Sylvia Wynter's Dream

by Blaire Santos | 6th November, 2023 | Blog 5: Setting is more than a place, it’s sensory

Red dust congealed on the Mazda’s metallic teal, matching the sign pegged at Blair Atholl, the shrimp farm where Daddy lived. We zoomed beyond the green squares of shrimp pens towards the pools of perfect cyan near the mangroves gripping the lagoon side of the Placencia peninsula. Sometimes, we’d swim, painting red across the glowing blue with sediment from the bottom. But that day, we went fishing—to watch Grandma in her glory. 

Grandma settled on the bank’s clay. Breeze skimmed the shivering waters like a phantom, and the fishing rhythm began. Daddy stood back. He wasn’t a fisherman, but Brods and I flanked the expert. She did not even need to bring bait. She waved the line like a magic wand and conjured fish on the hook with a sharp tug of her burly hands. Snapper and bay snook would die with dignity, even as Brods sliced open their bellies and scraped out their guts into the thin strip of sea. I chopped the others into chunks to attract the titan, flaunting its argent shillings. 

I don’t know where Daddy looked when the tarpon bit the line, but I know he didn’t see the six-foot silver shuttle fly towards heaven and sink into hell, trashing away all tranquillity in the boom of its flop. He only saw the blue turn white in a liquid pirouette. 

“Ah gat ahn!” cried Grandma, but Daddy’s eyes swelled with panic. His mouth parted and collapsed in an aquatic pulse. He stretched his hands towards me, trying to grasp me, but his feet stuck to the ground. Then, the waters thundered, and Daddy screamed, and Grandma lost her concentration, lost her tarpon. 

“Bernard, yu fraitn di fish!” 

“D-Da y-yu s-seh, ‘a-aligeta’!”

“Ah seh, ‘Ah gat ahn’!” 

His cackles wheezed in and out like the Mazda’s ignition until we all laughed.

Brods and I planned a fishing trip for Grandma’s birthday this year. We would have stayed on the Placencia beach, sans mangroves, taken a boat onto the perfect cyan sea and fish with rods, and bait, and everything. We would have driven past the clean Blair Atholl sign on the well-paved road, reminisced about how bad it used to be and said, “Memba when Daddy mi tink Grandma seh ‘aligata’ insted a ‘Ah gat ahn’?” 

But Brods died three days before the trip. And, of course, it rained at the funeral. I glanced at Daddy’s grave and saw rain channelling through the grout lines of its blue tiles. The wind whipped waves across the blue, and the burying ground curdled into red muck, and when Pastor Brown said, “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust,” they splattered red clumps onto Brods’ white shirt, mimicking his shotgun wounds, and I screamed. I sank as if the ground was water—like I was going to kick up red from the bottom of a pond in Blair Atholl.

Still, I didn’t flop because Grandma pulled me up with the sharp tug of her burly hands and said, “Ah gat yu, baybi. Ah gat yu.”