The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson

sisters, until their armor of teenage cool was cut through by threats to break their you-know-whats right then and there if they didn’t bring themselves over where they were supposed to be, and promptly.
    Once everyone’s food and belongings were laid out on the tables, it was time for a prayer. Phaedra hated how holy the hill women and some of the men became when they came together under the auspices of church functions. And this time was no different, as the hill women fell over themselves in an effortto prove their godliness, taking the baseline level of Bajan gentility to a fever pitch. Phaedra thought that Father Loving’s prayers to bless the food and the cooks and the church family and the sea and the fishermen and our nation’s leaders would never end. Ever since she’d seen Hyacinth and Dionne making fish cakes earlier in the day, her heart had leapt with single-minded focus toward devouring them. And so as she endured Father Loving’s endless entreaties to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Phaedra soothed herself by imagining how the oil, batter, codfish, onions, and pepper would explode in her mouth.
    Father Loving wound through his prayers, and Phaedra felt Chris fidgeting next to her. Phaedra and Chris were still friends, though sometimes the tension between Dionne and Trevor was thick enough to slice with a cutlass, and that meant that they couldn’t all hang out together anymore. Chris had been waging a campaign for closeness during the bus ride, holding Phaedra a moment longer than necessary when the Bird Hill caravan veered too close to reckless drivers on the south coast road. Now Chris slid in when Phaedra was defenseless, her head bowed respectfully. Phaedra felt Chris’s leathery fingers creep toward hers, but she swatted him away before he could take her hand in his. When Chris’s hands were a safe distance away, she heard Father Loving starting up again with more fervor, this time with a plea that the children of Bird Hill would not forget where they came from, that the blood of Jesus and of their people that was shed for them would not have been shed in vain.
    The Bird Hill Church of God in Christ picnic was held every third Saturday in July. If you asked some of the old people, like Hyacinth, they would tell you the real story, that the church had only taken what the original seven men who founded the hill did to celebrate their emancipation, and made it their own. They would also tell you that Bird Hill was once a community of freedmen, born when the local slaveholding family was wiped out by a series of unfortunate events. Pneumonia whipped through the white Braithwaite children like fire in a cane field. A boating accident took the overseer. A mysterious illness rotted the patriarch from the inside, bloating him until one day his belly ballooned to three times its normal size and his lips cracked and eventually stopped letting air pass through. Mrs. Braithwaite found herself without a child, husband, or another white person of her class to talk to. She looked out upon the fields and saw herself outnumbered by big strapping women and men grown strong on provisions and pork fat. Mr. Braithwaite was a firm believer in keeping his property in tip-top shape, and it was not unusual for the Braithwaite boys, as his male slaves were called, to take first prize in running and boxing competitions with the other plantations. Soon after her husband’s death, Mrs. Braithwaite was consumed by a rot similar to the one that took her husband, although in her case she got smaller and smaller, well past the slim-waisted figure she cut when she was first married. The disease progressed quickly, and in a matter of days, she emitted such noxious gas that her servants took her commands from well across the room where she lay wasting away. Theold-time hill women would tell you that Phaedra and Dionne’s great-great-grandmother, a heavy-footed woman with sour sops for breasts