Extract from Holding the Eye of the Sun

Olivia Simone

Dom walked quickly, hoping she’d get there before the splitting of her overfilled corner shop bags. Their blue handles had moulded into endless wrinkles, stretching from the guava juices that pinched together, from the box of pressed azaleas, from the heaviness that trickled down Dom’s arms, through her fingertips, and into the texture of each bag. She pushed the handles further along her forearms and pulled them into her chest. They lugged into her breasts, the corners of the juice cartons scouring the soft flesh beneath her top. Turning onto her parents’ road, Dom walked passed Lucia’s – the neighbour who never seemed to age and reminded Dom so much of Granny. She could see Lucia hunched over the ground, scraping at the greens sprouting between her patio. Lucia must’ve felt the burden of Dom’s gaze upon her because she twisted towards her, and they held each other’s eyes for a moment. Waving, Dom attempted a smile, but Lucia simply rose from her folded position, leaving the rest of the strangling weeds to double in size, and withdrew inside. The house consumed the woman, her body coalescing with the mottled window decorating the front door. Dom stood still – the bags fidgeting with impatience as they sliced her elbows – watching, waiting for something. Until she realised that something was nothing and continued along the street to her parents’ house. 

Standing outside, she rang the bell and waited for the flapping sound of her mother’s approaching slippers. 

‘Hello!’ Jennifer said as she opened the door, ‘come here.’ She hugged Dom tightly. 

‘Hey mum.’ Dom’s arms remained fixed to her sides like she were a toasted soldier, ready to be dunked in yolk. ‘Okay, you’re squishin me now.’ 

‘Sorry,’ Jennifer said, closing the door behind them. ‘Feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.’

‘Where's Lea?’ Dom asked, following Jennifer to the kitchen. 

‘She’s not here yet… would you believe?’ Jennifer raised her eyebrows.

‘What?’ Dom sighed as she freed her arms, putting the bags on the counter. ‘She’s never late though.’ The bags let out a grateful sigh too, relaxing onto the surface. 

‘Domm, y’alryt?’ Patrick called, interrupting them. 

‘I’m good, dad,’ she replied, walking into the living room and perching on the arm of the sofa. 

‘Where ya sista?’ Patrick asked, clicking off the television. ‘Ain’t dis whole ting for her? And why ya late?’ 

Dom paused, stuttering over her tongue before she finally said, ‘it’s only ten past.’

‘Did we say ten pas? You bes not do dis at work.’

‘No, no—’

‘So you show more respec to work dan ya parents?’ Patrick’s creased eyes pierced through Dom’s face, pushing her off the sofa’s arm and sinking her into the cushion. His humour was always too close to the truth and Dom could rarely predict whether he was about to laugh or cut her with anger. She looked down at the sofa – the stuffing had burst out of the frayed leather in various places, desperate to escape. 

‘Alryt,’ Patrick said, exhaling and divorcing his stare from Dom. ‘How’s work an dat? Dey payin you proper?’

She nodded. Something always prevented Dom from asking Patrick how he was in return, like she was scared to learn that he wasn’t always okay, that he wasn’t always and only her father who never cried and was always pretending. 

‘You ax ya mudda fur help?’ He continued, interrupting Dom’s thoughts. She paused. ‘Who raise ya chile!’ Patrick shooed her to the kitchen with his hands, ‘g’won g’won!’ Even though Dom moved quickly to appease Patrick, she knew his tone had changed from when she’d first entered the room. His voice always sounded more Caribbean when he felt something closer to positive than negative – like everything bad had to be kept distanced and so he’d lace his words with an unnatural Britishness when life was low. Patrick offered Dom a wide smile as she walked behind his chair and into the kitchen. 

Wriggling her fingers into the damp washing up gloves, Dom prepared the sink into a soapy bath. As she did so, the door knocked. Jennifer pushed the mac and cheese into the oven and pottered to the front. Dom knew that it was Azalea, but she kept her back turned, instead staring into the white, perforated bubbles in the sink. As Azalea’s chatter grew closer, the knots inside of Dom twisted upwards, contorting around her chest. 

‘Hey,’ Azalea said, delicately placing her hand on Dom’s upper back. 

Dom faced her sister, welcoming her embrace. ‘Mind ya back,’ she said, holding the wet gloves away from Azalea’s top. They pulled away from each other smiling. ‘Can’t believe you’re this late.’

‘Is only twenty pas! Cut me some slack, man,’ Azalea joked, ‘I can’t always be perfect.’ She jabbed her forefinger into Dom’s side. 

‘Hi, Jen,’ Michel said, hugging Jennifer in the doorway of the kitchen. ‘Sorry, we're late. Traffic, you know.’ 

‘Lea always accounts for traffic.’ 

‘Not this bad, sis.’ Azalea spoke firmly, locking away the rest of Dom’s questions. 

‘Come now girls!’ Jennifer announced, leading everyone into the living room and handing them glasses of Prosecco. ‘I just wanted to do a little toast,’ she continued, holding her glass in the air. 

‘Mumm,’ Azalea replied, taking her expected place next to Michel on the sofa. ‘You really don’t have to, save it for the weddin.’

‘You’re my first daughter and you’re getting married. Let me be a proud and happy mother, please. I remember when you were a child and walked in here wearing my wedding dress and now… twenty-seven and engaged. Me and your father have always been so proud of you, Lea.’ Jennifer looked to Patrick for reassurance, but he nodded exaggeratedly, smiling cheekily at Azalea. ‘I’m being serious!’

‘Don’t we kno it, Doris,’ Patrick replied, smirking at Dom. 

‘Fine.’ Jennifer said abruptly, lifting up her hand in defeat, ‘I won’t say anything.’

‘Mum, don’t be like that,’ said Azalea, laughing, ‘we’re only messin.’

Jennifer huffed; caught between sitting down and standing up. ‘I just wanted to say that we’re so happy for you and so glad to welcome Michel into the family.’

All glasses raised in unison. Patrick inhaled a gulp of Prosecco. The corners of his eyes and lips crinkled as he tried to temper the expression of disdain that overtook him. He’d never liked Prosecco – the bubbles too spritely, the glasses too dainty. There were numerous things Patrick still hadn’t acclimatised to, even after forty-two years in England, and celebratory Prosecco was one of them. He longed for his cousin’s homemade rum punch, his packs of Piton and Angostura bitters. He longed for the purpose he felt in St Lucia – the one he realised he’d possessed only once he’d left. He longed for a turn at controlling time so that he could wind it back, even though he knew he’d likely make the same choices. 

Patrick was in his early twenties when he held an impressionability that encouraged him to emigrate to England from Castries, surfing between the waves of sofas offered to him by the network of Caribbeans living in London. He spent his first two years in Notting Hill, balancing nightshifts on the conveyer belt of a dog food factory with days spent at college training in carpentry and joinery. He worked himself to a pulp, maturing his body years before his age, and stored the entirety of his existence in the skin of his hands. The fine creases of his palms carried the memory of every floor he laid and his brittle edged knuckles told the story of every fight he faced – the man he pushed through a pub window, the skinhead who tried to steal his gloves – as well as every fight he left alone; every unthrown punch that meant the averting of his eyes and shrinking of his shoulders as he quietened himself in public. Between both hands Patrick held an imprisoned love for life, for his wife, for spontaneity – a love weighed down by tragedies that remain unspoken. Unfelt. Unresolved. A love that he knew to exist but which could not escape from the thick, impenetrable skin of his hands. With every sip of Prosecco, he winced and dreamt of the taste of Pitons. 

‘You know you don’t have to drink it if you don’t like it,’ Dom said to Patrick. Jennifer looked over waiting for him to complain, but he didn't. 

‘How’s work, Michel?’ Jennifer asked. ‘Lea tells us you’ve got a promotion. That’s exciting.’

‘Yes, it’s quite a bit more money which can help add to the wedding costs…’ Dom turned her mind elsewhere whenever Michel spoke. There was a disconcerting essence of politician in his voice, and she found it impossible to take anything he said seriously. Not that the two of them ever directly spoke. She disliked him and the artificial small talk he conjured from her family, and Michel – although only four years older than Dom – treated her like she was a child and uninteresting. Dom soon left for the bathroom, removing herself from his droning. 

‘Dom,’ Azalea half-whispered, ‘can I come in?’ She tapped on the locked door. Dom clicked the latch, and they sat on the edge of the bath. ‘You know you don't have to leave every time Michel opens his mouth.’ Dom side-eyed her sister and they shared a quiet laugh. ‘Okay, ignore me. I know he can chat a lotta shit.’

‘God, Lea. Do you even like him?’

‘Yea... Course. He’s good to me.’

Dom thought of the wealthy family Michel came from – they’d paid his way through an Economics degree at the University of West Indies, and he became an investment banker soon after moving to England. His pale brown skin, international American accent, and air of entitlement helped him assimilate to a sector dominated by privately educated, white male Oxbridge graduates. To them, he was the one that ‘didn't count’ and to him, that was a prized label worth acquiring. ‘Is he really?’ Dom pressed again.

‘He’s good enough.’ Azalea’s eyes looked full of dishonesty, but Dom knew not to argue with her. ‘Anyway, why you been airin me recently?’ She asked, redirecting the conversation. 

‘I haven’t.’

‘You know I can always tell when you’re lyin, Dom. What’s going on?’

Dom watched the floor between her feet, ‘jus life… you know how it is.’

‘You sleepin?’

She shrugged, ‘not really.’

‘I thought all this had stopped now? Have you tried the melatonin?’

Dom lifted her head, looking to the blurred window. A bird flew passed; its body distorted by the wrinkles of the obscured glass. She stood up, walking towards it, but stopped when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. 

‘You said you’d try.’

‘Sorry, yea I will.’ She answered absentmindedly, not taking in Azalea’s words but instead hearing the question that’d wandered the walls of her childhood mind, Daddy, am I dark like you now? She’d asked Patrick while she stood in front of the mirror, analysing her tanned skin from their recent holiday to St Lucia. He’d said nothing in response, retrieving his Pond’s cream from the cabinet, but she couldn’t bear the thought of her Blackness running away from her; sucked dry with every day they remained in England.

‘Imma go downstairs before mum comes looking for us. You comin?’ Azalea stood, unlocking the bathroom door. Dom nodded, following behind. 

While they waited for dinner to be served, the food overwhelmed the house. Each dish fought for the space at first before accepting coalescence, tangoing together through the kitchen, the dining room, the corridor. Sizzling oven-baked mac and cheese swam with the rising steam from the curry goat and danced with the residual oiliness of each plantain as it dried on a paper towel. With the guidance of her husband’s cousins, Jennifer had learned to cook Caribbean food. She had close to perfected a number of dishes from the Lesser Antilles – from saltfish to Trini doubles and roti. Patrick proudly told his bredrine that his wife, even though English, managed to provide him with a taste of home at least three times a week. 

As they migrated into the dining room, Michel stood behind Dom’s chair, his hands on the back as though he were going to take it over. 

‘Oh, that’s actually–’

‘Dom,’ Jennifer interrupted, placing the curry goat in the centre of the table. ‘You don't even live here anymore.’

‘No, it’s okay,’ Michel said through a smile, ‘here you go.’ He offered her the seat like it was his and sat opposite Azalea. Jennifer rushed back to the kitchen, throwing dirty pots and utensils into the sink. 

‘What’s g’wannin’ dat kitchen, woman?’ Called Patrick, ‘come sit. Eat.’

‘Coming,’ she grabbed the rice and peas, ‘coming!’ Jennifer rolled her eyes to herself before walking back into the dining room, placing the final bowl onto the table. Everyone began to lean across their plates – arms and hands crossing and stopping – dishing food for themselves. 

‘Michel’s got a promoshun,’ Patrick said, speaking between mouthfuls. ‘Lea’s got a new job,’ he continued, nodding down the table towards Dom. ‘When you gettin sutin?’ 

‘Dom’s not like that,’ Azalea answered. ‘She don't like to be in charge too much, right?’

‘You know your dad got a call from Castries the other day,’ Jennifer interrupted, ‘from cousin Leroy, saying dad’s got another sister somewhere.’

‘What!’ Azalea put her fork down. ‘Who?’

‘What was the name?’ Jennifer asked, turning to her husband. ‘Starts with an M or—’

Patrick threw his laugh across the room, cutting Jennifer’s words. ‘Ery Rastaman from Marigot Bay to Pigeon Point probly a damn Campbell. What I need anudda sista for?”

As the evening bled delicately into night, Dom became increasingly desperate to leave. She wanted to pour herself out of the door like the exposed stuffing fleeing from their sofa. Bickering rose and fell like a conductor’s baton and cooled the once hot food. The British lilt of Patrick’s accent appeared at sporadic intervals, further detaching him from the unspoken issues he wished to ignore. Jennifer fussed over the food and her family’s fragile happiness, hoping to force a feeling of togetherness no matter how artificial it might’ve been. Azalea mothered their mother, and Michel, and Dom, picking up where Jennifer fell short. Michel spoke predominantly at Patrick, crafting every word like they were miniature men walking into Patrick’s ears and holding signs that read I’m better than you but please approve of me. Dom remained at the end of the table, leaning one ear towards the window behind her, listening for any evidence of existence beyond the house. Remembering herself and the life she lived outside her family home meant that she could withstand to return to the place that’d contained her for so many years. It had contorted her into a box she didn't fit in and when she was back she always found herself bent inside it again, clawing to be released. Dom continued to watch her family, outwardly engaged but miles away, until their plates were stacked with scraps and their cutlery married together. Her and Azalea helped Jennifer clear away; they moved around the kitchen in silence, their bodies swirling past each other like choreographed dancers. The box of pressed azaleas still rested atop the surface and Dom lingered beside them; she watched herself give them to her sister in her mind. But then she left the flowers there, letting them marinate further in the plastic bag. 

‘I know things aren't always perfect here,’ Jennifer said, walking Dom to the front door. ‘But don't leave it so long next time.’

‘And stop ignoring my calls!’ Azalea called from upstairs. Dom and Jennifer quietly laughed together before Dom let her mother embrace her again. 

‘Bye,’ Dom called to Patrick. He’d returned to the living room; the back of his smooth head peeping over the armchair. The hum of the television the only sound that waved Dom farewell. 

Leaving, Dom released a stunted sigh. She was free from the house but being in Manor Park still choked her, it still dragged her into that box and the child she was then. The child who rarely smiled and never spoke, who was named Alicia but who everyone called Dominica. The child who studied the paleness of her mother that could only compare to the white fog in her eyes, and the darkness of her father like the black clouds of her iris; and then herself, drifting with the ash pearl winds of autumn and pouring with the thundering rain of nighttime. The memories wouldn’t let her go, tugging at her breath until she reached the noisy lights of the station and swept through the turnstiles, burying herself in the momentum of people rushing to the platform. Stepping onto the train, Dom watched the animated chatter of young women all dressed up for their Saturday night out, the rocking knee of a hooded teenager sweating in the stuffy air. Then she closed her eyes and just listened, absorbing the relentlessness of life around her. 

‘So much unfinished business with my dad and what he’s done…’

‘Wait so you were walking, and he was in the car?’

‘All they do is bitch about it…’

‘Yeah, I just bought some Jaffa cakes, some crips, some…’

‘For whatever reason he put up the worst…’

‘That means I can go one level up…’

Sardine was sitting behind the door when Dom arrived home, looking up at her expectantly. But when she picked him up, he wriggled free from her attempted hug, escaping the exhaustion she breathed into him. She shrugged off his unusual rejection and walked to her bedroom, undressing and wrapping herself in a satin robe. The night was still adolescent but Dom was tired – wearied by the quiet chaos of her family attempting to upkeep an image of stability. Moving to the bathroom, she stood in front of the mirror, brushing her teeth and watching her body peep through the gaps of her loosely tied dressing gown. She turned the tap with a heavy hand and water flew around the sink, splashing the corners of her robe and spilling to the floor. Dom pulled at the fabric, wanting to stop the blotches of dampened satin from sticking to her, and revealed her nakedness even more – the fat in her stomach, the skin of the body, the bumps and rolls illuminated by the harsh light. The bare light that called her to stare, trance-like, at the body’s flesh as though her eyes were kindling and the body a flame. A flame that exploded into a full fire. The more Dom stared, the higher the body’s blaze grew. Her skin pulsating with heat. Water climbed up from the floor and over the edge of the sink, swimming around Dom’s ankles and towards her face. Taking hold of Dom, Water hugged her against their embrace, extinguishing the body’s fire to dying cinders, melting Dom into the creases of her curved skin – sinking deeper and lower, deeper and lower, flooding into the folds of black, searching and pleading. searching and pleading. 

Water carried Dom through her body’s skin and into the warm shadow of a samaan tree surrounded by Bwa Kwaib flowers. The tree loomed above Dom, fashioning its roots into a large dining table before her. On top of the table of roots was a translucent cloth embroidered with the image of an afroed child. The animated girl was attempting to escape from five disproportionate Bantu knots while she played at being a world leader, her arm extending over a lectern. Dom rubbed the fabric between her fingers and it pumped with life, like the girl was traipsing between the woven threads and would soon pounce free and sit beside her. When Dom looked up from the cloth, the table was no longer vacant but lathered with infinite dishes – curry goat, callaloo, rice and peas, mac and cheese, honey pork, fried chicken, baked breadfruit, hot dumplings. The sun dove between the leaves of the samaan, spotlighting the food and raining warmth upon Dom’s skin. She stood up, the teardrops of sun falling down her body, and then she saw the face of The Woman behind the saltfish. Smiling wide at Dom, The Woman looked as she always did – her broad, open face framed by her afro which she wore with a lattice of cainrows at the front. 

When Dom was younger, The Woman had mostly appeared to her in Water – always floating, always drifting, always calming – and occasionally in the stars. She’d shone through their light, revealing safe paths as though she were a third sibling, tempering the earthquakes of Dom’s mind. They’d never communicated much, conversing solely through their expressions and the shapes of their moving bodies, until recently. The Woman had been attempting to speak with Dom and she tried again, shouting across the long, samaan table; her high pitched voice flowing like lava over the myriad dishes. But every time she spoke, Dom was unable to decipher her words – she heard only shrieks and felt only rising heat from the small embers escaping The Woman’s mouth. The dark cinders fell from her voice like tumbling stones and set the tablecloth alight. Dom attempted to call something back to The Woman but her throat was captive to the heat and her tongue heavy with the sparks that lay upon it. The fire from The Woman’s screeches swarmed across the table, melting the untouched food, and scorched the top of the child’s Bantu knots, her scalp freed from its taut pulls. The girl jumped out of the woven tablecloth, and dove into the roots of the samaan tree. Dom sat back down, her body collapsing into the wooden chair as the unruly flames ran towards her; she nestled into their unending warmth, closing her eyes as they cradled her skin still damp from Water’s touch. Yellow hues flickered behind her eyelids, but only then did she realise that they weren’t from the fire’s silhouette but instead cast upon her face by the exposed lightbulb in her bathroom. 

Opening her eyes, she was back in front of the mirror. Her toothbrush dangled out of the side of her mouth like an unwanted cigarette while her body leaned to one side, her left arm resting hunched on the sink. She swilled. Gargled. Turned off the racing tap and walked to bed.