It’s not just that Cheryl *knows* the rules, it’s that she was there while I invented them. The night Bean was born, she stayed overnight with my grandmother, so my mom could sleep in the other bed in my room at the clinic. Cheryl was still at the house when we got home early the next afternoon. For the two and half years that followed, she spent eight hours a day, five days a week with my family. She knows me, and she knows Bean, even if she hasn’t seen him in a year and a half. She’s also the only person he remembers from our life here in Grenada. Other than his father. He even forgot mangoes. 

So when Cheryl called and said could she please take Bean for Saturday, and bring him in a sports festival t’ing for chirren, I said yes, of course, because she’s still his only babysitter.

This is Bean’s first ever sleepover with anyone who is not my mother. He’ll be back tomorrow. 

*

When I informed Bean’s father, he frowned. Briefly. And then he said, “You know I hear dey say Cheryl have dem wild children.”

“Wild?” Like, what does that even mean?

“Yeah, man.”

“Wild. Like the big daughter.”

Yeah, man!”

“The one who got in trouble for reading?”

He shrugged, which signifies concession.

*

We didn’t go anywhere at all the first few days. Bean fell asleep on the New York to Miami leg of our flight, so I did too, which was great, because I’d barely gotten three hours of sleep the night before, and terrible, because when I fall asleep in cars or on airplanes, I don’t move, and I wake up with molten fire in my knees and ankles, the residue of my battle with Lyme Disease in high school. 

Bean was a good sport about Mommy’s feet. I had new DVDs and books, fresh magic markers, and a sketchbook that I wallpapered in Buzz Lightyear stickers. We drew frogs, houses with plants growing from their chimneys, and a dinosaur that looked exactly like the Loch Ness Monster. I restrung my red coral necklace, slipping in a turquoise bead every five chips. 

I’d promised that we would go the the beach the first day, and I meant it, but I had to let my feet - too swollen even for slippers - heal. 

The storm, when it came, approached slowly. Bean was exhausted from the day before, had played for *hours* in the ocean, and didn’t sleep late the following morning because he woke up hungry. He ate three hard-boiled eggs and some ham for hops and went back to sleep. 

“Mommy? Where is Woody? Did you pack Woody in the suitcase?”

“Yes, baby. He’s in the box with your Legos. See?” 

“Nooo.” He sniffs air out at me, hard, a horrifying expression of impatience I recognized he’d learned by watching me communicate with his grandmother. 

“Not THIS Woody. This is SMALL Woody. I want BIG Woody.”

“I didn’t bring Big Woody,” I reminded him. “We left Big Woody at Grandma’s house.. She’ll keep him safe for you. Also, sweetie pie? Big Woody didn’t have his hat. A cowboy can’t travel without his hat.” 

“I WANT TO GO TO GRANDMA’S HOUSE!”

That was the beginning of an epic - no, no, literally! epic. - tantrum. It lasted about sixteen hours. Highlights include: 

- This is not my house!

- I need space!

- I want to go to Grandma’s house!

- I want to go to the yellow house!

- I want to go to Hickory!

- WHERE IS UNCLE BOB’S DOG? 

- I want to go to the beach! 

- YOU ARE NOT MY REAL PARENTS! [blatantly lifted from Coraline, I realized later] 

- I hate the beach! 

- I HATE MY BED. IT IS NOT EVEN A REAL BED. IT’S LONG. AND MADE OF WOOD.

- I hate this house, this sink is OUTSIDE THE BATHROOM! TAKE ME TO THE AIRPORT RIGHT NOW! COME ON, MOMMY! WHY ARE YOU JUST SITTING THERE? 

- YOU SAID THERE IS ALWAYS A BEACH AND NOW YOU SAY THERE IS NOT ALWAYS A BEACH. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO TELL THE TRUTH, MOMMY!

- Go out and get me some sunglasses that fit me! 

He’s yelling at me like third-year Harry Potter.

I know he got a whole lot of sun the day before. I also know he’s overtired and still catching up on hydration. That he has spent well over three days straight mostly stuck alone with me and my hurty feet. That some of the food is unfamiliar and that his daddy talks funny, funny enough that he doesn’t always understand.

Yet mostly I’m amazed at how quickly he just slides into Grenada. He drinks guava-kiwi juice and eats a breadfruit chip, and I’m relieved, because he can be very particular about food, and has recently declared that he does not like! chicken nuggets! any! more! So it matters when we don’t have Cheerios, his favorite, but we *do* have Alpen, a muesli concoction from Switzerland, full of peanuts and currants, and he clears the bowl and asks for and receives three refills.

His father makes him cocoa tea, and it’s not like the Ovaltine in our kitchen back at Amherst, it is not so processed, it is unsweetened; like real baking chocolate squares that you melt in a pan, fold with white sugar. The first cup is too hot and bitter, but his father quickly learns to let it cool, then add some sweet milk. Bean drinks it, gulping, and if he notices the bits of bay leaf, he doesn’t mention it. 

In this photo, he stands on the edge of his bed, his belly pressed against the painted concrete wall, his fingers angled against the bottom corner of the window. After I take the photo, I walk across the mattress on my knees, duck my head under the lace curtain, join him between it and the window. 

“What do you see, baby?”

“Kitties! There were kitties. Two.                 They might come back.”

The garden on the other side of his bedroom wall is overgrown and exotic, a sight with or without kitties, but Bean harbors a particular affection for felines. 

My head level with his behind the lace curtain, I watch my son’s face. His mouth is open a little bit, enough that I can see all his teeth. His hands are aflutter (twitter? atwitter? ha!) and his eyes are fixed on the green beyond the screen. 

He’s enthralled, delighted, eyes bright with the *possibility* of seeing the cats again. He’s riveted in *anticipation* - “they might come back” - of the sight. 

It’s a quality of his I covet, that ability to so effortlessly pluck joy from the world, and eat it whole. 

I am a traveler, and I am fearless. I wear flip-flops in the security line, because it saves time, and I never check luggage if I can help it. I carry my cream rinse and lotion in a Nalgene travel set. The little bottles hold 3 ounces each, and I appreciate their simple, finite shapes. My passport and tickets and cash are in a pouch that swings resolutely from my neck, and thus my hands stay free, always available. 

I am sometimes surprised, but I’ll never let it show on my face.  

My hair is long and thick and coarse, Aslanesque, and looks better the less I wash it. I fix it by feel. I have no need for mirrors. When my shirt gets dirty or my socks feel sweaty, I change clothes in the filthiest train station rest room, never letting my feet touch the floor. I can take a shower at a sink. I eat the local food and speak the popular slang. I collect colorful phrases, words that tickle me, and I incorporate them into my personal lexicon. 

No one can ever figure out where I’m from. 

I’m not rootless, it just seems that way. Give me a little time, and I’ll match the pattern of my chair’s upholstery, even if it’s paisley. Give me a lot of time, and you’ll swear I was born to sit there. 

Juicy Lucy, by the way, is the nickname she gave herself. 

(large and legible)

You can’t imagine that you won’t remember the name of that Italian movie, the one that takes place right after the war, the one where soldiers who aren’t supposed to be soldiers are slogging through a marsh, not knowing who they’re supposed to shoot because nobody wears uniforms anymore, so they shoot everyone. 

You can’t imagine you’d forget the name of that boy, the one you purposely collided with at the ice rink so he’d talk to you, just for a minute. 

You can’t imagine that you’d remember that argument, the one you had with your best friend at the pool party, the one right after graduation, the one that was so bad you never really talked again even though you still miss her. You’d remember the argument itself, but not any of the details or any of the substance. You’d think it must’ve been important, some kind of dealbreaker, but really you’re just guessing because you do. not. know. 

The thing about being young is that you can’t imagine forgetting. You can’t imagine that you’d have to write things down or they’d be gone the next day. You can’t imagine that well before your child is old enough for kindergarten you’d forget which word it was, exactly, that was the very first one he ever spoke. 

You can’t imagine that in order to remember these moments you need to reach back into the past, close your eyes and recreate every detail still available. That you’d have to do this, and that you’d have to do it often. That you’d have to study. That your memory would require refreshment, as if the precious mental images that make up your history were not really all that different from the irregular French verbs you used to mutter under your breath, repeating and repeating and visualizing and repeating until you could - and did - recite them in your sleep. 

I review these things like I’m going to be tested on them later. The pale green taste of that grapefruit soda, the one I can’t get here in the States unless I go to Brooklyn. The smell of the carrot oil my son’s father used to smooth back his hair. What it felt like when my skin was never cold and the water in the pipe was always hot. How slowly the sun set and the way the sky looked like a broken egg yolk. The thickness of the island air that you can feel even before you step outside the airport. 

I study these details, I recall them often, I write them down and THAT is how I make them forever mine. 

In May of 1999 I had gotten my BA from Cornell University. I had double-majored in History and French Lit and harbored vague dreams of graduate school, but I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, or even the next five years. And so, in a sequence of events best described as coasting along the path of least resistance, I took a job at the not-for-profit health care agency where I had worked every summer since graduating from high school. I rented an apartment two blocks from my mother’s house. I got engaged. 

Over the next few years I became an expert time waster. I watched a lot of TV. I took a lot of baths. I ate a lot of fast food. I did a lot of online shopping. I stopped opening my mail and answering my phone. I fell out of touch with most of my friends. My fiance and I were a perfect pair of unhappy, frustrated hermits. I knew this was, to say the very least, a profoundly unproductive way to be spending my twenties.

By the summer of 2001, I had woken up. I had made a commitment to myself. I was going to dig my life out of the rubble. I was, after all, only 24. I got well started and for the first time since college life felt promising. *I* felt promising.

Then September 11th happened, and I drowned. My lungs filled with water. I sank.

By terrible coincidence, my mother had just sold her house, moved onto a sailboat, and left for the Caribbean. She and her husband had taken an early retirement. They’d been planning it for years. For the very first time in my life, I needed her, and she wasn’t there. 

Two years and all sorts of inertia later, I’m no longer engaged. I’m living in a new place, full of light and the best tasting well water on Jah’s green earth. I quit my job, and have enough savings to stay unemployed for a while. I am planning to write. Finally. 

I am barely two months into this brave new world of mine, when a fire destroys nearly everything I own, including my computer and my books and every single word I’ve ever put to paper. It is far and away the worst thing that has ever happened to me, but it is only the beginning. 

After that I ended up in Massachusetts. I moved in with my brother, who was a student in Amherst. I spend my days on campus, in the library, reading. I spend my nights drinking and smoking and plotting precisely how I would like to relive my life. I want a do-over.

I need a do-over, you know? Because in a few short years I’ve managed to go from promising Ivy League graduate to wannabe hippie loser. It’s earth-shattering, how far I’ve fallen. Or how far I *think* I’ve fallen, because the bottom is still leagues below me. 

So. It’s now January 2004. I’ve moved back to New York. I’m living with my dad. I am employed. I am seeing friends I haven’t seen in years. I am, wonder of wonders, doing it right. But I get impatient, which is I guess why I end up getting back together with this guy I dated in college, and moving in with him almost immediately. He’s precisely the same person he was when I broke up with him in 1997, but! But when I’m with him, I am almost the same person I was in 1997. The person I was before everything went wrong. 

Clearly, this is not going to end well. 

Another notebook excerpt. I wrote a story about this one, but it’s way too long for Tumblr. I’ll post it when/if I manage to edit it down to fewer than 1000 words.

The super-short version is: Back in 2005 when I first got to Grenada, I was a total mess. Like so traumatized by the events of the previous year that I was 1) super-skinny, 2) showering in my bathing suit and 3) totally unable to have a normal conversation with any guy who tried to flirt with me. So I always always ALWAYS had a book with me, no matter where I went. I’d keep a finger between the pages, marking my place so that with a moment’s notice I could stick my nose in the book, thereby allowing me to avoid talking to people without being blatantly rude.

It got to the point where I’d giggle about it. Someone would pass me and ask, Is the lady alright? And I’d reply, The lady is fine. The lady is reading.

Then one day I legit laughed out loud about how silly I was being. And that’s when I realized: I was going to be OK.