Concrete Island Read online

  Concrete Island

  Carnivale Chronicles

  Anita Davis

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Concrete Island

  Copyright @ 2020 by Anita Davis

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work made be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Acknowledgments

  To my girls, Sherelle, Midnight, Trease, Gabrielle, and Ty for giving me the invaluable feedback you did during my crunch time.

  Thank you so much J.L. Campbell for helping me in the last hour with keeping true to how Jamaicans talk. You are so appreciated.

  Readers, I hope you all enjoy this one and please consider leaving a review.

  Prologue

  2 Years Earlier

  “Earth to Starr.”

  “What?” I blinked my eyes a few times, focusing my vision on one of my best friends, Rikia, who was still waving her almond-colored hand in front of me.

  “So you haven’t heard anything she’s said for the past two minutes?” My other best friend, Tamara, chimed in right before she got back to downing what was apparently the resort’s most famous drink, a rum and banana mix.

  “I’m sorry, I guess I was lost in my thoughts. Everything on this island screams Bob Marley. Not in a bad way though. You can just tell how much they still love and respect him.”

  “Okay, Professor Night. I better not find out your fall semester freshman course is on how Bob Marley impacted Jamaican culture,” Rikia joked.

  “It won’t, Professor Patterson.” I chuckled as I looked at Rikia. “You know, although my courses discuss the African diaspora, they primarily focus on the black experience in America.”

  “Yeah, they treat him like a national treasure here, but that’s not it. What else had you so quiet? It’s like, without moving your lips, you were talking to that lady over there that looks like you.” She pointed to a resort worker not too far from us. “Just a strange stare off contest between you too,” Rikia said.

  Tamara sat up from her lounge chair and lifted her floppy sun hat from covering her eyes. “I knew I wasn’t tripping. Y’all do favor each other a lot, and it’s like she’s been following us around these past three days we’ve been here.”

  “She does work here guys,” I said in a feeble attempt to lessen the weight of what they were saying because I had been feeling that same way.

  “Do you know her?” Rikia asked me before all of our eyes traveled over to the thick, dark-skinned woman.

  Tamara’s neck snapped back at me. “Sand. The woman is mopping sand. It’s plain to see that something ain’t right about her. If she looks over here again, you gon’ check her or you want me to?”

  “Down tiger. Thanks, friend, but she seems harmless, and honestly, I should’ve approached her day one. Something just feels different about her.”

  “I imagine many serial murder victims thought something was ‘different’ about their killer right before they snatched them up.”

  “You watch too much ID Channel.” I eyed Tamara as she lifted her hands in surrender before pulling her hat back down over her face and reclining her full-figured body against her chaise.

  I was up from my seat and halfway past the table when Rikia grabbed my wrist and said, “Hey, where are you going?”

  “To talk to that lady.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, I’m okay,” I said the words but could see that given Rikia’s raised eyebrow, she still feared me going over to the woman. I wanted my bestie to be at ease so I said, “Besides, she’s not that far away. If anything happens, we’ll just be a sprint away from you. She looks harmless though.” I shrugged.

  “Alright now, I’m right here if you need me. And Tamara will quit soaking up the sun long enough to help out too if need be,” Rikia warned.

  I looked back to see Tamara nod at me, and I silently thanked God for concerned friends.

  I didn’t know what would lay ahead when I spoke to the woman, but I needed to make sense of the eerie feeling I had in her presence. I stepped up from the sandy beach and onto the tiled deck that she was now mopping. “Excuse me?”

  She stared at me for what seemed like hours before her glossy eyes blinked, and she finally said, “Yes?” in a shaky voice.

  “I hope this doesn’t come out wrong and I know you work here, but I’ve seen you more times than I’ve seen any other resort worker since I’ve been here. You seem to stare at me a lot. Is everything okay?”

  The woman took a deep breath and held her eyes closed a bit before she opened and trained them back on me. “Sorry for staring at yuh, is just dat…yuh look just like mi bredda, mi twin bredda.”

  Things just kept getting weird for me because the woman had the same slanted but deep-set eyes like mine. Her saying I looked like her twin brother did something to me. Lost in the moment, I said, “Coincidence I suppose.” I shrugged. “I guess it’s true that everyone has a twin.”

  “Yeah, but wha’ ‘bout dis?” She pointed to my exposed shoulder, which caused me to slap my own skin thinking that she was warning me about a bug.

  “Dere was no bug on yuh. I was pointin’ to dis.” She touched my birthmark, causing me to look down at her finger. Her skin was the same complexion as mine. She kept her finger on my giraffe shaped birthmark for a bit. “My twin and I have dat same birt’mark, too. In di same place.” The woman pushed her uniform top off her shoulder, causing me to see my unique birthmark on the skin just below her bra strap.

  My mouth was still slightly agape when the woman turned to look back at me and said, “An unusual one, right?”

  “Um, yeah.” My mouth went dry as thoughts rushed my brain. I had never seen anyone with my exact birthmark in the exact location as mine. And there she was saying that there was a third person with our peculiarity.

  “So that’s why you’ve been staring at me? You saw my birthmark and you say I resemble your brother?”

  “And me,” she whispered. “Mi just can’t escape di odd feeling mi have about yuh since mi see you di first time.”

  “So what, you think I could be your brother’s daughter or something?”

  “Mi don’t know. Is it possible?” Full of emotions, she held herself.

  I was at a loss for words. I didn’t know what to make of what the woman was saying. Truth was, I never knew my father or even who he was.

  My mother was going through a promiscuous phase when she conceived me. A mixture of shame and not wanting to own up to her ways caused my mother to not even pursue finding out who my dad was.

  The sordid look of emotions on the woman’s face pulled me from my musings. I shook my head at the surrealness of it all.

  My girls and I had only come to the island to unwind and enjoy ourselves, but the woman’s suspicion and inquiry had shifted my world in a matter of moments. “You know…I’m sorry…what is your name?” Not being lost on manners, just in the moment, I held out my hand to shake hers.

  “Zeporah. What’s yuhs?” Her thick accent was so beautiful.

  “That’s such a pretty name. I’m Starr.” She held my hand longer than a normal handshake would be with a stranger and it caused me to look down at our joined hands. There was something so homey about the way she gripped my hand.

  “Starr. Starr.” She repeated my name as if she was in awe of it and was trying to commit it
to her memory. “Starr, yuh such a pretty young gyal.”

  “Much like yourself, right?”

  She chuckled. “I didn’t want to say it, but yuh is di spitting image of me when mi was younger.”

  “I bet.” I finally pulled my hand from hers, reeling in the fact that I looked more like her than I did my own mother. “Zeporah, to answer your earlier question, I’ve never known my father, so I don’t know who he could be or where he could be from. What you’re alluding to could be plausible, but I hate to say, more than likely, it’s way off base.”

  Her features saddened and her countenance pierced my heart.

  “Mi get it. Me t'inking that yuh could be mi brother’s daughter may be off base, but mi just can't shake dis feeling in mi gut.” She paused for a second and then said, “Mi wish mi could have mi phone on me during work, because yuh could see how much you two really look alike.” She looked defeated for a second, but then she said, “Mi get off at four. If yuh meet mi out back, mi can show you some pictures.”

  Staring at her, one of my brows immediately lifted.

  “I get your worry, but mi really want yuh to see what mi talkin’ about.”

  “I-I don’t know.”

  “Okay. If you don’ show up, mi won’ bother you another day you’re here. But if yuh just as curious about me and mi brother now as I am about your connection to us, then you’ll be out back at four.” Her face lit up with hope and then she walked away.

  The attentive stares of Rikia and Tamara rushed me back over to the table and I shared with them my encounter with Zeporah.

  “Starr, I am not letting you go back there to meet that woman. This has scam all over it. She’ll get you back there, kidnap you and be expecting us to pay the ransom to get you back.”

  “Again, you watch too much ID channel,” I admonished Tamara.

  “She does, but she’s right, Starr. This sounds like a scam.” Rikia patted my hand.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but we look so much alike guys. We have the exact same birthmark in the exact same location on our bodies. And when she squeezed my hand…it just felt different…familiar.”

  That familiarity, curiosity of what Zeporah had said to me is what had me sandwiched between Rikia and Tamara as we stood in the staff quarters of the resort waiting on Zeporah.

  “Starr.” Her voice caused me to jump and my friends to draw nearer to me. “Sorry for scaring yuh. Mi just happy yuh come to meet mi here.” Clutching her purse suspended from her forearm, she came to stand in front of me. “I hadn’t been able to focus on anything the rest of the day, wondering if you would come out here. Hello.” She nodded and smiled at Tamara and Rikia.

  “Hi,” they said almost in unison.

  She looked at me for a while, a longing in her eyes before she finally pulled out her phone, fidgeted with it, and then handed it to me.

  I barely had the phone up in my face before shock settled in the bottom of my stomach.

  “Yuh can go right and see more pictures of him,” Zeporah directed me.

  I heard her but couldn’t get my thumb to move on the screen. If the pic of what I would look like as a handsome man wasn’t enough to floor me, any others might bury me from the disbelief I was in.

  I couldn’t move and was grateful for my friends planking and propping me up, but Tamara wasn’t against scrolling through more pics of Zeporah’s brother. Five pics later and the usually chatty Tamara was just as silent as I was. A quick glance at her caused me to see wide eyes and a gaping mouth. Her shock matched mine.

  Rikia must’ve been the most composed between us because she cleared her throat and said, “Starr, I don’t think this is a scam. Perhaps a very odd coincidence, but even I can’t deny how this woman would assume you’re her brother’s child.”

  “Can you take me to him? We can talk to him together and I can see if he’s ever been to Chicago and if he ever came across my mother.”

  Zeporah pinched her lips together. “Mi wish mi coulda do dat, Starr, but him dead ten years ago. Mi miss him dearly ever since. We did close, especially after we parents dead. We did only have each other, but after dat him dead inna boating accident.

  “When mi see yuh dat first day, mi start to have hope. Like what if, even though mi brother lef mi, him lef a piece of himself here and mi just find it.”

  She looked deep into my eyes and I choked up. There was so much despair in her voice. I wanted to be her niece to comfort her…and to finally find out about a part of me I felt like had always been missing. “What was his name?”

  “William Brown.” The corners of her mouth slightly lifted.

  “Zeporah, how about I take down all of your information, give you all of mine, and I’ll get in touch with you once I get back home and talk to my mother?”

  “Mi woulda like dat.” She reached in and pulled me into her embrace.

  *1*

  Starr

  “It ain’t Trinidad and Tobago, but this bomb Carnivale you helped spearhead will be in full swing two weekends from now. I can’t wait to show off my belly ring and scantily dressed size sixteen body down on Northerly Island.” Tamara swung her butt length weave over her shoulder and shimmied in her seat.

  “Okay thicker than a snicker,” Rikia said to Tamara. Tamara often referred to herself as such so we all laughed as we sat around the table in Rikia’s office. It always seemed to be our meeting place whenever Tamara stopped by campus to see us in between showing houses to her real estate clients.

  “Starr?” Tamara looked directly at me. “You know anything about how many people plan to attend Carnivale? Any celebrities coming into the Chi to soca with us? And by celebrities, I mean fine melanated men ready to come in and shimmy in nothing but some shorts and sweat covering their sculpted bodies.”

  “So you haven’t seen the flyer, the performer’s lineup?” I asked with a bit of shock in my voice.

  Tamara frowned, marring her otherwise gorgeous face and fell back in her seat. “I mean yeah, I have, but the only superstar I saw on it was JoJo’s old stuck up ass.”

  “Leave her alone.” I waved Tamara off. “She is mad talented.”

  “I didn’t say she wasn’t. She can sing. I’m just saying, I ain’t checking for her. Wrong gender,” Tamara quipped.

  My shoulders slumped. “You just heightened one of my worries. Not enough people in Chicago know about Carnivale. I need as many of us,” I rubbed my skin to point out its dark hue, “to come out. Not only for the optics, but to learn more about our rich cultures and to celebrate us in all of our glory.”

  “Ooo wee, ever since we got back from Jamaica two years ago and you showed your momma that pic of your daddy and her kitty-kat remembered he indeed was the one who knocked her up, you have been so…Jamaican.”

  Rikia buckled over in laughter while I chided Tamara’s antics. “First off, don’t ever bring up my momma’s lady parts again. And secondly, I’m proud to know I’m part Jamaican.”

  Holding her stomach, Rikia calmed her laughing down long enough to look at Tamara and say, “Wait, please tell me the story again. I hate that I was not there to experience Ms. Night’s response for myself.”

  “I can’t stand either of you heffas.” I adjusted in the armed chair in Rikia’s office, knowing that there was nothing I could do to stop Tamara from jumping up and retelling the story for what had to be the thousandth time.

  Her tiny waist very much so contrasted with how wide her hips were. She had killer curves and knew for a fact that her measurements had been the undoing of several men. She adjusted her pencil skirt on her slim waist and said, “Okay, and you know I ain’t lying because I tell it the same every time just like it happened the first time.”

  Rikia chuckled.

  Tamara positioned her cinnamon-colored hands in front of her as if she were waiting for a football pass as she prepped to tell the story. Her theatrics would be in full swing. “We settled in Ms. Night’s kitchen and Starr wasted no time in recounting everything that happened wit
h Zeporah in Jamaica. Baby, when Starr walked over to her mother and held up her phone, Ms. Night gripped her countertop. And not like because she had seen a ghost, but it was the look of a woman who vividly remembered a man knocking the bottom out of her thang.”

  “You make me sick,” I shouted at Tamara.

  She chuckled. “I’m sorry Starr for putting your momma on blast, but you know I ain’t lyin’. She literally started fanning herself, and you helped her to sit down thinking she was merely distraught, but then the next words that came out of her mouth let us know she was everything but.”

  “What she say, girl?” Rikia asked, a grin plastering her face.

  “Girl, she said that she conceived Starr, and I quote ‘during her hoe phase’. She said that she particularly had a craving for dark men at the time and couldn’t have separated them from one another if her life depended on it. But when Starr showed her that picture, it all came flooding back to her senses. Ms. Night said she had never had a man do her like he did, and the memories were why her lower extremities were beyond her control as she stared at the pic of him.

  “She said he was the best that she ever had, and it stood to reason why Starr looked just like him. She said he put it on her so that she could only succumb to the way he handled her body. Said that he did all of the work that night, made her see stars, and was probably why she named the product of that night, Starr. She looked at Starr and then at his picture, fanned herself, and said, “Job well done.”

  That last part always sent Rikia into a laughing fit that had her wheezing and Tamara well pleased with her reenactment skills.

  I needed their laughter at my expense to be over with so I said, “Enough already. I hate hearing about my momma and my daddy’s sexcapades.”

  Tamara finally rejoined her seat at the conference table we sat at and said, “Girl, that moment will never not be funny to me, so deal with it. But look at it like this, your momma’s memory of him comforted you to do the blood test with Zeporah and confirm that she is indeed your aunt and that William was your father.”