At school, in Queens College, Nassau, Bahamas, I couldn't concentrate on what was written on the blackboard or in my fifth-grade textbook. I got by, on intuition and listening to people around me. It was exhausting and my mind wondered constantly.

I daydreamed: gazed at the morning sun printing soft on the teacher's desk, at coconut trees casting lattice shadows—most only partially ordered—on stone slabs in the quad; I heard the swoosh from the copperleaf bush as it slid sultry on aluminum windowpanes, the rattle from tree tops when the wind blew, like shekeres shook fast.



After school, we met at the tamarind tree. That was where Mrs. Albury picked us up—me, my brother, sister and her two sons—every Monday at 3:30pm in her new, 1977, Chevrolet station wagon.

At the end of school, I was always the last to leave. It took a while to sort through my desk, piece together assignments and due dates. Folders packed neat were in an instant retrieved and reviewed, over and over. I sat alone save for a solitary fan above my head clicking dense, blades lumbering tempo grave.

I walked to the tamarind tree. Through quiet halls anxiety pricked, along the lifeless quad I felt a pull, and in bare dusty fields I sunk. On the walkway, soft-hot tarmac seared the soles of my Clarks and stung the balls of my feet; I saw the sun slink guilty, felt the sharp from blistered pits capping long jump runways. At the school crest—a lighthouse and two shells surrounded by seven conch—I ran.



Mrs. Albury's station wagon had a rear door which, side hinged, swung like a gate: I always sat in the cavernous seat that faced backward. Short, Mrs. Albury sat perched on the front seat which she rolled all the way forward—it was a settee made of hot fabric dipped in a chocolate. As we turned right down Eastern road, we picked up speed.

I daydreamed the tarmac rolled beneath was a high-speed belt, strips of white paint pulsed as if laser beams shot at traffic undulating in unison; I pretended rows of tall palm, stocky croton and hibiscus guarded pink walls, that royal poinciana and overgrown bougainvillea, flashing broken strokes of red-orange, yellow, white and purple, were peacock displays in a high speed junkanoo parade.


Before school, in my pajamas, I stared at the paint canvassing my bedroom, lost in its yellowness. My mind wondered fast. Why was it when I grabbed coconuts to twist them off the tree, they were always cool to the touch? Why did the bush (tropical forest) opposite our house encroach so fast? Who was it clearing that opening deep in the bush and planting cassava in neat rows? My brother and sister, already dressed and in the car, called out my name.



Mrs. Albury pulled off Eastern road into our neighborhood, Sans Souci. The car's engine moaned as we climbed the steep hill, past the cement house painted dull, to the summit where a different air cooled, and where I could see the bay.

I daydreamed Blackbeard sat in his tower and signaled ships onto reefs, a white seabed blanched turquoise hid conch, meditating in steely glacis; I imagined a giant broom had swept the sea marbled; waves marched stiff in hollow squares; sloops slid and dipped, motorboats knifed: in the distance, a burnt-yellow rinsed the sea, sun and air luminous.


One day at school, my sister glanced at a notice board and realized I was in a swim meet that afternoon. I had no idea. The water in the pool had been churned thick and slick like an oil and was warm. I heard the roar from my schoolmates as I turned my head and gasped, the rumble from my nose when I blew out air under water. Roar, gasp, rumble, roar, gasp, rumble…!

Mrs. Albury turned right onto our street and passed by my favorite tree, the gumbo limbo.



At home, I stopped doing my homework, trekked into the bush and sat under the lignum-vitae tree and daydreamed.



Christopher Rabley