Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

embroidered for me.”
    The other women turned to nibble the imported digestive crackersand sip the tea, for they were all aware that Antoinette Bradshaw had never been to America, and wouldn’t it be something if her gloves got there and she never did? But Antoinette’s mind was already dreaming. Oh, it was unfair that women could dream at all. There she was, the very Madame Antoinette Bradshaw, wondering what it would take to create coats of mongoose hair. Would American women wear that? Might she convince Liva Lovernkrandt to take more than one pair of gloves, perhaps a chest of gloves, to give as gifts to stylish New York ladies? The gloves might serve as a kind of announcement. Or perhaps Antoinette and Owen would, after all, send Eeona to the States for a fancy finishing school. Antoinette would insist, absolutely insist, on accompanying her daughter. Then Nettie would invent a reason to stay for a while. First, she must master mongoose coats. Then the women who wore her gloves would commission her. Later she would make garters rimmed with the backs of sea turtles. Ones that every woman of class would want to wrap around her thigh. Now Antoinette looked down at the woman on the magazine, the one ready to blaze. Mr. Right was not the only thing worth snagging. When Nettie left the Lovernkrandt house, she went to take the hot-pepper tea so this damn hardheaded baby would finally burn out of her.

7.
ANETTE
    Let me tell you something I know about Anegada. Because I learn plenty somethings with this hard head of mine. I don’t remember nothing of my life before I turn four years old. But I don’t need memory. A historian, that’s me after all. I ain never been Anegada, but I know enough.
    In all my years I have never want to chase a child. I had want everychild I ever conceive. But not every woman have that in she. I can’t speak for those women. But I know that Anegada wasn’t no place to do nothing except make love. I mean, you know the place? You seen even a postcard of Anegada? It too pretty. Like heaven and hell marry up and birth all the beauty goodness and badness could possibly make. You hearing me? When you raise up in that place, like how Mama had raise up in that place, you only know about beauty and how to make it. And lovemaking is a beauty making.
    So it ain nothing to imagine that Antoinette Stemme had come pregnant when she young. Probably for a nice boy, a lobster fisherman, who have legs like bronze. And if this is so, you can’t blame she. Everybody loving and beautifying and the man sweet and tender. Besides they have maybe fifteen girls and fifteen boys on the whole island. Of course, they going to meet up and mix up and mate up. And all of them is the most beautiful people you ever dream.
    And we could just imagine what is they life back then. Fishing is life. Eating lobster twice a day is life. Swimming is life. That sound like leisure for any of we in the big city of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. But for them then? No. Because there ain no hospital in Anegada. No doctors. If you deading, you going to dead. Can’t blame nobody. No police, no lawyers, no court. Because that’s the place. Perfection but with a hole in the middle. Is not a island really. Is a atoll. You listening?
    So when a young captain get he young ship catch on the coral . . . what? Even if we just making this story up, we could easy say that is like the Anegada girl named Antoinette is a siren. And her mother and father love she like the land and they want the best for she. They done realize the girl have vision for she self beyond what the atoll know how to manage. So they convince the captain, and it don’t take much for the young captain Bradshaw. Sure, he know that she have the other boy baby in she body. But the girl sweeter than lobster. The captain, he know ’bout bush. He the kind of man know all about woman things. Swift as anything captain and girl wash thatother man baby away. The captain ain know that he