Chapter Nine #2
The lump that had been in my throat had moved down, getting bigger and bigger.
It had gone from a pebble to a stone to a boulder.
There was so much damn anger. I let out something like a laugh and a sob, slapping my hand over my mouth to keep my emotions in check.
Not here. I couldn’t unleash it here, in front of these people who were watching me.
I swallowed it all down until there was nothing but dullness.
“You should check harder,” I said, because there was no way he was going to give up that quick. Holding myself was so hard. I was supposed to be like Nana, calm and rational. Solution-oriented when all I wanted to do was destroy everything.
“She’s not about to be another missing Black girl that you just write off.”
I could imagine the stories he’d heard about the Isle.
I could practically hear how they described us when there wasn’t anyone around to stop them.
How they spouted stories of us practicing voodoo (an actual religion they wouldn’t even understand), or worse, devil worshipping, and running around like we were uncultured heathens.
Like we were wild, how they thought of people from Africa.
How they worked so hard to take all of this from us, couldn’t believe this Black family had managed to take and retain an entire island for their own use, and then built a world within a world on it.
Thinking we had been the ones to steal, forgetting that if it hadn’t been for them and their greed, we would have never been here.
They acted as if we didn’t know hard work.
As if we hadn’t suffered. As if we weren’t suffering this very moment.
“It’s not about…” He tried explaining to a crowd who wouldn’t give him an inch, not even Lyle.
“In the dark, it’s hard to tell the distance from water to land.
And if one, or both of them, was injured and the other was trying to tow them in …
with the currents and especially after a freak storm.
There is practically no chance they could have swum to shore. ”
Screw what he was saying. Naira could have made it. She could have made it back to land.
“We live on an island,” I said. “Grew up in the water. Naira is one of the best swimmers around.”
“Miss, swimming around an island’s shallow waters is a little different than swimming in pitch black in the middle of the Atlantic.
There are too many factors they’d be up against. They could swallow so much seawater that it affects mental capacity.
Exhaustion. Trauma from the accident. Marine life—”
The way he talked down to me stirred the monster in me. It threatened to come out, to tear the smug look off his face.
Buzz Cut continued, “It is easy to get turned around.”
Three sharp raps on the floor, hard and like thunder, startled the both of us back to our corners.
“That’s enough,” Nana Ama barked, sending a glare that could melt metal at DNR so he melted back in line with Sheriff Lyle. She gave the reddening man a long and hard stare until he wilted beneath her. A five-foot woman able to make a man double her size cower in complete fear.
She returned her gaze to me, the hardness in her eyes melting away as my breathing hitched and I attempted to lock the monster back in the cage.
Naira wasn’t dead. Maybe she was out there floating in some high reedy inlet or passed out on a sandy beach in some area where people didn’t usually roam. But she wasn’t dead.
I thought about explaining, but Nana’s sharp head shake and quick flick of the wrist silenced me as it had done the officer who came with Lyle.
Not here. Not in front of Naira’s parents.
Her eyes shifted toward Naira’s mother, working through a fresh wave of tears, the other four kids gathering around her.
The last thing I’d done was walk away from her.
She left thinking I never wanted to speak to her again.
And for the past few days I’d doubled down on that thought, ignoring her messages.
The thought of how I’d acted over something as minor as going away to college was concrete gloves slamming into me so hard, I stumbled back toward the door.
I had to leave. Had to get out of the room where everyone wanted me to believe my best friend was dead.
There was no air in this place. Everything became a blur. I spun on my heel and charged forward, pushing the people who’d gathered behind me, bottlenecking the doorway.
I pushed past them, unable to stand the way the house suddenly felt like it was closing in on me. There were too many eyes on me, watching for my reaction like I was on some show. The Ada Show, just like Naira had accused me of wanting.
I couldn’t think about putting her to rest.
The things we say, we speak into existence.
I managed to make it to my golf cart before my heart started racing.
I clawed at my throat, unable to breathe in the thick humidity.
I was falling, throwing out a hand to stop myself when an arm grabbed me by the waist, steadying me.
Through blurry eyes I made out Sekou, hovering over me like a hanging rubber tree plant.
I fell into him, letting him swallow me up in his arms.
It took him a moment to work up the ability to speak. Watching him try almost made me burst. “It’s okay. They’ll find her and we’ll be able to say goodbye…” He swallowed like he was taking down an impossible pill. It was impossible. Impossible to believe any of this was reality. “It’ll be okay.”
Except it wasn’t okay. It never would be.
I snatched myself away, looking at him with new eyes. “You think like they do? Like she’s gone, gone?” How could he ever think Naira was dead?
His face was slick with tears. He reached out to me, but each time I staggered back.
“Get away from me,” I said between heaves.
“Who doesn’t know the sea better than me?” he choked out. “And what it can do. God, look what it did to Elder Gilbert. I know it’s unbelievable, but don’t we gotta face facts?”
“I don’t gotta do shit,” I seethed.
Sekou was speaking nonsense. I wished he’d go back to his non-speaking self instead of telling me all of this. He grabbed at my arms, attempted to pull me into him.
I slapped him away. If he believed them, then Sekou could stay with the rest of them.
I turned away, stumbling down the street like I’d downed a huge pitcher of the Garvey Brothers’ moonshine.
I pushed past the people showing up to find out what’d happened, the news about Naira spreading through Golden Isle like wildfire that one of ours was lost.
She was lost because I made it that way.
Nana always said that words spoken on the Isle held power.
I should have known better. I’d seen Nana in action, walking the circumference of the island, chanting to fortify the protective links that made her feel safe, boiling poultices for the sick or wounded, and whispering blessings for those who asked, only to see them fully healed days later.
Words held meaning, power here. And the last thing I’d said to Naira was to stay gone.
Now she was.