“Look at this!” Yvette shouted. She dived and we saw her two skinny legs shoot up in the air. She remained like that for a split second before disappearing into the water. She re-emerged sputtering and laughing.
“You found it again!” Sophie shouted. “I can’t believe it! You always find the stone first!”
The stone was in the middle of the river and very difficult to find. It, too, was legendary, for it wasn’t unusual for someone to spend an entire day under the bridge and not find the stone. Like ole crab and rivermumma, the stone was said to appear only to those it wanted to stand on it. Now all the girls crowded onto the stone, held hands and started singing and shouting at the top of their voices. Every so often one or other of them would fall off the stone, because it was not large enough to hold four people.
“Let’s play a ring game,” Monique suggested.
“Yes!” Yvette agreed, arms flailing about. “A ring game! Let’s play a ring game!” She was having the time of her life.
“Which one? Which one?” Junie asked, equally excited. Anyone looking on would not have believed they were the same two girls who almost came to blows a moment before.
“Stagolee!” Sophie shouted. “I am Stagolee!”
The others chimed in: “Stagolee stole the cookie from the cookie jar.”
“Who me?” Sophie asked, bracing back and pointing a finger at herself and looking at the other girls.
“Yes, you!” they shouted back, in joy.
“Couldn’t be,” Sophie said, shaking her head and shoulders from side to side, denying the theft.
“Then who?”
“Number four,” Sophie said pointing and laughing at Yvette, “stole the cookie from the cookie jar.”
“Who me?” Yvette asked, pointing a finger back at herself and shaking her head.
“Yes you!”
“Couldn’t be!”
“Then who?”
“Number one stole the cookie from the cookie jar.”
With all the singing and rocking they were doing, the circle broke apart and they all went under the water, before coming up and joining hands in a circle again. The more I looked at them, the more fun they seemed to be having. I put my toe in the water and twirled it around, watching circles spread into larger circles in the water. I put one foot in up to my ankle and left it there. The water really did not feel that cold; perhaps I would go in after all.
“Come in! Come in!” they chorused when they noticed what I was doing.
Next I was sitting with both legs dangling in the water. I pushed off from the cement block and the water enveloped me. This time it felt warm and silky, like Grandy’s loose warm hugs and kisses. The girls made a place for me and I joined the circle in the river. Soon I was singing at the top of my lungs with them, our voices echoing loudly under the bridge.
“Seeee,” Yvette stuck out her tongue at me; “there was nothing to be afraid of!”
Nothing at all I agreed. Not Grandy; not ole crab; not sasabonsam, and certainly not rivermumma. How could she handle five girls all at once? The circle broke apart and we dived under the water, emerged, took air, blew bubbles, splashed water at each other. We felt we’d never had such a good time.
“Let’s check our baskets,” I suggested when we had been in the water for more than an hour. “They must have a lot of shrimps by now.” They agreed and we dived under the water and emerged at the far end of the bridge. It was only when we were out from under the bridge that I remembered we were almost naked. I wanted to turn back for our dresses, but the others disagreed, saying we should just check our baskets and get back quickly under the bridge. There didn’t seem to be anyone around to see us.
We waded over to our baskets; they were filling up rapidly with silver-gray shrimps. Later when we got home, we would poach them over an open fire and watch them turn a brilliant red. We would salt and pepper them and eat them with roasted breadfruit or boiled green bananas. The baskets checked, we hurried back under the bridge.
“What game shall we play now?” I asked.
“What about Mango Time?” Sophie suggested.
“That’s not a game, stupid,” Yvette said. “That’s a song.” We continued holding onto each other on the rock. By now our fingers were pale and wrinkled from being in the water so long.
“You’ve got breasts!” I said to Yvette, looking at the small mounds on her chest.
“And you too!” Yvette pointed back to me.
“Just barely.” There was just the barest hint of a rise on my chest.
“I have nothing!” Monique muttered, gathering up the skin on her flat chest.
“You know what’s going to come next,” Yvette said solemnly.
“It!!!!” we all said, letting out a shrieking cry.
“I don’t want it to happen to me,” Monique’s eyebrows crinkled up. “Everything will change. Plus, I just don’t understand certain things. Like, you know, can you still pee when it happens? And does it come all the time, non-stop?”
Not one of us could answer her questions. Neither Mama nor Grandy ever spoke to me directly about it. I only knew one day it would happen to me and after that, if I were not careful with boys, I could get pregnant. It, I knew, involved blood, and often times women were miserable and tired because of it and felt a lot of pain. It called for sanitary napkins, and sanitary napkins could be troublesome and expensive. Why did women have to have it in the first place? It was something all the women I knew wondered. After a while it went away and women could not become pregnant any more. All this information I had picked up along the way, since no one really sat me down and talked to me directly about it. Like so many other things in my life, innuendoes were supposed to suffice for direct information and somehow I was just supposed to know all these things.
Suddenly I heard bush breaking as if someone was coming towards the bridge from the hill. I stopped playing and listened intently. It might be a stray animal, in which case the sound would take no particular path, would move about from place to place, in a straggly fashion, but these sounds were different. Sure in their step and heading straight for the bridge.
“What’s that?” I asked, raising my hand to still the talking about me. For a moment everyone went quiet.
“What’s what?” Yvette asked, slightly annoyed, as if I were making things up.
“That!” I said again, panicking, for the sounds were getting louder. It was coming in our direction. Then we all heard it. Someone was coming towards the bridge.
“Good lord,” I groaned, my mind running all over the place. If it was Grandy I was dead. If it was sansabonsam, I was dead. If it was some stupid country boy… that thought I couldn’t follow to its logical conclusion. We began swimming vigorously towards the cement blocks. When we got there it was pure confusion. I could not find my dress, while Monique, Junie and Sophie were struggling over the same dress. The only one who remained in the water was Yvette. She didn’t seem the least bit concerned that someone or something was coming, and acted as though she didn’t have a care in the world. She continued treading water, stopping every now and again to stand on the stone in the middle of the river. Every once in a while she turned in the direction of the bushes to see who or what might be coming out.
Three boys appeared at the far end of the bridge. Three boys from the district. Immediately they started laughing and pointing at us. “Look at them! They naked! We see you naked!” This was terrible. No boy had ever seen me naked or near-naked before, and I had promised myself that none ever would. Here