“Time? What time?” Gibbs said. “I’m leaving for England in two weeks. What is going to happen to you?”
Gibbs held Covey’s face in both of his hands. This was not the life that Covey had imagined for herself only days earlier. Covey had hoped to follow Gibbs the following year once she’d worked out her school papers and sponsorship and a ticket for the transatlantic crossing. She had planned to move to England to be with Gibbs. She had planned to marry Gibbs, attend university like Gibbs. Have children with Gibbs.
“Covey, please, come with me now.”
“What, to England? But I’m not ready.”
“Then I’ll wait for you. We’ll go together.”
Covey gasped. That wouldn’t do. She needed to get Gibbs away from Little Man.
“No, you can’t stay. Your studies…”
“There’s no other way, can’t you see?” Gibbs had said.
But Covey managed to convince Gibbs that she was right. Gibbs would leave and, Covey promised, she would make her plans for her own departure.
“Don’t worry,” Covey told him on their last day together, even though Covey herself was beginning to worry. They were treading water in their secret place, that stretch of coast where they went when they wanted to swim alone together. As Covey clung to Gibbs, as she felt his saltwater mouth on hers, she thought back to the way Little Man had pronounced Gibbs’s name on the day that he had cornered her in the kitchen. He had said Gilbert Grant like a curse, like a warning, like an ultimatum.
Matrimony
More than four thousand years after the first marriages were recorded between men and women in Mesopotamia, plans were under way for a similar ceremony in August 1965 on the north coast of a small West Indian island. In keeping with tradition, Coventina Lyncook was to be bound to Clarence Henry, not only for Henry’s personal benefit but also for the greater social good. In Covey’s case, the wedding would result in the easing of the financial obligations that her father held toward Little Man.
Covey stood on a low stool in a dressmaker’s shop in town, feeling the wedding dress being pinched here and there by pins, not fully believing that her marriage to Little Man Henry would really take place. Covey, who had been brought here by Little Man’s mother, had chosen the ugliest dress she could find, a monstrosity of puffs and fluffs, hoping to consume as much of the woman’s money and patience as possible.
Surely, Covey’s father would figure out something. There had to be an alternative, she thought. In the meantime, she refused to speak to her pa. She eyed herself in the dressmaker’s mirror and considered whether, in a worst-case scenario, one of the knives Pearl used in the kitchen could be concealed in the many folds of the wedding dress. If it came to that, would she have the courage to use it? What would she be willing to do?
And what would she do after that?
Covey kept believing that her father would work things out with Little Man, that there would be a last-minute reprieve. Things would settle down, she and Bunny could do that harbor race, and Covey would travel to meet Gibbs the following year. But Little Man would have to back down first.
It wasn’t until two days before the ceremony, when Pearl went to the hotel to start work on the wedding cake, that Covey’s marriage to Little Man seemed inevitable. Covey, still ignorant of the delicate mechanics of having to work for a living, was furious with Pearl. How could she agree to make a cake for a wedding that was taking place against Covey’s will? When Pearl came with Bunny to see Covey right before the ceremony, Covey couldn’t look Pearl in the face. She merely turned her cheek to accept a kiss.
Bunny held Covey tight, rocking her from side to side, then walked her into the hallway where her father waited. As Covey’s father lifted his bent arm to support her gloved hand, Covey felt her mind unhitch itself from her body and drift, just as it did during her longer swims, when she could see the stroke of her arms from above, the drift of the current, the distance from her destination.
In the wedding hall now, Covey floated above the rows of guests, their dark blazers and sculpted hats. She hovered above the circle of bare scalp at the center of Little Man’s head, then streamed past the floral arrangements and through the plate-glass window, heading northeast toward the Atlantic Ocean, reaching out for Gibbs on the far, far side.
Then Little Man was pressing his mouth against Covey’s lips and she tumbled back into her body. The guests were applauding. The rest was a blur. There was a lunch, a speech or two. Her father, looking slack faced, stood and raised a glass in the couple’s direction, said a few words. Then Covey found herself standing in the center of the reception hall, watching Pearl’s black cake being wheeled into the room from the hotel kitchen. Covey felt Little Man place his fingers at the side of her waist, and her heart squeezed itself into a tiny ball of steel.