Ashes to Ashes
By: Melissa A. Matthews
Tags: Death, Short Story, Fiction, Caribbean, Environmental Issues

Ashes to Ashes

Photo by Artiom Vallat on Unsplash

19 June 2069

The purple stain around her full lips looked almost like lipstick. It was a shade she would’ve worn in the old days. The days before the oxygen masks, the water, the looming threat of death — -this life. I wonder if she’d done it purposefully. So that she wouldn’t have to wait with us.

Wait for it to come and extinguish us. The way it smothered papa and ma. I wondered if like them, she felt it rising beneath her but was powerless to fight back. I wonder if she made peace and allowed it to fill her lungs, her throat, her mouth until it strangled all signs of life.

I could not ask why because secretly we’d all hope to be so lucky. Lucky enough for it to come for us as we slept and not be as violent as everything is now. Eating is violent. You cannot trust the food. It is poisoned. It is a gamble but not eating is certain death. So we eat and then we vomit and defecate until worms and viruses free themselves into the sea. After a while though, I’ve noticed that our stomachs have stopped fighting back. They’re so hungry that they welcome the poison. The taste buds start to enjoy the taste of rot. We cannot trust our own bodies, they betray us.

The hospitals have quietly closed. There are local “clinics” — -in the same way, I remember parlor shops from our childhood — -in people’s homes. It is hard to know who to trust. Any salve, any bush is welcome when death seems to be nipping at your heels. I don’t really understand what we are trying to save ourselves for now, though. I suppose that’s why the neighbor down the road has stopped offering me his many concoctions. He cannot answer my question, “what is de point? What are we actually saving?”

As Granny used to say, “Monkey know which tree to climb.”

I won’t be trading any of my food or torchlights for a nondescript bush to soothe this dying stomach. It has all begun to sort itself out. I have nowhere specific to be on any given day or any given time to be worried about stopping worms or viruses from expelling themselves from this body. The waters rise almost every night, it will claim this body whether in whole or part. Why should I worry about my sugar being high or cholesterol? I’ll be dead the same way.

Jules was healthy. She was always drinking somebody’s bush tea and yet, that water took her, same way — -dead.

We will set her ablaze on a raft that is floating out on the sea. As little girls, we would sing, “Ashes on de water, ashes on de sea. We all jump up with a one, two, three.” I will jump up for her. She will finally be free.

The water has been upending all of the cemeteries. The dead float amongst the living on the coasts. Nobody has time for those trivial things anymore; funerals and weddings, even babies — -collateral damage of the times. The coasts are receding like Uncle Boisie’s hairline. They say that in America, all dem millions of people have been forced inland to the midwest. The oceans have eaten away at them. At least they have plenty for it to feast on. It’s been eating what we don’t have to give.

When they evacuated Brooklyn and Queens — -up there in New York — — cousin Carlton and dem say they were coming home. When I asked “why?” Nobody answered, but I knew the answer and I knew they didn’t want to say it aloud.

Just as we lie better in our native tongue, the thought of death is more comforting in the land where your navel-string is buried. The joke is on them though. I’m pretty sure alla dem strings — -mine included — — are at sea too. Why come back and die sooner?

This place ain’t but the size of Brooklyn and we’re all moving farther inland into the bush. People are building latrines. I never knew latrines. We always had indoor plumbing, but life is regressing. I remember my grandfather talking about his grandmother’s “green bathroom”. Moss had overtaken the walls of her latrine and even as a small child he rebuffed the notion of having to go outside to bathe in the company of mossy walls and whatever of God’s creatures lived in them. I wonder what Grandpa would say about us now. I wonder if he could have ever imagined this — -Carlton and dem coming home, running toward death. It seems counter-intuitive to me. I think it would’ve felt so to Grandpa too. He was a logical man. Survival is the name of the game. They are better off trying to survive there, but you can’t tell hardback. stubborn old people what to do. So, I just watch and wait.

I’m waiting for the day that I can stop waiting for this thing to come and kill me. I want to be free like Juliet. I wonder if she’s with Papa and Ma. They were so full of life.

When Papa was still teaching at the University of the West Indies and used to sneak us into the labs to homeschool us in science, we spent hours dissecting things. He would talk to us about how the world was changing. I can hear his voice ringing in my ears, “It’s too late for all these things de environmentalists want to do. Things will only get worse. Best to enjoy the days we have left.” We didn’t really understand what he meant then.

At home, Ma would say “Frank, what yuh tellin’ de chiIdren? Let dem be children!” He would shake his head, smile and say “listen to yuh mother! Doh listen to dotish old men like me.” We would giggle and leave his words hanging in the air.

I don’t remember ever hearing him say “I told you so,” though, I wouldn’t have given him wrong, if he did. I think he had more days than he anticipated. Not many people live to old age anymore. Life has gotten too hard. I’m glad he — -they — -lived when that was possible.

Ma was fiery. She was always dancing. Her statuesque frame was legendary and her ebony skin so smooth. “Legs fuh days” is how Papa described her. Even after children, after surgery, after failure, she kept on those legs. She channeled everything into her dance. I remember us vividly playing at every single rehearsal, show — -anything. We knew the layout of Queens Hall better than that of our home.

Jules and I would pretend to be her and dance each step backstage as she practiced on stage. She would bribe us with mangoes or sticky sweet tamarind candies, if we promised to stay quiet. We weren’t very good at staying quiet, but that never stopped her from giving us our treats. I cannot remember the last time I had a starch mango or any mango. I wonder if they have mangoes and tamarind candy up there. I wonder if Jules is dancing with Papa and Ma. I wonder if they are seeing what’s happening down here and coming for me next. I can only hope.

Today, though, I will have to get a move on. We have to transport the body from her little house up to Las Cuevas. When the last storm hit, it blocked all of the roads. We can hitch a ride with her to Santa Cruz, if there are cars running. I used to know a lot of men that ran taxi up on that side. When the business was thriving, I had a lot of those boys making deliveries to town but these days I don’t know. Everything and everyone I knew then — -when I came home — — seems useless now. Plenty people abandoned their vehicles when the gas stations got destroyed. There is always somebody with money and a back-up plan in this here sweet T and T though.

My friend, Marcia’s first cousin, has been hoarding gas for his vehicle for the last five years. He kept doing reports and trying to warn the government. He was a big boy in the energy company back then. Everybody ignored him so he started preparing for the inevitable. The rest of us are only now understanding that the inevitable he was going on about was the dissolution of life as we knew it and life at all.

Her boys will help me transport her. They are good boys. Twenty and twenty-one now; they had all the promise of world class cricketers as children, but then the sports stopped. It all stopped. The cinema, gymnastics, dance, pan, and anything with a ball — -it all died when the third set of water pounded down our little island.

The oxygen masks are heavy plus their mama will be so much for them. I do hope that we make it today.