The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson Page B

morning, which always began with the same question, “So, whatchu doing?” She wanted to forget Taneisha’s kindness in believing that she might actually be doing something interesting, rather than “nothing” or “watching TV,” like she usually said. That, and the fact that Taneisha always waited for Dionne to say something about her mother, instead of asking, was just part of what had made them such good friends.
    â€œEh eh, but it look like you real watching whatever movie you playing in you head,” Saranne said, pulling Dionne out of her reverie.
    â€œHuh?” Dionne said, and then looked up to see Saranne was already halfway out the door of the changing room. She hustled, and trailed slightly behind Saranne as they edged farther down the beach, in the opposite direction of the Bird Hill picnickers.
    The girls eyed and then circled their prey, a group of boys who sat on boulders that made the sea a calm lake around them. Dionne and Saranne could tell from the boys’ crisply pressed designer jeans and fresh haircuts that they were from town. They felt like their practiced coquetry had finally found a worthy audience.
    Meanwhile, down the beach, the Bird Hill children and teenagers swam under the watch of a lifeguard while the adults napped in the shade. Hyacinth busied herself gathering aloe vera for sunburn and the women’s teas she made at home; she finished by collecting sea grapes, her favorite things on the beach. Nothing gave Hyacinth more pleasure than rolling the sea grapes’ seeds in her mouth so she could taste the sea and salt and fruit flesh all at once. She had her fill of them while the kids played in the radius of sand and water she’d circumscribed.
    Looking at Phaedra and Chris, at first glance some people might have said they were both boys, Chris in his navy trunks and Phaedra in a pair of shorts and a sports bra and tank top Dionne had handed down to her. Phaedra felt a bit self-conscious at first, watching the other girls in their frothy-colored bathing suits with frills and ruffles. But it wasn’t long before Chris won back her attention with a challenge to see who could find the most sand dollars. That day, the sea was choppy, the waves bashing the shoreline like an angry god. The children swam just to the edge of where the lifeguards and their parents said they could go. White sea foam sprayed high above their heads, wetting and cooling them down. Phaedrawas reminded of watching her father in the bathroom mirror in the morning, the dollop of cream that he put on her nose that she didn’t wash off until he was finished shaving.
    It was easy to think about Avril in Barbados, but Phaedra had a hard time placing her father there. Errol never talked about Barbados much, always saying that you had to leave old-time things behind to get ahead, as if the key to surviving leaving home was to pretend it never existed. Phaedra wondered if Errol felt the same way about the life he’d left behind with Avril and Dionne and herself. Did he think of them, talk about them, or did they live in the shadows of his heart, along with his memories of home?
    A few minutes before yet another round of eating was set to begin, when Phaedra’s and Chris’s pockets sagged with sand dollars and seashells, they emerged from the water and plopped on the sand in front of Hyacinth.
    â€œWhere’s your sister, P.?” Hyacinth asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” Phaedra said, and shrugged.
    â€œI don’t know, who?” Hyacinth said.
    â€œI don’t know, Granny. I think she went off with Saranne.”
    At the sound of that girl’s name, Hyacinth sprang into action. Hyacinth knew that Saranne had been sent to Barbados from Trinidad for the summer by her mother, who hoped that a dose of time at home might cool the fire beneath her clothes. Rumor had it that Saranne was pregnant when she came to Barbados, that she had stayed at a private