Liming
Monday we set out to call on some family. We’re staying just down the road from the village of Gros Islet where Jacqui grew up. The name of the village makes no sense apparently: gros means large, and islet means small island. We can walk there from our hotel, and we do—Matthias’s father had wandered down the road on a walk while waiting for the rest of us to finish our morning routines, and he’s learned from a cousin of Jacqui’s where her aunts that she wants to visit live.
Fellow Catholics will appreciate these kind of family relations: Everyone is a cousin of some sort or other. Matthias, who hasn’t met much of his family, pauses to try to trace the branches of lineage whenever his mom explains a relationship, and occasionally I try to put it in terms of my family so he can feel more justified in shrugging it off as, ‘OK, a cousin.’ Add to that the mix of both blood relatives and those who raised others or grew up with others but aren’t blood relatives and his family here is quite large.
After breakfast we head up the road towards Gros Islet to visit Aunty Marie, whose name is pronounced Mawi, like you would say Maui. (She is not to be confused with Matthias’s Aunt Maui, who was raised by Aunt Marie.) We turn into the main road for Gros Islet, but Yvan-Pierre misses a turn somewhere. We stop in the road and a woman leans off a balcony to ask us whom we’re looking for. Between her and an older woman selling some provisions on a corner we find the right road and walk towards Aunt Marie’s house.
We meet her and apologise for interrupting some social time with a friend of hers, who introduces herself before seeing herself out.
Our visit is like any visit to an older woman’s house, and it reminds me of visiting Nana. We sit on a couch in her front room and I constant readjust the crocheted doilies that line the back. We turn through a massive, slightly disorganised album of family photos. There’s a picture of Matthias’s mom in her wedding dress from 1989 that would fit right in next to the three that Nana kept on her mantle, complete with the mauve curtained background, puffy sleeves, and more lace than you’d think you could fit on one dress. She asks if we’re drinking beer and offers Matthias and me each a Heineken.
She also has soursop, and I may have squealed with delight. She offers to give us one, but instead we ask to cut it up and eat it here. Matthias is skeptical of a fruit with sour in the name. Soursop has a spiky skin, but inside the flesh is creamy. Jacqui serves us with some napkins and tells us to spit out any black seeds.
After Marie’s we get directions to walk to Aunt S’s: Towards the school, down the slab to the other road, turn right, and something after that. Along the way a car stops and Jacqui’s cousin Reeves pulls over to offer us a ride. We visit with Aunt S— before making our way to Aunt Nadia’s, but she isn’t home and the girl who is doesn’t have her number. She lives in the country but comes into Gros Islet to sell produce. (We’ll either catch her or go visit her in the country, Reeves later assures us.)
Aunt S— walks us to a good restaurant for lunch, where I have what has become my staple plate here: A mix of sides so large there is no way I will finish it all. There is salad (your typical mixed greens side salad), peas (rice and beans), provision or ground provision (starches like plantain, banana, breadfruit, and squashes, sometimes with yuca too), and chow mien. Other places have had mac & cheese as well. This is served with a choice of condiments: oil & vinegar dressing, creamy dressing, ketchup, and of course pima or hot sauce. Of course we get Pitons to drink.
After lunch Reeves picks us up and mistakenly starts heading back to our hotel before we tell him we want to go to the beach. He turns around and drives us out to Pigeon Cove, a beach just south of Pigeon Point, which used to be an island until it was turn into a peninsula by a road that was built out to it. When Jaquish was little the only way to get there was by ferry—or swimming. Aunty Marie lived out there and Jacqui would spend summers there.
As we drove Reeves would slow down and point or call to people walking along the shoulder, ‘That’s your cousin,’ he would tell Jacqui.
We pull up to Joe’s Bar and Grill on the beach and Reeves points to someone sitting on the deck, ‘That’s your cousin,’ he says, and calls to her. We get out of the car and she gets a bit teary greeting Jacqui and all of us. Vanessa is her name, and she introduces us to her friend Grace with whom she’s having drinks on their day off. We stay for a round of cocktails, and while Jacqui and Yvan-Pierre go for a walk along the beach, we have a beer with Vanessa and Grace. They’re both bartenders: Vanessa at Nigel’s Bar (Nigel is her boyfriend) and Grace at Breadfruit Corner, a new bar opened by Syrians. Because there are still quarantine protocols in place, food service stops at 7PM, and bars close at curfew at 9PM. Officially.
We make plans to meet up with Vanessa Tuesday between 5 or 6 so we can go to her bar, and then to Grace’s bar. Separately, we make plans to have a big, late lunch. ‘You like the classic margaritas,’ Grace says, pointing at my empty glass, ‘Come tomorrow I’ll fix you up nice.’
‘We’ll go liming,’ Vanessa says, using the phrase that means partying here. A lime is a party. ‘We’ll make sure you have a good time.’
Before we depart, we talk about our trip here so far and adventures yesterday. ‘O, Rahm,’ Vanessa says. ‘He’s my cousin on my mother’s side.’ By the transitive property of cousins, we learn that Rahm is our cousin, too.
We spend the day at the beach on Tuesday. Yvan-Pierre had wanted to go diving, but according to Rahm, the weather conditions wouldn’t be good for it, so instead we head to the market for a fish and then to the beach, where Rahm cooks the fish for us for us.
We anger the weather gods by going ocean kayaking, and it starts to rain. We stand under a tree while the fish finishes cooking, but it rains enough that we need to move our bags and effects somewhere.
The beach we’re at is a tiny private beach—or at least as private as beaches get on an island. There are a couple houses and No Parking signs. Some Saint Lucians are here in a car, and a couple arrives during the rain shower, but other than that it’s just us. This beach is one of Rahm’s favourites and is near where he grew up. Matthias and I move our things under someone’s covered garage and hope it’s OK. As we do a woman calls to us from the porch and we expect to have to move, but she’s telling us there’s a pipe around the back of the house and we should rinse off the salt water, so we do. As we finish, the party here in the car is waiting to rinse off, too.
We eat the fish under the woman’s covered garage. Apparently it tastes like chicken; it’s a dorado, which is apparently the same fish as a mahi-mahi—or at least I’m not looking it up to verify that. Rahm cooked it with some garlic, onion, salt, and pepper—simple, and it smells like barbecue from the local cured wood he used. His friend Cameron had joined us partway through, the brother of Antonius who had driven us to the ATM the other day. Not a cousin, apparently. At least not yet; there’s always a possibility.
After our day, and after a shower and a change, we head back to the food truck where we had gotten dinner the night before, GD-Eez. Just down the street from us there’s a sort of food truck lot, and we like GD-Eez the best. We chat up the couple who runs it—also not cousins, but they know a lot of the people who work at our hotel.
We walk to Nigel’s Bar and I forget to take pictures because I am too busy annoying Matthias by carefully considering each flowering tree we pass to debate whether the flower will match my fit. Eventually I settle on a pink one and get it situated just as we approach the bar.
Vanessa has orientation for a small business administration course she’s taking that the government has offered, so we spend some time chatting up the regulars who are around: Bert, D, Wilkie, Luke. Matthias DJs some songs and we sing to soca, and Wilkie shares some of his favourites as Matthias Shazams them. I learn that a Campari and Heineken is called a stud around here. Bert gives us each a straw full of some moonshine that is definitely moonshine. Luke emphasises that D is apparently quite an accomplished local musician, a keyboardist with his group Derek Yard Productions. People come and go.
At one point Bert points outside. ‘It’s your cousin,’ he says to Matthias, and we introduce ourselves to Veejay, Vanessa’s brother, as he comes in. He’ll be our ride home.
We finish our drinks, pop back to the hotel with Veejay for the cash I forgot, and meet Vanessa back at the bar. She runs a tight ship: As people come and go and pour shots, she asks, ‘Who’s paying for those?’ and ‘OK, when?’ and scolds Bert for tallying people’s drinks incorrectly when he forgets that each fifth drink is a cross. Obviously I love her.
We walk with her over to Breadfruit Treehouse for karaoke night and it is indeed karaoke night. They have a nice setup and we enjoy the tourist watching. There are many eye rolls. What amuses us most is a local Rasta-looking man who is tearing up the dance floor with every song, doing some sort of one-armed push-ups. Eventually he sings a song and instead of singing the lyrics, freestyles over the instrumentals. One verse is about the local representative, Spider. Somehow I don’t have any pictures of him and this is a shame.
At nine, which is curfew, the gate is pulled down over the door, but we don’t have to leave, and stay for a final round of Pitons. Once we finish, we walk back to Nigel’s Bar and have a final final round of Pitons before Veejay drives us home.