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Isaiah Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey)

Killing an Au Pair: Killing a White Girl

‘Killing an Arab’

“I can turn and walk away or I can fire the gun

Staring at the sky, staring at the sun

whichever I chose, it amounts to the same

Absolutely nothing”

-The Cure

May 24th, 2018 Punta Cana Harbor/

The Dominican Republic/ Punta Cana Marina

Penelope Stockard Bedowitz, the Hollywood blonde, lithe blue-eyed 20-year-old SMU pre-law, dressed in a navy-blue Dior nautical ensemble, sat in front of the entrance to Punta Cana Harbor atop her Louis Vuitton Horizon 70 luggage, waiting for the Jones and Zavalas at the marina, where the little 48-foot Sunreef catamaran they would live aboard for the summer was moored. The tribe has leased the same boat every year for the last eight years. She watched as they climbed out of the Uber minivan, all six of them dressed in white. This was her first time summering with Isaiah’s family, so she knew nothing of their traditions. All white on the first and last day at sea. They all boarded the SS Wagadu wearing their ivory ensembles and would leave wearing all white on the last day aboard the ship.

The mid-sized 48-foot 8-year-old cat, with what she thought was a yin-yang symbol, was a Sankofa crest on the prow; their tiny boat was a pool toy compared to the floating metropolis that her parents owned, but she loved the time she spent aboard the Joneses’ little boat. Once underway, the SS Wagadu felt like you were actually sailing a ship at sea and not just chugging along in a floating Hilton like her parents’ powered superyachts. They paid someone to pilot and maintain each of their ships. There was no staff of a dozen servile eastern euro-trash peasants to crew this ship. In fact, technically, this time she was the help.

The family’s ivory-robed matriarchs, Barbera Zavala and Helena Jones, were regal sirens, all warm smiles and dulcet tones as they gently directed the uniformed porters to the exact spot in each cabin where to put each and every piece of the tribe’s luggage. The locals chatted casually in Spanish with Kennedy and Alexander it seemed as if the men all knew each other; she assumed it must be from previous visits.

The four local dock workers were all smiles as they carried the family’s steamer trunks, duffle bags, and suitcases towards the pier where Penny waited. The children 13 years old Aeon and Isaiah were behind their mothers each holding the leash of one of the Joneses big black bitches a pit-bull and rottweiler; Django and Yasuke. Directly behind Isaiah and Aeon were their fathers, Kennedy and Alexander. Penelope had been on the island for a day already since she was meeting them after flying down from Manhattan. After the semester ended, she flew from Dallas to New York for a brief meeting with her family before they departed to summer with friends in the Mediterranean before she began her work as the au pair for the two families.

Pen wasn’t really an au pair but simply a friend of the close-knit family’s high-functioning autistic son, who was invited to join them on their annual summer sailing vacation this year. Isaiah didn’t have many friends; most people found his personality aloof, distant, and off-putting, but she found he had a very dry, dark sense of humor and that she enjoyed hanging out with him between classes and at the library when they studied together. He could be a lot of fun if you were into nerds and she was sort of one herself.

This is the summer she reads Camus ‘L’Étranger’ ‘The Stranger’ (in French, of course) after listening to the Joneses and Zavala’s discuss the existential crisis at the center of ‘Killing an Arab’ while drunkenly reclining on the trampoline as the Cure played on the ship’s speakers. The children will read ‘Les Damnés de la Terre’ and ‘Things Fall Apart’, swap books and finish the others book before she gets through ‘L’Étranger’, her French was always very poor.

Perched strategically atop the bimini, Penny watched the two couples as they lounged around the ship in their bone-colored ensembles while she kept an eye on the children snorkeling directly beneath the trampoline’s net between the submerged azure lights that circled the hulls, illuminating the clear blue water of the lagoon in all directions. Aeon, afro-puffs quickly braided, was always the first to dive into the water once the ship anchored. They never turned them on once they were underway, even insisting they be turned off once they were on night watch, anchored. She did the same when it was her turn to take the late watch, even though she would have loved to watch the water dance with the hull in the wet night lights.

Eventually, she figured out that they turned off their location beacon software and were running dark. They didn’t want anyone to know where they were once; they left a port. It meant you had to be extra vigilant and learn to navigate using the radar when you were on the night watch, since, without the ASI beacon software, you are invisible to most ships. This would be the last time she would see the men in pants this summer; after tonight, they would wear sarongs, loincloths, and loose-fitting embroidered kaftans.

The moment Helena was certain everyone was on board and had stowed their luggage, she put two home-manicured pinky fingers between her teeth and cheeks, whistling as loud as an air raid siren. Isaiah came double time to the main cabin and snapped to attention so smartly, she thought he might salute by his posture. With a nod and a glance, they both quickly headed topside where Isaiah released the mooring lines, stowed the fenders as Helena launched the ship. Once’s she has safely maneuvered them out of the marina into the open seas Helena and Isaiah become a blur of action as they raised the main and set course for a secluded lagoon near Isla Monito, a half a day’s sail southwest between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where they start every season.

It was always amazing to watch them even though she didn’t know the boom from the standing rigging or a Genoa from a storm sail. she recognized the economy of movement, mindfulness of purpose, it was a dance with wave and wind and it was exquisite. Every wave rises a tower of the ocean’s cathedral, the sea is the house of their god. This is the place they come to worship the water and be baptized in the house of their lord of oceans.

She had wondered how cramped the living space would be with seven people on board until she noticed the porters putting all of the Joneses’ and Zavala’s luggage in the same gigantic stateroom. Barbera smiled cryptically at her as she walked by on her way to her berth at the opposite end of the port side hull near the bow, just past the kids’ cabins.

The dock seemed to dilate time as they alone moved in slow motion, a gentle breeze of salt air stirring their clothes and hair as they strolled down the pier toward the waiting cat. My gawd, they look like an Abercrombie and Fitch page, the women in their big straw hats and large sunglasses with large purses hanging over slender arms. Even down to the interracial, ambiguous ethnicity and sexual preferences, it was all impossible to discern. The adults, a black woman (a Dominican), a white woman (a Ginger), an Asian (a Filipino) man, and a black man (a Black Man). With two pre-teen ethnically ambiguous black children. Watching them right now, for all you knew, they were a lesbian and a gay couple or any mix of people in between. No one ever guesses that the Asian man and the black woman are a couple. Ever.

She wondered if the kids knew their parents were a foursome?

“By that mad twisted logic, if the ancient Greeks, and Romans, and Egyptians, of your mythology had practiced the same type of slavery as the 17th century Europeans, there would be no Christians or Jews today. So, someone decided to do what was unthinkable by the ancients: erase another people’s God!” Kennedy exclaimed, half drunk. Slavery was fine with them; you work for free, but coming between a people and their God was a line no civilized peoples would cross. They might kill you, but your God and your language are your business. Otherwise, the Jewish faith and their cousins, the Christians they disappear 4000 years ago.”

Barbera listened and slowly shook her head, laughing as she massaged suntan lotion onto Helena’s back. Kennedy loved these debates with his best friend and neighbor, Alexander, about philosophy and theology. Dr. Zavala, being a holy day Catholic, was still a believer at heart, and these sorts of discussions were the norm after dinner and a few drinks. They were all as nerdy as their precocious children; they were, in fact, just nerds all grown up. Penelope was not a prude; could lesbians even be prudish?

She just never thought of the Joneses and Zavala’s as sexual creatures, even though she was here ostensibly to watch over their children, the fact that they had to have had sex at least once in order to sire said children had never entered her mind. Now, knowing that they were swingers, she wondered exactly what they did together. Did they simply swap partners, or did they get creative? She laughed out loud at the very idea of these esteemed doctorate wielding tenured university professors humping each other savagely as mud covered Burning Man hippies.

There was a brutal truth beneath their teasing her about her accent when she spoke Spanish. Helena smiled demurely as she stared at Penelope over the salt-encrusted rim of her glass as she sipped her 3rd margarita of the evening, sitting on the deck watching as the children alternated between playing with the dogs and body surfing along the beach. “You’re a rich bitch–raised by maids”-just like me. she sneered. You have the family’s Tapatia housekeepers’ accent; the only way to get the accent is to learn the language young. I bet you thought you was a real “Mex – E – Can” until you were old enough to figure out Santa Claus ain’t real uh?” Barbera shushed her.

”There is no need for this right now, Hell.”

“It’s alright, Barb, you see this little Beverly Hills dilettante right here went to the same prep schools and private academies my momma sent me to when I got out of rehab. Its where rich white folk like to send their kids when they think we’re fuck ups. So, Ms “Dior”, she sneered, “just between us girls, what did you do? Heroin chic, anorexia, bulimia, cut yourself just to feel something ’cause daddy didn’t wuv you or did he love you too much? We’re all friends now, right?” She giggled drunkenly.

Penny reached over and snatched Helena’s drink from her hand and drained the remainder of the nearly full margarita on the rocks in a single gulp. “I have a sealed juvenile record/attempted murder was reduced to aggravated assault on the condition that I spend the next year in the psychiatric hospital. I beat a boy into a coma for picking on a little effeminate kid. Ricki’s parents sent him to our school on a scholarship, hoping this sort of thing would stop; they had no money. Lance thought he was special because his dad was the star of a sitcom, most ignored him because his mom was an A-List film producer.

I punched him in the throat then after he went down stomped the shit out of his head fracturing his skull before they pulled me off of him. After I did my time in the nut house instead of the jail house, my parents shipped me to the Academy, our Alma mater. After graduation, I attended SMU (a 3rd rate party school located in a shithole of an over grown country town.) instead of an Ivy League school just to piss them off. The same way you joined the Navy to piss off your mom.” She stared at Helena coldly. “My mother’s name is Marta; she didn’t give birth to me, but she raised me. I know there are lots of uptown white kids who were raised by their Latina maids, that is not our fault. It doesn’t make me a bad person or a joke to you. I’m trying my best, you drunk old cunt!”

“Don’t Try.” Penelope turned away, walked down the steps to the transom, and swam out to the beach to be with the kids and dogs for the rest of the evening.

“You go too far this time, Helena.” Barbera scolded. Helena looked at the gangly blonde girl on the beach and smiled. “I like her, she’s tough. That is why I invited her for the summer. Her instinct is to fight, to protect. I knew about her brush with the law the day Izzy told me about his new friend at school. I just needed to hear her say it. To own it and not play the victim.” Helena sipped her drink, and the salt air tousled her crimson curls, her green eyes ablaze with intensity as she spoke.

“My son is a sweet, trusting soul just like his father. Both are always coming home with strays I have to housebreak and train the bitches. She drained the dregs of her drink and smiled. She is here for the same reason Django and Yasuke are here, nothing more.” Barbera looked at the huge black perfectly obedient war dogs guarding the children as they played on the beach while Helena refilled her drink. This is why she loved her best friend; she was positively Machiavellian in the execution of her maternal duties.

Penelope spent the summer watching over the children as Helena, with paper maps, a compass, a sextant, and chronometer, taught them to navigate by the stars. Barbera marked them all with the same symbol on the ship’s prow in henna, and when she wasn’t painting water colors, she was in the engine room doing routine repairs and maintenance on whatever part of the ship needed repair, the children passing her tools as they learned the task themselves.

Helena and Alexander, with some help from the children, kept the hull, props, and rudders cleaned and scrubbed free of barnacles, algae, and seaweed, snorkeling beneath the hull at anchor daily. Removing plastic debris and drifting fishing nets attached to empty plastic jugs as floats.

While Kennedy fished all summer and did most of the cooking, Penny’s favorite chore, helping prepare the meals. Aeon and Kennedy were the tribes’ resident chefs. Twice that summer, Alexander and Kennedy, wearing nothing but their usual sarongs and swimmer’s googles, wielding dog-legged spears, took off standing on their wide Hawaiian paddle boards to go spear fishing in the morning and returned in the afternoon with a Bull shark over 6 feet long for dinner.

Aeon immediately put her spear through the creature’s brain to be certain it was dead before she used the spear’s hook to drag the monster on board, where she immediately began to gut and fillet it with the practiced ease of a butcher. The creature was bigger than he was; she looked at the soft-spoken, bespectacled accounting professor in a different light after.

Barbara blessed their catch with a stanza from the poem:

‘The Passage’

“BEFORE YOU, my mother Idoto,

Naked I stand;

Before your weary presence,

A prodigal

Leaning on an oilbean,

Lost in your legend

Under your power wait I

On barefoot,

Watchman for the watchword

At Heavensgate;

Out of the depth my cry:

-Christopher Okigbo

The second night out, when she was nauseous and retching, seasick all day, and the drugs didn’t seem to help. Aeon climbed into Penny’s berth with her, put her arm around her, and massaged her stomach, shoulders, and back until she fell asleep, her warm, moist breath softly blowing against the back of her neck. Aeon studies anatomy in order to be a better fighter. But she also uses the same knowledge to relieve pain instead of inflicting it. She was a deeply empathetic child, and she was happy Penelope was watching out for her best friend while he was on campus.

Once a week, they would take the inflatable dinghy to shore and go into town to shop for fresh vegetables and fruits. It wasn’t unusual for them to be invited to dinner or to church by the locals as they shopped, and they occasionally accepted these invitations. Penelope was always amazed at how at home they seemed. Eventually, she would discover that they were all nomads and immigrants except Helena, whose mother, at 15, married an octogenarian millionaire to escape the rural poverty of small-town Texas life.

Kennedy grew up on naval bases all over the globe, wherever the Marine Corps stationed his dad. The Zavalas were both first-generation immigrants who moved to the States as children. They all wore clothes from Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and homemade clothes most of the time. The only clothing they always bought new were undergarments and socks. The homes they lived in were owned by their in-laws or the alumni. They were professional educators after all, they could never afford to own a home in that neighborhood, this is how the university kept its tenured faculty safe and close to the campus.

Isaiah grinned at the young woman as they lay face to face, stretched out in the noonday sun, on the trampoline suspended between the twin hulls, sunning themselves after lunch. Penelope was always fascinated by his eyes in contrast to his ebony-hued skin. His eyes were bright emerald green with flecks of gold today, but when he was angry or sad, they changed to deep hue sea green pools, twin lagoons beneath a stormy sky. Those were his mother’s eyes, there were oceans in her eye’s sailors’ eyes. Penelope reached over and began to twist the end of one of his braids as he spoke, while she stared into his eyes, occasionally glancing over at her half-finished Camus, only to sigh and pout in frustration.

“I’m an American; we count our generations by our wars, like rings in a tree—Revolutionary, Civil, French, Indian, Spanish, WW1, WW2, Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, Afghanistan. We are a warrior nation. We always have been, just had a great propaganda department in Hollywood and controlled most of the sources of publishing, news, cinema, and mass communication up until the advent of the internet. Those days of being in control of the narrative with embedded reporters (like military intelligence, an oxymoron) are long over. The house of cards began to collapse into itself.”

Colonizer, Settler, Pioneer, all just white people invading other people’s countries. If you or your ancestor hopped on a little boat or a wagon or walked or flew to another land where there were already people and declared yourselves for any reason the rulers of that land, you are just an invasive species. No amount of verbal gymnastics of denial can change these facts. If I walked into your house and took over a room because you were not in that room how long do I have to stay there murdering your family members enslaving, stealing your resources and raping your women before the room hell the whole house is mine. Take all the time you need to formulate and answer. I can wait.

You see, there is no such thing, is there? If a bunch of Africans got space lasers and marched around Europe digging up the graves and tombs of your ancestors and stealing everything that wasn’t nailed to the tomb’s walls, would we be archeologist and explorers because we showed up with a technological advantage and proceeded to transfer the resources of Europe and the west to Africa? Every other telling of this story that white people create is simply a lie. A rationalization needed to get beyond the fact that your culture is founded on evil. And fundamentally corrupt. Pretending you are a democracy cannot change these objective facts of your history. Capitalism and democratic panaceas cannot work; ameliorative reforms are useless. When every organ of the body politic is a malignant tumor, the cure for cancer is what?

“That is the source of white fear—the loss of control over the 90 percent of the planet you imagine yourselves superior to. You say ‘Never again!’ but what you really mean is ‘never again’ for white people. Do you have any idea what Leopold did in the Congo? The preamble to Germany’s American-inspired “final solution”, but we only have museums for the European Holocaust, and try to erase the African one from our history, thus our conscience. Another abomination of your history that makes you feel uncomfortable, swept under the rug near the dustbin of your fictionalized narrative, consumed as history. What you all truly fear is the day when the white West finally loses military power, that the rest of the world will treat white people with no power the way you treated everyone else. In the end, what the European colonist progeny, invaders, Afrikaner, Zionist settlers, white man truly fears is justice. Thus, the rise of fascism in the West.”

Collectively, there is nothing inherently noble in the European colonist; they are merely murderous invaders, no matter what lies they tell you or themselves. Flip it and see what they say if it were the other way around. I recommend you read Baldwin, he covers the inherent hypocrisy of European white American myths of heroism and patriotism, white ppl vs colored people, it’s as plain as the nose on your face. To ever even have believed for a second the lies you were told is simply an indication of the power of propaganda. And cognitive dissonance. Don’t worry, we have books by James Baldwin in English. Penny gave his hair a hard tug he cried out in pain as they laughed. Django and Yasuke looked on, tails wagging.

Over time, she would learn that they were all atheist or agnostics except Alex, but they still attended church with the old black women, who wore their heads covered in traditional head wraps, to connect with the community; no one was trying to convert anyone; this was communion in the truest sense. Barbera, a metal sculpture turned art teacher, was the best internal combustion engine, gas, or diesel mechanic of them all, even Kennedy and Isaiah, both engineers. They would stop to help a local or fellow foreign sailor with repairs at the first sign of mechanical trouble if they could help.

They left Isaiah and Barbera alone on an uninhabited island for two days, repairing an engine for a stranded fisherman on his beached boat while we sailed for a day until we reached the tiny isle of Crown Port, Tobago/Trinidad, to gather provisions. When we returned, they had finished repairing the engine and were preparing the old man’s nets.

Kennedy would cook out at the beach, feeding anyone who asked for a plate while the kids played football and bodysurfed with the locals. He and Alexander would stay up till dawn drinking El Presidete beers, playing dominoes, and smoking Havana’s with weathered old black fishermen whose wrinkled, aged faces looked as if they were carved out of mahogany.

They remembered Helena and Kennedy when they first met them back when they were still in the military. The two old men argued about what size the boat (38 feet) was, as well as the manufacturer (Island Packet). It was over 20 (18) years ago, the only thing they agreed on was it was a sloop (cutter) named Nostromo. Kennedy said nothing; he just puffed his Cohiba, sipped his beer, and smiled because they remembered.

The black people on the islands were just like the Joneses and Zavala’s; they plaited and braided each other’s hair sitting on the front stoops of corrugated steel walls of their brightly colored homes, mostly shanty town shacks with no hot water and pirated electricity. Before summer is over, the children will have everyone’s hair in cornrows. Kennedy and Alexander let their hair and beards grow out every summer until they got back to Dallas, then they would take the kids with them to Graham’s barbershop.

When Aeon practiced plaiting and braiding her hair, she realized she had no memories of her own mother doing her hair as a child, only their housekeeper Marta. No one ever invited people like her parents or their friends to dinner or to church. The people were nice enough, but now she realized that they were merely tolerated but not truly welcomed. The day before they leave, she will overhear Kennedy and Helen discussing having ‘the talk’ again with their son before they go back to America.

Now, she kept expecting Bill Murray to voice over and the credits to roll by saying Written and directed by Wes Anderson. The fact that they will not speak a word of English for the rest of the summer makes it feel more like Jim Jarmusch. Maybe she has just been binge-watching way too many 1990s indie films since she arrived yesterday. She got up, walked past the reclining couples, and dived over the side into the deep.

“I’m alive

I’m dead

I’m the stranger…)

The Stranger (Camus novel)

Cover of the first edition (Collection Blanche)

Author Albert Camus

Publication place France

Media type Print (paperback)

Pages 159

“Ki-sho-Ten-ketsu” is “KA-ME-HA-ME-HAA!” 4 part construction practicals – Japanese Manga 101 • “Ki-sho-Ten-ketsu” is “KA-ME-HA-ME-HA…

[General features of the fishing songs The text below is a transcription of one of the fishing songs sung by the Shatta boys: Ewe Translation in English Ame si ƒo detsi vivi mate ŋu aklᴐ asi ko adzo le Egbᴐ maɖᴐmaɖᴐkpᴐe o Wobe kutrikuku Metsonu ye nye dzidzedzekpᴐkpᴐ. Ne ɖee Wὸnye nyateƒea manye afi sia manᴐ egbe o Mele dzamevui dzem zã kple keli Gake nyemate ŋu atᴐ asi naneke dzi be eya ye Nye viɖe si mekpᴐ tso nye kutrikuku me o Kese wᴐ dᴐ, fiẽ ɖu Tsᴐ wὸ ɖᴐ kple ɖᴐkplᴐti Miayi tᴐ dzi, Miayi tᴐ dzi Afi aɖe kpᴐkpᴐ nyo wu yame kpᴐkpᴐ]

[The one who prepares a sumptuous meal does not just wash his hands and walk away. “Success should be the outcome of hard work,” they say. If that were true, this is not where I should be I keep toiling night and day But I have very little to show for it ‘Monkey dey work, baboon dey chop’ Pick up your nets, get your paddles To the sea, to the sea A bad job is better than none at all The first two lines refer to a common traditional proverb, which literally implies that when one has worked hard on something, she or he must have a taste of the outcome.]

[Figure 2: Example of an inscription on a canoe. Photo by author. 12 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF AFRICAN MUSIC Lines 3 and 4 point to an anomaly in the community between ‘what ought to be’ and ‘what is’, that is, the unfairness in society. In lines 5 and 6, the singer places himself within the context provided in the first four lines by pointing out how his propitious yet grueling daily routine has earned him practically nothing worthwhile. He supports his claim in the next line where he quotes a popular metaphor which highlights the social inequality within set structures. As explained earlier, many of these fishermen are not canoe owners. They have entered into some kind of contractual agreement with the owners, most of whom know very little about fishing. When the catch came ashore, these canoe owners were entitled to bigger portions than the fishermen.

According to Vercruijsse, the “fishermen give one fifth to one quarter of their catch to the owner of the boat” (1979: 95).4 The remainder of the catch is then distributed among the crew as well as the people who are active in pulling it ashore. In all likelihood, the referent of the ‘baboon’ in line 7 of the text is the owner of the fishing equipment. In spite of the injustice, lines 8 and 9 signal the singer’s acquiescence to the exigencies of his reality; consoled by the fact that ‘a bad job is better than none at all’ (line 10). In a single breath, this song, like many other songs of the fishermen, stimulates depths of thought.

The language is generally cryptic and indirect, employing a number of figurative expressions and literary devices such as metaphors, allusions, anthropomorphisms, intended ambiguities, and so on. Due to this practice in the language, the construction of meaning from the texts of these songs is rather subtle. Similar to Porter’s observation in his study of English work songs, in fishing songs “the surface is constantly disrupted by metaphors or symbolic modes which extend the frame of reference to points of conflict and change in society, and thereby totalise the song” (1992: 80).]

[Wagadu (Mauritania) The ancient Soninke goddess also named Wagadu, whose disappearance and rediscovery are the subject of the ancient Dausi epic in a version of Mande mythology, more specifically Soninke legends and folklore set during the Soninke’s heroic era, roughly 6th century BC to 1st century BC.[1][2]

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See also

Gassire’s Lute

References

Lynch, Patricia Ann; Roberts, Jeremy (2010). African Mythology, A to Z. Infobase Publishing. p. 133. ISBN 978-1-4381-3133-7.

Allan, Tony; Fleming, Fergus; Phillips, Charles (2011-12-15). African Myths and Beliefs. The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. p. 122. ISBN 978-1-4488-5989-4.]

About the author

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, Tx.