Island Lessons
The mutton with rice was exceptionally terrible that day. Nevertheless, my Catholic school cafeteria offered two choices of menu, edible and unidentifiable. I believed it was because they wanted us to suffer like Christ. I was not hungry enough for this, so, I pushed my way through checkered skirts, and white short-sleeve blouses to a trashcan to pitch it. Before I could, a nun, at least seventy, in a navy blue and starched white habit, jerked my arm and expounded how the poor West Indians would have given their only dollar for that meal but they had to live on plantains, goat, and mangoes. I responded with “Well, they needn’t sister, they can have mine.” She narrowed her brows and would have surely punished me with board time of writing the book of psalms or half the New Testament or something but a fight broke out and my redemption was granted. Quickly, I broke the nun's grasp as her attention diverted to the brewing brawl. Tucking down by a palm near a concrete slab, I crouched behind a thorny scrub to watch the ruckus, relieved by my escape. Pointing a finger in my face, a model-like Japanese -American girl about fifteen with long, silky black hair and a strong British- Calypso accent fanned out her skirt and plopped down beside me.
“ You o’most were toast. Ma’n I’d ne’er would ‘ave said that to Sister Duez.” She pretended to open a book to study but continued with a brief introduction.
Her name was Lelia and she was born on the island of St. John’s. She lived there now and her family was one of the few allowed as permanent residents because it was now a federal land reserve. I already knew that no one was allowed to live on St. John and told her how envious I was. It was one of the most beautiful of the islands. I had snorkeled there and toured the historic ruins of sugar plantations. “Wow! What a privilege,” I exclaimed and introduced myself, explaining that I was new to the Virgin Isles. She laughed and said everyone knew that from my accent and white legs. Her gift of gab exceeded mine and before recess was over, I knew that recently her dad had passed away from a rabies bite. Rabies?, I asked, here on the Virgins? No, he was bitten by a bat while stationed overseas in Europe and afterward came home to die.
“You see, it takes a while to die of rabies, at least my dad did. He went crazy first. It was so hard, Ma’an. My mum took it well.” Blinking away denied emotions, she wiped her sleeve up to her eyes. Her mother was Japanese whose family had been exiled in the forties and after the war they bought property on St. Johns before it became a reserve. So, now, she lived with her brother, who was twelve, and mother in a small geometric house with her own room and a cat, named Cyrene, justifiably.
She gave me her number and we arranged for a Saturday trek. Though not sure what a trek was, I gladly agreed, desperate to be her friend in this strange new world. We were to meet at Red Hook Ferry pier. I arrived early and took in the sandy cream beach washed clean by cool clear swipes of waves tickling hermit crabs and white sea urchins out on the rocks. Drifting with the slapping rhythms my imagination rambled. I envisioned that I discovered the treasure rumored to be buried here …it belonged to a roguish, handsome young pirate who would return to his loot only to find me. Flinging his past lusts aside, he would bestow an emerald pendant around my neck remarking how its resonance matched my eyes all the while becoming more enchanted. He would beg me to join him on faraway quests and exotic adventures declaring he could no longer live without the vision of my flowing hair…
“What, there’s someone waving at me?” I snapped to reality when a stout West Indian lady wrapped in a brightly colored shawl touched my arm, “Hallooo, huney, yes, she wav’ed at you”, only to realize that Lelia was beaconing for me to join her on the ferry. She had arrived, chasing my daydream away. We ferried over to St. John’s talking incessantly as if we had been friends long ago and were catching up on life. Her mother was a librarian and loved to cook. Great! I thought. I liked to cook and I loved to eat. So did Lelia. The weekend was a whirl of stir-fried island concoctions, baking chocolate chip cookies and devouring everything we made. She taught me how to make “perfect” western omelet and I showed her how to juggle the eggs, in the end making a “perfect” mess. She was amazingly talented and I couldn’t get over her sure-footed, easy manner. Constantly smiling and quick with stories all the while pushing and tucking her shiny long hair aside at every chance, I was immensely envious. Her hair was so black it seemed incandescent, shimmering indigo in the light. She had thin wide lips and a high forehead. In addition, she stood at least four inches over me. God, she could be a model, I seethed. Catching my thoughts and realizing I had said God’s name in vain, I silently prayed for forgiveness. Truly, I was perplexed though, as popular girls didn’t usually make friends with me. I decided not to worry. Lelia was now my first real friend in the Isles and I was basking in it. She was fun, gregarious, and interesting. Noticing how the boys followed her around at St. Peter & Paul’s High, I began imitating her. Secretly, I noted her funny quips intending them for my own use later with boys I might meet.
After lunch, she said she had to freshen up and after what seemed a long time, she emerged, wearing khaki shorts, preppy sandals and a flashy bathing top. I was so jealous of her beauty and thin shape. My own body was still changing in my adolescence and I wasn’t as shapely in the right places and still pudgy in my waist, plus I didn’t know how to
We scooped up towels and headed down a narrow paved road where I met soldier crabs, a mongoose, her brother’s friends, and everyone else who Lelia knew. The trek turned out to be sort of an island walk-a-bout. Because St. John's could be driven entirely in no time adding to the claustrophobia or island fever as it was called, the islanders took up sort of a social street walking where you could meet up with neighbors, buy goods from the native islanders or simply hike up the mountains and this Lelia explained was called “trekking.” We were also going to visit the old Sugar-plantation ruins and then play in the water to cool off. I enjoyed the hospitable atmosphere as people from all ages smiled at me and offered Lelia food. We talked about her childhood and I, mine. She was an “A” student I learned and it was expected of her. “What about you,” she asked? I admitted that my parents didn’t exactly care like that, but I tried for A’s anyway. I wanted to attend college. She said she wanted to travel the world as a flight attendant but they had to be pretty, you know. Oh, she was. I reassured her. However, my words were lost and off she rattled onto other subjects.
The next morning we rose long after the sun laughing, talking, and planning our day meanwhile cooking up another feast. After, Lelia again excused herself and spent what seemed forever in the bathroom. I asked her if she was o.k. and was reassured with Lelia’s usual, “No worries!” Racing each other, we ran up a bluff to conquer and explore. It was so easy to like her. Our friendship bloomed and bosom-buddies we were from then on. Each one visiting the other on weekends, she helped with my chores of sanding the hull on my dad’s boat, which we preparing to live on and I gardened for Lelia, to her elated relief, as she deplored weeding.
I was settling into island life. However, I couldn’t quite seem to adjust to the West Indian Stop Lights. My dad owned a Moped, an island jeep open on all sides and low to the ground. At each stoplight in Charlotte Amalie, a West Indian islander would hop on with all his friends holding on to whatever they could propped on bumpers and hoods hoping for a lift. In order to detain this, a driver needed to stay put letting the traffic pass refusing to give in to the hitchhiker, sometimes requiring an additional green light to deter them. It was the only way, as Dad never rejected them this charity. Awkwardly we held on, squishing together to allow our extra passengers and silently hoping their ride would be short.
Chip, my brother, took up wind-surfing, my dad- scuba-diving, and I learned to snorkel, clean out sea urchins for decoration and eat pate’ pies made with the loving, careful hands of West Indian widows that I met while exercising down goat paths. School had become easier and I had acquired many new friends through Lelia. Life was promising.
Months later, Lelia was staying over supposedly to work on a school project, when she began to cry. I asked her why but was shocked by what she told me.
“I throw up my food.”
“What? Are you sick? I’ll get my mom.”
“No, I throw up my food on purpose,” taking in a breath and wiping her eyes. “They call it anorexia.”
“I don’t understand.” In fact, I had never heard of it.
“Well, I obviously have never thought of doing that,” examining my own waistline. I studied her and in my innocence wondered aloud, “Why would someone as pretty and smart and so together as you need to do that”?
“I need to stay thin. And I’m not pretty,” she defended. I didn’t agree. We talked for hours about it. She explained how she ate whatever she wanted and then would throw up enough to keep her weight down. “You should try it. It works,” she advised.
If Lelia needed to “get pretty,” than I was in an awful quandary. I must have seemed hideous to her. I began to scrutinize my chunky reflection in shaggy bell-bottoms, t-shirt, and thin, straggly brown hair in the mirror, checking for weight loss and pimples everyday questioning what the world must think of me. I knew what they thought. I made sure that I avoided my mother’s side-reflection mirror for then I would see what I thought everyone else did…a flat-faced, big-nosed profile of a deformed but blossoming introverted fifteen years old. Even so, I could not seem to bring myself to such extremes as Lelia had. Consequently, I struggled along with my mother’s suggestions of coconut, mangoes, papaya, and salads. Running and swimming at the beach became my new companions and before long I had dropped two jean sizes to a slimmer size seven.
During spring break, we moved onto my dad’s schooner moored in Red Hook harbor. Summer vacation had begun but it would be lonely. Lelia was flying out to stay down island, in Barbados, with her family for “holiday.” Reluctantly, we said our tearful goodbyes, pledging to be best-friends, but I never saw Lelia again. Her wide smile, brown eyes and friendly face would be forever etched in my memory. I never forgot how to make a “perfect” omelet either. Secretly, I thanked her for that, but only that. For now, I too, felt most ugly and excessively worried about my weight. A day never retired before I weighed myself or examined my outline in a mirror. I had made new friends at my new home on the Isles, only to become a stranger to myself and later to my family.