One Caribbean Rising: The Seed

By half past two, the heat had settled over Cave Hill with the confidence of something that knew nobody could make it leave. It rose from the concrete paths, clung to the pale walls of the buildings and found the narrow strip of skin between Abigail Alleyne’s blouse and the strap of her bag. Even the breeze seemed tired. What little of it reached the campus carried warmth rather than relief, stirring leaves without doing much for the students crossing between buildings with folders tucked beneath their arms and bags hanging heavily from their shoulders.

Abi moved through them at a brisk pace. She had already calculated how long the walk should take and resented every obstacle attempting to prove her wrong. She wasn’t properly late, not the embarrassing kind where you opened the classroom door after everyone had settled and twenty heads turned to watch you find a seat, but she was close enough for it to bother her. Two or three minutes, perhaps, and even that depended on whether the lecturer possessed the unreasonable habit of beginning precisely when the timetable said the class began.

The elective had irritated her before she had even attended it. She hadn’t chosen Caribbean Studies 201 because of some deep intellectual calling or burning desire to spend another afternoon in a classroom. She wanted the additional credit, and of the electives that fitted around everything else she had already committed herself to that semester, this one had looked least likely to interfere with her plans.

At least, that was what she had told herself when she registered.

She adjusted the bag, biting into her shoulder, and almost walked past a group of students struggling to assemble folding tables beneath a tent outside one of the buildings. Almost. Three tables had been placed lengthways, two sideways, and a banner was stretched uselessly between two students who were discovering that optimism did not alter measurements.

Abi slowed despite herself.

“Turn those two.”

The young man holding one end of the banner looked at her. “What?”

“Those two tables.” She pointed. “Turn them the same way as the others and move the last one to the end. Then the banner will fit across the front.”

He looked at the tables, then at the banner in his hands, and the solution arrived on his face with such clarity that Abi had to stop herself from smiling.

“Oh.”

She was already walking away when metal legs scraped across the concrete behind her.

Her mother would have said she was interfering again. Abi had heard that accusation often enough growing up, usually after reorganising something nobody had asked her to reorganise or stepping into an argument because the solution seemed obvious and everybody else appeared determined not to see it. She never understood why people preferred spending twenty minutes complaining about a problem that could be fixed in five.

She checked her phone.

2:27.

“Wonderful.”

By the time she reached the building, the heat had dried her mouth. Just inside the corridor stood one of the university’s wall-mounted drinking-water fountains, a practical stainless-steel fixture with scratches around the basin and a button that required more pressure than seemed reasonable. Abi pressed it with her thumb, bent towards the small arc of cool water and drank until the heat no longer seemed pasted to the back of her throat.

The fountain gave a familiar metallic gurgle when she released the button. Water disappeared through the drain while a door slammed somewhere farther along the corridor, and students passed behind her discussing an assignment, their accents carrying different islands through the building.

Abi wiped a drop from her chin, checked the classroom number and hurried upstairs.

She arrived with less than a minute to spare.

The lecturer hadn’t started.

Of course he hadn’t.

She chose a seat two rows from the front, close enough to hear without becoming the automatic target whenever the lecturer wanted someone to answer a question. Her notebook came out first, followed by two pens and her phone, which she placed neatly beside them before finally allowing herself to look around.

The room was more crowded than she had expected. Apparently half the university had discovered the same opportunity for additional credit. Some students called to friends across the rows; others had already retreated into their phones. The room carried that particular Cave Hill mixture Abi had known for years, where a single conversation could pass through Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, St Lucia or somewhere farther north before anyone thought to ask where anybody came from.

A tall young man with long locs entered carrying a battered sketchbook beneath one arm. He scanned the room, found an empty seat several places from Abi and folded himself into it. The sketchbook was open almost immediately.

Abi glanced across and realised he wasn’t doodling. His pencil moved with quick, confident strokes, building lines into what looked like the beginnings of a house.

Well, he’s going to be useful in a lecture.

A second student arrived with a sports bag slung over his shoulder. He was considerably shorter than the man with the locs but built as though the gym occupied a permanent position somewhere between education and religion in his priorities. His T-shirt strained slightly across his shoulders when he stopped beside the empty chair.

“You saving this seat?”

The tall student looked at the chair and then back at him. “For who?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

“If I was saving it, somebody would be sitting there?”

The shorter man stared at him for a moment before laughing.

“Belize?”

The pencil stopped. “How you know?”

“Accent.”

“Trinidad?”

“How you know?”

“Accent.”

That was apparently enough to establish diplomatic relations. The Trinidadian dropped into the chair, and within minutes the two of them were talking as though they had met somewhere before and simply forgotten about it.

Abi returned to her notebook, although she found herself looking up again when a tall woman entered carrying a folder beneath one arm. Her long, straight dark hair fell well below her shoulders, and there was something about the way she walked into the room that made Abi think she was accustomed to knowing exactly where she was going. She chose a seat near the aisle, opened the course outline before she had fully settled and frowned.

Abi noticed the expression immediately.

The woman raised her hand.

The lecturer, who was still arranging papers at the front, looked up. “We haven’t started yet.”

“I know. I have a question about the assessment weighting.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the room.

The lecturer regarded her for a moment. “Perhaps I should introduce myself first.”

“That would probably be appropriate.”

The laughter grew louder, and even the lecturer smiled.

“You’re Jamaican.”

“Kingston.”

“I would never have guessed.”

For the first time, the woman’s expression softened.

Abi liked her immediately. She also suspected that liking her might eventually prove exhausting.

The last student to catch Abi’s attention arrived carrying enough technology to make her look as though she had come to document the course rather than take it. She was plus-sized, with round tortoiseshell glasses, a camera hanging from a strap across her body and a tablet tucked beneath one arm. Before entering, she paused at the doorway, raised the camera and photographed something outside.

The lecturer looked pointedly at the camera when she lowered it.

“No photographs during the lecture without permission.”

“I wasn’t photographing you.”

“I don’t know whether to be relieved or offended.”

“Relieved, probably.”

The room broke into laughter again.

“Since everyone appears determined to establish their personalities before I establish the course,” the lecturer said, waiting for the noise to settle, “perhaps we should begin.”

He introduced himself as Dr Adrian Clarke and confirmed what Abi suspected: some students were there because they were genuinely interested in Caribbean history and regional identity, while others had seen the words ‘additional credit’ and suddenly discovered a passion for regional studies.

Abi kept her expression neutral while several people around her laughed.

“I don’t particularly care why you came,” Dr Clarke said. “I care whether the way you think changes when you leave.”

That was the first thing he said that made Abi put down her pen and look directly at him.

He moved away from the lectern. “Let’s begin with something simple. What is the Caribbean?”

The question produced answers immediately. Geography came first, until Dr Clarke pointed out that Belize complicated that definition. Culture followed, which led him to ask whose culture it was. Shared history produced questions about which history, while colonialism led to different colonial powers, and slavery opened a discussion far too broad to contain within a single definition.

What should have been a simple question became increasingly difficult, and Abi found herself enjoying the confusion more than she expected. Every definition seemed to leave somebody outside who unquestionably belonged within it. The Caribbean was geography until it wasn’t, language until one remembered how many languages it contained, history until one considered how differently that history had unfolded, and culture until someone tried to define exactly what Caribbean culture meant.

Dr Clarke appeared delighted.

“Good. So now that we cannot agree on what the Caribbean is, perhaps someone can tell me why generations of politicians have believed they could unite it.”

That was when the room really came alive.

CARICOM entered the discussion, followed by the West Indies Federation, independence, sovereignty, currency, immigration, language, national pride and the small-island rivalries everybody claimed were harmless until someone insulted the wrong island.

Abi began taking notes despite having promised herself that this elective would receive only the effort necessary for a respectable grade.

The tall Jamaican woman was explaining that cultural affinity could not simply be translated into political integration when the Trinidadian student interrupted from behind her.

“The economics don’t make sense either.”

She turned. “Which economics?”

“The economics of being separate.”

“That wasn’t what I said.”

“I know. I’m saying there’s another problem.”

Dr Clarke pointed towards him. “Name?”

“Dario Maharaj.”

“Trinidad and Tobago?”

“Yes.”

“Explain.”

Dario leaned forward, resting his forearms against the desk. “We talk about sovereignty as though every Caribbean economy is operating independently, but we’re not. Most of us import heavily. We depend on outside markets, outside banks, outside shipping, and outside investment. So when we talk about economic independence, what exactly are we protecting?”

The Jamaican woman turned fully towards him. “Political sovereignty and economic dependency are not the same thing.”

“I didn’t say they were.”

“You implied it.”

“No. You inferred it.”

The room reacted with the collective murmur of people delighted to discover an argument they could enjoy without participating in it.

Dr Clarke grinned. “Your name?”

“Elizabeth Chambers.”

“Jamaica?”

“Obviously.”

Dario laughed.

Elizabeth didn’t.

The Belizean student had continued drawing throughout the exchange, although Abi noticed that his pencil slowed whenever somebody made an interesting point.

Dr Clarke noticed too. “And you?”

The pencil stopped.

“Me?”

“The artist.”

“Antonio Reyes. Tony.”

“Where are you from, Tony?”

“Belize.”

“And do you have an opinion about Caribbean unity?”

Tony looked at the page as though the answer might be somewhere among his pencil lines. When he finally looked up, he said, “West Indies cricket.”

Several students laughed, but Dr Clarke folded his arms.

“What about it?”

“We come together for cricket.”

“Sometimes badly,” somebody called from the back.

Tony smiled. “Still come together.”

Dr Clarke nodded for him to continue.

Tony glanced around, apparently only now realising that the room was waiting for him. “We spend plenty of time explaining why we can’t be one thing. Different governments, different languages, different histories, whatever. But put West Indies on a cricket shirt and suddenly everybody understands what it means.”

Elizabeth turned towards him. “A cricket team doesn’t require shared sovereignty, taxation, immigration policy or a constitution.”

Tony listened to the list with growing amusement. “You always do this?”

“Do what?”

“Answer questions nobody asked yet?”

Dario covered his mouth, badly disguising a laugh. Abi couldn’t help joining him.

For half a second, Elizabeth stared at Tony, and then the corner of her mouth betrayed her.

“I’m not saying cricket is government,” Tony continued. “I’m saying the feeling already exists. If Caribbean people can come together as one people for cricket, why can’t we come together where it actually decides how people live?”

Something changed in the room.

Abi couldn’t have explained what it was. The air-conditioning continued humming; somebody shifted a chair near the back, and sunlight still pressed against the windows, but the discussion no longer felt like students throwing ideas around for the entertainment of a lecturer.

From the back came the voice of the woman with the camera.

“Maybe because we’re waiting for governments to tell us we’re Caribbean.”

Dr Clarke turned. “Name?”

“Keisha Thomas. Barbados.”

“What do you mean?”

Keisha rested the camera across her lap. “Music doesn’t wait for government. Food doesn’t. Language doesn’t. Somebody in Barbados hears a Trinidad song tonight, and by tomorrow everybody knows it. Jamaican music goes everywhere. People marry people from other islands. Families live all over the region and outside it. Maybe people are already more connected than the systems are.”

Abi turned in her seat to look at her properly.

That was interesting.

Dario immediately seized on it. “Exactly, because the systems cost us money.”

Elizabeth sighed. “You’ve returned to economics.”

“Economics always returns.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means if my mother sends money to Grenada and part of it disappears in fees to a company outside the region, somebody designed that system. If two islands next to each other import the same thing from thousands of miles away because there’s no efficient way to trade with each other, somebody designed that too.”

Tony turned his sketchbook around.

The building had disappeared. In its place was a rough map of the Caribbean, islands connected by pencil lines that looked like shipping routes, flight paths and something Abi could not yet identify.

She leaned sideways for a better look.

Dr Clarke caught her doing it.

“You’ve been very quiet.”

“I’ve been listening.”

“That’s becoming a rare academic skill. Abigail Alleyne, isn’t it?”

“Abi.”

“Barbados?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

Abi looked again at Tony’s map. She had been trying to decide what bothered her about the discussion, and suddenly she knew.

“I think everybody’s starting in the wrong place.”

Dario pressed a hand theatrically against his chest, but Abi barely noticed him now.

“Where would you start?” Dr Clarke asked.

“With what people actually need. Everybody starts talking about presidents, constitutions and flags the minute somebody says Caribbean unity, but none of that tells me how somebody gets from one island to another when they need to.”

Tony’s pencil touched the paper again.

Abi could see the problems now, one after another, the way she always did when something complicated finally began arranging itself in her head. “How does food move? What happens when a hurricane destroys crops on one island but another has a surplus? How does medicine get where it needs to go? Could electricity be shared? Could somebody’s qualifications be recognised somewhere else? What happens if you need medical treatment on another island? How do people send money without losing part of it? What happens when two people are Caribbean but can’t understand each other’s language?”

When she stopped, Keisha was watching her with an expression Abi couldn’t quite read.

“Maybe the question isn’t whether the Caribbean can become one nation,” Abi said.

Elizabeth frowned. “Then what’s the question?”

Abi looked from her to Tony’s map, then towards Dario and Keisha. “What would have to work as though we already were one?”

For several seconds nobody said anything.

Then Dario nodded. “That’s a better question.”

Elizabeth looked at him. “You just agreed with someone.”

“Don’t make it a thing.”

Tony laughed, and Dr Clarke walked back towards the lectern with the unmistakable expression of a lecturer who had just discovered that his students had done part of his work for him.

“I had intended to explain your first group assignment today.”

The groan from the room was immediate.

“However, five of you have just volunteered to make my life easier.”

Abi knew what was coming before he said their names.

“No,” she murmured.

Keisha laughed from the back.

“Abigail. Antonio. Dario. Elizabeth. Keisha.”

“This feels punitive,” Dario said.

“It probably will be.”

Their assignment was to examine a practical issue affecting Caribbean regional development and produce an eight-thousand-word report followed by a forty-five-minute presentation. Elizabeth managed to extract the word count, referencing requirements and presentation length before Dr Clarke had finished explaining the task, prompting Dario to ask whether she was physically capable of allowing another human being to finish a sentence.

“I like information,” she told him.

“I noticed,” Tony murmured.

Elizabeth heard him.

The look she gave him promised that the group assignment would not be dull.

Dr Clarke turned to the board and wrote in large letters:

IF THE CARIBBEAN CAN UNITE FOR CRICKET, WHY NOT FOR EVERYTHING ELSE?

Abi stared at the words while the others continued talking around her. The question was enormous, the sort of question that concealed hundreds of smaller problems beneath a sentence simple enough to fit on a whiteboard. Ordinarily she would have narrowed it immediately, divided it into manageable sections and made everybody choose one.

Instead, she found herself wondering what would happen if they didn’t make it smaller.

When Dr Clarke eventually dismissed them, the five emerged from the building with the rest of the class and immediately discovered that being assigned to a group did not automatically make them behave like one. Tony started towards one path, Dario towards another, Elizabeth was checking the time as though she had somewhere important to be, and Keisha had already taken out her phone.

“Wait,” Abi called.

All four stopped.

Dario looked back at her. “That sounded like an instruction.”

“It was.”

Something about his grin told Abi that he was going to enjoy annoying her.

“We need each other’s numbers before everybody disappears.”

“We just finished class,” Elizabeth said.

“Exactly. Which means if we don’t arrange something now, somebody will wait until midnight the day before we’re supposed to meet.”

Abi didn’t mean to look at Dario.

At least, she didn’t think she did.

He put a hand against his chest. “Why are you looking at me?”

“I wasn’t.”

“You absolutely were.”

Keisha laughed and held up her phone. “I’ll make the group chat.”

They walked together towards the courtyard while trying to find a meeting time that didn’t collide with somebody’s life. Thursday was rejected because Dario had the gym, which made Elizabeth ask whether the gym could survive one evening without him.

“The gym isn’t the one I’m worried about,” he told her.

Friday was impossible for Keisha because she had a shoot. Abi suggested Saturday morning and received four expressions that ranged from disappointment to outright betrayal.

“Saturday afternoon, then.”

They reached the courtyard before anyone answered.

At its centre stood a broad decorative water fountain, completely different from the little stainless-steel drinking fountain Abi had used inside the building before class. This one had no practical purpose beyond making the courtyard pleasant. A raised stone centre supported several shallow tiers, and water spilt continuously from one level to the next before falling into the wide basin below. Students often sat along its edge between lectures, particularly later in the afternoon when nearby buildings cast enough shade to make the stone bearable.

Tony dropped his bag beside the fountain and sat on the rim.

“Two o’clock?”

Dario made a face. “I can do two.”

“After the gym, presumably,” Elizabeth said.

“You say that like taking care of yourself is a character defect.”

“Not at all. Talking about it every six minutes may be.”

Keisha laughed and sat beside Tony, the camera resting against her stomach. “Two is fine for me.”

Abi remained standing. “Good. Saturday at two.”

“Look at that,” Dario said. “Democracy.”

“Nobody voted,” Tony pointed out.

“Exactly.”

Keisha had already opened a new chat. “What are we calling this?”

“Group Three,” Abi said.

Keisha looked up at her with genuine disappointment. “No.”

“What’s wrong with Group Three?”

“Everything.”

“United States of the Caribbean,” Dario suggested.

Elizabeth didn’t even hesitate. “Absolutely not.”

“West Indies Government,” Tony offered.

“No.”

“Caribbean Avengers.”

“No.”

“Four People Liz Doesn’t Like.”

Keisha’s laugh burst across the courtyard loudly enough that two students passing nearby looked over.

Elizabeth folded her arms. “We’ve known each other for less than two hours.”

“And already the evidence is compelling.”

Even Elizabeth laughed at that, although she tried to hide it by looking away.

Abi found herself smiling too. An hour earlier, these people had been strangers she happened to notice entering a classroom. Now she was standing beside a fountain arranging a Saturday meeting with them, and somehow Dario had already appointed himself the person most likely to irritate Elizabeth; Tony was encouraging him, and Keisha was documenting the whole thing as though she suspected they might someday want proof that it happened.

Tony nodded towards the question Keisha had typed into her notes.

“Cricket and Nations.”

Keisha considered it, then smiled. “I like that.”

Five phones vibrated within seconds.

Keisha created the group “Cricket & Nations”.

Abi looked at the notification. “Fine.”

“That may be the most enthusiasm we’ve had from you all afternoon,” Keisha said.

“I’m enthusiastic.”

Dario looked at Tony. “You believe her?”

“Not even a little.”

Abi opened her mouth to answer, but something cold touched the back of her hand.

She looked down.

A drop of water rested against her skin.

Her first thought was that the fountain had splashed her, although she was standing too far from the basin for that to make much sense. She wiped it away with her thumb and returned her attention to the conversation.

Dario and Tony had already moved on.

“I’m telling you,” Dario said, “transport doesn’t work without financing.”

“And financing doesn’t carry a box across water,” Tony replied.

“It pays for the boat.”

“What if somebody already has the boat?”

“Then you pay them.”

“Maybe they’ll help.”

Dario stared at him. “That’s your economic model? Maybe people will help?”

“People do.”

“Until fuel costs money.”

Elizabeth stepped between them verbally before either could continue. “Both of you are arguing about implementation before establishing a legal framework. You cannot simply move commercial goods between sovereign states because Tony found a fisherman with a good heart.”

Tony considered that seriously. “What if he has a really good boat?”

Keisha raised her camera.

“Don’t move.”

Elizabeth immediately looked at her. “Do not photograph me.”

“I’m not photographing you.”

“You are pointing the camera directly at us.”

“I’m capturing a moment.”

“Capture somebody else.”

Keisha laughed and stepped backwards, bringing Tony and Dario into frame as they continued arguing.

Abi heard the fountain change.

It wasn’t louder.

That was what made her notice.

The steady splash of water over stone remained exactly the same, but beneath it came another sound, softer and lower, like water moving through a narrow channel.

She turned towards the basin.

For a moment she couldn’t see anything unusual.

Then the surface moved.

The breeze crossed the courtyard from Abi’s right, visible in the movement of Keisha’s loose blouse and in the leaves shifting above the benches. Ripples should have travelled with it.

Instead, a narrow disturbance moved against the breeze.

Straight towards Abi.

She forgot Dario’s voice halfway through a sentence.

The current crossed the basin with an almost deliberate steadiness, separating itself from the ordinary ripples until it reached the stone directly in front of her.

Abi stared.

The water touched the edge.

Stopped.

“Abi?”

Keisha’s voice seemed to come from much farther away than the few metres separating them.

Abi didn’t answer.

The water began moving again.

Not across the basin this time.

Up.

Only slightly. A swelling beneath the surface, perhaps no more than a few centimetres, but enough to make Abi step backwards.

The courtyard seemed to recede around her. Tony was saying something to Dario. Elizabeth answered. Keisha laughed. Students passed beyond them. Yet all of those sounds became muffled, as though Abi had somehow put her head beneath water without moving.

Then she heard the woman.

Singing.

There were no words Abi could understand, only a low melody woven into the sound of the fountain. It wasn’t coming from somewhere beyond the courtyard. She knew that with the irrational certainty with which people sometimes knew things they could never prove.

It was coming from the water.

Her mouth went dry.

The melody changed.

Something inside Abi responded before fear could. A strange ache opened behind her ribs, not painful exactly, but familiar in a way that frightened her more than the singing itself. For the briefest instant she remembered being a little girl standing ankle-deep at the beach while her mother shouted for her to come back because the water was getting rough. She remembered knowing, somehow, that the sea wasn’t angry.

She hadn’t thought about that day in years.

“Abi.”

This time Tony’s voice reached her.

She blinked.

The courtyard rushed back.

Dario was staring at her.

“You all right?”

Abi looked from him to the fountain.

Ordinary water spilt from one tier to another.

“Yeah.”

“You sure?” Keisha asked.

“Yeah. I just…” Abi rubbed the back of her hand where the cold drop had touched her. “Thought I heard something.”

Dario glanced around. “Like what?”

Abi almost said a woman singing from inside the fountain.

Instead, she shook her head. “Nothing.”

Keisha was still holding the camera.

“Wait,” she said.

Her expression had changed.

“What?” Elizabeth asked.

Keisha looked at the camera’s screen.

“I took that while you all were arguing.”

“So?” Dario asked.

Keisha didn’t answer immediately.

She enlarged the image with her thumb.

Abi felt the cold sensation return to the back of her hand.

“Keisha?”

“Come here.”

They gathered around her.

The photograph showed Dario in the foreground, one hand raised in the middle of whatever economic argument he had been making. Tony sat on the fountain’s edge, smiling at him, while Elizabeth stood to one side with an expression that suggested she had already identified seventeen flaws in both men’s reasoning.

Abi stood behind them.

Beside the fountain.

She remembered exactly where she had been when Keisha took the photograph.

What she did not remember was the water behind her looking like that.

A pale blur rose from the basin, too tall to be an ordinary splash and too narrow to be the spray from the fountain’s upper tiers.

Dario leaned closer.

“Lens flare.”

Keisha shook her head. “That’s not lens flare.”

“Moving water, then.”

“I know how moving water photographs.”

Elizabeth held out her hand. “Let me see.”

Keisha passed her the camera.

Abi didn’t move.

Elizabeth enlarged the image.

The blur lost definition as the pixels separated, but for one uncomfortable moment Abi could see what her mind had been trying not to recognise.

Something that resembled a shoulder.

A head tilted slightly.

Long hair.

Behind her.

Tony stopped smiling.

“What is that?”

“Nothing,” Abi said too quickly.

Four faces turned towards her.

She forced a laugh. “It’s water. It’s a fountain. Water moves.”

Keisha looked from the photograph to the basin.

“Not like that.”

A breeze moved through the courtyard.

The fountain continued spilling peacefully over stone.

Abi wanted to tell them about the current moving towards her. She wanted to ask whether anyone else had heard the singing. Instead, she suddenly felt foolish. She had known these people for less than two hours. She wasn’t about to introduce herself properly by announcing that decorative fountains sang to her.

Dario broke the tension first.

“Well, if a ghost joins the group, I’m not doing its part of the assignment.”

Tony laughed.

Keisha lowered the camera.

Even Elizabeth smiled.

The moment loosened.

Abi was grateful for that.

Within another few minutes, they confirmed Saturday at two, argued about where they would meet and finally began heading towards their separate lives. Dario genuinely did go to the gym. Elizabeth had another lecture. Tony slung the battered sketchbook beneath his arm and headed towards another part of campus.

Keisha lingered.

“You sure you’re okay?”

Abi looked at the fountain.

“Fine.”

Keisha studied her for a moment, perhaps deciding whether to push.

She didn’t.

“Saturday.”

“Saturday.”

Keisha walked away, then turned around and began walking backwards.

Abi pointed at her. “You’re going to walk into somebody.”

“I haven’t yet.”

“You will.”

“Then you can organise the ambulance.”

Abi laughed despite herself.

Keisha grinned, turned and disappeared into the stream of students.

Only then did Abi look back at the decorative fountain.

For several seconds nothing happened.

She almost felt relieved.

Then one small ripple formed at the centre of the basin.

It travelled towards her.

Abi left.

By the time she reached home, she had almost convinced herself that the photograph had been nothing more than moving water caught at an unfortunate angle. Keisha’s camera had frozen a fraction of a second the human eye had missed; that was all. The singing could have come from someone’s phone. The strange current might have been caused by one of the fountain’s pumps.

There were explanations for things.

There were always explanations.

She changed, found something to eat and sat at her desk with her laptop, grateful for the familiar comfort of a problem she could actually organise. She created a folder for CARIBBEAN STUDIES 201, then added separate folders for research, sources, meeting notes and presentation material. After considering them for a moment, she created one more for tasks and deadlines.

That felt better.

She opened a blank document and rested her fingers against the keyboard.

Tony’s question came back first, followed by Dario talking about money leaving the region, Elizabeth dismantling every simplistic political assumption anyone offered, and Keisha saying that Caribbean people were already crossing cultural borders without waiting for governments to approve it.

Then Abi remembered her own question.

What would have to work as though they were already one?

She typed Working Project Question, stared at it, deleted the heading and began again.

If the Caribbean can come together for cricket, why can’t it come together as one nation?

The sentence sat on the screen looking much more confident than she felt about it. It was too ambitious, probably naïve and certainly too broad for an eight-thousand-word assignment. She should narrow it before Saturday. She should break it into something measurable, defensible and manageable.

Instead, she saved the document.

Her phone vibrated beside the laptop.

Cricket & Nations

Tony: Saturday 2?

Dario: After gym.

Elizabeth: We know.

Keisha: 😂

Abi smiled and typed:

Saturday, 2 p.m. Don’t be late.

Dario answered almost immediately.

She’s already managing us.

Tony: Somebody has to.

Keisha: I like her.

A few seconds passed before Elizabeth added:

2 p.m. confirmed.

Abi was still smiling when another notification appeared.

Keisha had uploaded the photograph from the courtyard.

This time nobody made a joke.

Abi opened it.

She zoomed in until the image began breaking into pixels.

The shape remained behind her.

She closed the photograph and put the phone face down.

Outside, Barbados was settling into evening. The worst of the day’s heat had begun to lift, and somewhere nearby a dog barked at a passing car while a television played loudly through an open window. These were ordinary sounds, familiar enough that Abi could place herself inside them without thinking.

Then she heard water.

She lifted her head.

A faint trickling came from somewhere inside the house.

Abi went first to the kitchen. The tap was closed. She checked the bathroom, then the shower, pressing each handle to make certain nothing had been left running.

The sound stopped.

She stood in the hallway listening to the silence.

“You’re being stupid,” she murmured.

Saying it aloud helped.

A little.

She returned to the bedroom, closed the laptop and switched off the light.

For a few seconds she stood beside the window looking towards a darkness that concealed most of the island beyond the neighbouring houses. The Caribbean Sea was nowhere near enough for her to hear it from there.

She knew that.

She had lived in Barbados all her life.

She knew the difference between a tap, a drain, rainwater, a fountain and the sea.

Yet when she climbed into bed, she heard the woman’s melody again, so faint that it seemed to exist somewhere between memory and sound.

This time Abi didn’t get up to check anything.

She lay still and listened until she fell asleep.

Delete

Caribbean Journal

Merle Brathwaite, 71 — Retired Schoolteacher, Bridgetown, Barbados

My granddaughter came home from Cave Hill this evening talking so fast I had to tell her to slow down before she swallowed her own tongue. Apparently there was a discussion in one of her classes about Caribbean unity, and five students got themselves worked up over why we can stand behind the same West Indies cricket team but struggle to imagine doing much else together.

I laughed when she told me because there is nothing new about Caribbean people dreaming of unity. When I was young, I heard grown people talk about Federation with a seriousness children were expected not to interrupt. I didn’t understand all the politics, but I understood the excitement. You could hear it in people’s voices. They spoke as though something larger than all these little islands might finally belong to us.

Then it fell apart.

Afterwards, everybody had a reason, and everybody had somebody to blame. The politicians blamed one another, ordinary people blamed the politicians, and eventually life became busy enough that most people stopped talking about what might have been. Other organisations came afterwards, other treaties and meetings, and some of them did good work, but that old dream never quite returned in the same way.

So I was only half listening when my granddaughter started telling me about these students.

Then she said they weren’t talking about a president or a flag.

They were talking about boats.

Food.

Electricity.

Medicine.

How people travel.

How somebody on one island might have what another island needs.

That made me put down what I was doing.

Perhaps nothing will come of it. University students are supposed to imagine things bigger than themselves. The world usually teaches them to make those dreams smaller soon enough.

Still, I find myself thinking about those five young people tonight, whoever they are.

Every generation deserves the chance to ask an old question without inheriting all the reasons the generation before them decided the answer was no.

Maybe that is how things change.

Not because somebody discovers a question nobody ever asked before, but because somebody finally refuses to accept the old answer.