Chapter 1

Raine
August 26, 2017
2pm

“Psst, browning! Ey baby! Me woulda wear yuh.”

Browning. A thick, dark brown substance sold in a bottle, used to season chicken but weirdly, also used to darken fruit cakes at Christmas time.
Also browning. A woman of just about any shade of black caught walking the streets of Jamaica.
Also browning. The most annoying descriptor ever levelled to me.

“Slimmaz. Same how yuh a moggle inna yuh jeans, suh mi wah yuh moggle inna mi life. Come gimme piece nuh?”

Never a dull moment in this country. Saturday morning in Downtown Kingston wasn’t something you forgot. Jamaica, in general, wasn’t somewhere anybody forgot. Market day downtown was the very antithesis of peace and tranquility. From the taxi men who haggled for passengers like women downtown bickered over fresh produce; to the JUTC buses with the no good AC and bus preachers; to the god-forsaken coaster buses who drafted a different set of road rules at every stop sign; to the stalls with the same products at slightly different prices sold by street vendors strategically placed 5 baby steps away from each other. All this was spread like dry pimento seeds across a background of unrelenting heat, music blaring from public transportation, smatterings of conversations in patwah and the shouts of product names, prices and descriptions yelled over the din of the crowd.

Even after being away for over 2 years, I navigated the ankle breaking sidewalks of Kingston with the ease and familiarity of someone who had never left. Turning off Duke Street, walking onto North Street and finally arriving at King Street, I revelled in the considerable silence I’d found after just 10 minutes of walking. Behind me, Zoe and Kamili lagged behind, their hands filled with black “scandal” bags which housed other scandal bags and even more scandal bags of products. It was the very last Saturday of the back to school rush and the capital city was filled with parents, business people and the ordinary university student, all of who had waited until the very last weekend before school reopened to do their shopping.

“Last year of university. Cya believe it.” Zoe sighed and did a little twirl before turning around to beam at us.

I exchanged a look with the third party, Kamili, who was rolling her eyes.

“Watch where you’re going dreamer,” Kamili quipped, dropping her loot on the washed out asphalt beside the trunk of my car.

“I, for one, am happy it’s our last year. Cya wait to be done with UWI, once and for all. 26 weeks and mi gone.”

Trying to stuff the last bag into the trunk, I fought it shut and turned to look into the puzzled faces of my two best friends, and starting this weekend, my housemates. I loved them but I was already dreading every minute of it.

“I still don’t get why you hate it here. You’re the poster student for your faculty. They goodly create a Raine Bishops scholarship when yuh gone. You shouldn’t be damning the entire school because of just one dutty bwoy.”

“I don’t hate it there. I just wah leave.”

45 minutes, 50 stoplights and 78 road hogs after, Zoe pulled up at my aunt’s house on Petunia Way. Auntie Jasmine was my mother’s only sister and my favourite aunt. Since I was in cornrows, size 3 shoes from Sammy’s Shoes Store and dressed in the burgundy pleated skirt from my basic school in Portland, Auntie Jasmine was a young girl. Even now, at her 40 year old mark, I still considered her to be young. My grandfather, Ralbert, had her when he was about 70, so when she was just 20, I was born and she took over as my mom when my mom died.

Because of some family riff-raff, Jasmine took off to Canada last year, and left her 4 bedroom house to me for my final year of university. It was posh in a non fussy-way that only Auntie Jasmine could achieve. Jasmine was one of the few people in the family to have successfully completed university. My grandmother always said Jasmine thought herself to be fancy. “That bright eye gyal Jasmine too good fi country life from she bawn.” Mama always said these exact words in her grumpy baritone voice but I knew that deep down in her fried green plantain, roast breadfruit and coconut drops heart, Jasmine was Grandma’s favourite bright eyed gyal.

Opening the gate to the verandah, my heart sank a little as I thought about how far away Auntie Jasmine was now. To be fair, we’d been far apart since I started university and spent every semester in a different country, spending summers doing Work & Travel to afford shipping out another semester.

The sparsely decorated living room was littered, wall to wall and tile to tile with bags of grocery, trunks of books and the suitcases and corouches of Kamili and Zoe. Jasmine would have a fit and I looked furtively over my shoulder at her grad school portrait that was on the never used piano.

“We should probably start with the food first, so that nothing spoils,” this from Zoe as she swept her long wavy hair into a 2 second knot at the nape of her neck. Zoe is from old money Mandeville and is a year older than I am. We met because we danced together for a gala at our university where I study modern languages and she studies medicine. Kamili, with her tightly wound kinks from her recent big chop is from Tivoli and is our resident goddess. We met her through the same gala where she played the drums for our performances 3 years ago. A Norman Manley Law School student, Kamili is the only person in her family to make it past the 5th form and rarely ever mentions her life back home. The three of us were lumped together in an unlikely group tied together by our unshakable love for music and shared hatred for runny egg yokes, people on public transportation, fuck boys and a horde of other crawsis.

Kamili grabbed the crocus bag with the liquor and went to the kitchen.

“Seriously Kamili, you just goin’ pass all the bags wid chicken and prioritize the liquor?”

“Our priorities are different Zoe luv.” Leaving to grab the other bags from the car before they start another war, I slowly extricated myself from the situation. Only one crate of fruits and vegetables remained in the trunk and another market bag of about a billion clear plastic bags of seasoning. Lazy from birth, I tried to pack both 5 pound bags unto my slight frame and nearly toppled over as I tried to close the trunk with my hip.

“Need a hand?”

I jumped, causing the trunk to fly open before the lock connected and turned around to stare at someone who looked familiar in an unfamiliar way. Judging from his UWI Pelican sweatshirt, I knew our eyes probably made four at some point on campus but I just couldn’t place him. Is he a Joshua? Adam? Jordan? One of the million Nicks or Alexes or Brians or Davids littering uptown Jamaica? Before I could pick his face and name out of the social web every UWI student is inevitably launched into, he tentatively stepped off the sidewalk and onto Auntie Jasmine’s driveway.

“I’m Eli. I’ve seen you around school a couple times.”

Before I could tell him that his seeing me around doesn’t make me know him better, he caught the market bag that was slipping from where I had wedged it between the crook of my elbow and my side.

Good breeding and the fear of my great granny’s retribution from the grave led me to say thank you and introduce myself.

“Thank you. I’m Raine.”
“Yeah, I know.”

As I opened my mouth to drill him about who, where, when, how and why he knew me, he closed the trunk and started walking towards the house. I knew this was basically a stranger. I knew women my age had the unusual ability to disappear around strangers but against better judgement, I found myself walking 5 steps behind him, with an escape route in mind. Just in case.

“Where should I leave this?”

“Here’s fine. Thank you again.”

I watched him carefully place the bag beside the glass doors and admired what I considered to be the most perfect backside ever given to the male species. He was tall. Much taller than my 5”10 and had the thickest head of hair I’d seen to date. His hair wasn’t coolie like Zoe’s but thick enough that I imagine that he’d broken his fair share of combs as a boy and for some reason I wanted the privilege of washing it then blessing it with my prized bottle of olive oil. I stopped myself from asking about his curl pattern and hair wash routine and placed my crate beside the bag.

“It was nothing. I haven’t seen you around campus in a while. You graduated?”

“No. I went on a program for a year. I’m in my final year now.”

“Ahh,” he said as if my words lit the fire to a Marcus Garvey sized enlightenment.

“I’ll see you around then.”And before I could ask him where he was from since I couldn’t place his accent or most importantly, how he knew me, he was already jogging through the gate.