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Roatan, Honduras, 1892.

She left a note on my bed.
“Here we are on the magical island, Sarah. I have a man here and must be with him. Surely you understand. See you day after tomorrow. Sorry!”

I put on my woolen bathing costume that covered everything from my belly to my breasts and shoulder down to my knees. I put a dressing gown over this and caried my Turkish towelling under my arm in a tight jelly roll.

My body felt heavy in the heavy air. If I had thought it through, I would have said it felt like dread. Our Captain had lent me something before he hurried off, glasses he had fashioned that would allow me to see underwater without stinging my eyes in the salt water.

I lowered myself into the water off the pier near where the Sea Witch was moored. The glasses filled with water right away but did they make it easier to bear the salt in my eyes? I wasn’t sure. I paddled out along the edge of what I knew was the beginning of a coral reef that stretched hundreds of miles. I couldn’t help thinking of the deepest spot in the Atlantic Ocean that lay right off the Honduras coast near Roatan.

There was a buzzing in my ears. The beautiful blue and yellow fish I saw at the beginning of the reef wall had all but disappeared, just me and the reef and my methodical kicking.

How did it happen? I looked up and saw that I was already lost. The reef I had been following now had canyons that led to canyons. I followed one and it led to another, deeper and deeper.

I had a sudden panicky moment.
Where was I going?
I wanted human company.
The colors now were drained of all life, greyed back.

I headed onto the reef determined to climb up and see where I was in relation to the Sea Witch and the pier. I coral burned and cut my legs.
I broke water, sitting uncomfortably on the spiny coral, aware that I was hurting it as much as it was hurting me.

The shore and pier were far away.
The few people around the pier didn’t notice me.
I had no choice but to call for help.

And then things got blurry and vague.
No one could hear my calls. I felt like Icarus, out of my element.
I began to struggle for my life, shouting and calling, crying, in pain from the coral.

Behind me, something surfaced. I saw a black face, kind eyes. Goggles.
“Get on my back,” he instructed me.
I wondered if my rescuer knew: “You will hurt ourself on the coral,” I objected stupidly.
“Get on my back,” he repeated.

I mounted his back.
He slid away from the coral reef into the water.
I clung to him, grateful to be off the reef.
He swam easily through the water separating us from the pier, people and civilization. He placed my hands on the solid pillars of the pier and hoisted himself up.

I turned to look for a ladder or some way to get myself up.
I began swimming in the direction of the ladder I’d seen.
He was shouting. At me.
I surfaced.
“You are heading back out. Give me your hand.”
Other faces peered down at me.
He hoisted me up by my arm and I lay face down
on the pier like a beached whale, exhausted and drained emotionally.
Someone put Turkish towelling over me.
He squatted down beside my head.
“You were headed right back out,” he said, curious.
Another person brought me fresh water.
“Drink,” he said.

When I could sit up finally, he said, “Where are you staying?”
“On the Sea Witch,” I said with a jerk of my head in that direction.
He seemed surprised. “Are you Odile’s friend?”
“Yes but I am alone now while she is with friends.”
”I will take you there,” he said, getting up.
“No,” I said, “She is ashamed of me.”
“Why?”
I stated the obvious. “Because I am white. Because I had to be rescued.
Because I am a woman traveling alone.”

“Good thing I was here and heard you cry out. I thought it was seagulls at first but began to pay attention and saw you, out there.”
He helped me to my feet.
“You are lucky because this is our annual festival for all Garifunas. No one would have heard you. Everyone is there.” He put his hand beneath my elbow as I staggered a bit, trying to move forward.
“Come with me,” he said.

“I need my clothes,” I said shivering. “I need my bed to sleep. I am dizzy.” I gathered up the things I had set on the pier when I went into the water. It seemed so long ago.

“Stay here.” He jumped into a boat and paddled over to where I was hovering near the ladder. “Come along,” he said raising his arm to help me down. “I am taking you to the Sea Witch.”

I took a seat opposite him. He had two oars in his hands, ready to propel us. “I am Antonio,” he said.
“I am Sarah,” I said, smiling. “Thank you!”
“I will be back before sunset,” he said, “to bring you to our ceremonies. There will be food and dancing. Odile is there.”

I was too tired to object.

I fell into bed and disappeared into a deep hole where I eluded the pursuit of sea creatures who searched for me. But I had my own hole and—though they passed close—I avoided detection and was consumed by fear in my hidey hole, living life a prey.

When we arrived at the festival, I understood why the port side of the island seemed so desolate. Everyone was here, and from the looks of things, there were less than one thousand people on this island. Antonio threaded his way through the clusters of people and introduced me to two people who sat on a sort of dais. Antonio said a few low words to them.
They gestured me to a chair between them.

Then, when I was settled beside them, the power couple, she spoke.

“We Garifuna are an old People, hidden here, strung out along the eastern coastline of Central America, originating in Saint Vincent, all of us speaking a derivation of Arawak, a Creole patois that each band understands.” She spoke with her hands, drawing the map in the air.

I looked out over the crowd, clustered in groups in circles.

“We have our food our drinks, our music, our dance—which you are seeing and enjoying. The auguries at our ceremonies this morning told us that you were in trouble. It would have been very bad juju” (here she smiled) “to have someone like you drown here today.”

“You mean a white?” I asked.

She thought for a long moment. “No,” she said. “An oracle. We sent Antonio out to scout for you.”

Then he spoke. “You have attracted the attention to a deep sea god who wants to taste you.”

She: “That is very dangerous! S/he sees very few Seers and s/he is attracted by your light, by your pulse, by your signal. In Cuba and Haiti, they call this deity Olokun.” He said it with a throat click on the “k”.

He: “I am sorry but you must not bathe in the ocean.”

“How long?” I gasped. “Ever?”

They looked at each other. Then responded at the same time, “We don’t know.”

Now we watched the dancers for some time. I saw Odile on the other side of the yard casting anxious glances at me. I thought that by smiling and waving, I could reassure her. I waved a little.

More absorbing were the dancers, men and women, young and old. The drums and other instruments I didn’t recognize that looked like large upside down metallic basins, some stringed instruments, played a persuasive beat that commanded the feet to move. But this dancing was not about the feet. For while the feet beat out a hopping shuffling, the head and shoulders were still. The trunk gyrated and the buttocks made rhythmic rounding circles, shaking fast, a control they had clearly learned since childhood.

They didn’t dance together so much as for their circle, one at a time, in the middle of the circle. When one hopped out, another hopped into the circle.

He: “Antonio said you told him that Odile would be embarrassed by you if she brought you here and why.”

Now it was my turn to be embarrassed. I had spoken my inmost fear.

He continued. “You said, “Because I am white.”

I looked around. There were no other whites at this Garifuna festival. I shrugged, jerking my head toward the crowd.

He: “You don’t see that there are whites here?”

I nodded. Yes I had to see that a few whites were among the Garifunas. “But they are your People.”

She: “Odile says you are headed to Cuba.”

I nodded, still miserable.

He: “You will see there. Cubans come in every shade from white to black.” She: “Same here. There are no distinctions made.”

We were quiet for a while, watching the dancers.

The she asked: “Haven’t you noticed a difference in whites?”

I said, “I don’t know quite what you mean.”

She: “ I mean a difference in what matters to whites.”

“Some struggle,” I said. “And some do not, not as much.”

She: “You will never find that here. Everyone has enough. No one suffers want.”

The man laughed. He was on his feet now, with the shuffling gait that showed a man was ready to begin dancing.

Then she rose with a full-hearted shimmy which looked like a full-on hips and buttocks shaking. He side-stepped behind her. Both held their heads and shoulders still with all the motion below the waist in the hips. Once someone—man or woman—was fully into it, you couldn’t take your eyes off them. He moved back and forth from side to side behind her, his buttocks and hips in full vibration, circularly.

Abruptly they sat down.

“They are always coming after us,” she said. “Whites.” They will take our council trees. Or they have found metal or minerals on our land. They crave the fur of some animal or skin of some reptile.”

“Everything,” he said, “is a commodity.”

“The robber barons, “ I mumbled.

“Yes,” he said. “They don’t care for the common good. Only their own personal enrichment.”

“Sometimes we give them what they want,” she said, “curious to see if they ever have enough.”

And if we don’t give it,” he said, “they take it.”

She said, “They don’t seem to be born from the same earth as we are.”

He said, “We seriously consider this. That they might be from some other star.”

“A greedy star,” she said and laughed. “But they can never have what we have.”

I thought about the Montour family line, Turtle Dawn and her mother Delphine. And her mother Marguerite.

“Some whites,” she said, “are like light passing through a prism. Composed of al the colors.”

“Most whites,” he said, “are colorless because they lack, history, character.”

“But they can never have what we have.,” she said, with a signal that they were finished speaking. She stood.

Odile came up then, sensing her moment to approach.
“Come dance with us,” she invited.

I thought I could and joined a packed-down dirt dance circle. It tried a few circles with my buttocks, tentatively. I watched Odile abandon herself to the music, sidestepping, stopping, vibrating with the drums.

I could.