The heat hit us the moment we stepped off the plane. It was smothering. So thick I could taste it.
A driver from the hotel was waiting for us in arrivals with a sign. TYLER + KATELYN, it read. We watched the island pass by the windows, the nerves from the plane now excitement. There were stretches of banana plantations with the yellow fruits spooning each other in cozy bunches. We passed a lone goat tied to a string, happily chewing on a grassy knoll. We saw women with bundles of firewood piled high on their heads, bottoms gently swinging in brightly colored skirts, walking for miles in the blistering heat. The whites of their soles winked as we passed.
The road wound into the wet rain forest, which rose up on either side like a magnificent green cathedral, its wily tendrils dripping from the canopy, beckoning us into its depths. On the roadside a pile of planks collaborated to form the semblance of a bar, and a one-legged man waved as we passed, proffering a pair of enormous avocados. As we emerged from the jungle into a small half-finished development, a sign declared Everyday is payday!
After an hour we came to the top of a hill and saw the sea for the first time. It was the bluest sea I had ever seen. Impossibly blue.
The hills on either side of the bay were blanketed in dense jungle, which thinned out as the land reached the water. Wooden huts on stilts were scattered like dice across the hillside. There was a strip of black sand spiked with palm trees, which cupped the water. A handful of yachts bobbed against each other, a wind-chime percussion.
Dad was waiting for us by a small wooden jetty. All his freckles had joined together, making his skin like the mottled bark of a redwood tree. He was wearing shorts, flip-flops, a polo shirt, and a baseball cap with his sunglasses dangling between his teeth. This is happy Dad, I thought, as he gave us both a squeeze.
He took our bags down to a small pier and threw them onto the ferry, which rocked with the weight. Dad greeted the boatman with friendly banter and helped us on board. The boat chugged slowly across the water toward the black sand beach. Dad pointed out his and Lana’s bungalow right at the top of the hill, nestled in trees.
The boat pulled up to a pier on the other side, and Dad jumped out first. He helped us off, one at a time, and then the boatman passed up our bags. As we walked along the beach, groups of young islanders greeted us with smiles and invitations to look at their makeshift stalls selling palm-leaf baskets and beaded necklaces, reggae blasting out from stereos.
We loaded our bags onto the small two-seater funicular. Dad pressed a green button and we began our slow ascent up the hill, the carriage trembling with each unsteady lurch. Everything on the island seemed to be standing on rickety legs, but I suspected rickety legs lasted longer here. This seemed like somewhere time could grind to a complete halt, or start going backward if it chose, and no one would notice.
At the top of the hill the train came to a hesitant stop. It was a short walk farther to their bungalow. From his deck we could see the Pitons in the distance, two volcanic spires, one big, one less big, always side by side. Two sisters.
Lana came out to greet us and kissed us hello, once on each cheek, four lip-glossed smoky kisses between us. Her eyes seemed to be a paler shade of blue than before. I couldn’t understand her position back then, or see that it was not so far removed from our own. She only existed as an obstacle between my dad’s affections and me, not as a real person with her own needs and fears, and so I remember her like that: two-dimensional, silent, impenetrable.
We had our own apartment farther down the hill. It was smaller and part of a block of three. The main room had a double bed with a mosquito net strung like a spider web around it. French windows opened onto a balcony overlooking the bay. In the back a black ribbon of ants streamed from one corner of the kitchenette to the other. I hated ants.
A small window looked out onto the tropical foliage outside. On the windowsill sat a scraggly black cat. His big yellow eyes twitched nervously, half in hope, half in fear. He had mangy sores under his armpits, so we named him Syphilis.
As darkness fell, we heard a strange wheepa-wheep-wheep among the night noises, a song we came to know.
* * *
The next day Dad went to work, leaving us to explore the bay. We spent our first morning in the swimming pool making up synchronized swimming routines. I was thrilled to have Caitlin to myself. She was fourteen years old now and embroiled in mysterious activities from which little sisters were largely excluded. Occasionally she would tell me about the love lives of her group of friends—which girl had broken up with which boy, and why—and I found it entirely absorbing, although her attention span for these conversations was far shorter than mine.
The swimming routine grew with each practice. Our heads emerged sneezing the water out of our noses, and one of the boys from the beach was clapping by the side of the pool.
“Are you dancers?” he shouted out, dunking a tentative toe in the water.
We both laughed, shaking our heads, embarrassed.
We swam to the poolside to chat. His name was Thomas. Caitlin was better at talking to boys than me; she’d had boys at her school, so they weren’t such a foreign species.
Dad called us for lunch; we said our goodbyes, and as we walked away I jabbed Caitlin in the ribs. “Someone likes you,” I whispered.
“Shush!” she replied, batting away my poking fingers and feigning annoyance while smiling.
Dad had arranged for us to take our first scuba dive that afternoon, so we could get our PADI qualification during our stay. Our instructor, Rosmund, had a body like rippled water and carried a knife around his ankle. He knew the names of all the fish and could swim in the salty sea with his eyes open. He wore the smallest neon-green Speedo that made all the women stare. The reef felt like an alien world. The coral fanned and waved, forming castles in the sand, and Ros would tickle it with his knife, sending a stream of fish toward us. I spotted a lone turtle making her way to the surface in the dark blue distance with a majestic front crawl. I felt a sense of urgency and elation; suddenly I wanted to see everything in the world and see it all at once.
Cait and I were sitting on the pier waiting for Dad to finish work, dangling our feet in the shallows and watching the fish below, when suddenly she yanked her foot out of the water with a little shriek. I heard a giggle from beneath the planks and saw Thomas hidden under the pier. Caitlin bombed into the water, raising the sandy cloud about her where she landed with a thud on her bottom. I watched them splashing and giggling breathlessly in the distance.
* * *
Caitlin didn’t come back until dinnertime. We ate most meals in the hotel restaurant, because neither Dad nor Lana liked to cook. I was already sitting at the table washed and changed, when Cait appeared, straggly and sandy, eyes bright and excited like she’d been on whole adventures since I’d last seen her. I was jealous just at the look of her.
“Where’ve you been?” Dad asked as she sat down to join us.
“Just hanging out,” Cait said, shrugging and helping herself to bread and butter.
“Hanging out where?”
“I’ve been making friends.” It was an undertaking we knew Dad encouraged.
“Oh yeah, meet anyone interesting?”
“Just some local kids,” she said.
“His name’s Thomas,” I butted in, knowing it was a betrayal. “We met him this morning by the pool.”
Caitlin gave me a pointed look, hardening her jaw, and I gave her one right back, which said she deserved it for abandoning me.
“Ha!” Dad said, a mock detective thrilled with his new clue. “I know the kid. His dad works at the resort. Well, I’m not surprised. You’re a very attractive young woman and could have any boy on this island. You too, Ty.”
Dad talked to us about his plans. He was hoping to help develop the hotel, building a new bar area to bring in more visitors from other resorts in the evenings and expanding the restaurant out onto a deck. Eventually they could build fancier villas farther up the hillside with more expensive rooms. He liked the prospect of being a hotelier like Mr. Hilton. Dad was proud of his job, proud to be working on something he could share with us. Eventually he hoped to delegate his responsibilities to a team of managers, so he could spend his day working on his tan and contemplating our future. This could be the start of a great dynasty, he said. We could come back with our friends or boyfriends whenever we wanted and work summers in the hotel. I started to imagine our future here too. This new Tyler with her bronzed cheeks and straggly beach hair. She would become a diver like Ros and carry a knife around her ankle. She would spend her days barefoot, her skin dusty from the sand and honey-smelling from the sun lotion. I liked the sound of this Tyler better than myself.
As the restaurant filled up, it seemed like Dad knew everyone on the island. Each of his friends came over to meet us, like we were people they already knew existed, and after they left, Dad would lean in confidentially to tell us their stories. “Everyone on the island calls that guy Big Balls in Creole after he got into a fight with this man twice his size—I’m not kidding—while he was on a date in a restaurant. Something the man says offended the woman he was with, so they started to have it out, and the man whips out a machete and tries to chop off his head. Luckily, my friend here ducked in time and he only lost his ear. He could have been decapitated.”
We looked over and, sure enough, in the place of his ear was a nugget of cartilage.
“He’s a real character and a friend to me here,” Dad added, sitting back in his chair.
When we finished our meal, we joined the others at the bar. They all laughed when we said we were only here for two weeks. They winked while saying “You’ll be back.” They spoke of the island as if it had an irresistible force that pulled you in until you forgot all about the world outside. It was like they had discovered a wonderful secret, and now that we had too, we could be part of their gang. Dad was, and it made him happier than I had ever seen him, at least since knowing him as a person who felt and wanted things independent of me.
Thomas came to find Cait. Dad shook his hand with playful gravitas while introducing himself. “So, you must be Thomas?” he said, which made Cait squirm and look exasperated. I left to go play pool with them while stealing sips of unattended drinks from tables. The rum was dark and viscous and tasted sweet like syrup. It left me giggling and stumbling.
It seemed like the whole island was drunk with the weight of the starless sky that night. A steel drum band played a sweet melancholy rhythm and the crowds got up to dance. Between the beat of the percussion and the movement of bodies swinging, there was a mighty crack in the skies and the whole island shook with its ferocity, until water broke through in a deluge. Everyone in the bar ran out on to the strip of black sand and danced between the palm trees as the raindrops left wet, warm kisses on my skin. It was heavier and more luxurious than any rain I have ever felt. The music followed us out, the drums beating harder and faster with the thunder. As we danced, the storm clouds parted, and we raised our arms to the heavens and cheered.
It was a day before my twelfth birthday.