Because
I had already finished my ethnomusicology research paper and sunburned my fair
skin enough times to not mind the sting and interviewed so many
"locals" about solid waste management that I felt I was assuming
superiority, I agreed, a restless eighteen-year-old girl with wild hair
bleached blonde by the sea salt, to beach hop in Jamaica, where anxiety does
not live and the sky is a vibrant blue or tangerine or pink and the people want
to count your freckles. There I
would learn to be idle, there with the reggae music blasting from plantain
carts, there with the three kinds of jerk chicken spice, there with the
graffiti reminders to "calm dem down," there with the skateboarders
and the drug dealers and the hair braiders and the bartenders and the pig
farmers and the tour guides.
I
went, wary of Caribbean tourist culture. I asserted myself as a sailing research student with S.E.A. Semester, not a spoiled
brat runaway. I had never surfed,
had never jumped off a cliff into rolling teal waters, had never smoked ganja,
had never climbed a Banyan tree with branches hovering over a cold lagoon, had
never kicked a coral reef bed and feared resulting barracuda attacks as my
blood mingled with the cobalt blue depths. I brought Band-Aids for the cut on my foot and sunblock to
reapply after swimming in every famous beach on Port Antonio. Long Bay, Boston Bay, Annotto Bay. Seashells and sea glass replaced the
sandwiches that had filled my backpack.
Father
Tick Tock picked up a piece of aqua-colored sea glass from the sand. The dusty pink flesh of his palm
covered the edges of the piece. The
opaque, pockmarked glass glinted.
He looked like he held a piece of hard and dusty sky.
"For
you," he gestured. I combed a
stray ringlet behind my ear and shyly smiled, accepting. "Whah you gonn' do with the
glass?"
"I
don't know yet," I shrugged, looking down at the sand to avoid staring at
his eye patch and bare chest.
"It's
deh prettiest garbage we 'ave," he boasted. "I'm Sean.
Some call me Father Tick Tock.
What's your name?"
"Aliza,"
I replied. I began walking
away. He kept my pace,
occasionally straying to pick up a glittering piece of glass. After a few minutes of silent
collecting, he offered me marijuana.
I explained that I was sailing under strict coast guard regulations. He asked about my oceanographic
research on marine debris and solid waste management systems. I asked him for the story behind his
name.
"My
name? There is no story. Oh, wait.
Yea man. So I had a bag filled with ganja, right. Four pounds. No, four kilos. And the police, they come an'
take me arms." He crossed his
arms, clutching an invisible bag. "I go like this"--he flung his arms
out and with his elbows tight began to flap--"and fly away. So my friends
call me Father Tick Tock. I'm still running from the police and time..."
His story faded there.
I
nodded. Most likely the actual
event connected less with Father Tick Tock than the friend who christened him. The sun-blasted garbage, carelessly
tossed beer bottles and jam jars and food containers from Jamaica, other
Caribbean islands, or anywhere in the path of the Sargasso Sea's current,
tinkled in Father Tick Tock's hand.
I
refused the ring he twisted from a guava root for me. I refused the ziplock bag of marijuana. I refused his phone number. I refused his offer to dreadlock my
hair, already tangled by humidity.
I took his sea glass.