After her hands had become blistered from the rough wooden handle of the shovel, she had put it down in favor of getting dirt under her fingernails. She scooped up the dirt with her hands, piling it on the mound next the hole she had been digging. Her skin tingled in the hot sun that made the little bits of mica in the soil sparkle like coins when they catch the light. Underneath a bandana, soaked with sweat and tied too tightly around her forehead, Ema could feel the blood beating inside. She slid a dirt-caked hand across her face to wipe away a few drops, the grit gently scraping her skin.
There was a sound like someone opening a tin can, and she turned to find the iguana on the roof of the house behind her. Its claws tapped the metal as it walked, finding the perfect spot to stop and take in the sunlight. She thought he was lucky to find a place to live like the gardens, where they didn’t, like the rest of the people on the island, eat iguana soup. By his appearance she knew the sun must be at its peak.
Realizing she had been out there for half the day already, Ema stood up and pulled off the straw hat and bandana, letting both hang around her neck while she counted the holes. Twenty-two. She had two left to go, and that was a promising enough accomplishment by lunchtime.
Ema bent back down and pulled the straw hat back onto her head to shield her reddening neck and black hair that only took seconds to become hot under the sun. With more enthusiasm than she remembered having even at the beginning, she began digging again.
Before she reached the twenty-fourth hole, however, Carlos’s truck pulled into the garden entrance followed by a trail of dust. He pulled under the guava tree and stopped what seemed like inches from the shop. From the bed of the truck he began unloading the things he had picked up in town. Ema stood up, slapped her hands against her khaki pants, and left for the kitchen to see if they needed her help and to try to score a johnny-cake for lunch.
Tourists gathered around the center garden as she passed. All of them seemed to ignore her, and she smiled at this. She enjoyed the thought of finally blending in. Of not being part of the attraction anymore. Even as she opened the screen door and passed down the hall, the rest of Annah’s family didn’t look up quickly to catch someone peeking out back, or call out over their shoulders, as they stirred boiling pots of oil, “who’s there?” anymore. At the back of the shop, Renada sat tying labels with ribbon onto bars of soap and curling the ends with scissors. Her friend, Stefania, looked up from the radio she was fiddling with to say “hi” and then “hola” and then “bon dia”, all in quick succession.
“Hola,” Ema said back, bending down to pick up a bar of soap and hold it close to her nose, breathing a long breath in. “Mmm. Chocolate.”
Stef muttered something in Spanish, slamming her hand down on the top of the radio, a motion which seemed to have no real direction or purpose, other than frustration. “I’ll be back.”
Renada shrugged. “She’s not even mad at the radio. She’s mad because her mom is leaving early and so she’ll have to leave soon. We were going to practice a dance.” She shrugged again and focused on the length of the ribbon she was cutting.
“Have you seen your grandmother?” Ema asked.
“No,” Renada said. “But she should be finishing a tour soon. Then we’ll be getting ready for dinner. How does the fence look?”
Ema looked down at her boots, caked with dirt, and the khakis that had been so clean when she arrived. Finally, she thought again, although she wished she could speak more of the language. At least one of them.
“Good. I’m going to get some water and finish digging those holes. Then I’ll help with dinner.” She stood up and stepped over Renada’s legs which were tangled in ribbons of various colors. From back in the kitchen she heard music- deep bass that seemed to shake the dolls hanging on their nails in the shop. A woman’s voice that sang so fast she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to tell what she was saying even if it wasn’t in Papiemento.
As she left the kitchen, Carlos was on his way in from the front of the shop. He carried a machete in his right hand; it hung there like he had forgotten about it, grazing the ground. In his left hand he held onto a spidery tangle of yellow coconuts. His dark fingers curled around a wiry, antenna-like mass from which hung three newly ripe shells, smooth, with no indication of the hairy capsule inside.
Ema pointed with her thumb over her shoulder and raised her eyebrows, still self-conscious about saying anything but a few words in Spanish.
He smiled, then nodded his head back behind him towards the front door of the shop. Next to the shop entrance, blue walls painted with red trim, were more coconuts piled on top of a concrete bench. She pulled them free of one another and carried them, three in each hand, into the shop and then back into the kitchen. As she passed the visitors perusing the shelves, testing sprays and holding soaps up to their noses as she had done earlier, she heard a methodic thumping. Carlos had already begun hacking at the coconuts with his machete, slicing off chunks of yellow husk and eventually leaving only the brown fuzziness of the hollow nut, which he then also cut and drained of its milk. The pure white pieces were quickly gathered up by the ladies in the kitchen before Renada and Stefania had a chance to sneak in and steal them.
Annah came in from her tour holding a tray of plastic cups filled with red hibiscus tea. She left it on the counter and washed her hands under the faucet.
“How is the fence?” she asked.
Ema took a long sip of the tea and said, “Good. Almost done.”
“Carlos won’t be able to get the cactus for a couple of days.”
Ema nodded, throwing her cup in the trash and untying the bandana around her head. She retied it, trying not to pull it quite as tightly this time, and said, “I have a few holes to go.”
“Okay,” said Annah. “But you’re done for today. Go take a shower.”
Ema smiled. “You’re never going to get anything done if you keep giving your help the afternoons off.”
“You’re not my help. You’re my guest. Go.”
Ema pulled the bandana off her head again and left the kitchen through the back door. As she passed through the center garden again she could see the tour group’s bus leaving through the gate. Annah’s mother was standing beneath one of the guava trees that stood next to the exit. She was almost ninety years old, her long white hair braided and pinned on top of her head. As the bus passed, she reached her wrinkled brown hands up and began hurling the little green fruits at it.
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