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WHILE I WAITED FOR my third date, I had a lagniappe – something extra, something I hadn’t bargained for, and she came to me from America.
She sat across from me in the subdued light of the room. Her straight blonde hair was loose and hung just above her shoulders. Her blue eyes were wide and full of life. Her face, tanned by the tropical sun, glowed. Her loud American voice had softened to match the little seaside restaurant where we were now seated. It felt like being in a movie where the poor slob was hypnotized by the enchanting goddess.
Beth was more than just another American tourist; she was the guest of my friend, Donna. I had never paid attention to Beth until tonight. She was not my type. For one thing she was white and I was no longer going through the fantasy of having a white European woman as my mate. Added to this was the fact that Beth was overweight. I preferred trim women to match my lean frame. A trim woman was also more likely to be athletic and I enjoyed the outdoors: swimming, cycling, running, hiking, kayaking... The list was lengthy. But I had gone with Donna and Beth to Tobago, our sister island in this twin island republic, since Donna’s mother would not let her go without a chaperone. There was nothing like a big, strong man around to keep an eye on your daughter on the harmless streets of Tobago where crime was virtually non-existent. Secretly, Donna’s mother was hoping that I would join the family as her son-in-law. I had heard our mothers joke about what a great couple Donna and I would make. Although Donna and I shared many good times together, we never hooked up as a couple.
Tobago is pristine: acres of lush vegetation and a hundred beaches with clean turquoise water. The people are simple and friendly and the island has developed sufficiently for one to get around, but is underdeveloped enough that tourists could enjoy the many wonders of nature.
Even though Tobago is a part of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, twenty minutes away by plane and two hours by ferry, I seldom visit there. My tolerance of tourists is in the vicinity of zero. There are too many of them with shorts so short that I see pieces of their backside as they walk around like they own the place. No good Tobagonian would ever leave home so scandalously attired. These visitors openly express regret and disgust when everything is not as convenient as back wherever they came from. Stay in your own bloody country is my solution to their problem. Worse yet is seeing the visitors sprawled on the beaches desperately trying to get a tan and turning painful shades of crimson, or soliciting the local men – men with dark bodies, hard from pulling fishing nets in the scorching Caribbean sun. It is indeed a place for sex tourism, something I loathed in my own backyard.
I was being mesmerized by Beth and I did not know it. When we returned to the guesthouse, Donna lounged on a chair while Beth and I sat close to each other at the edge of the pool with our feet in the water. It was easy talking with her that night and we talked endlessly.
“Tell me about your family, Clay.” Here was a beautiful woman expressing interest in me, with no agenda, and her simple request melted me. That did not happen to me often.
“My parents split when I was seven – on Christmas night, actually.”
“Ho, ho, ho and a merry Christmas to you.” I smiled at her wit. “What went wrong?”
“Dad really liked the ladies and he brought two of them home so we could have a nice big family Christmas dinner. My mom had had enough so there was this big fight and she took us and went back to her mother’s house.” She nodded her understanding. “Dad came the next day for us but Mom refused to go back with him.”
“Did they divorce?”
“They were never married. I used to wish that they had gotten back together. Maybe I would have been a better man. But then again, when I hear the horror stories about my male friends and their fathers, I think I was lucky to be spared.” She digested what I had said and the silence was comfortable.
“How’s your relationship with him now?”
“Non-existent. We were never close. I was closer to my Mom until the later years.”
Beth told me that she had never known her father and had moved out from home since she left for college. She had studied graphic arts and was now working to pay off her student loan. Her ambition was to have her own business. She had one brother, an artist who was wandering about Europe or Canada or South America; it was hard to keep up with him.
Donna was hinting that she was ready to turn in by the size and frequency of her yawns.
“This is our last night, Donna. Forget about sleep,” I said. Euphoria was washing over me; it was as if Beth and I were suspended in a bubble where time was frozen. The moment was delicate like fresh dew on flowers early in the morning and I did not want the sunlight to come and drive it away.
“Boy, I need my beauty sleep.” She stood and stretched.
“Not that I can see, my dear.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she retorted and marched inside.
Beth looked at me. What are you going to do? I got up, took her by the hand and as we made our way indoors, she put her hand around my waist and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. In that moment we connected spiritually. We belonged together.
At her bedroom door she said to me, “Hang on for just a sec.” I heard muttering and then she opened the door and pulled me inside.
From under the covers Donna muttered, “Clay Powers, if my mother ever hears that I allowed a man to stay the night in my room, I’ll be moving to your place.”
“She won’t hear it from me,” I grinned.
Beth and I sat on her bed with our backs propped against the wall. Our hands were intertwined like lovers’ and I did not pull away.
“Do you have a girlfriend, Clay?”
“No such luck.”
“The girls here must be blind. If I didn’t have a guy back home, I think I would be moving to Trinidad.”
“What is he like?”
“His name is Dan. We met in college and he is an accountant.”
“That will be good for you when your business is booming.”
She laughed out loud and then immediately stifled it when she remembered Donna was trying to rest. “I like your optimism,” she whispered. She traced the lines in my palm. “The only problem with Dan is that he smokes. I don’t really like that.” I waited for more. “I really don’t like him smoking but I hope that maybe when the kids come along he’ll quit.”
“How many are you planning to have?”
“Two. Just an average American family.”
“I want to have six.”
“Six!” I covered her mouth with my hand afraid that Donna would put me out if we continued to disturb her. It felt good to lean on her and to smell her fragrance, and to feel her smooth skin, and I wished that she would forget Dan and consider me.
“I come from a big family and I have this sort of romantic idea of how a family is supposed to be: lots of laughing and talking and playing. I want that.”
“Did you have that growing up?”
I shook my head and told her my story. I told her how the eldest of my brothers had two kids with a girl he later abandoned. He moved on to marry a woman with a child and then had two daughters with her. He stayed with her, even after she threw a pot of hot water on him for his philandering ways. That had cured him. Beth winced.
I told her about my sister who had two children out of wedlock for two different men and later married a man of whom my mom did not approve. We did not go to the wedding. My sister stayed with this man even though he was a poor provider for his four children and had the audacity to ask my sister to raise the child he had with another woman after their marriage. I was proud of my sister when she said no to the arrogant backside.
Then there was the other sister who had even converted to Hinduism to marry the man of her dreams. The childless marriage lasted seven years, until he deposited her at our home one day on the pretext that she was there to spend some time with my mother. He never came back for her and he has since divorced her and married a younger woman.
I told her about a brother who had lived with an Indian woman for a while. They said that nobody could love a black man the way an Indian woman does, but that particular Indian woman loved the bottle more than her man. Rumor has it that the child he was now raising as a single parent was not his.
My other sister’s marriage was ill-advised. She married a “pretty boy” and in spite of my good advice to her to call off the wedding when there was still one week left before the march down the aisles to her doom, she went ahead with the ceremony since all the invitations had already been sent out, the hall had been booked and the caterers and flowers and everything was in place.
Before she even had time to get accustomed to her brand new name, Mrs. Drakes, the marriage ended for the “pretty boy” found it hard to be satisfied with one partner. He required one woman at home to do the domestic chores and to satisfy his libido in the middle of the night, one woman outside to help with the finances, and all the other women were to satisfy his ego by telling him how good he was in bed.
The wife of my other brother was not on speaking terms with my mother. My mother said that she was half-crazy because after her marriage to my brother she moved to the United States in search of employment. When she realized that she was pregnant with their first child, she returned home but the damage had been done. My brother, an unenlightened archaic toad, refused to get counseling and we witnessed the inevitable collapse of the marriage after their second child. The woman wanted to soar but my brother was not willing to be the wind beneath her wings.
“Not quite the Brady Bunch, is it?” I asked. Beth was the first person I had ever told my family history. I was not ashamed of it; it was just that no one had ever elicited the tale. She said nothing, but wrapped her arms around me and rested her head on my chest.
It was the first time I, too, had considered what my family was really like. Did the spate of failed marriages now affect the way I looked at women and marriage? Did I feel like my family was under some sort of curse so that I too was incapable of having a meaningful long-term relationship? Did I just say that I was holding out for that one special person whom I felt would make me happy forever when, in fact, I was scared to death of being hurt?
I woke up the next morning spooning Beth. I looked around the room and noticed that Donna was not there. It was just before nine o’clock by my watch. My mind returned to the body snuggled up next to mine and I got hard. Beth woke up too.
“Is this how you say good morning?” I was embarrassed and had no comeback. She turned to face me. She looked me in the eye and how I prayed that I had a good morning face and that my breath was not bad and that I was as beautiful a sight as she was to me. Her index finger traced my face. I brushed away the hair that had fallen on her cheek and then my hand drifted down her shoulders and onto her hips, pulling her closer to me.
She kissed me, ever so gently, and I closed my eyes to soak it in so that I would have something to hold on to when she was gone. She kissed me again, this time longer and more intensely. I hoped to God that Donna was far, far away. I held her; she held me as if we were weighing the consequences of what was about to happen. Whatever we were about to do we would have to do quickly as Donna could not have gone far away.
Beth wanted me. God, a woman who can take charge. I love that. She kissed me with short, eager kisses and I hungered for more. Her hands reached into my underwear and she touched my hardness – and then we heard the footsteps and the turning of the key in the door.
Donna never said anything when she found us under a sheet pretending that we were playing some childish game but I am convinced that she knew what we were up to for she kept giving us knowing looks after that.
*
I HAD LEARNED TO LISTEN to old sages like my friend Phyllis who taught English and sat two desks away from me in the staff room. When she had told me that I had to let go of my hang-ups about love and let it find me, I listened to her. She helped me to realize that I had a mental checklist when it came to looking for women, and though I could check off very few boxes on that list when it came to Beth, I listened to Phyllis who told me to embrace love for it sometimes came when you least expected it and in places you never imagined that it would.
So I decided to write to Beth. I poured out my heart to her over ten pages and told her how I wanted to give us a chance, the “us” that had started on that last night of her vacation in Tobago. I was not one to wreck a happy home but I told her that I sensed she was not completely happy with Dan and she should not let the fact that she had been with him for so long, or that they were making wedding plans, make her settle in a potentially unhappy situation. I had lost a love before and I did not want to lose another one.
Beth never wrote back.
