They were sitting on a long stretch of wall at Dead End Beach anticipating what Jeffery had promised would be the most spectacular sunset found anywhere in the world, which was not much to go on, he admitted, as he had never travelled outside the shores of Jamaica.
The wall ran parallel to a small window to the sea that gave a direct view of the sun's descent beyond the horizon. As it was a Saturday evening, the area was now a hive of activity with locals bathing in the water, men fishing and vendors plying their trade.
“I promise you a Montego Bay sunset will hit your soul different.” His voice delivered a jolt of infectious child-like excitement into her and she found herself grinning so hard her cheeks ached.
She stared at him and struggled to recollect was the last time she felt such unbridled joy. Each night since they met in the taxi, she had laid her bald head on his hairy chest and listened to him recount stories from his childhood. Jeffery told her of his humble beginnings growing up in Westmoreland, the unmerciful abuse his father meted out to him and his brothers and how he finally decided to leave home at the age 16 after his father, in a drunken rage, threatened to kill him with a machete. He told her of his dreams of becoming a musician, his fears, how he often felt lost navigating life in Jamaica as a young man who wore locs and when the conversation got around to his mother, he spoke about her with a tenderness in his voice.
The only thing better than the conversations between them were the periods of silence. Often there was just the hum of the air-conditioned unit from the corner of the room and his slow, deliberate breaths which were reciprocated by a noiseless intake of air on her part. In these moments she felt compelled to tell him her truth but she decided against it.
I will be gone soon either way, she would tell herself.
…
“I loveeee ackees,” she shifted her sitting position on the wall so her body would be closer to Jeffery's.
She held the small, green fruit between her thumb and index finger, inspecting the shape and colour as if this was the first time she was eating it. Using her teeth, she pierced the skin and popped it into her mouth. Some of the juice ran down her chin and she dabbed it with her hand.
“No sah! Ah guinep dat. Ackee ah wha' yuh eat wit saltfish," he replied.
She laughed loudly, paying little attention to the people on the beach who were now staring at them.
“What so funny?" Jeffery asked her, he too erupting in laughter.
“This is the first time I really get to hear your accent. I love it, you should talk like that all the time.”
“If ah talk me ah talk like dat yuh nah go undastan!”
As he reached over into her lap to take one of the ackees, the tips of his fingers brushed the skin on her thigh. She was always surprised at how delicate, and almost imperceptible, his touch was.
The smile drained from her face when a dizzy spell crept up the base of her neck into her head.
“Yuh alright?” his voice was filled with concern.
“Jeffery I... ,” the pregnant pause was filled with sounds of the ackee vendor calling for sales on the Boulevard, a group of children were screaming with glee in the water and an ice-cream vendor tooted a horn to announce his arrival. The noise had gone pass being unbearable for her.
She felt the tornado swirling in her head and all throughout her body; it gripped her in the space between her ribs and it seared down into her stomach. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe through the pain.
“I... ,” she paused again. Her mouth hung open as if more words intended to come out but had gotten lost along the way. “… have a slight headache is all.”
“Yuh wanna leave?”
“No, no I can manage. I want to see this with you.”
“Look,” he pointed out to the horizon.
It seemed as if the entire world was now washed in a blazing orange hue from the departing sun. Specs of sunflower light had matured into lightning red shards of glass and they were now piercing her through the body- her stomach, her eyes- she was overflowing with light, a welcome change to the dungeon of darkness she had spent the last few months trapped in. As the bits of sunlight continued to fill her up, for the first time in a long time, she breathed easy- the pain was gone.
The two of them stayed on that stretch of wall until all the colour had drained itself from the sky, neither speaking a word.
“How was it?” Jeffery questioned when the sunset had eventually given way to dusk.
All she could muster was a smile.
“Speechless?" He smiled. "I told yuh it was going to be beautiful."
…
It was now the last night before she was scheduled to return to Barbados. The two soon-to-be-strangers-once-again lay on the white sheets of the hotel bed, silent but not asleep. The digital clock on the bedside table showed the time 3:26. She had to be up soon if she was going to make the check-in time for the flight.
“I know we na know each other for long and I know, no I don’t know. I mean ... yuh think yuh can ...I mean. I wanted to ask if yuh could stay in Jamaica a while longer please, na not a little while longer, stay. Stay for a long time” Jeffery exhaled hard as if the words had been suffocating him.
"No. I can't stay." Her tone was frank.
"How come?"
“I don't have time.”
“I know yuh have a 'hole life in Barbados but me and you ...” he put his hand on her back as if hoping his touch could convey the words he was struggling to say.
“I can’t." She shrugged his hand off her back.
“Yuh can't or yuh never want to?” He did not give pause for her to reply, "Tell me the truth. The truth 'bout you. I know there is something you not telling me. I can feel it. I been honest wid yuh about everything! Yuh know all about me and i know nutting. This is more than two weeks now I dey wid yuh and I know nuttin atall 'bout you. Yuh dey inna one relationship? You come Jamaica fi summer fling and now affi go back ah yard wid yuh man?” His patois grew thicker, his tone more serious with each question.
When no response came from her. He pressed on again, “Or is due to dat scar pan yuh head back?” Her body stiffened noticeably under the weight of this question.
Jeffery reached over to her and ran his fingers along the length of the scar located on the right side of her head. It started behind her ear, ran horizontally across the length of her skull and came to a stop right in the middle.
His touch made her flinch and she immediately sat up and responded, “I drop out of a mango tree when I was small and burst my head.”
The scar, to her, looked menacing, like centipede with a million legs and she disliked anyone calling attention to it. Although her hair had since sprung up into a small afro, the follicles around the scar remained incorrigible, refusing to grow and she forced to use make most days to camouflage the healing flesh with her kinky hair.
If she had turned around, she would have seen the incredulous look on his face. She knew, as Jeffery did, that the freshness of the scar discredited her story about a childhood injury.
"So yuh not going to tell me the truth then? That's what yuh telling me?
She pretended to be asleep.
...
At precisely 11:53 am, she and Jeffery walked into the lobby of the hotel, hand in hand.
With much persuasion he was able to get her to agree to prolong her stay in Montego Bay. He had only one condition: that she share her full story with him. She had already resigned herself to the fact that eventually she would have to come clean to Jeffery about everything- about the cause of her severe headaches, the true origin of the scar, and the real reason he came to Montego Bay. She knew her body would be deteriorating in the near future, as was evident by the frequency of the headaches and the constant fatigue.
But for now she would just focus on enjoying the limited time they had together and put the thoughts of doctors and hospital stays at the back of her mind.
She approached the front desk and was greeted by a smiling receptionist who looked as if he had polished his teeth with correction fluid. She handed him her room key and gave him a polite smile.
“Good day Miss. Checking out?”
“Yes, please.”
“No problem.” He looked down at the computer and began to type. “Did you enjoy your stay here with us?”
Her face broke into a foot-long smile as she looked across at Jeffery, who was squeezing her hand firmly, as if he was afraid she would bolt from the hotel and leave him behind.
“Yes I did actually. It was lovely.”
“Glad to hear that,” the young man’s teeth came like flashes of light through his lips “Ahhmmm I see a note here that you requested a taxi for two persons?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Ok no problem. Will that person be meeting you here at the hotel? Or it is a pickup along the way?”
“Huh? He's already here.” Confusion painted itself across her face.
Mr. White Teeth spoke again, this time enunciating each word as if she did not speak English, “Where-is-the-next-person-who-is-supposed-to-accompany-you-in-the-taxi-so-I-can-alert-the-taxi-service?”
When she did not reply, Mr. White Teeth questioned further, "Miss yuh nuh understan me?
She wrinkled her eyebrows, perplexed by his attitude as well as his question. She looked at Jeffery and back again to the Mr. White Teeth and back again to Jeffery.
She smiled awkwardly, thinking that the accent barrier accounted for the misunderstanding between them. She whispered to Jeffery, urging him to respond to the receptionist .
"Tell her dat is you who gine with me in the taxi. She mussy can't understand Bajan dialect."
"Miss? Who are you whispering to?" Mr. White Teeth asked loudly and genuinely confused.
She squeezed Jeffery’s hand even tighter as the tornado intensified in her head.
...
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