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Chapter One

My mother told me that when I was born, no one, not even the doctor, thought I was going to live. I arrived too early, and I was so tiny, the doctors had to keep me in an incubator so that I could breathe. And every day, my mother sat by me and fed me and prayed for me and cried because she didn't know what else to do. One day she fell asleep in the chair next to my incubator, and she dreamed that an angel came to watch over me. He was beautiful, my mother said, and he smiled at the both of us and told her that everything was going to be just fine. He put his hand over my heart and promised her that I would be fine. When my mother was finally able to take me home and she bathed me for the first time, she noticed a mark like a small pale hand above my heart. She remembered the angel, and knew that it wasn't a dream after all. He had touched me, and that was how I had gotten better. My mother told me that this was better than a birthmark, that it was an angel mark, and that I should be happy knowing that the good Lord had sent a guardian angel to watch over me.

At times when I felt sad or lonely, I asked my mother to come to my room and tell me the story all over again. I would put my hand over the angel mark, and she would put her hand on mine, and the three of us would smile at our story -- Mom, the angel, and me.

I stopped believing in that story four years ago, when I was nine. I guess I just grew up all of a sudden. The story about my birthmark began to seem silly. But maybe if I still believed in my angel, I could put my hand over my birthmark, and I would feel better about this awful summer. What could be worse than being held prisoner on the island where my parents grew up, with my sister and my grandmother? I just knew that Maciré and my other friends were having a great time back home in Brooklyn. I was missing everything.

At first my best friend, Maciré, was jealous when I told her that I'd be spending my summer on a Caribbean island. I pulled the letter I had written earlier out of my pocket.

Dear Maci,

Let me tell you a little something about Trinidad. It's a great place to visit -- blue sky, sandy beaches, and delicious exotic fruits so sweet and ripe they fall right off the trees. But every day it's the same blue sky, and after the hundredth wave sends you crashing down into the gritty sand, and you've swallowed a gallon of salt water, and the damp and the mosquitoes get to you, and there's sticky juice in your hair from the fruit falling on your head, you get a little bit tired of living on an island. Two weeks down, six more before I get back home.

Your favorite redhead,

Gracie

"Grace, you get themzabocayet?" Ma called down. Ma was my mother's mom. She practically lived in the kitchen. The smell of whatever she was cooking got into her skin, so that when you breathed her in, you could smell warm baked bread and roasted sausages, or curried crab and dumplings, or whatever she had just made into a meal.

"No, Ma," I said.

"Well, your aunty going to be here soon, child. You better hurry it up."

"Yes, Ma," I said quickly. I had learned long ago not to keep Ma waiting.

My grandmother eyed me from the kitchen window two stories up. Her thick glasses glinted in the sunlight, then fogged up when steam from the pot poured through the open window. I took a deep breath and caught a whiff of something spicy and sweet.

"What you making, Ma?" I asked.

"You'll find out when you come up here with themzaboca," she told me.

"A-v-o-c-a-d-o," I muttered under my breath.

That was the other thing about Trinidad. Nothing and nobody is called by their right name.

Trees and flowering shrubs filled Ma's yard. There were guava,pomerac,avocado, and bay trees. And hibiscus, orchid, and croton plants brightened every corner of the yard. In a corner at the back was a neat area just for herbs like thyme, basil, chives, and dill weed. That morning Ma had me pick some bay leaves to brew for our breakfast tea. And the avocados were to be sliced and served as a side dish at dinner.

I moved slowly toward the avocado tree. In Brooklyn you got avocados from crates at the fruit stands on Church Avenue. No standing in the mud with a ten-foot pole. I chose a low branch and thrust the pole up. It touched nothing and tipped over, nearly hitting the side of Ma's yellow house. I moved a little to the right and tried again. This time, I hit leaves and brought down a flutter of them, along with the rainwater they had cupped from last night's downpour.

I shook my hair free of water and leaves and looked around. Just past the tree was the mossy brick fence that separated Ma's and the neighbor's yard. If I got a running start I could probably pole-vault over it. I shook the thought out of my mind and thrust the pole up a third time. This time it hit a young avocado, but did not bring it down.

"You not doing it right. You want me to help you?" someone asked.

I took a step backward as a boy from the yard next door hoisted himself up to the top of the brick fence in one smooth move. He flung his legs over, showing muddy flip-flops, and jeans cut off at the knee. He was long, brown, and skinny, with straight black hair that fell down over his forehead, and eyes the color of burnt sugar. "I've got it. Thanks," I said dryly.

He jumped down and stood beside me, looking into the tree. "Oh yeah? Well it don't look so to me, nuh?"

Who exactly did this kid think he was? And how long had he been watching me? I wasn't about to let him show me up. I raised the pole again right up to the biggest avocado on the branch, pulled it back, and swung it toward the branch as hard as I could. It hit, but no avocados came down. The boy tilted his head back and laughed. I couldn't help but laugh too.

"You don't know how to do nothing, nuh?" He motioned for me to hand him the pole, and I did. Mosquitoes were already beginning to feast on my legs, and I wanted to be inside, sitting on Ma's couch, drinking freshly made watermelon juice.

The boy looked into the tree and threw the pole up once. He caught it as it came down, and moved me aside as an avocado landed on the wet grass at our feet, splattering us with mud. He did it three more times, each time bringing down ripe fruit.

"That's how you pick azaboca," he said. He leaned the pole on the side of the house and hoisted himself back over the fence. "All right, eh, America?" he said.

I stood gaping at the spot he had disappeared behind. How did he know I was American? My eyes drifted to the avocados at my feet. "Thanks," I shouted. But there was no reply. "Well, at least I tried to be polite," I mumbled to myself.

I climbed the wooden back stairs to the kitchen with the avocados and dropped them gently in the kitchen sink.

"The tree bearing plenty these days, eh?" Ma said. "How you didn't give the neighbor boy one? Is he who picked them after all."

I pretended to wipe my chin on my shoulder to get away from her look and concentrated on washing the dirt off the avocados.

Ma put tomatoes, cucumbers, and a head of lettuce in the sink. "Here. Fix up the salad." Then she turned her attention in the direction of the living room. "Sally! Sally, come here, please."

Sal, fresh from a nap on the couch, stumbled into the kitchen rubbing her eyes and stretching her long limbs in every direction. Even though she was three years younger than I, we were about the same height.

"You done sleeping, child?"

"Yes, Ma," she replied with a yawn.

"Then set the table, please. Your aunty Jackie will be here any minute."

By the time I had finished tossing the salad with salt and pepper -- Ma always said, all you needed to dress a salad properly was salt and a dash of pepper -- Aunty Jackie pulled into the driveway. I forgot all about the avocados and raced Sally to the porch just in time to see our aunt squeeze her large frame out of her very old, dented, and scratched-up car. She opened the back door, pulled out a book the size of the Brooklyn Yellow Pages, and waved it at us. Then she winked. A grin spread across my face. I knew that winking means secrets, and I could hardly wait to hear the stories Aunty Jackie would tell us tonight.

Chapter Two

Aunty Jackie brushed past the red and yellow hibiscus bushes at the side of the house. Ma's dog, Haysley, ran up to her and put his front paws on her behind.

"Stop that, dog!" she yelled at him. "Gone! Gone now!" Haysley dropped down on all fours and trotted, tail wagging, after her. When she got to the top of the steps, she let the low porch gate bang shut so he couldn't follow her in. He spun around twice trying to catch his tail, and then settled down with a yawn on the top step, like he always did.

"Oh, my, nieces!" Aunty Jackie said opening her arms to us. "Come and give your aunty a squeeze." Sally and I hugged her hard from both sides. I could barely get my arms all the way around her.

"Oh, Lord," she said. "Every time I look at you, Miss Sally, I see more and more of your father. That beautiful dark skin, those big brown eyes, those long lanky limbs. But that smile, that smile is all me. You smile just like your aunty." Sally flashed her some teeth. "And you," she said to me. "I don't know where you get this red bushy hair. That can't be from the Charles side of the family. I got the whole Charles side in this album here, and not a one of them have red hair like that!" she said.

I looked at Sally, still smiling Aunty Jackie's smile and sporting Dad's long legs. She always got the best of everything. I got whatever was left over, like the dregs at the bottom of a glass of juice. Dad knew it. Everyone knew it, including Aunty Jackie.

"But you are just like your mother on the inside," Aunty said quickly, holding my chin until I met her eyes and made a weak attempt at returning her smile. "Both of you cut from the same cloth, yes? Quick to get vex, and then everybody better watch out!" She threw her head back and laughed. "Oh yes, look at that face. Trouble for so!" She tugged gently at my mane and stepped inside to greet Ma.

"Oh-ho, Jackie, is you then?" Ma said, wiping her already dry hands in a dishtowel and peeking out from the kitchen.

"Who you expecting besides me, Mummy?" Aunty Jackie said.

Ma chuckled. "Come inside, nuh? I make rice and peas and stew chicken. Grace there make the salad."

"Red? You make salad? You know how to find your way in a kitchen? You makin' your aunty proud, girl!"

Sally laughed and pointed at my hair. "Red."

I looked at Sally's neatly braided pitch-black hair, and tried to smooth down my own red bush a little. That girl always knew how to ruin a compliment for me.

"I set the table," she said, turning the attention back to her.

"Oh yeah? It look real nice, baby."

Sally tried to take the photo album that Aunty was still holding on to.

"This is for after dinner, girl. You too hurry, yes?"

I loved the way Ma and Aunty talked. Every sentence was a melody that ended on an upswing, as if it were a question.

Aunty Jackie sat down heavily at the carved wooden dining table and ran her finger along the grooves of a branch laden with leaves. Everything in Ma's house looked like it had been carved by hand out of solid tree trunks. The arms and backs of the couch and armchair, the coffee and dining tables, and all the dining chairs had delicate patterns of tropical fruit carved into them and were polished to a smooth shine. When Sally and I first arrived, we were very careful of them, thinking that they might be uncomfortable to sit in, or they might break easily if we did. But within a week we were as comfortable on Ma's furniture as we had been on our own back home. Maybe more.

As soon as Ma put the last dish out on the table, Aunty picked up a pot spoon and started to pile heaps of rice and peas on everybody's plate. "Did I ever tell you about the time your grandmother caught your mother kissing a boy by the side of the house? Yes, right out there by the brick fence."

Sally's jaw dropped open, but Ma gave our aunt a look that stopped her midgossip, and Aunty clasped her hands and bowed her head. Sally and I knew to do the same.

Ma prayed. "Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ Our Lord."

"Amen," we all answered. I kept my hands clasped a few seconds longer to add silently, "Lord, I hope my friends aren't having too much fun in Brooklyn without me." Then I took it back because Ma always said that God didn't like ugly.

I couldn't believe that my mother tried to convince me that this vacation would be a good experience. So far I had only gotten experience in swatting down mosquitoes in my sleep. For once Dad and I had argued on the same side. There were better things to do in Brooklyn. But Mom said that our grandmother wanted us to spend the summer with her before she got too old to enjoy us. So that was it. Dad caved in and bought the tickets. Even my parents couldn't argue with Ma.

"So, was it Daddy?" Sally asked, wanting to continue the gossip.

"Oh no, no, no," Aunty Jackie said. "Just some boy from school. She was only about thirteen then." She winked at me. "You know how you thirteen-year-olds are, eh, Red?"

Ma grunted.

"Well, I thought your grandmother was going to give your mother licks for so," Aunty Jackie continued. "Imagine, kissing a boy in Mrs. Charles's yard! I didn't think she would be able to sit for a week, but your mummy get away scot-free."

Sally giggled. "What happened to that boy?"

"I don't know, nuh? He probably pining over her still. They all used to pine after your mother. She was a real beauty, yuh hear? But she didn't have much use for any of them. Good thing too, because Ma didn't like anybody we dated."

"Until Daddy," Sally said.

"Well..."

"Ma didn't like Daddy either?"

"She likes him now, eh? So don't fret that. Now the two of them tight, tight, like sardine in tin can."

"Why didn't you like Daddy?" Sally asked Ma.

"She said he was too skinny. She said he was like a coconut tree -- tall and dry, with a big head at the top." Aunty laughed. "Steven used to look like them bobble-head dolls, you know? Only now that he put on a little weight, he looks like he grow into it."

Aunty Jackie continued on through dinner telling us about various escapades from when she and our mother were younger. Ma's eyebrows arched farther and farther up with each new revelation. But I had the feeling that she wasn't surprised at all. Ma knew everything that went on under this roof.

After dinner Aunty Jackie began to clear plates off the table, but Ma waved her away. She gave each of us a Julie mango, and shooed us out to the porch to eat them because she didn't want any yellow stains on her good furniture. We leaned over the porch railing and peeled the mango skin off with our teeth. As we ate, juice dripped off our elbows and onto the shrubs below. Haysley trotted downstairs to try to catch the occasional drip, but he was too old and slow to have much success, and he ended up licking the sticky yellow juice off of rocks, hibiscus leaves, and his own graying fur.

Ma's yellow wood-and-concrete house stood midway up a hill, in between a small boarded-up blue house that the owners used only around Carnival time, and the Seepersads on the left in their more modern, all-concrete house. The hill didn't slope up evenly. The area right in front of Ma's and the Seepersads' front gates was flattish, and would make a decent place to play soccer, if I had anyone to play with, and if there weren't any cars coming. As the sky darkened and the streetlights blinked on, the sound of someone beating out a melody on a steel pan drifted to us on a warm breeze. The tune was as soft and sweet as mango flesh.

When Ma finished in the kitchen, she brought out a roll of paper towels and the album, and put them down on the wrought-iron porch table.

"Don't touch that with your sticky fingers now," she warned.

"Oh yes, girls. Let's have a look," Aunty Jackie said. She licked her fingers, then wiped them on a paper towel before opening up the album.

There were pictures of Ma, thin and smiling for the camera with family members we had never met. There was our mother as a little girl with two thick black braids that stuck out at the sides of her head.

"We used to call her 'fat plaits,'" Aunty Jackie said laughing. I could see why.

"And there's you, Jackie," Ma said. She pointed at a picture of a little girl wearing nothing at all, running after a white puppy in the grass. "That was right in front this house here," Ma said.

"But that isn't Haysley," Sally said.

"No, hon, that was Thunder," Aunty said. "Hays is old, but he isn't that old. Right, fella?" She looked back at the dog, who had repositioned himself by the porch gate. He flopped his tail once, as if in response.

We flipped through page after page of faded family pictures trapped under the yellowed plastic sheets. There were pictures of birthday parties with kids in paper-cutout hats, weddings full of women in lacy dresses, dancing with men wearing shirt collars as wide as their shoulders. There was our mother and aunt as little girls in bright green school uniforms, at Sally's age sitting on Ma's porch, and as teenagers wearing bikinis on the beach. Aunty Jackie was right. Our mother was beautiful.

"We used to make a lime to Maracas Beach every other Saturday," Aunty Jackie said, pointing at a page full of faded and discolored pictures of teenagers on the beach. "But once or twice webreak bicheand went to the beach during the week instead of going to classes."

Ma raised her eyebrows again. "And I only hearing about this now?"

"Well, we couldn't tell you that then," she said, winking at Sal and me.

"No, I suppose you couldn't. But don't encourage these two to follow your foolishness."

Aunty Jackie pointed to a picture of four men and three women sitting in the sand on the beach. Despite the splotchy photo, I could tell it was a bright beautiful day. Their faces were dark, a sharp contrast to the pale sand and white foam of breaking waves behind them.

"This was the whole beach side. This was Sheila Carr. She and your mother were like this." She crossed two fingers and held them up. "And here," she said, pointing at three skinny boys playing cricket with a coconut branch, "this is your father and Bucky and Jack."

"Bucky?" Sally and I asked together.

"Well, that was just his nickname. You know I can't even remember what Bucky's real name is now, nuh? I haven't thought about these people in so long, eh?" Beneath those two pictures was one of Aunty, our mother, and their friend Sheila posing with their hands on their hips, making kissy faces at the camera. "We looked like movie stars, no?"

And next to that photo was one of two girls posing with one guy. The picture was blurry, but something below the guy's left shoulder caught my eye. When Aunty turned the page, I asked her to go back.

"Who is this?" I asked, pointing to the man in the picture, whose face I couldn't make out.

She frowned. "Hard to tell. You can't make out much in this one. This here is your mother though. See the yellow bikini?" She pointed to another picture that showed our mother wearing the same yellow swimsuit. "This was probably Sheila. I don't know who the guy was."

"But it's probably Dad, right?"

She brought the album to her face for a closer look. "No, hon, you know your father is a lot taller than your mother. This person isn't that tall at all." She turned forward a page. "Here's your dad. See? Shoulda been a basketball player."

"Let me see," Sally said, shoving her face between the album and me. "Yeah, this guy's way too short."

I shoved her gently away and squinted at the photo. "Then maybe it's one of his brothers -- Uncle Ernie or Uncle Carl?"

Sally shook her head. "No way."

"They're pretty tall too, so I doubt it. More likely it was either Jack or Bucky, but it's hard to know for sure. Why you ask?"

Ma stared softly at me beneath a frown. Behind her thick lenses it was hard to know if she was trying to tell me something, but the look she gave me was the same kind of stare my teachers gave when they were waiting for me to figure out an answer. I sat back in my chair and let Aunty narrate us through the rest of the album. By the time she was done, it was late, and she decided she'd better get going. She got her beat-up purse and hugged each of us good-bye. Then she reached for the album.

"Oh, can I borrow it, Aunty?" I asked.

"I have plenty of other albums you can look through, Grace," Ma said. "Look at that thing. It liable to fall to dust if you handle it too rough." She turned back to Aunty Jackie. "I put some food in containers for you to have tomorrow. Come and get it, nuh."

"Thanks, Mummy. Grace, why you don't help me take that old thing down to the car. I don't have enough hands for all of this."

I wiped my palms on my pants and picked up the album. As Aunty went inside to get her containers of food I went barefoot down the cold concrete front steps to her car. In the shadow of a hibiscus bush and hidden by the open car door, I flipped open the album. I quickly scanned through pages until I found the picture I was looking for -- my mother, her friend Sheila, and the man whose face we couldn't make out. I took the picture out of the album and pocketed it quickly.

As Aunty started making her way down the stairs, I decided to take another photo -- the one of all my parents and their friends on the beach. The picture was stuck on the page so I scratched carefully at the edges trying to pry it loose. Soon Aunty was at the bottom of the stairs and the picture was still stuck. Fortunately, Haysley jumped up and put his front paws on my aunt. She staggered backward and tried to get him off her. That gave me just enough time to get the picture out. Just as Aunty got up to the car, I placed the album gently onto the backseat and closed the door. Haysley and I stood guard at the gate as she left the driveway and drove down the hill. "Good boy," I said, and patted his big head.

I wanted to look at the pictures again right away, but I didn't want Ma and Sally to see. So I waited until after Sally got tired from watching TV and Ma ordered us both to bed. Then I waited for the sounds of Sally's light snoring. I stared at the wooden ceiling and waited a little bit longer just to be sure no sounds were coming from Ma's room. A white wood slave made its way across the ceiling. We didn't have these in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn all the gross lizardlike things lived at the Prospect Park Zoo.

I turned on the lamp, sank into the couch, and held the first picture under the lamplight to get a better look. I was hoping that what I had seen earlier might have been a mistake, but now it seemed clear. I blew at the picture to get rid of any dust, and brushed it gently with my finger. There was no mistake. The man in the photograph had a little birthmark below his left shoulder, and just above his heart. It looked like a small pale hand. It looked exactly like mine.

I looked at the other picture from Aunty's album, but I couldn't make out which of the men had the birthmark. So I took out the stack of albums that Ma had under her coffee table and checked each one carefully. Without knowing what the face of the man with the mark looked like, I searched for bright red hair, just like mine.

I studied each picture carefully in the dim lamplight. A lot of Ma's pictures were black-and-white, so when I came to those of people on the beach, I looked at them carefully to find the man with the birthmark on his left shoulder. After searching to the end of her last album, I had still found nothing. I got up and walked around the living room, looking at all the pictures of family and friends that Ma had hanging on the walls. They revealed nothing.

He had to be some other member of our family -- a cousin, or an uncle that Aunty forgot had come along, but who? I searched my memory for a family member my parents' age that I'd met. I knew all of my uncles, and Sally was right -- they were all tall like my father, and with a darker complexion than the person in the picture seemed to be. Besides, if there were someone else in the family that had the angel mark, we would have known about it a long time ago. Some member of either the Charles or Brewster families claimed every body part that Sally and I had, every part except my thick red hair, and the angel mark. Frustrated and tired, I put the albums back where I found them and went back to my room. I tucked the pictures under my pillow for safekeeping.

By the time I woke in the morning, Sally's bed was already made, and I heard her outside trying to teach Haysley to fetch. I stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, glad to have some quiet time to myself. I tried not to think about the picture, but it kept popping into my head. So I went into the shower and leaned against the cold concrete wall. Finally I relaxed and let my thoughts go free. A thought played over and over in my head and wouldn't go away, no matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut to get it out. "You're so different, Grace," it said. "Where did you get that red hair from?" it asked. It was true that I didn't look like Dad at all. And nobody else had my red hair. I tried to shake the thought from my head. My mother and I were so much alike, everybody said so. But my father and I? We were as different as salt and sweet. What if my father wasn't who I thought he was? He and I never agreed on anything. He and Sally were so close, and they looked so much alike.

I needed to figure out who the man in the picture was. If I understood why we had the same birthmark, then maybe I'd understand more.

Excerpted from Angel's Grace by Tracey Baptiste
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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Angel's Grace

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