Chapter Four
On our way back to Golden Isle, we passed Mr. Gilbert in his fishing boat, delivering his latest catch to sell to one of the restaurants.
I waved to the old man, who had so often brought me and Nana Ama a bushel of crab or shrimp or oysters from his hauls.
Fishing, shrimping, and growing peaches had been the main sources of livelihood since the Kin had lived on the Isle.
Later that night, a chorus of whoops and hollers rang out as a newly sprung Cal High graduate jumped from the deck of his catamaran into the water with a splish.
We had all tied our boats together in a network of ropes and moored them to the docks.
Parties on the water were something of an Isle tradition, and our graduating class had spent countless nights hanging out beneath the stars.
Sometimes the boats would drift out farther, away from the inlet and into the Atlantic, but tonight we decided to stay close to the shore.
That way, if some of us got too drunk, we wouldn’t be too many clicks in to get them on land.
From where I stretched out in Sekou’s sailboat, I watched as another islander, Davis, dove into the dark water.
I swayed with Sekou’s boat, feeling pretty nice on the Peach Lightning moonshine that was our island’s specialty.
It was so good that even the mainlanders loved to come and have a glass or three of it.
Had to take it slow, though, because that ’shine could sneak up on a person real quick and lay them out completely for two days.
“How long before Ada tells me to dock so she can go home?” Sekou asked.
I wasn’t about to pay him any dust. I was relaxed and enjoying the night and everyone else having fun.
I stifled a yawn, not willing to admit that I was a little tired and wouldn’t have minded going home to bed.
It was that moonshine. But I wasn’t going to let Sekou Thompson, the eternal partier and playboy, have the satisfaction.
I turned to Naira, showing my saddest, most pitiful eyes. Since the bus, she’d mellowed out some and I wanted to keep it that way. This “being mature” took some getting used to. “Tell your friend to shut up.”
Naira offered a patient smile from her corner of the boat, where she’d been hunched over her phone all night. I was reassured we were good, even if she seemed distracted since we’d gotten back. I hadn’t mentioned Luke since we boarded the bus, listening to Sekou for a change. Growth, right?
I waited her out, hoping she’d be first to break and let us in on her love life. My growth was diminishing by the hour, though. There was only so much a person could take.
Naira said, “You’ve been sneaking home early for years already. Live a little.”
My eyes narrowed. Traitor.
The boat rocked when Sekou heaved himself off it and into the water with a tribal yell.
“Try to look like you don’t totally hate being here, please?” Naira slid her phone into her back pocket, stretching and wiggling her fingers at me and ignoring my groans.
“My bad.” I bowed and remembered to smile hard enough to make my dimples appear.
“Maris stopped by the store the other day,” Naira said nonchalantly. “I think she’s hoping you’ll hang out on the Fourth.”
I forced myself to remain calm so Naira wouldn’t notice how much I didn’t want to discuss Maris tonight.
“She shouldn’t have done that.” I gritted my teeth. “Considering she’s the one who ended things. She should be more focused on getting ready for that research trip with her college.”
Here, the Fourth of July held a different kind of meaning.
We celebrated big on the island with fireworks, food, and partying, but not for independence from the British.
On the Golden Isle and to the Kinfolk, the Fourth was the day of our ancestors’ independence.
It marked the night the founding families saw a light in the distance out in the Atlantic and decided to follow it like the North Star, rather than die like the countless other stolen lives on the boats that were carrying them to hell.
The founding families vowed never to be taken back again to live in bondage and used that mysterious blinking light in the water to guide them like a lighthouse.
They landed on Golden Isle, the isolated island of fireflies, and flourished.
Naira shot me side-eye. “Maybe Maris figured out she screwed up. Don’t you want to hear her out?”
“Nope.” I popped the p. Maris was the cherry on top of an already annoying day.
“People make mistakes, Ada. People change. You can’t always be so black and white about stuff.”
It was black and white. Maris had shown me who she was when she refused to understand my priorities. She showed me I wasn’t enough when she called it quits.
“How are you all into light and warmth when you’re—”
I sat up quickly, striking what I thought was a sexy pose. “—some kinda Nubian goddess who bathes in blood to keep her youthful beauty?”
Naira pursed her lips, unimpressed as she watched me do a few more. “No. No, I wasn’t gonna say that.”
I flopped back down.
I could never share all of me. It came with the territory and the responsibilities to the island.
To my grandma, especially since it was only the two of us left.
To my legacy and the promise my family made to protect this land and everyone who lived here, which didn’t leave much room for a love life.
“Love is overrated.”
Naira smacked me. “Did you say that when you were with Maris?”
“Okay, now where is Sheriff Lyle because that was definitely assault.” I swiveled around, looking for the Beaufort County sheriff even though it wasn’t his day to check the island.
Wouldn’t be surprised if he popped up from behind the cluster of boats, ready to bust us.
But we were policing ourselves. No excessive drinking.
No boating if you were drinking. Each boat had a designated driver and Sekou was ours, though I didn’t remember Naira taking a sip of anything other than water.
I decided I’d had enough ’shine. I wasn’t about to be the drunkest one on this boat and make an ass of myself.
“I just want you to be happy,” Naira said, sounding like the world was on her shoulders.
I couldn’t explain to Naira why Maris and I didn’t work when I didn’t fully understand it myself.
We just didn’t, and I had to believe that was okay sometimes.
Plus, I was going through stuff. I had bigger things on my mind: like if this year was finally the one when I’d be able to Light and fulfill my role as the next matriarch to the Kinfolk and caretaker of Golden Isle.
Nana had been preparing me since I could remember, teaching me how to make tinctures, salves and balms, protection charms, and mojo bags.
How to make her most special elixir that she shared with the Kin every year, the elixir that kept them well and strong, if they wanted it, because on the Isle, there was always a choice.
And each year so far, I’d failed at it miserably.
Nana said I had to want it, that I hadn’t accepted it, that I still feared it—the Light. She said I had to cultivate more.
“I am happy,” I stressed, hoping she’d get it. “I don’t need Maris to make me happy so maybe leave that one alone.”
Giving my everything to someone was out of the picture.
There were too many opportunities for danger, for them and for me, if the closely guarded secrets and gifts of the Isle were revealed.
I couldn’t invite my closest friends to share that burden, let alone a lover.
Holding that part of me back was me giving my everything.
Naira pouted. The fire pits dotting the shore not too far off snapped and crackled, sending up sparks.
“You know…”
Please don’t say it. Not tonight. I sucked in air. Nearly three years had passed, and I wanted one night when I wasn’t reminded in some way.
“You know…,” she said again, “I just want you to be happy after…,” Naira choked out, her eyes shiny. I slowly exhaled. “Like, you never really talk about it.”
Wasn’t going to either. What was there to say? Naira was really on one tonight. All up in her feels and trying to bring me down with her.
You’d have thought it was her mother who was dead. My mother had to be. Because I didn’t sense her presence here on Earth. Or maybe she was too far away and I was too weak to feel her. No, my mother was gone.
“What? Girl, come on,” I scoffed, waving her off. It came out much louder than I intended, as I tried to pretend away any emotion.
“Who needs love when you and Sekou will always be by my side? We’re done with Cal.
We have the whole summer to chill, and come fall, maybe I’ll even take classes at the community college with you.
It’ll be great. What else is there?” I shot her a big cheesy grin, ignoring the flash of guilt sliding across her face.
Love sure as hell didn’t stop my mom from going and leaving me behind because the thoughts in her mind became too many. Love didn’t keep me from wanting to launch into the stratosphere and never come back whenever I was forced to think of the moment Nana broke the news.
“Ada,” Nana began that morning over a warmed cup of her treasured honeyed coconut water, “your mother has left.”
The heaviness in Nana’s voice and her ageless face, which now looked a hundred years old, told me what she meant without her having to say so. Mom hadn’t gone to the mainland for an excursion. Mom wasn’t coming back.
“How?” I asked, feeling surprisingly calm.
Nana looked beyond me to her groves that led to the cliff. “Out to sea.”
I nodded because the huge painful lump growing in my throat wouldn’t let me speak.
Nana sighed out her prayer for the dead. “May Mami Wata guide her to our ancestors, and may she finally find her peace.”
Love didn’t stop the anger and resentment of knowing I wasn’t enough for Mom to stay, even though it had taken her so many years to have me.
Nana constantly telling me how much my mother loved and wanted me for so many years wasn’t enough.
Not for me. Not for my mom. I was supposed to live with that. And I couldn’t.
The only things, the only things that kept me from exploding were my grandmother and my friends. I couldn’t take another person leaving.
Eventually, the water crowd joined the shore crowd, and that’s when things got really live as we dried off in front of the fires. The music transitioned to a line dance, and the crowd went wild. Sekou spotted us, twirling an invisible lasso in the air and then throwing it at Naira.
She froze, caught for a hot second, then gripped the invisible rope in both hands and started under-handing her way toward him as he pulled on his end, her feet two-stepping and cowboy boogying effortlessly in time to the lyrics as she continued pulling herself along the rope.
Her execution was so flawless, it was easy to see how Naira was the undefeated best dancer of the three of us.
Naira reached Sekou and he wrapped his long, muscled arms around her, twirling her as she cackled happily.
The two of them started dancing, jumping around, getting lost in the crowd.
Sekou, who towered over most of the moving bodies, motioned for me to come over.
I waved him off, opting to hang back and watch from the sidelines like I did best. I popped in my earbuds to block out the noise that could crowd my mind if I wasn’t careful, facing the expanse of water that stretched out of the Calibogue Sound and into the Atlantic.
I gazed out to the blackness of the glass-like water as it reflected the sky.
I could see the mainland’s twinkling line of lights from where I stood on the beach as my friends danced the night away.
I shivered, imagining someone across the three-mile stretch of Atlantic on the other side, doing just as I was doing.
On the shore, staring over here and wondering about us too.
And for the briefest moment I thought my imagination was reality, and across the sea was someone staring back at me with two tiny red orbs where eyes should have been.
I looked away to refocus, but when I returned there was no one.
Another intense shiver ripped through me, clenching my bones, and I felt the slightest quiver of fear.
I chalked it up to the dampness from the water and having an extraordinarily unordinary day.
I walked back to the warmth of the fire.
It was nothing more than fear of the unknown.