Page Title

Joanne Hillhouse

Antiguan Joanne C. Hillhouse (who also writes as jhohadli) is the author of two
books of fiction: The Boy from Willow Bend and Dancing Nude in the Moonlight.
A former Breadloaf fellow, her fiction and poetry have, also, appeared in Tongues
of the Ocean, Mythium, Ma Comère, The Caribbean Writer, Calabash, Sea Breeze,
Women Writers: A Zine, St. Somewhere, and more. She was awarded a 2004
UNESCO Honour Award for her contribution to literacy and the literary arts in
Antigua and Barbuda. Among her projects are the Wadadli Youth Pen Prize. She’s
a freelance writer, journalist, editorial consultant, and producer (having worked in
print, film, and TV). For more, visit www.jhohadli.com

At Sea

, by

Joanne C. Hillhouse

The day was bleak. Not unlike the aura surrounding the man, Rita’s father,

Who sat, hunched, in that raggedy old beach chair

Who seemed as much a part of the beach as the coconut trees and like them had defeated hurricane
after hurricane

Who leaned, as they did, toward the sea, as though it called to him

From ‘Cap’s Fish Shack,’ the sandy-floored ‘restaurant’ her parents had owned as long as she’d
known herself, Rita watched him – seasoning on her fingers, fish guts in the bucket at her bare
feet.

Lucille, the fish boat named for her mother, leaned, rejected, further up the beach.

Rita bought most of their fish these days off lesser fishermen than her father. He didn’t go out to
sea anymore; not since six months ago when Lucille and his childhood friend Rudie had died
within weeks of each other.

Rudie, a leading politician, had been slashed to death, with a cutlass, in his own bed by a 19-year-
old boy currently serving time behind the big red gate at 1735. Some said it was robbery, some
whispered it was something else.

Her mother’s passing had been more of a whimper, the most recent aftershock of an earthquake
of a stroke that had condemned her to a kind of half-life two years ago. That was the same year
Rita – long single, her girls off at U.S. Universities – had taken over the restaurant.

And here they both were, father and daughter; waiting.

Her father was new to waiting. Rita was on intimate terms with this unsatisfying lover;

Waiting for life’s grand adventure
Waiting for the loneliness and fear to have their fill of her
Waiting for her children’s father to return

The divorce had come only eight years and two daughters into her marriage; and Rita still felt the
pain, sharp and persistent like a bladder on the back of the foot.

Long years of waiting and dreaming in

Grey as dead as the scene before her
Grey the colour of her eyes, her father’s eyes
Grey that had lost its sparkle

Cap, Rita’s father, had once been the adventurous hero of their little seaside village: braving
storm, hauling fish pots and telling at-sea fables while roasting fish over a grill made from an old
oil drum in the ‘Shack’s’ backyard. As a child, Rita had sat on the sand, breathing the smoke
mingled with pepper and salt, face turned to the stars, wishing for romance and adventure of her
own.

How had that girl of big dreams become this little woman? She’d wondered through these many
years of half-living. And it was at her mother’s funeral, or maybe Uncle Rudie’s, that she’d
decided to make a go of things undone.

That’s how it had come to pass, her French language classes.

That’s how come He was coming here this evening.

Well, actually, he was coming for the Friday night fish fry. Rita had invited him as a kind of
challenge to herself:

He who caressed the French words like they were his lover
He who then slipped fluidly into his native West Indian tinged British accent
He who had brown-sugar-brown skin and eyes that danced like her father’s once had

Rita looked at the grey scene and dreamed of eyes that danced, as the aroma of seasoned and
seasoning fish filled her nose.