Someone would have to guide me over the Queen Wilhelmina drawbridge, which spanned the Waaigat inlet, then into the streets. Finding my way would take time.
On the cay, I'd wondered which was worse: to be born blind or to have your sight suddenly taken away. I'd quickly decided that being born blind was the worst. Never to see a bird, the sky, the sun or moon. Even for a while.
The drive to Scharloo, the district in which we lived near the ship channel that extended to the refinery, usually took about twenty minutes. Curaçao is only thirty-eight miles long and nine wide at the widest, between Jan Thiel Bay and Playa Canao. I well remembered how that cross-island road looked the last time I'd seen it. Here and there those strange divi-divi trees, their branches shaped by the wind. All kinds of cactus, machineel trees, and manzanilla bushes along the road.
Most people think that every Caribbean island has lots of coconut palms, jungle plants, and wide, white-sand beaches. Our island was rocky, a desert type with cactus everywhere. Any palms we had were shipped in from South America. Our beaches were small, their sand coarse. There wasn't much rainfall, and tankers brought in fresh water as ballast.
"How be yuh healt'?" the cab driver asked, using English with a Creole twist. The moment he spoke I knew he was a native.
He'd heard about me: Local Boy and Cat Found Alive. The rescue operation had been in the papers as well as on radio. An Associated Press reporter had interviewed me in the hospital. Time magazine had called.
"I'm fine," I said.
I stroked a nervous Stew Cat as we scooted along. He'd have to adapt to a new land.
"Dat's good," the driver said.
The native islanders usually spoke Papiamentu among themselves. It was Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, and more than a little African mixed into one language, the heritage of slavery. It was usually heard nowhere on earth except on Curaçao and her sister islands, Aruba and Bonaire.
I knew a few words. Ayo was "good-bye" and mashi danke was "thanks."
"Here we are," my mother said when the car stopped in the front of our house. My father made a joke about my luggage. I had no possessions except for Timothy's knife and the clothes on my back, bought the evening before in Panama City.
Our small stucco house, painted soft green with white trim and a red tile roof, was on the north edge of Scharloo, well in back of the old mansions owned by the rich merchants. The oil company paid our rent.
Still holding Stew, I said, "Let me feel my way in," and moved across the uneven sidewalk. When I reached the iron gate and opened it, I fell down, Stew leaping out of my arms. I'd forgotten there was a step up.
"You okay?" my mother asked, and touched my shoulder.
On hands and knees, angry at myself, I said, "Yes." I'd fallen down hundreds of times on the cay. But the cement walk wasn't as forgiving as sand.
There were four steps up to the front door, I remembered, and I navigated them all right, finally entering the living room. To the left, against the left wall, rose the stairs to the second floor, where my room was. Almost dead ahead was the doorway to the dining room; beyond that, the small kitchen.
The smells and sounds of that gabled house came back—the sounds especially: floor creaks, the swish of the wooden-bladed ceiling fans, the wind chimes outside the back door. Yes, I was home.
I thought I knew where every piece of furniture was but right away tripped over the coffee table in front of the couch. There were two overstuffed chairs between a floor lamp by the opposite wall. I lost my bearings and went that way, falling over one chair, knocking the lamp down.
Suddenly, tears rolled over my cheeks. I hadn't cried since the day before I was rescued, hearing the sound of an airplane flying overhead, then dying away.
Knowing they were looking at me, I lashed out at my parents. "Stop watching me!" I yelled.
My father said quietly, "Okay, we won't."
I knew how I looked—hands outstretched, frustration on my face; angry at being blind.
"Would a cane help?" my mother asked.
I sighed and nodded.
"We'll get one for you this afternoon," my father said.
So, with everyone watching, I'd have to get around like an old man. Before, the only eyes focused on me had belonged to Timothy and Stew Cat.
"Just let me alone for a while," I said, sitting down in the chair I'd bumped into. "Where's Stew?"
One of them placed him in my lap.
"Would you like something to drink?" Mother asked.
I shook my head. I felt like a stranger in my own house.
They left the room and I could hear them talking in the kitchen, though they'd closed the door. They were talking about me, I was certain. What they needed to do was let me make my mistakes. Like Timothy had done.
Soon I smelled bacon frying. A little later my mother announced that lunch was ready, and I made my way into the dining room, felt around the table, and sat down in my own chair. I wasn't as helpless as they seemed to think.
On the cay, Timothy had placed my food—fish or langosta or coconut or boiled sea-grape leaves—on a driftwood plank. We both ate with our hands, naturally. The navy nurses had told me to feel for the plate, then use the fork. They made me guess what I was having. Sort of a game.
My parents had seen me eat the night before. I'd warned them I was messy.
"I made one of your favorites." A bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. "And rice pudding, with raisins. Ice cream and chocolate-chip cookies for dessert."
I'm sure Timothy had watched me eat, seen me spilling food down my chest, but he'd never said a word.
Mother said, "Oops, some bacon came out."
"I'll find it," I said. I felt like yelling. It was in my lap.
Sitting down, Mother said, "Henrik called just before we left for Panama. He'd heard about you on the radio. He couldn't believe you'd been rescued."
That was Henrik all right. Always difficult to convince. I'd thought about Henrik van Boven now and then on the cay.
"He's really a true friend," my father said. "He took it hard when he learned you were missing."
"He wants to know when he can come over," Mother said.
I hesitated. I wasn't quite ready for Henrik. He'd want to know about every second, minute, and hour since last April.
"Let me set the clinic appointment first," my father said.
I nodded. They'd talked to the navy doctors about my problem.
The sandwich tasted great; I hadn't had a BLT since sitting at this same table months ago, in another life. A life I'd never have again.
Soon I groped my way upstairs, remembering when I'd taken them two at a time, up or down; then I turned into my bedroom, which was opposite the one belonging to my parents.
In my own room I was more certain of myself, knowing where everything was: the bed, the desk, the bureau, the closet, the bookshelves. I'd already been told that nothing had been touched since the morning we'd departed on the Hato.
I felt around. Everything was still in place, as they'd said.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, wondering what to do with myself. A moment later there was a thump, and then Stew Cat rubbed along my leg, purring. He was as lost as I was.
"Is there anything we can get you?"
My mother had followed me up. Maybe that's what she'd do from now on. Follow me everywhere.
I shook my head, looking toward the open door.
That whole first day and night at home I felt as if I didn't belong. On the cay I'd always had things to do, just to survive. Chores that had meaning. Here, I felt useless.
During the night I found myself missing the wind rustling in the thatched roof of the hut; missing the splash of the usually gentle surf; missing Timothy.
Here I was, secure in my own bed at last and not wanting to be there.
I asked Timothy, "What's wrong with me?"
There was no answer.
***
The next day Henrik van Boven visited. He'd
also passed another birthday since I'd last seen him: he'd turned twelve, too. I sat on the front steps with Stew, waiting for him.
To me, he'd always looked very Dutch—straw-colored hair, moon face, and body on the chubby side. The van Bovens lived about seven blocks away. Henrik's father was city director of public works, and Henrik often sounded like his father, in charge of everything. Yet I liked him anyway; we'd had fun together.
Almost the moment I heard the gate squeak, he said, "You look different."
I knew I did. Still sun baked.
"And you're blind."
As if I didn't know it!
Laughing, I said, "Hi, Henrik."
"You're blind! That's what the newspaper said. Blind! Is that the cat?" Same old Henrik.
I said "Yes" to both questions.
By now he was no more than three feet away. Then I knew he'd sat down beside me. His voice came from the right. "Will you always be blind?"
"I hope not."
"All right, tell me everything."
"You said you read the newspapers."
"Yeah, but they always leave a lot of good stuff out."
I started with the torpedoing of the Hato and the raft, thinking I should just write it down on paper and hand it out to anyone who asked. People always had an idea being shipwrecked was like living on Robinson Crusoe's island.
When I told him about Timothy, he asked, "Why'd he call you 'young boss'?"
"Just habit, a leftover from slave days. He said he called most white men 'bahss' instead of 'mister,' without even thinking..."I knew he didn't really feel they were his bosses. It was just his West Indian way of speaking. "After we became friends I asked him to call me Phillip."
I could hear his "Phill-eep" even now.
I talked with Henrik until he said he had to go home for dinner.
***
That night I again found it hard to sleep. My mind kept turning back to those first few hours when I'd re-covered consciousness and found myself on the raft.
What I remembered most about that morning was Timothy's refusal to give me more than three small swallows of water. I'd hated him for it at the time.
A while later, I had a nightmare. A schooner that Timothy had once sailed on, the Hettie Redd, had been caught in a "tempis," a hurricane, off Antigua, and was breaking up. Timothy's feet were wedged in the rigging and he was drowning.
I woke up with my heart drumming. We'd talked about the Hettie Redd and a green-eyed girl named Jennifer Rankin.
I'd had dreams of Timothy while alone on the cay. Now I was having them at home.
8. Being a Slave
OCTOBER 1884—In the night quiet of Back o' All, from his floor mat Timothy asked Tante Hannah why the bukras had left him. The Amager had been a stone in his belly all day. He had a broken heart, his disappointment so big he was drowning in it.
He hadn't known what to do with himself since early morning. For a while he'd walked in circles in Upper John and Dunko, staying away from Back o' All and the waterfront so no one would say, "Thot yuh gone to sea, boy."
About noon he'd returned home, silent and brooding, then had gone with Tante Hannah to deliver ironed wash to the estate on Frenchman Bay Road. They'd caught a ride part of the way on a friend's donkey cart, not returning until time for supper at twilight.
But he hadn't mentioned the Amager until this moment, well after the evening meal, more than twelve hours after the ship had stood out to sea. Tante Hannah wisely hadn't brought it up either.
She sighed. "Can't say exactly why."
A gullie settled on the roof with a cha-cha-chi sound, its claws scratching the palm fronds.
Staring at the ceiling—annoyed that the gullie was up there, breaking into his thoughts—he asked if they'd left him because he was black. All day, he'd thought that must be the reason, the only reason.
"Mebbe." He heard another troubled sigh that went back to the Gulf of Guinea, the Slave Coast of Africa. "Sum o' dat but moh deeper. Way bock it goes."
She'd talked very little about her own past with him. Slave days. He'd guessed they were a painful subject with her, one she preferred to forget.
The fronds in the roof rattled. The gullie was walking around. Stupid bird.
Timothy guessed that slave ships had looked something like the Amager—beautiful above the main deck, but filled with horror and death below.
He waited patiently.
She was silent a long time, then for the next hour and more she talked about being a slave.
The slave ships had sailed for Africa out of America and England, out of France and Holland and Denmark; out of Portugal, out of Spain and Italy. Money was to be made in the New World, selling bodies.
The ships sailed with pots and pans and tools and guns, bolts of gaily colored cloth, cheap jewelry, and bottles of perfume. All of these were to trade to African chieftains for live black bodies. The ships first made land on the Grain Coast or the Gold Coast or the Ivory Coast—the Slave Coasts.
Timothy listened, thinking about trading pots and pans for human bodies.
The first hundred arrived in St. Thomas in 1673, almost two hundred years before Timothy was born. The king of Aquambon, located on the Gold Coast, had sold them to the Danes. For a while, St. Thomas was the chief slave port of the New World, Tante Hannah said.
The gullie scratched.
Tante Hannah's papa and mama, of the Ashanti tribe, had been walked out of Kade in clanking chains. They were naked. They had to walk a long way in high heat, but they were young and strong and they survived. She said others fell over and died, then were unchained and pushed off the paths for wild animals to eat.
Timothy listened, thinking of Tante Hannah's papa and mama naked and in chains, so frightened they found it hard to breathe. The gullie scratched again and Timothy was tempted to go outside and throw something at it.
Timothy had always heard it was horrible, that voyage across the Atlantic, but he hadn't known just how bad it was until this moment.
Tante Hannah said the "floating tombs" had bare wooden decks where the slaves were shackled, lying on their backs, many still naked. The cattle and hogs that were carried to slaughter for food weren't chained—only the slaves. But they sang songs of rebellion and love in tongues no white guard could understand.
The gullie cried cha-cha-chi and took off, flying upward.
In the soft darkness, Timothy again imagined those ships with their great white sails driving them westward, looking so pretty and peaceful, hiding the misery below.
Almost half the slaves died before they tied up in St. Thomas, Tante Hannah said. They were thrown overboard for the sharks to eat.
What happened then? Timothy wanted to know.
There was another long sigh. "De bukras fattened 'em up, doctahed 'em, den sol' em to wark de crops."
Her papa died nine years after being marched off the ship, at age thirty-one. Her mama lived five more years. "I warked longside 'er till she dropped ovah, weedin' cane. Papa died diggin' hols foh plantin'."
Chains still on them? he asked.
Tante Hannah laughed hollowly. "No, Timothy. No. Dere wuz nowhar to run."
They were never freed? he asked.
They died before that happened, she answered.
He'd been shown their conch-shelled graves at Estate Alborg. He'd been told that Master Alborg was a better master than most. But Tante Hannah still went back there only once a year, at Christmas, and then it was only because Timothy would be given a bag of candy from Denmark.
She sighed deeply and reached over to touch his hand.
"Ah 'member de day we got freedom. July third, 1848. De day before, we'd rung de estate bells an' blew on conch shells to tell de gobernor we wanted freedom. De nes' day, 'bout two tousand slaves circled 'roun Fort Frederik sayin' dey burn Saint Croix less dey freed. De gobernor came dere an' say, 'Yuh now free...'"
The wattle-and-daub huts where the slaves had lived at Estate Alborg had long been destroyed. But slavery s
till hung over the plantation like an evil cloud.
Tante Hannah finally said, "Timothy, dey still tink we slaves, eben tho we free. Dey tink we don't 'mount to much. Dey still tink it an till dat change, we still in chains. Dat's why de bukra boy got your job."
So it was because he was black, not because he couldn't do the work. He thought about that awhile and then asked if he had any slave blood in him.
Tante Hannah's low laughter was turned inward as much as outward. "Ebry mahn, womahn, an' chile wit black skin in de New World 'as slave blood."
He asked her why they talked differently from the bukras. "Dat, too, goes way bock," she said.
People from at least twenty-five tribes had landed in St. Thomas, many of them talking in different languages. To understand each other, they began to use bits and pieces of the white man's tongue. "Dey now call it pidgin Engleesh..."
Timothy stayed awake for another hour, thinking about what it would have been like to be a slave. He was too young for his own papa and mama, whoever they were, to have been slaves. But this night he felt Slave Coast blood in his veins.
No wonder there was something familiar about the chants of the coal women at the wharves.
No wonder he felt his own feet move when Tante Hannah danced on Emancipation Day, celebrating the anniversary of the day when the governor freed the slaves.
Now he knew it was all inside him and would never go away.
9. The Clinic
My father called the refinery clinic. The doctors there, all from Holland, were the best on the island. They served sixteen thousand workers.
"At two o'clock," I heard him repeat.
When he placed the phone down, I asked, "Do they have an eye doctor?"
"Yes."
The name of the eye doctor was Boomstra, and he seemed more interested in what had happened on the cay than in my eyes. Kept asking me how I'd survived.
After X rays were taken and developed, he hummed to himself while examining me, asking me exactly when I thought my sight had begun to fade, asking my mother if she'd seen the blow to my head. She hadn't.