A Return

I look in the mirror and tell myself I’m Jamaican over and over again until I start to believe it. I tell myself that the people outside of this door, at the family reunion, are just like me. That we share more than a last name and a few stories. That we share blood.

I also know the truth. That my grandfather left this country years before my mother was born. That she’s only been here a handful of times and I’ve only been here once. For my grandfather’s funeral. And I know that makes me different from the rest of the family. They say welcome home and I say thank you, but they say it with the accent and I don’t and that reminds me that we’re not the same.

And still, it’s hard not to feel connected. When something reminds me I’m not like them, something stronger tells me I am. I listen to the music they play and when they say this is my favorite song somehow I know the words. We play soccer and basketball, and when I take a break to get water, the games keep going. Watching from the side, it’s not hard to see that my cousins and I move the same. 

On the first night, we eat together and they push a plate full of ackee and saltfish in my direction. It looks like scrambled eggs but smells like the ocean, and I help myself, scooping it out with the serving spoon my uncle hands me. I try it and it tastes nothing like scrambled eggs, but everything like the ocean. Salty and full of fish. After three forkfuls I can’t stomach any more. I’m afraid to throw the food away, but more afraid to stay at the table and not eat. 

Here. Try this.

It’s my mother. She reaches down and picks up my plate, replacing it with her own. I recognize oxtail. My grandfather used to cook it before he started to slow down. I can eat this, I think, and when I taste it, it tastes just like his. For the first time since we landed, I feel I’m home.

The Mountain and The Second City

Our family reunions happen every four years, like the Olympics, but this is the first time it’s been here. Usually, my mother and her sister and the spider web network of great-nephews and third-cousins living in America push for us to gather in the U.S. I don’t know how, but this time, my uncle convinced everyone that it was time for a return. That’s what he called it. A return. I wonder if my mother feels she is returning. I don’t.

When we were on our way from the airport, I asked my mother why we don’t stay with family, and she said it was because there were too many relatives flying to the island and that my uncle’s place wasn’t anywhere close to big enough to house us all. We stay at a resort in Montego Bay instead.

It’s beautiful here.

The ocean and the sand give their color to everything. The sun is hot, like back home, but the breeze here is better. Strong enough to keep me cool, but soft enough to keep our clothes from flapping in the wind. Instead, our linen pants and shirts and dresses ripple smoothly, mimicking the waves. I breathe in and the smell puts all those “Tropical Breeze” air fresheners to shame. This is real and you can tell. For a moment, it’s sweet, but then the wind turns and catches the smell of a beef patty off a vendor’s cart and now it’s savory. My mouth waters and it makes me think about the last time I ate, which wasn’t recent enough. The resort, the beach, the vendors. It’s all incredible.

But this isn’t why we come here.

We come for Cold Spring. We come for the mountain.

All of Montego Bay sits in the shadow of the mountain. Our mountain. This is where I’m from. 

My cousins and I sit shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee in the back of the van as we drive. It should be uncomfortable, but being close to them feels nice, and the lack of seatbelts means that we’re the only thing holding each other in place. The roads up the mountain are narrow and unpredictable and, I think, many of them could be confused for hiking trails instead of streets. I don’t mind, though. 

My uncle means to say Welcome to Cold Spring but his accent makes him say Welcome to ColeSprin. I look around and the area we’re in now looks just like the one we just left. No street signs, no lights. Just this road and the mountain. 

I see them between the gaps in the trees. Little houses scattered along the mountainside. None of them look alike, but that’s what makes them look alike. A little community of outcasts, tucked away in the mountain, for only the locals to find. I feel like I’m trespassing until we stop.

It sits back from the road, balancing on its foundation like a house of cards. There’s a staircase that leads to the front door. The wood it’s made of hasn’t rotted and browned, so it looks new and stands out against the bright green of the mountain. The house itself is small and I remember my mother telling me there was no way all of us could stay here. As my cousins and I slide out of the van, untangling arms and unraveling legs, I think she was right.

Still, this is home. 

My uncle pushes the door and it swings open easily. The inside and the outside smell the exact same and they’d look the same too, except it’s clear that someone lives inside. There are dirty clothes—or maybe they’re clean—in one corner of the living room. In the opposite corner is a mattress, with a few blankets and one pillow. My uncle catches me staring. One bedroom, he says, and that explains it. 

Behind the house is the family graveyard. They say generations have been buried here, but I only see two headstones. I step carefully. One belongs to a name I don’t recognize. The other is my grandfather. I try to remember coming here for his funeral, but I can’t. I start to feel guilty, but I say a prayer for him instead. 

We eat lunch here. Just chips and soda, since my uncle needs to go shopping. He sits in his chair, a brown recliner at the perfect angle to see the TV. My mother and aunt have been sitting on the couch since we arrived, and they don’t move now, opting to pass on lunch. I sit with my cousins on the mattress. We joke with each other and then fall silent. One of them lays back and, within moments, he is asleep. The others follow his lead until I am the only one left awake. I try to make myself comfortable, but I can’t. This is their home, I think to myself. I am a guest. I let my thoughts stir up anxiety and inferiority. Soon, I am sleeping.

As we drive down the mountain, heading back to our resort, I wonder how many members of my family have grown up on that mattress. 

Later that night, I grab a map of the area from the front desk. I look for Cold Spring, but it isn’t marked.

A Moment at the Grave

I wanted to know what happened when people died. I remember that. My mother told me that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. I remember being afraid of hell. I couldn’t imagine such a place, but, sometimes, when my paranoia was really bad, I could feel it. Under my feet, I could feel fire. I could feel suffering. I could feel hell. It was so intense that, for a while, hell made me forget heaven.

Once he moved in with us, my grandfather set me straight. He told me that there was no heaven or hell, so I asked him what happens when people die, and he said that, on the other side of the world, there was an island filled with the dead. Not a heaven or a hell. Just an island, he said. 

I wanted to know what it was like.

Hard to say, he said. I’m not dead. He laughed when he said this. His laugh was deeper than his voice. And rough, scraggly like it came from his beard instead of his lungs. I imagine it’s never the same. Each day is different from the last. Better than the last. But always familiar. That’s what makes it special.

I asked him what he meant.

Familiarity breeds contempt. Do you know what that means?

I shook my head.

Good. You’re too young to think that way. He said this to the air in front of him, not to me. But I wanted to understand. I begged him to explain.

Some people think the more you know about something, the less you’ll enjoy it. 

I looked at him and he knew I wasn’t following.

What’s your favorite color? he asked. I told him blue. Imagine if everything were blue all the time. Your mother, me, all the foods in the world. Everything.

I thought about it for a second. It didn’t seem bad at first, but then I realized that sometimes, my favorite color was green and that I’d miss it if it were gone. I’d miss yellow and black and red too. I told him all of this.

If everything was always blue, you’d never want to see blue ever again. You’d spend all day, every day hoping for something different. He said this to himself, but I know he wanted me to hear him. To understand what he was saying. But there, on this incredible island, the colors are different. Sometimes blue is blue, but sometimes blue is red or green or yellow or black. That way, it’s always familiar, but it’s also always different. It’s familiar without the catch. Familiar with no risk. And that’s peace.

In awe, I told him it was incredible and he laughed his deep, rough, scraggly laugh.

I think about this as I stand at his grave. I want to tell him he’s wrong. I want him to know that I’d give anything to not be an outsider here. In his home. That I just want to be familiar, risk and all.

But I can’t.

Standing here, I feel his body beneath my feet. I close my eyes and I can hear him breathing. 

When I open my eyes, I am looking down on Montego Bay, at the cars packing the streets, at the vendors selling food and jewelry, at the tourists lying around a pool with the beach steps away. Being above it all, I feel peace. The ocean, the sand, the trees. It all is a mix of colors like on a painter’s easel. The blues and yellows and greens mix together around me in this place that I’m married to by blood. My breathing syncs with his and then I start to fade into the picture, skin first.

Hunting

My uncle does not shop. He hunts. When we arrive at what my mom calls something like an outlet mall, he separates from us. While the rest of us will travel in a pack, he will hunt alone. I watch him stalk through the aisles, looking from stand to stand. I wonder what he sees. My mom tugs me towards a booth selling linens but I shake loose. I will follow my uncle, like a cub. 

He stops in the middle of it all. People swirl around him. His head pokes above the rest and I wonder if he can see me. No. I wonder if he can sense me.

He turns and stares right in my direction and I feel that my position has been compromised. He starts to storm towards me. He is on a mission. I freeze. Have I been doing something wrong? I ready myself for whatever comes next, but it never comes. He flies right past me. I turn and I see what he sees. 

The man is drowning in sweat. The sun shines directly into his metal booth and it must feel like an oven. While the other stand owners are on their feet, showcasing their goods with fast words and grand gestures, this man is sitting. He doesn’t look like the other people here. He looks tired. He looks beaten. He looks like prey.

My uncle marches up to the booth and picks up a necklace. His shadow shields the man from the sun and the man looks grateful. My uncle, doing his best to hide his accent, asks how much and the man must say something. My uncle shakes his head. I don’t have it, he says, which I know is a lie. The man must know it too, but he is too tired to argue. 

What do you have? Ten? My uncle holds up a finger and opens his backpack, letting the man see the bottled water my uncle slipped from the resort. As he digs through his backpack, the man’s eyes follow the water.

I have even less than that, my uncle says. The man tells him he’ll make a deal. The bottle of water and five American dollars for the necklace. He stresses American, so my uncle will understand just how great of a deal this is. My uncle accepts and slips the necklace into his pocket.

He turns to me and I realize he knew I was following him. I’m nervous, not sure what he’ll say. He walks over, triumphant, displaying the necklace like it was his first kill. It’s not.

You gotta haggle ‘em a lil, he says. Only pay what something is actually worth and it’s only worth what you pay for it. He flashes a smile and when he does, he looks like my grandfather, so I know this is true.

Eighteen

I am sick. 

Last night, my cousins came to my room and told me that we were going out. 

You’re eighteen, right? I nodded. Good. I asked where we were going and they said to a party. I put on the same linens I’d worn during the day and they booed when I stepped into the hall.

This won’t do, they said. Go change into something better. We can’t have the birthday boy lookin’ sloppy. I wanted to tell them it wasn’t my birthday. I’d been eighteen for months, but I could tell it didn’t matter. I went back inside and when I stepped back into the hallway, they approved of my new outfit. A black V-neck and some dark blue jeans.

Alright then. C’mon. They ushered me down the hall and toward the front of the resort. We hailed a taxi and piled in, one after the other. We didn’t fit, but we made it fit. My face was pressed up against the window, but I didn’t mind. I asked where we were going and they told the driver not to say anything.

We stopped in front of a club. I could barely hear the music, but I could feel its vibrations on my cheek through the window. My cousins paid the driver and then we all fell out of the taxi. I told them I couldn’t go in. I was too young.

Not here. Here, you’re a man.

It was too dark and too crowded inside. I grabbed onto my cousin’s shirt so I wouldn’t get separated from them and I knew this was not what a man should do. Shame. That is the only word for it. I needed to prove to them that I was a man, like them. Like my uncle. Like my grandfather. 

The shots came all night and I never paid a dime. I’d drank with some of my friends back home, but never like this. At home, we’d share a flask after homecoming. Here, my cousins and I traded shot after shot, chasing them at first with sangria and then with nothing. We didn’t dance. We couldn’t stray too far from our table or we’d lose it. Instead, we swayed. Each of us moving in our own way, but all together. To anyone watching, it must’ve looked choreographed. I wondered if it looked like I was in step with them.

Last call was the first time they let me order my own drink. I’d never ordered a drink before. I wanted to impress them. I opened my mouth and said the first thing that came to mind. Piña Colada. They laughed and I knew I’d chosen wrong, so I switched to a Rum and Coke. Like my outfit, this was met with smug approval.

Today, I am sick. I know the word is hungover, but it doesn’t feel like anything from last night carried over. I am sick. I wonder if my cousins feel how I feel and I know they probably don’t. Not now at least. But last night, without words, we all agreed not to dance. Instead, we decided to sway. It is this memory that keeps the room from spinning.

Glazed Bananas

I’m at the breakfast buffet when I finally understand. I have walked through it several times. There are johnnycakes next to biscuits. Ackee and saltfish next to scrambled eggs. Salt Mackerel and bacon. For every Jamaican option, they balance it out with an American one. This is the nature of a resort. Enough of a break from the normal to feel like you’ve done something exotic. It can’t be authentic, but it has to feel authentic. It has to be diluted. It has to feel familiar.

I look at my plate and wonder why I eat nothing new.

What is that?

She’s talking to herself. It’s a white lady. Her voice is familiar. She’s from the South, like me. I think maybe Alabama. She’s right against my back, looking over my shoulder at the buffet. She wants to try new things. She’s got eyes that want to learn. But she’s strayed too far from her comfort zone. Jamaica is not like Alabama and it’s clear that she’s just now beginning to understand that. I wonder if she’s here alone. I hope not. She’s drowning here, with nothing familiar to keep her afloat. I want to tell her to grab hold of something she knows, something she can trust. Move your hand to the left a few inches, I want to tell her. You’ll find sausage links and bacon there. Just like back home. But she’s determined to drown. 

I step aside and let her serve herself. She looks at me, and then back to the buffet. I watch her scoop ackee and saltfish onto her plate and I know she thinks they are scrambled eggs. She grabs some saltfish fritters and I wonder if she knows how much fish she is committing to eat. She moves toward the fruit.

Oh. Glazed Bananas. Nice.

I tell her those are plantains, not bananas.

Oh. Thank you. She’s shocked I said something. I’m shocked I said something. We both stand there frozen for a minute until I hear my uncle’s baritone laugh behind me. I turn and he is waiting, plate in hand. His laugh must’ve scared the woman. She drops the piece of plantain she’s been holding on a serving fork and scuttles away. My uncle walks up and clasps his hand on my back. Hard.

Fuckin’ tourists. Am I right? I nod. Glazed Bananas, he says to himself. He chuckles and piles his plate up with french toast. I grab a plantain. It looks like a banana to me.

Above it All

Tucked away in the mountains, far above Montego Bay and a little less far above Cold Spring, is the school my grandfather went to his entire life. It’s a small, one-room building that’s now worn down. There aren’t enough kids in the area for it to still be running. 

Years of rain have washed some of the paint off and now the school appears sickly and pale. I try to picture it like my grandfather would have seen it. Bright yellow, full of children. Full of friends. I imagine what it would be like to grow up here, with him, with my cousins. All of us, despite the difference in ages, under one roof. Learning and growing together. I think about this, and I feel closer to them all.

My mom looks at the school in awe and I think she might be about to cry. You know he had to walk to school every day, she says, pointing down the mountain. He used to say it was uphill both ways. I look down the mountain, expecting to see Montego Bay, but instead, I see Cold Spring, and for some reason that makes me feel warm. I imagine going to school here, sitting next to my grandfather. I wonder if he and I would’ve been friends and what games we might’ve played if we were. I can see him running and I can see myself struggling to keep up. I’m not sure why, but the idea of him running in front of me, always out of reach but never out of sight, is extremely comforting.

American Black

The whole family has gathered at the front of the resort to say goodbye. My uncle is the first one to see us. The Americans are trying to sneak away, he says while my mother is checking us out and, immediately, we are swarmed by relatives. Thought you could get away, my cousins say with a sinister smile. I laugh because I am used to it—to them—now. They laugh, too, and soon we are all laughing together. 

The man working the front desk asks us to please be a little quieter but my family takes this as a dare and the volume only increases. The man tries to silence us a few more times before giving up, retreating into a back room where I assume he goes to complain to his coworkers about uncontrollable families. And I realize that, to him, that’s exactly what we are. A family. I begin to smile and my mom asks me, Did you have a good time? I nod.

My cousins are busy loading our bags into the van while my mother and I say our final goodbyes to some of the older relatives who operate on their own time. When we’re done, we make our way to the van, where my mother takes a few pictures of me and my cousins. I slide into the backseat and my mother follows. Before she closes the door, my uncle reaches towards her and drops something into her hands. Best coffee on the planet, he says and my mother turns the burlap bag over in her hands. A label, decorated with blue skies and white clouds, reads “Jamaican Blue Coffee.” Drink it black, he says to her, then turns to me. No cream, no sugar, no nothing. This is real coffee. Don’t ruin it like you do in America, and I want to be offended but I can still taste the sugar and cream from the coffee I drank this morning, so I say nothing. My mom says thank you and slips the coffee into her purse. She hugs my uncle and he hugs her back and they look identical at the moment and, again, I am reminded that we are family.

Shit. My mother whispers this through her teeth. I ask her if everything is okay. Yes, yeah. I just forgot about customs. That’s all. I’m confused why customs has led to so much stress, but then I see her fidgeting with the coffee my uncle gave her. I don’t think they’ll let us bring this through, she says, and I can see that this hurts her.

When we get to customs, the line is long and the room is busy. I can feel my mother’s anxiety growing as we slowly approach the desk, inching forward along with everyone else. I really wanted to try that coffee, she says to no one in particular. I ask her to hand it to me and she does. I open it, expecting to find beans, but am surprised to see that the coffee has already been ground. This makes my plan more difficult.. I take out my toiletry bag, which despite holding my toothpaste, toothbrush, a stick of deodorant, and a pick, still has a lot of room. I dig my hand into the ground coffee, letting the cool brown dust get under my fingernails and into my fingerprints. My mother gasps. What are you doing?, she asks and I tell her it’s worth a shot. I scoop once, twice, three times before my toiletry bag can hold no more. I force it closed and place it back in my suitcase and my mother re-ties the coffee bag shut. The line moves and we move forward with it, struggling to keep a straight face.

At the front desk, the woman looks over our passports. She asks us all the standard questions. How long were you gone? Where did you stay? What was the purpose of your trip? My mother answers all of them without a second thought. Do you have anything to declare? I tense up, but my mother doesn’t. She places the burlap bag on the desk and says We have some coffee. We’d like to bring it through. The woman behind the desk looks up at my mother, and I hold my breath. 

I suddenly become aware of the men in black and blue walking around with dogs on leashes. I wonder if they can smell the coffee. That’s stupid. I know they can smell the coffee. I wonder if they can smell the difference between the coffee in the bag on the desk, the contraband coffee in my toiletry bag, and the remnants of coffee that are still stuck under my fingernails and pressed into the ridges of my fingerprints. I worry that the woman will tell us we can’t bring the coffee back, that she’ll call over one of the men with a dog and the dog will sniff out the coffee in my toiletry bag, before turning on me and my fingers. I look at my mom and—

That’s fine. Go on through. My heart collapses into my chest and forces me to exhale. I can tell my mother relaxes too. She says thank you and slips the coffee back into her bag. We walk silently for a few moments, both recovering from the incident. I’m not sure why, but I feel pressured to break the tension. I think for a minute on how best to put my mother at ease, before settling on something.

Fuckin’ tourists. Am I right? I say, trying to mimic my uncle’s accent and voice. It’s a joke. My mother stops walking and looks at me and this makes me panic. I’m not sure if she has ever heard me curse and now I’m worried that’s all she hears. I prepare myself for a lecture. But she laughs. Her laugh is deep and scraggly and it sounds like my uncle’s, and this makes me think about how my uncle’s laugh sounds like my grandfather’s. And, seeing my mother laugh like this, so wholly and so full, makes me smile. That smile turns into a laugh and it sounds like my mother’s and it sounds like my uncle and it sounds like all of my cousins. I feel all of us here in the airport, laughing together. We all sound the same. We all sound like my grandfather. And I feel his body beneath my feet and I feel his spirit above my head. I look at the whites of my mother’s teeth and they turn green, then yellow, then black, before settling on blue. My favorite color. 

When we get home, we drink the coffee just as my uncle instructed us to. Black. No cream, no sugar, no nothing. It’s incredible. I feel each sip as it washes through my body. It takes me back to Jamaica, to my uncle’s house, to the mattress on the floor. It rewrites my life and I feel as though I was born there. I go to school in that little yellow building and work at one of the resorts at the base of the mountain. When I die, my relatives bury me in the plot of land behind the house, next to my grandfather. 

What are you thinking about? my mother asks me, sipping on her own cup. I tell her that I think I want to be buried in Jamaica when I die. I hope you don’t mean soon, she jokes, and I assure her that I don’t. I want to grow old and have kids and have my kids have kids. And I want them to all wonder about me. I want them to hear stories and to revere me and respect me for laying the groundwork for them. I tell my mother all of this and she smiles, and I know she knows that what I’m really saying is that I want to be like her father. Well, she begins, it’s probably for the best. I don’t know if you notice, but the ground here is dark. Black. But in Jamaica, it’s different. The ground isn’t just ground. It’s soil. A lot better for digging, for planting roots. 

We keep sipping on our coffee for a while. I finish first and slip away into my room. I lie down on my bed and I sink in. Soon, I am asleep, dreaming of home.