The Black Madonna

The children left the same day the storm came. And although Martha had no proof, she knew that the Black Madonna was at the centre of it all. She knew it the same way she had known she was pregnant with José a whole week before her period was due. The same way she knew that Verna killed her husband—served him right, the good-for-nothing wife beater.

But knowing didn’t mean anything could be done about it. The children were gone, and with them, her beautiful José, every trace washed away as if they had never existed.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Martha cradled the fragile hope that José was just out on one of his adventures. Maybe he had forgotten to tell her that he wouldn’t be back for a few days. That he was taking every child in the village with him. That it didn’t matter that the strongest hurricane in decades was bearing down on them. They would be alright. He would bring them all home safe and sound.

Since he was a child, he would disappear for hours on end, returning with the scent of the ocean on his skin. After he washed himself off with rainwater from the barrel by the door, she would inspect his body for stowaways, running her fingers through his locs, and holding his hands up to the sunlight so that the thin membranes between his fingers glowed translucent, like fronds of seaweed.

Once, a tiny crab, slightly bigger than the head of a bobby pin, sidled out of the flap of skin between his thumb and forefinger, darted up his arm, and disappeared into the locs brushing his shoulder. Martha's shrieks sent the cat scampering under the dining table.

Maybe this was just another one of those days. Soon, he would be home. She could almost see him striding up the main road with little John John on his shoulders, Betty and Aaliyah and all the others struggling to keep up. He had just gone through another growth spurt and his legs were long, almost as long as his father's.

“This boy too full of himself,” Antonio would mumble whenever José swaggered up to him to measure shoulders.

“Where you think he get it from?” was her usual response.

But she knew that her husband was proud, too, of his son, whose smile gleamed easily in the dark night of his face, who seemed to be loved and admired by everyone.

They hadn't always been so accepting, the villagers. Rumours swirled like bitters in water when José was born. He was too dark; they had never seen someone whose skin rivalled the moonless sky. And his first cry—deeper than a newborn’s should be—made Rosa, the midwife, gasp.

Martha had sensed that something was wrong when Rosa’s back stiffened as she examined the newborn. She pushed herself upright and reached for her son. When his tiny fingers folded themselves around her forefinger, her heart sank—a stone dropped into a still lake. His hands, and his feet, too, were webbed like a frog’s.

Antonio, God bless him, refused to let the village gossip get to him. And when Martha wondered aloud, one evening, how all the talk about José’s strangeness affected him, he put the spoon of fish broth down, and said, “You can’t let these people get to you, Martz. You think I don’t know that the boy different? These things does have their reasons!”

He didn’t have to say much more. They both remembered the night José was conceived. They had talked about it many times. About how the sea took Old Man Desmond’s house in one gulp. About how it howled and pulled at them as they dragged the old man out of the surging maelstrom of splintered wood and galvanised roofing. About the shouts of alarm as the neighbours waded in to help them. And about that other inexplicable thing that made their mouths dry and their hearts beat fast, despite the passage of time.

Even before the sea took it, Old Man Desmond’s house had seen better days. Just like its owner, it seemed to be losing the battle against time, listing to the side like a drunken man.

And then there were the ceaseless waves, eating away at the front yard. The cherry tree was the first thing to go. One morning, it just toppled over, exposing sodden, rotted roots. Then the okra and pigeon peas closer to the house started to wilt. Mosquitoes multiplied in the stagnant pools left by the waves. Every evening, they rose in thick clouds, attacking passersby despite the sage that Old Man Desmond burned to keep them at bay. Before long, the sea was lapping at the bottom tread of his front step.

No one would have imagined that so much land could disappear in such a short time. Old Man Desmond’s house was at the edge of the village, true, but it wasn’t even on the beach.

Martha remembered that beach. She used to walk along it when the sun was going down and watch the men bring their catch in, the bottoms of their boats scraping the sand.

With the village spread out along one flank, and the sea on the other, the beach had been a living thing, preyed upon by the waves, shrinking bit by bit until it disappeared completely.

Now the sea turned its attention to the houses on the southern side of the main road. Old Man Desmond’s house, being the closest, was gobbled up first. But before long, the waves were nibbling at the foundations of the Mendez family house and playing tag in the Joseph’s yard. It seemed as if, given enough time, they would eat their way across the main road to the houses nestled against the hill where the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows stood watch over the village.

The sea—their longtime friend and benefactor—had turned on them. Even the fish seemed to have abandoned them. The men had to go further and further out in search of the carite and red snapper that they sold at the fish depot down the road, and the cavalli had all but disappeared. To make matters worse, the weather had become unpredictable, with storms whipping the waves into frenzied madness without the slightest warning.

These things lay heavy on Martha, choking her dreams so that they spat up visions of mountainous waves and deep, dark water. On the nights when Antonio stayed out at sea, sleep eluded her altogether.

One such night, fear held her so tightly that she decided to walk up to the church and pray before the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows. The Black Madonna, the only one on the island, loved fishermen almost as much as she loved children. She would bring Antonio and the others safely home.

So intent was she on her mission, that Martha paid scant attention to her surroundings as she climbed the hill to the church. Later, when she told Antonio about that night, she would squeeze her eyes shut, trying to remember if the church was lit, if its wide wooden doors were open. They must have been. How else, as she ascended the last of the steps, would she have seen the woman standing before the Black Madonna?

The village buzzed like a marabunta nest the next morning. The men had returned, their boats so laden with fish that they needed help pulling them in. As the women filled their baskets, Aunty Fern told everyone who would listen about the strange woman she had seen the evening before, walking through her yard, her face framed by the setting sun.

“I just happen to look out de window, you know … walking through my yard normal, normal. Like is she own!”

The woman, she said, crossed the main road, then walked through Olive’s yard, and up into the treeline that marked the base of the hill.

“Must be the church she was going to. But she eh know it have a road?”

The women laughed and whispered among themselves, wondering who the woman was, what business brought her to the village, and more importantly, where she was now.

As she carried their share of the catch back to the house, Martha wondered when she had become the kind of woman who kept secrets. She walked through the back door and emptied the basket of fish into the large bowl on the kitchen counter.

At the table behind her, José was trying, unsuccessfully, to shell a heap of pigeon peas. His eyes kept straying to the chair by the window where the woman sat, her face turned towards the sea, one hand playing with a string of cowrie shells looped around her neck, the other stroking the cat that lay purring in her lap.

Antonio couldn’t believe that Martha had brought a stranger back to their house in the middle of the night. And while he was away!

“What I was supposed to do? Leave her in the church by herself? With no food and nowhere to sleep except on dem hard, hard benches? Besides, she was soaked.”

“But who is she, Martz? And what she doing here?”

His hands were on her shoulders, holding her still so that she could see the real question blazing in his eyes, the one they were both afraid to ask.

How was it possible that the woman with eyes like lightning and hair like sea foam, the one who had held the towering waves back as they dragged Old Man Desmond from the sea all those years ago … How was it possible that she was here in the flesh, sitting in their living room?

The next morning, the woman ventured out into the village alone. She walked slowly down the main road, as if she were surveying the land. A few of the villagers tried to approach her, but she looked straight through them and walked on. Embarrassed, some stood huffing like pufferfish, while others folded in on themselves and slunk away.

The dogs were a different matter. Instead of barking at the stranger, they sniffed at her voluminous skirts and, with tails wagging, followed her as she walked. When she smiled at John John, who was standing in front of the corner shop, a ball of toolum forgotten in his hand, he ran and placed his sticky fingers in hers. Now, they were walking together: the statuesque woman in the long indigo dress, the boy, and the dogs.

The talk surrounding the strange woman died down after a few days. Like all gossip, it required fuel and there was none to be found, no matter how hard the village macos searched. Martha was tight-lipped about who the woman was and why she had taken her in. And the woman surrounded herself with a wall of silence so impenetrable that everyone assumed she could not speak and left her alone. The only ones who kept her company were the village animals and the children—a growing retinue that seemed content just to be in her presence.

There was a connection between the woman and José that Martha didn't quite understand. She had seen them sitting together, looking out at the sea. And whenever one entered a room, the other would smile and move closer. One afternoon, while José washed the dishes, she decided to ask him about it.

“What you mean if I find her strange, mommy?” José gave her a quizzical look. “I know her all my life. Everytime I go by the sea, she’s be there in the water. Is just that now she look different, more like me.”

Martha’s world shifted beneath her feet as José spoke. She could feel it pulling apart, reconfiguring itself in new and frightening ways. And so, she set his words aside until she had the time and space to examine them safely.

Besides, there were other, more pressing things to worry about. The weatherman had announced that a strong storm had developed off Africa’s west coast and that it would likely be a full-blown hurricane by the time it reached the island. The village, being on the windward side, was particularly vulnerable.

There were those among them who remembered Hurricane Eugene, the worst storm to ever hit the island. To this day, they would cross themselves and look up at the church when recounting that night in 1964. The hurricane had almost flattened the village, taking the roofs off houses, and sending trees hurtling across the sky. It was Our Lady of Sorrows that had saved the villagers. They had all rushed to the church and stayed there, huddled beneath the Black Madonna as the winds howled outside.

As the hurricane—Beverly, they called her—blew across the warm waters of the Atlantic, she grew, along with the villagers’ unease. In about a day or so, she would be upon them. So like everyone else on the island, they battened down their houses, and gathered supplies. The church, as always, would be their sanctuary.

On the day that Beverly made landfall, the villagers awoke to silence. There was no birdsong. Not a dog barked. It was as if the entire village were holding its breath. By midday, clouds were rolling in on a playful wind that flicked the tops of the waves into spume. But the villagers weren’t fooled. They knew that this wind was a turncoat.

It was Nelly who came knocking while everyone was getting ready to head to the meeting spot in front of the corner shop.

“Tell Jared we ready to leave. You all need help with anything?” Nelly blurted out as soon as Martha opened the door.

“Jared not here but if I see him I’ll tell him.”

“What you mean he not here?” Nelly’s voice rose. “He tell me he was coming by José.”

“José! José! You see Jared?”

Antonio stepped out into the living room, a towel around his waist.

“Boy, you eh hear yuh mother calling yuh?”

Silence flowed out of every room and pooled around their feet.

Martha and Antonio stopped at every house on the way to the corner shop, hoping to find their son or one of his friends. But it seemed as if they had all disappeared, even John John. The only ones left were the babies, held in the arms of frantic mothers who walked up and down the main road looking for their children.

By the time the adults were gathered in front of the corner shop, the wind had started to moan.

Everyone was shouting and no one knew where the children were.

“Maybe they gone to Stonehall,” someone ventured.

“But why? They would never make it in time!” someone shouted back.

Stonehall, the nearest village, was about an hour away by car. It would take the children half a day to get there.

“Maybe they already at the church.”

That made more sense. The villagers nodded in agreement.

But how could they be sure? And suppose the children really had taken God out their thoughts and were headed to the neighbouring village? The road ran parallel to the shore and would flood when the hurricane hit. There was no doubt about it.

Jacob volunteered to drive his lorry to Stonehall. It was the only vehicle that would stand a chance in the storm. Fidel and Damian would go with him. They had to hurry though; it had already started to rain.

The rest of the village walked up the hill, faces as grim as the clouds roiling overhead. By the time they got to the church, they were all soaked, the water dripping from their clothes and running down their limbs in rivulets. No sooner had they reached the stone steps than lightning clawed its way across the sky, followed by the crash of thunder.

The creak of the doors as the villagers pushed them open echoed through the church. After a moment of shocked silence, muffled cries of despair filled the hall. There were no children here.

As the wind roared outside and threw itself against the shuttered windows, Martha stepped away from Antonio’s arms and sank to the floor before the Black Madonna. She didn’t notice him join the huddle of men in front of the altar. And she wasn’t among the women who clung to their husbands, fathers, and sons, pleading with them as they strode towards the doors.

Before he walked out into the howling storm, Antonio wrapped his arms around his wife and kissed her damp cheek.

The next morning, like the one before, was eerily calm. Beverly had pummelled the church all night but its stone walls and greenheart rafters had stood firm.

The women—and the few old men who remained—were huddled in small groups along the walls and on the wooden benches. Some whispered to each other, as if afraid to break the silence that seemed to blanket the world. Others stared out into nothingness, their faces gaunt with worry.

Heavy pounding broke the spell. Two of the women ran to the doors and heaved them open, grunting with the effort. Outside, framed by blinding light, were Antonio, Marcus and Juggie. Their faces were slack with exhaustion and they seemed unable to take another step.

The women pressed close to guide them inside when a strangled cry followed by a pointed finger made them all look past the shell-shocked men and towards the village.

Except that there was no village. Instead, just beyond the church steps, the land dropped away to an endless expanse of calm water reflecting a clear blue sky.

Martha didn’t see or hear a thing. She hadn’t left the Black Madonna’s feet all night. And even now, with the storm over, and the air crisp and fresh as that first creation morning, she clutched the hem of the Madonna’s indigo skirts, whispering, “Keep them safe. Please. Keep them safe.”