Remember
By
Charlotte Brock
Picture the globe; in the center, the heart, the source, is Africa, tropical rainforest green, gold of desert sands, primal blood red. See the Equator, bisecting the continent just below her shoulders, through her chest. North of that line, and west of Africa herself, are a dozen tiny islands, nearly lost in the vast Atlantic Ocean.
That is Cape Verde.
Do you remember when we arrived to our new home? We flew from Dakar to an island named, quite aptly, ÒSalt.Ó Stepping off the small bi-rotary airplane, the heat hit us first, then the flies, huge, black, buzzing flies that landed on us and would not leave. ÒSalÓ (for that was its Portuguese name) was a stretch of sand barely sticking out of the ocean, covered with salt mines, a few hotels, and the countryÕs only international airport. The beach, we discovered later, went on forever, a line where white gold met deep indigo, and where we children delighted in searching for miraculous sand dollars. (Even broken, these perfect artifacts of the sea held a surprise: tiny fragments of shell in the shape of doves).
Another short flight brought us to Santiago, the largest island, where the capital, Praia, was located. Do you remember our house? The biggest on the island next to the PresidentÕs, as we were so often told. An imposing rectangular block of stone and granite, held together with fragile cement made of ground stone and salt water. A house full of severe corners and straight angles; the staircase was a series of cold granite slabs with gaps of air separating each one. Did you slip on them as often as I did? Do you remember how sharp and hard they were on your knees, your hands? The house was huge, with six bedrooms upstairs, and downstairs a living room that was a ballroom to four little girls.
Remember the view: earth in the back, air in the front. The house stood between two cliffs: one, a wall of dirt and pebbles that rose behind the gray cube we called home; the other, right across the cobble-stoned street, a steep slope of boulders and hardened lava that led down to the ocean. Behind us, the land, the people, the villages, the poverty of a country that lived off fishing and stone cobbling. To our front, the ocean, the sky, and beyond, way beyond, somewhere across the horizon, other countries, other lands, the world that went on without us for almost four years.
In Cape Verde, the sky was never blue, but yellowish-brown. For the first two years we were there, it did not rain. Instead of humidity, sand and dust were the only offerings from the mainland, air-shipped with kindest regards all the way from the Sahara. The islands became large specks of dust floating between Africa and the new world, their name all too ironic. There was no green on the green cape. Only small tan shrubs survived the drought, and a few thorny, dry trees like the acacia.
Do you remember how we spent our days? The first year we were there, our father made us go to the local school. Since there was one building and many children, school lasted only a few hours, so that children could learn to read and write on a rotating basis. We were dropped off by the embassy driver, wearing our American clothes and backpacks, into the courtyard where the other children stared as if we had just stepped down from the moon. They had had to scrounge shoes and shirts in order to be allowed into the one-room schoolhouse.
Do you remember the games we played? What an imagination you had! Two and a half years older than I, you were always the leader in our make-believe worlds. When it was hottest outside, the sun blazing through the dust clouds, we would gather all the stuffed animals and dolls in the house and lock ourselves into our parentsÕ bedroom. With the air conditioner turned all the way up, we would escape toÉ The North Pole. Our bears and dollies were our babies who might die of cold very quickly if we didnÕt somehow save them. Abandoned by cruel, uncaring men, left without food or shelter in the middle of a glacier during a snowstorm, our maternal love and our innate goodness were our only salvation. With igloos of pillows and blankets keeping in our body heat (and the stuffed animalsÕ), we would huddle around our babies, and you would narrate our endless saga of loss and death, hope and survival, in the coldest, starkest region of the planet.
I know you remember our strikes Ð actual demonstrations against our parents and the cook because we were sick of the twice-a-day FISH IN TOMATO SAUCE. It was all we ever ate, fish in tomato sauce, fish in tomato sauce. You complained about it so much, and to no avail, that finally you led us in a rebellion against the despotic regimen that brought us such bad food. You organized us, commanded us to help you make posters that read loud and clear ÒNo more FISH IN TOMATO SAUCE!!!Ó and led us as we marched (or tottered, in the case of the baby) into the kitchen at lunch time, thrusting our signs and chanting our powerful political slogan, agents for change.
Do you remember when you baked a cake, by yourself, and wanted to give it to a new friend who lived a few miles away? We told no one, and headed out the back door, scaled the cliff, and set off, bearing our warm offering. We soon found ourselves surrounded by young boys who teased us, pulled our fair hair, laughed at our ridiculously pale skin. We tried to ignore them, tried to continue on our journey, but more and more small brown bodies blocked our way. In the muddle, we were separated and I found myself in the middle of a tightening circle of laughing, pointing, nearly naked youths, who spoke a Creole not taught in school. The tallest and boldest grabbed me and kissed me full on the lips; appalled, I shoved him away and ran, ran.
What happened then? Do you remember?
Remember, remember: the daily excursions to the beach, a beach of black, volcanic sand (how hot the sand was under our bare feet); the giant grasshopper invasion (how heavy they were, landing on our shoulders and heads, and how they devoured everything in sight); the trips on the Embassy sailboat (how high the waves could be, how sea-sick the passengers got, how breathtaking it was when white porpoises swam right beneath us, following us like guardian angels); the first rainy season in years (how we danced and laughed in the rain, wearing only our bathing suits, how the sudden rains caused flooding and outbreaks of disease and daily processions in the streets, with small caskets and wailing crowds).
Do you remember the lighthouse a few kilometers from our house, on a thin outcropping of cliff far above the breaking waves, the lighthouse we would walk to on a path cut into a field of swaying golden grasses, the lighthouse that we would walk to in the blue hour before dark with our parents, our parents walking together while I ran ahead into the field, flying over the field, flying ever faster ahead of them, past them, alone, leaving all of you as I flew amid the endless golden grasses?
Charlotte M. Brock is a Marine Officer. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, of a French mother and American father, she was raised in Jamaica, South Korea, the Cape Verde Islands, Washington, D.C., France, Mexico, and West Africa. Charlotte attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Peace, War and Defense in May 2002. During college, she participated in Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps upon graduation. She was stationed in Camp Pendleton, California, and deployed twice: with the 1st Force Service Support Group in 2004 and with Multi-National Corps-Iraq in 2005. She is currently stationed at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina.