Miss Ayanna (Part I)

How the hell am I supposed to go back to Miami after this?!

I am on my back. Floating. Lazily. The sneaky sun is baking the top side of my body and the non-chalant water is cooling the bottom. My eyes are closed and a sad wonder fills my head as I realize that I will leave all of this - Store Bay, Tobago, bliss - hundreds and hundreds of miles behind me when I have to leave in a few days.

I stand up in the water and at that very moment, I am having a rare bout with my Catholic faith and I am filled with an overwhelming reverence for my Lord for allowing me to experience what I am experiencing. I am thankful to Him that I allowed myself to be befriended by a sickeningly nice Trini girl by the name of Ren. I am thankful to Him for having sent Nadia From Siparia into Panther Hall's third floor lounge one night while Ren and I were attempting to study Finite Math. I am thankful that my two betis thought that it was the most logical thing in the world for me to just hop onto a plane into Port of Spain three holidays ago. I am thankful that on my fourth trip to Trinidad (I already had two holidays and one carnival under my belt!) Nadia had decided it was time for me to visit Tobago. But most of all, right at this very moment, I am thankful to Him that I am able to hear the choppy water slap gently against my body, that I am able to taste the salt water that is drying on my lips, that I am able to smell the coconut in the sunblock that I practically bathed in back in the hotel room, that I am able to feel the brazen sun turning the skin on my exposed shoulders several shades darker and I am most of all thankful that I am able to look out onto the shore and see that He has blessed us with a little piece of Heaven right here on earth. I flop onto my belly and dog paddle with all of my might so as to distract myself from thinking. My arms tire out way before my thoughts disappear...

I have about an hour to kill. This morning when we first reached Store Bay, we had only one mission in mind - Nylon Pool. Some of the glass-bottom boat owners were shameless, throwing their sly grins down at eager beachgoers through car windows and not even waiting for their
feet to touch the ground before attempting to harrass them into business.

"Mornin, alyuh," said one of the older ones. His grin had disappeared and now he looked at us as if though he couldn't even be bothered. "My boat leavin fuh Nylon Pool in a lil while. De tour las fuh about two hours and ah'll charge alyuh tree-hundred sixty each." The tiny wheels in my head begin to spin at once: tree-hundred sixty TT dollars divided by six...sixty. Sixty US dollars.

"Well it have more of us comin, nah, so we'll come look fuh yuh when dem does reach," lied Tanty. It was only four of us and all four of us were already there: me, Nadia, Nadia's mummy (Tanty) and Nadia's Aunt.

"Ok, den," the man said. Did he really believe her? "Jes come look fuh me, eh. I'll be rite out dey on de beach."

"Which one yuh boat?" Tanty humored him.

"De one dah say Soca Warrior on it." How original. I wonder if his business increased during the recent FIFA World Cup.....

"Alrite," we replied in unison. With that, the man adjusted his baseball cap and moved on to a big white woman with two young, mulatto boys.

We left the parking garage and walked on to Store Bay. It was rather early in the morning so the crab and dumpling stands were closed and the vendors' booths were still locked up. We stopped on a large, rectangular patch of grass that had several benches and trees big enough to shield the pasty, white Germans from the merciless Tobago sun.

Below that rectangular piece of grass was the actual beach itself, sprawled out for miles and miles, looking exactly like some of the postcards I had seen in one of the shops in Piarco.

"Dah boat lookin buss." Tanty had spotted the Soca Warrior first. She was right. "Nah, we nah goin on no Soca Warrior," Tanty declared.

Just then, a young black man appeared beside us and it was as if he had materialized out of thin air. His smile was friendly and he indulged us in a few stories about himself before he solicted our business: he was born in Trinidad, moved to Canada when he was very young and was now living in England but visiting Tobago on holiday and helping his cousin out with manning his boat. Tanty asked him for his name and he said it was Brian. A little more chit chat and Tanty was back to business.

He pointed his boat out to us. Her name was Miss Ayanna and she was a modest beauty - not as flashy as the newer, freshly-painted boats, but not at all as ragged as the Soca Warrior. She was closer to the shore than most of the other boats and I pictured her to be the quiet little sister of all the others. Her front end was facing in our direction and as we stared out at her, judging her, she seemed to stare right back, a firm stare - like the one the butcher used to give my mother when she was trying to explain to him how she wanted the meat chopped up.

Brian gave us a nice discount and Miss Ayanna had passed inspection so we were all set. In about an hour and a half, we were to meet him on the beach to set out for Nylon Pool. What will I do with myself for an hour and a half, I wondered. A minute later, I found myself floating face-up in the cool water asking myself a rather dreadful question - how the hell am I supposed to go back to Miami after this?!