunk on each arm and watch the whole thing happening inside the house like it’s on television. The ocean breeze lifts my hair off my shoulders and blows it around and I don’t even care that it’s getting messed up. I am so mad at Larry for getting drunk.
“You okay, honey?” Bruce Ware says to me when he gets everything taken care of to his satisfaction, and I say, “Yes.” Then Bruce takes Mack by the arm and I take Larry and we walk back down to the beach two by two, which seems to take forever in the loud rustling dark. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if a gorilla jumped out and grabbed me, after everything that’s happened so far! Bruce goes first, with the flashlight.
I love a capable man.
When we finally make it down to the beach, I am so glad to see our Negroes waiting, but even with their help it’s kind of a problem getting Mack into the dinghy, in fact it’s like a slapstick comedy, and I finally start laughing. At this point Mack turns on me. “What are you laughing at, bitch?” he says, and I say, “Larry?” but all Larry says is, “Sshhh.”
“Never mind, Chanel,” Bruce tells me. “Mack’s just drunk, he won’t even remember this tomorrow. Look at the stars.”
By now the Negroes are rowing us out across the water.
“What?” I ask him.
“Look at the stars,” Bruce says. “You see a lot of constellations here that you never get to see at home, for instance that’s the Southern Cross over there to your left.”
“Oh yes,” I say, though actually I have never seen any constellations in my life, or if I did I didn’t know it, and certainly did not know the names of them.
“There’s Orion right overhead,” Bruce says. “See those three bright stars in a row? That’s his belt.”
Of course I am acting as interested as possible, but by then we’ve reached the yacht and a Negro is helping us all up (he has quite a job with Mack and Larry), and then two of them put Mack to bed. “Scuse me,” Larry mutters, and goes to the back of the boat to hang his head over and vomit. Some fiancé! I stand in the bow with Bruce Ware, observing the southern sky, while the Negroes say good night and go off with a guy who has come by for them in an outboard. Its motor gets louder and louder the farther they get from us, and I am privately sure that they are going around to the other side of the island to raise hell until dawn.
Bruce steps up close behind me. “Listen here, whatever your real name is,” he says, “Larry’s not going to marry you, you know that, don’t you?”
Of course this is none of Bruce Ware’s business, so it makes me furious. “He most certainly is!” I say. “Just as soon as — “
“He’ll never leave Jean,” Bruce says into my ear. “Never.”
Then he sticks his tongue in my ear, which sends world-class shivers down my whole body.
“Baby — “ It’s Larry, stumbling up beside us.
“Larry, I’m just, we’re just . . .” Now I’m trying to get away from Bruce Ware but he doesn’t give an inch, pinning me against the rail. He’s breathing all over my neck. “Larry,” I start again.
“Hey, baby, it’s okay. Go for it. I know you like to have a good time.” Larry is actually saying this, and there was a time when I would have actually had that good time, but all of a sudden I just can’t do it.
Before either my ex-fiancé or his associate can stop me, I make a break for it and jump right down into the dinghy and pull the rope up over the thing and push off and grab the oars and row like mad toward the shore. I use the rowing machine all the time at the health club, but this is the first time I have had a chance at the real thing. It’s easy.
“Come back here,” yells Bruce Ware. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“Native,” I call back to them across the widening water. “I’m going native!”
“Shit,” one of them says, but by now I can barely hear them. What I hear is the slapping sound of my oars and the occasional bit of music or conversation from the other boats, and once somebody says, “Hey, honey,” but I keep going straight for the beach, which lies like a silver ribbon around the bay. I look back long enough to make sure that nobody’s coming after me. At least those natives can speak the King’s English when they want to, and I can certainly help out in the kitchen if need be. I grew up cooking beans and rice. Anyway, I’m sure I can pay one of them to take me back to Barbados in the morning. Won’t that surprise my companions? Since I am never without some “mad money” and Larry’s gold card, this is possible, although I did leave some brand-new perfectly gorgeous shoes and several of my favorite outfits on the yacht.
A part of me can’t believe I’m acting this crazy, while another part of me is saying, “Go, girl.” A little breeze comes up and ruffles my hair. I practice deep breathing from aerobics and look all around. The water is smooth as glass. The whole damn sky is full of stars. It is just beautiful. All the stars are reflected in the water. Right overhead I see Orion and then I see his belt, as clear as can be. I’m headed for the island, sliding through the stars.