“YOU!” A man yelled.
Tires screeched.
Xana didn’t look. She kept her head down and feet plowing through the sand. She had traversed most of the town. She passed palm trees and women selling beads and fry bread as she made her way to the beach. She passed behind the Dutch market. She kept a brisk pace and was only minutes from the Catholic school.
Car doors opened. “Woman!”
Xana couldn’t see her pursuers. The beach road was elevated and obscured by a concrete wall. She was used to being accosted, but these men weren’t the usual street-side loafers with nothing better to do than yell obscenities. These men had stopped their car at the sight of her. Her pace quickened. She scared a pair of stray dogs fighting over a fish carcass. Hungry gulls watched her scurry past.
“WOMAN!” the man yelled again.
Xana began to run, but her heavy frame slowed her down in the sand. She could hear feet slapping fast against the road.
Four men poured down a concrete staircase ahead, one of several spread along the wall that connected the beach to the street. She recognized the leader. He was short with a sagging belly and a snub nose. He wore a red-striped tank top and held a crowbar in one hand. His friends were behind him.
Morin. Her cousin’s husband. His curly black hair was disappearing up his scalp. Xana took a deep breath as the men surrounded her.
Morin rammed the crowbar into Xana’s gut. When she doubled, he smacked it across her head with both hands. Her skull shrieked in pain. Xana felt her ear split. She dropped to the sand. Warm blood dribbled into her ear canal and half her world went silent.
Morin pointed the hooked end of the crowbar at Xana’s face. “What have you done, woman?”
Xana felt dizzy. She kept her hand pressed tight to the side of her head. Her wild curls flapped in the ocean breeze. She looked at her attacker from under her heavy brow. Morin was a braggart and prone to outbursts, but he was only rarely violent. If she didn’t fight back, if she didn’t argue, he would do little more than yell. Probably.
“Stop!” Xana’s cousin, Oja, yelled from the steps. “Morin! What are you doing?”
“This is her fault!” the man accused.
“So what will you do?” Oja stepped in front of her husband, right in his face. She was thin but an inch taller than her man. Her flower-print dress was practical but pretty. A hard life had chiseled wrinkles into the corners of her face. “And what will Mama do when she hears you beat her to her prize?”
It was clear from his face that Morin hadn’t considered that. He waved into the air and took a step back.
Oja pushed him back farther and raised her hand to the car. “Take your friends and go.”
The man pointed to Xana with the crowbar. “You will show up tomorrow, woman. You will face the man Boraro. Or we will find you and drag you to him.”
Oja pointed again. “GO!”
Morin spat into the sand and waved to his friends as he turned. “Find your own way home,” he barked to his wife.
Oja sighed over the sound of the waves.
Xana sat in the sand clutching the side of her head. Her eyes ran from the sting. She looked at her hand. Bloody. Smeared. She pressed it to her ear again.
Oja frowned. “Let me see.”
“I’m fine.” Xana stood. She was still unstable.
“Xan—”
“I’m fine,” she repeated. She started down the beach. AJ’s school was just ahead and to the right. Five minutes. Five minutes and she’d see for herself. Her first few steps swayed unbalanced.
Oja walked behind her. “Mama has sent the man Boraro to find you.”
“I heard.” Xana didn’t stop. She kept a hand pressed to the side of her head.
“What did you do?”
She turned. “I didn’t do anything!” She glared at her cousin.
Oja was unmoved. Her eyes strong. “You were sellin’ the pills you got from the clinic.” Oja had never gone to school and like many Afro-Guyanese had picked up a slight Caribbean accent.
Xana threw up her hands. Raised high over her head, they seemed even larger. Oja had told her husband. And probably the rest of Figtree. “You said you wouldn’t tell.”
“Because I didn’t think anyone would care!”
Xana started walking. Her feet plowed through the sand. She needed the money. She’d already sold everything else. “It’s not about that.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s not.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know. But it isn’t.”
“We’re not talking about normal people, Xan. We’re talking about Mama Enecio and her dogs. They’re killers.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then why are they loo—”
Xana turned again. “I don’t know!” A strong breeze from the water blew her hair free and she held it from her face with one hand. The curls around her ear stuck to the blood.
She looked out over the ocean. The sea was brown and murky. There were no skyscrapers in Guyana, no rows of ritzy resorts along the ocean. The two great arteries of the country, the Demerara and the Essequibo, poured jungle silt into the sea. The meeting of warm, dirt-laden fresh water and the cold, salted ocean created a muddy, brackish grog that hugged the coast as it traveled with the current east across the country. Guyana’s beaches were ugly, and with such a view, no one bothered to maintain them. Even in Georgetown, the coastal capital that housed 90 percent of the population, the sandy beach was a dead zone. Only a few meters across, it was a buffer between the tide and the concrete barrier, irregularly speckled in graffiti, that held back the storm water.
The waves gathered bits of trash and organic debris from the jungle into small piles on the sand. Xana looked down at a jumble of dead seaweed. It clung to a plastic bottle as a mother clings to her child. “I don’t know,” she repeated.
“We brought your things.”
Her things. Xana repeated the words in her head. She nodded. Oja was kicking her out.
“I’m pretty sure that idiot just dumped them into the street.” Oja paused. “I’m sorry.”
Xana trundled without a word back to the concrete staircase. When she reached the top, she saw a worn suitcase and a duffel with a broken strap lying in the middle of the road. Inside was everything Xana owned, including her only pictures of AJ, other than the one she kept in her pocket at all times. She reached in and felt for it. Still there.
Oja came up behind and helped Xana pull the luggage to the curb, not that it was in any danger. Only two cars passed, and they simply drove around as the pair pushed the bags against the wall. The big woman collapsed onto the concrete and put a hand to her face.
“I don’t know,” she breathed. She covered her eyes. “I don’t know what they want.”
Oja sat next to her on the ground. “They set fire to Mr. Remmy’s house. Said they’d burn the rest if you didn’t meet Boraro in the junkyard tomorrow. At noon.”
Xana took a deep breath. She nodded in understanding. The tears were coming. She couldn’t hold them back anymore. She didn’t see the point in trying.
Oja fiddled with her hands. “Mr. Remmy tried to stop the fire before it ate all his things, got burned pretty bad. We took him over to the free clinic. We thought you’d be at your lawyer’s. When you weren’t there, we headed to the school.”
Xana sniffed and wiped her red and swollen eyes. She nodded.
Oja looked at her cousin. “Your lawyerman told me about AJ.”
Xana nodded again.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t understand,” Xana whispered. “I don’t know what they want.”
“He didn’t say. Just that he wanted to face you.” Oja took a breath. She hesitated to say it. “He killed Maisie’s cat. Twisted its head off right there in front of her.”
“Oh no . . .” Xana had often shared a bed with the cat. Roger. She closed her eyes. “Oh God.”
“Ripped it open and ate its hear—”
“Oja!”
A strong breeze blew Xana’s hair over her head and into her face again. She cleared it. Her ear stung.
“I can’t have you at the house, Xan. Not around Maisie. Not until whatever this is goes away.”
Xana looked at the dirt by the road. There was no curb and no sidewalk. Weeds poked through the cracks in the asphalt and made irregular shapes like the borders on a map. She nodded. She didn’t have another place to stay.
“I thought maybe you could go to your dad’s. I know it’s way down south and he’s good for nothing and treats you bad, but . . . AJ’s not here anymo—”
“Maybe.” Xana was numb. Quiet. “We’ll see.”
“I can help you carry—”
“I got it.” Xana turned. “Take care of your family, Oja. You’re doing a better job than me.” She stood.
Oja did the same. “Xan . . .”
Xana smiled weakly. Her eyes were bloodshot and dribbled tears. “I’m not mad. Okay? I promise.” Her lips turned down. It finally came. “I’m just jealous.” Her lower lip quivered. “You still have your family.”
The two women hugged. Oja came to Xana’s chest.
“I have to go,” Oja said into her cousin’s heart.
Xana stepped back and nodded. She sniffed.
“I gotta find that fool before he and his friends drink all our food money for the week.”
Xana wiped her nose and nodded again.
“You sure I can’t help?”
“I got it. Thanks.” She knew Oja had her own problems.
Oja waved and walked back toward town. After a moment she turned. “Let me know where you get settled.”
Xana nodded.
Oja waved again and kept walking. Then she stopped. “Xan?”
“I’ll be okay.” Xana smiled.
Oja nodded and left.
Xana watched her cousin walk down the beach road, then looked at her belongings. She sat again with a groan and leaned her back against the wall. A charred star, like the aftermath of a tiny explosion, marred the concrete near her feet. Someone had made a little fire by the side of the road, probably to cook something. She could smell stale, damp charcoal. Down the street, past the abandoned remnants of a used car lot, an old barber sat in front of his shop smoking and staring out over the ocean. His face was pockmarked with doubt and strain. The tops of the palm trees blew back and forth in the salt wind from the sea.
Another car passed. Like most in Guyana, it had no air conditioning and the occupants cooled themselves with four open windows. An old bus followed with a clatter. Its once-colorful paint had faded. A handful of people escaped the cramped interior by sitting on the roof. A woman near the rear window held a bag of laundry. She stared with a cracked brow as the bus passed. Xana knew the look. She’d seen it often and had even given it a few times. It was morbid captivation kept from full bloom by fear. You can’t get involved in others’ misery. You can’t help. And somewhere deep down you know you’re only ever a few steps from sitting in the same spot, just like Xana. It was the face of someone running at full pace from an end that was never more than three steps behind. It was the face of someone getting by just by not looking back.
Xana lowered her head. Her curls hid her face. Drops made dark circles on the concrete between her legs. Her chest shook in silent heaves as she cried. Her oversized hands clutched AJ’s picture.
He was gone.
Xana thought about giving birth, about the icy fire between her legs and that moment when she heard him cry and realized she’d give everything for him. Absolutely everything. She thought about chasing him in laughter around the single room she rented, and about bathing him in the river for the first time.
She knew it wouldn’t last forever. Life with AJ always had a time limit. Xana never had hopes of seeing him married or holding her grandchildren. That was never even a dream.
But this. This was too soon.
She had to get him back.
Xana stood and looked out over the muddy ocean again, then took a bag in each hand and started down the road. Her ear stung. Her head throbbed. She had hardly slept. She put one foot in front of the other and wondered how long she had. She thought about her death sentence. It wasn’t just a pituitary tumor, they said—whatever that was. That’s what made her grow, but there was more. There was a defect, somewhere deeper down in the secret code that tells everything what to do. Hers was broken. It twisted her muscles somehow, made them denser, different. Her bones would thicken as a result of the increased strain, or so they thought. But since muscle grows faster, the one would out-pace the other, and Xana would suffer fractures if she exerted herself. Her body would break under its own power. Eventually it would grow beyond the capacity of her heart, which would explode in her chest.
Best not exert yourself, they said. Stay calm. Live as long as you can.
It was all too much for a 22-year-old to hear. Death always seemed far away. It was like America or Europe: some place she’d get to one day, but not for a long, long time. Even after the diagnosis, she worried more about her fading beauty than a choked heart. She’d gotten pregnant at the first opportunity.
Now she was almost 30 and the end was nearer than ever. She had never stopped growing. She knew she’d be lucky to see the end of the next decade.
Xana hobbled through a grove of trees, dropped the luggage and collapsed in the dirt under a bagassa tree. It was her hiding spot, worn free of grass from all the times she had sat without being seen and watched her son play at recess, safe behind the fence. She’d been so relieved when the McDooms said they’d keep him at the same school. Xana’s school. He was always smiling.
The bell rang and the children walked out in a neat single line. Sister Rosa always kept everyone on their best behavior in the hall. But when they reached the yard, the line broke and two dozen kids ran screaming.
It only took a moment to see. AJ was not among them.
Xana passed out.
[Tap or click here to explore Guyana and the real village of McDoom]