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Everything was going great. Grades weren’t just good; they were all A’s, even in that stupid English class. Writing one more essay was probably gonna transform me into a book, but I didn’t complain. I wrote the papers, counted the numbers, even volunteered to answer questions. I did the work. I was getting along with everybody, not getting into trouble. Maybe the daily cool breeze from the ocean or the lack of hallways made things easy going here. Irie, like the Rastas say. Nobody was sweating me bout nothing. Me and Grandad was having good times, lots of good times. Probably, I was gonna start turning into a sea creature though, one with claws and fins cause we ate something from the sea almost every day: crabs, lobsters, wilks, snapper, king fish, all sorts of things. I couldn’t remember the last time I had chicken or even steak. The Chik Fila cows would be pleased. Grandad hardly used his stove. He cooked outside in the backyard, using a coal pot. He made everything so simple and mostly fun. Maybe this was like camping - cooking outside at night, sitting on an upside-down bucket and eating. Definitely different from Ma bringing home takeout when she was tired.
Yeah, sometimes Grandad acted crazy but when I really thought about it, he mostly made sense. Like a couple of times he took me to play soccer. Well, Grandad and everybody else on the island called it football, so okay, football. Anyway, on those occasions that he took me to play football, he’d always take off his shoes. Me? I just watched him from the sidelines. I didn’t have no cleats. I wondered if his feet didn’t hurt kicking the ball or even just being barefooted. When I ran track, I had shoes specifically for track. Shoot, I had shoes specifically for everything that I did. I could never imagine being barefooted doing nothing, especially running on the dirt ground with my bare feet. He didn’t look like anything hurt when he kicked that ball then ran behind it to kick it some more. When I finally asked Grandad why he gonna kick the ball without shoes, he would always say, “Why me gon’ mess up me good shoes pon dis ball in a dis dut.” I guessed he made sense, but I sometimes wondered if his feet didn’t hurt from the hard ground or little pebbles. No nice green grass or even sand, but hard and dirty ground without cleats, I just didn’t get it.
Grandad, as always, moved around the soccer field like he was just as young as the other players. His body moved smoothly to kick the ball in whatever direction he aimed. At times, he even head-butted the ball in a particular direction. That was wild to me! He never stopped even once to catch his breath or let someone sub for him. On the rare occasions that he made a goal, oh man. We’d talk about that the entire walk home. “Boy, you see me mek dat goal! Nobody coulda touch me!” His eyes would sparkle. Meanwhile, he kicked a ball with his bare feet on a dusty ball field. His feet were so dirty, I could just imagine him sitting down for a pedicure.
“Grandad!” I’d tell him. “We gonna have to get you a pedicure when we go back to Orlando.”
“Not me,” he’d say. “Nobody a go touch me foot dem.”
I’d laugh cause I was sure that nobody wanted to touch his feet, not after he was baking them in the dirt.
I didn’t mind waking up early on Saturdays to go to the mountains, to garden, then to town for the market. That was a regular trip for me now. Sometimes I’d even see Tess with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Headmaster, shopping in the market too. Seeing Tess was always a treat. Sometimes I even woke up before Grandad. Naw, not really. I ain’t never been able to wake up before him; that was definitely too out-a-pocket. I’m not sure he even slept, not like a normal old human being anyway. He had so much energy with that daily walk from school. He never used one of his two vans or even just let me walk home alone with Tess and my friends.
I was doing good. Why should he and Ma worry about me? Ma, she called a lot more, probably cause I stopped begging her to come get me. I’d tell her about some of the crazy things Grandad did, but nothing seemed like a surprise to her. She said she used to go to the mountain to garden too. I couldn’t picture that at all. I couldn’t picture Ma’s hand in dirt digging out no weeds but she said she had to do it, every Saturday morning, rain or shine.
Sometimes Grandad even let me drive one of the vans, of course the older one. I was afraid at first cause I didn’t want to get pulled over by the police, but Grandad would say, “Bwoy, doan bodda dem and day naw go bodda you.” Sometimes I drove to the market. I only accidentally drove off the road once, maybe twice, I was definitely a better driver for sure. Sometimes I wondered if Grandad ever followed rules or did he just make his own as he went through life. Cause me, it was only a couple fights for Ma to drop me here. But I wasn’t complaining no more. I was liking it... loving it, actually. And Tess, she was amazing. Why didn’t Ma send me to school here sooner?
All my classes were going great. My band class wasn’t at all what I expected. It was probably the only class that we could really move around in when the teacher was in the room. Band was one of the only times we left the classroom except for lunch and the end of school. Located in the building on the hill above the front office, it was not the kind of band that I expected. We learned how to play steel pan music. I’d heard it before but to actually learn how to play was another thing. This teacher was young too. Some of the kids said that he played in a local band so that’s why his class was actually fun. Before class, he’d have the radio playing a song we were gonna practice. Tess said they did this every year, learned the music to play in the upcoming Carnival. I’d been to Carnival before because Ma’s got pics of me with the masquerades but I couldn’t remember. So, I was starting to look forward to it - playing in the band, actually being a part of Carnival.
Tess stood in front of me in class. I played the bass pans in the back of the room. Very few people were assigned to them, probably because there weren’t that many. The bass drums were tall drums that one player was in charge of. I stood in the middle of four big barreled drums, so all I basically had to know was when to pound each one. If I listened carefully to the beat and felt it like the teacher said, he didn’t have to call me much to remind me to hit the pan. Tess? She was right up front on the single pan, the one that carried all the melody. That single pan was the hardest one to learn, too, because even though there were tons of numbers inside the pan to help, when to hit what, where and when, to play and have fun with it, players had to know them numbers by heart. Tess always joked that without her, the band wouldn’t have no melody. She’d dance a little when she said this, moving her waistline to the music she heard in her head. She was right, though; her section carried all the melody. All I did was make a sound once in a while; no one would miss that at all. But in true Tess fashion, when I did say stuff like that, she’d make me feel like the band wasn’t nothing without my section. We both knew that wasn’t true, but she still made me feel important.
After school was always beach time which, with band and Tess, made school so much easier to handle. Tess went with me and Grandad, too, most days. The black two piece made way to all sorts of colored bathing suits, some just one shoulder and floral. She hardly wore the same bathing suit twice, but in each one, she looked like a cold red Gatorade on an Orlando summer day. She looked gooood. What made her even prettier is that she didn’t even act like she knew how pretty she was. Even better, she laughed at every joke I told, even the ones I destroyed because I was laughing too hard. Grandad would say when Tess couldn’t hear him, “Dat gyal must like you cause only deaf people a go laugh at you joke dem.”
One day after school, Grandad wasn’t at the gate like he usually was in his normal, not-so-swag clothes. Tess, Anthony and Amanda still walked home, no worries. I walked with them on the normal route like the rest of the kids. I thought and thought about still going to the beach. I thought about maybe putting it off since Grandad wasn’t there. To be honest, he wasn’t really there any way cause he didn’t pay us much attention. This wasn’t really gonna be any different. Finally, I decided to go without him and pray that this was one of the times that Tess would come too.
“You goin’ beach still?” she asked before I could.
“Yeah,” I tried to break off a piece of sugar cane like I knew what I was doing. “I mean, if you still want to, not sure what Grandad has planned for us.”
“Yeah, we can go if you no fraid me.” She laughed.
“No, you’re harmless.” I laughed nervously. But was I?
We veered off the path like we normally did with Grandad, the two of us silent as we walked. She didn’t try to hold my hand, so I didn’t try to hold hers. I was starting to think that maybe we should’ve just walked home and not gone to the beach, but it was too late cause we were already on the shore looking out far onto the ocean with our backs to the land. The breeze was high, blowing our uniforms against our skins. We heard nothing but the ocean breeze and the waves crashing against the seashore. Tess dropped her book-bag on the sand and started to undress. Even though I knew she wasn’t actually moving in slow motion, it again looked like she was. Why was this, though? It was like time slowed down for us. I liked the slow and peaceful pace that seemed to surround her. I liked her. She slowly pulled her shirt from her skirt’s waist. Then she slowly unbuttoned each button. I hadn’t realized it before, but although our uniform shirts were the same, hers seem to have more buttons or maybe it was all in my mind. This time, she wore a white one-piece bathing suit. A large brownish orange flower with petals covered part of her back and part of her stomach. Relief swept over me cause I didn’t have to stare at her bare stomach with those little curled-up hairs. Grandad had taught me a trick, though. Focus on something less exciting like food or something like that. Unfortunately, food made me excited too. Anyway, I tried not to pay attention to her especially since she was so quiet. Then, she took her hair out of the wrapped up ponytail that she always wore. It was so long. The wind carried her hair away from her face like in a photo shoot or something and the photographer blew a fan in front of her just for her hair. For me, Grandad had already ruined my-hair-blowing-in-the-wind chances. I sat on the beach, digging my toes into the sand. She tucked in right next to me, so close that I could smell her hair.
Both of us stared out far into the ocean for some time and I couldn’t help to wonder if Ma was right to send me here. I knew she had her reasons. Well, reason. I’d had so much time to really think about some of those things that I’d done. So many things I could’ve avoided. So many better choices I could’ve made. I hated that it took this, Ma’s anger to get me to realize it. But, she was right, this was what I needed. I’d been pissed at first especially with the way that she’d basically dragged me out of the house with no idea of where we were going. But I’d never had this before - the ability to just sit, watch, and enjoy. Peace. Walking to the beach each day allowed that. Hanging with Grandad allowed that. Being with Tess definitely allowed that.
“Is that mint in your hair?” I asked awkwardly.
“Yeah,” she ran her hand through her hair. “You like it?”
“It’s ok, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I mean, it’s alright for shampoo.” Omg. Were we having a lame conversation about shampoo? “I just didn’t imagine someone using mint for shampoo. Grandad and Ma use mint for tea so I just thought it was used only for food.” I babbled.
“Yeah, you can use it for whatever you want. I actually does mek me own shampoo wid aloes, mint, and water. It ‘pose to make me hair longer and stronger.” She moved closer to me leaving nothing between us. “Feel it.”
I did. I looped some of it around my fingers. It was soft and long. “It’s strong, all right, and it’s definitely long.”
“Tanks!” She was so close to me that now our legs touched. My hairy legs looked like dead monsters next to her smooth skin.
“So...” I said.
“Stitch.”
“Stitch?”
“Yea, you said so, so I said stitch.”
“Oh, ok.” I didn’t get it but she laughed so I smiled too.
“So, what’s goin’ on wid you? You gonna stay a wa?”
“Looks like I’m staying.”
“It won’t be that bad, promise.”
“Naw, it’s ok.”
“Ok?” She faked gasped. “So, you have all dis in Orlando? Beach every day? Fresh air? A girlfriend with strong, long hair?”
Wait! What?
“You naw kiss me less I kiss you?”
“Um...”
And just like that, she leaned over, her lips were touching mines, kissing me. And I was kissing her back. And Ma could keep her Chik Fila sauce all to herself. And I was glad Grandad wasn’t here. And St. Kitts wasn’t too bad. And I was glad I was staying. And... and...