This is the part where I die.
Don’t panic; it isn’t unexpected. The sea is prideful, after all, and Death never goes back on a deal.
Granna always believed that the d’Abreau sisters were immortal, even after her daughter-in-law died delivering the last of us (me). But among our six bodies, she said, there were only five souls. Twins were special. A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
So Natalie and I—the twins, the babies—were blessed. Blessed by all who loved us. Blessed by the gods and goddesses, by the lore and the legends of Trinidad and Tobago, our islands in the sea.
Our connection was unbreakable, and from the first time we sang together in the bathtub, instinctively harmonizing at age three? Well. We were bright stars, Granna promised. Put on this earth to make music, to share it with the world. No matter that Natalie grew into a soft-spoken beauty with a voice as comforting as a warm breeze, and I became the raging storm, fearsome and bewitching. Our destiny tangled as our limbs in our mother’s womb. We were the first to know each other, the first to feel our matching heartbeats. Together, we made magic.
Two bodies, four lungs, one soul.
The beginning and the end. Completion.
Natalie and I sang for Granna and our father. We sang for our older sisters. We sang at Scarborough in Tobago, for fund-raisers and festivals. We sang in Trinidad, our mother’s homeland. We sang for the guests—always rich, often famous—at d’Abreau Cocoa Estates, Granna’s farm and eco-resort, the place we’d called home after my mother’s death. We sang for the men and women who harvested the cocoa pods, who came in for dinner covered in dirt and laughter, eager to listen. During Carnival we sang on top of the big music trucks that traveled through the streets of Port of Spain, as masqueraders jumped up around us dressed like angels and princesses and mermaids. We sang for home, Trinidad and Tobago, twin-island nation, the proud red, black, and white. For our mother’s memory—though for Natalie and me, she never existed.
We sang for fun. For our lives.
That’s what it felt like, the music. Like being alive.
So maybe I was a liar, and maybe I should’ve told her years ago, but I didn’t. Granna, I mean. It’s just that she was wrong about completion, so wrong about the connection and the stars.
The thing about souls was that Natalie really did have her own, like each of our four older sisters.
And mine belonged to the sea. Always.
I was born into the sea, born knowing this. Natalie had been born on the boat, but by the time my turn came, we’d been tipped. My first breath outside my mother’s body was salt water; the Caribbean Sea lay claim to my soul the moment it took hers.
I’ve never considered this soul more than a loaner, a broken-winged bird I’ve only nursed and borrowed. Granna might not believe it, but eventually, I knew I’d be called upon to return it.
One night last spring, just after Carnival, the moonlight sparkled on the waves not far from where our mother had delivered me, her last, and I came so, so, so close.
Then I escaped.
For a time.
Even a fool knows you don’t cheat Death more than once. And technically, after my watery birth, that night last spring already made it twice.
There’s peace in acceptance. Death in it, always. Inevitable. With the acceptance of one thing comes the dying of another: a new belief, a relationship. An ideal, a plan, a what-if. Assumptions. A path. A song.
Consider: Pregnancy dies upon birth. Plans die upon action. Dreams die upon waking.
Not to ruin the story, but if you’ve come this far, you should know how it happens.
The end begins, as all things must, in the water. Now.
Ropes of black hair twist before my eyes, swaying like reeds. One by one, red clips loosen from the braids, tiny jeweled starfish that
into the deep.
My body is sinking, sinking, sinking. Cold . . . And a memory stirs. The warm sea pressing against me, leaking into my lungs. Stealing my voice.
No, wait. . . . That was then. The spring. That last time, when I came so, so close. Then was the Caribbean, my Caribbean. Now is the Pacific, and though it’s late summer here, the Pacific isn’t as patient, isn’t as warm. My limbs will soon turn as blue-blue-blue as my silk dress.
It’s midnight now, the in-between, and the only person who knows where I am is asleep above, in the berth of our boat, the Queen of Cups. He was dreaming when I left; I knew from his sleep sounds. Beautiful, he was, stretched out alone where moments earlier we’d been entwined.
When he realizes I’m gone, he’ll search the water, dive beneath the boat. Frantic. Desperate. But he won’t reach me.
There’s blood in my mouth now, blood in the water, black-not-red at these dark depths. My lungs burn.
I’m ready.
But as my heartbeat stalls, as my limbs give their final tremble, as all around me turns to darkness, I can’t help but wonder. . . .
If the sea had offered me one last chance—if I could’ve bargained with Death to make this broken wing mine, a soul with all its beautiful imperfections—would I have taken it?
Even after everything I’d lost?