The first real thing I learned about my mother was that she was dying. Just after I turned 5, she divorced my dad and disappeared from my life. And then, when I turned 7, dad died in a car accident and it was off to Granny’s for the rest of my childhood. She always told me that my mother had her reasons for leaving, and that she was far away in England, which is why she was never around. 

But two years into my life as a Trini in foreign myself (Hunter College, New York City), I got a call from Granny. She said that my mother had stage 4 breast cancer and that she wanted to see me before—well, Granny couldn’t finish the sentence. 

Then slowly, carefully, she called out a number I could ring whenever I was ready.

 1-868. 

A Trinidad number. I didn’t even bother asking how long she’d been back. Something in Granny’s voice told me my mother had never left.

The only memory I had of my mother—the earliest memory I had at all—was a good one. I was 5 years old and must have run out onto the bus route, because I remember being snatched up from the chaos of the road as a Maxi screamed past, and my mother whisking me away to the pavement, where she held me tightly in her arms and comforted me. In the only memory I have of my mother, she saved my life. At least in that moment, she loved me.

So while there were days I was angry or confused at her absence in my life, I didn’t hate her. I didn’t have to really, because by the grace of god and my grandmother’s hand, I was provided for. I made it to a good college and, for the most part, had turned out okay.

I only held off from calling because I knew reconnecting with my mother would mean finally learning the answer to that question everyone in my situation had at some point: why didn’t you want me? 

And depending on her answer, I wasn’t sure whether I’d still be Okay after.

I opted for a text.

I’ll be back for summer vacation.

And she responded with the name of the hospital she was at. Told me she’d be waiting. 

True to her word, she was still alive when my plane touched down in June. But her condition had gotten worse and it was less clear she’d be around to see me off again in August. Still, I didn’t go right away. I met friends, toured the roti shops, restocked my pepper and green seasoning to take back with me, and went beach. Granny let a week go by before she finally told me to stop the damn procrastinating and go to the hospital. So I texted my mother again and told her I’d be by the following day. 

When I finally got to the turnoff for the hospital, I couldn’t bring myself to take the exit, and I just drove past it. I circled back and must have repeated the same thing a dozen times before I decided to just keep driving without turning back. I needed to clear my head. The city roads gave way to country ones, and I was swallowed up and surrounded by a Trinidad I’d never seen before. I followed signs and roads, basically at random, until I found myself parked outside the entrance to a trail leading into Tamana Mountain.

With nowhere left to drive, I sucked in the mountain air and walked into the forest. Tamana was famous for its vast cave networks and the incredible bat population that lived there, so the trail I’d found was reasonably well maintained to accommodate the visitors that passed through. I was about half an hour into my impromptu hike when the path opened up into a beautiful natural pool. And almost as if to confirm that I’d come to the right place to clear my head: someone had tied a red ribbon around the trunk of a nutmeg tree where the path gave way to the clearing.

I was hot from the walking and the stifling post-rain humidity, so I undid my boots and stripped down to my underwear to take a dip. I laid my clothes down on the bank, where I noticed someone had arranged some herbs, flowers and roots. The leftovers, it seemed, of a bush bath: a popular ritual in certain circles of the country. Some thought a bush bath could take off maljeux, or turn one’s fortunes. That it had the power to cleanse the things you couldn’t scrub out.

I’d actually picked a few wildflowers along the way myself, including a fire-orange nutmeg flower from the base of the bow-tied tree. Typically, you were supposed to take the bush in with you, but it didn’t feel right disturbing the arrangement, so I merely added my collection to the potpourri on the bank and waded out into the water. 

It had been raining and of course, there were caves in the mountains, so there was a bit of a current, but I’d put in my hours at the community pool. I could feel out where it was strong, where it was deep, where I could find my footing and where I couldn’t. After I shook off that first shiver from the cold, I settled in a place where I needed little bounces on my tiptoes to keep my head above the surface, and then I closed my eyes, feeling the water rush over me. And then, I pushed off to where it was deeper. 

I focused on the smell of the forest, the sound of the water, and let out a deep sigh I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in. I could feel myself bleeding into the white sound and rushing water, when suddenly it felt like something grabbed onto my foot and pulled me down. My eyes shot open and I saw a big shadow flicker and disappear into the bushes before I went under. 

The thing on my foot tugged again, stronger now. A root or a vine brought down by the rains? I jerked my leg up but that only tightened the grip—the panic making me inhale a sharp stream of river water. It felt like a cold, rubbery hand was squeezing my foot and dragging me under. Maybe it was because I felt endangered—like I needed saving—because at that moment I thought of the one memory I had of my mother. 

An unexpected calm fell over me then. I let the thing pull me under for a moment and, feeling the tension slacken, I kicked it off. It sank—heavy—into a colder, deeper part of the pool. 

With burning lungs, I shot myself back up and drank in a welcome breath of the forest air.

I couldn’t focus after that, and suddenly became aware of how cold the river was, so I made my way back to the bank, toweled off and picked the debris from my hair. The forest felt more stifling than when I’d first stepped in, and I was glad the way out was as simple as returning to the bow-tied nutmeg tree and following the trail back to my car.   

As I was leaving the clearing, I noticed a woman standing near the nutmeg tree, lining up a photo with her phone. The sound of my footsteps alerted her to my presence.

“You was swimming there?” she asked.

“Yes. Just took a dip.”

She squinted.

“Well, if it doh bother you,” she said with a shrug.

“If what doh bother me?”

“You mean you eh tie that ribbon on the tree?”

I shook my head.

“Actually, I have no idea what you talking about.”

And so, she told me this story:

There used to be a small church down here. Gone now, but popular a few years ago. Had a charismatic pastor who know how to charm his parishioners. But one day, a baby show up on he doorstep. Maybe a too-young mother know a man of god could never turn away an innocent babe. Or maybe, the rumors say, it was the Pastor own flesh and blood.

Of course, Pastor go on record with the former and turn up he nose to the rumors. 

Now part of the reason Pastor church blow up was he bush baths. Bush Baths not exactly Christian though, so he call them baptisms. And that was an attractive proposition to the parishioners: Christ Sanctioned Obeah. Cyah go to hell for that. 

And nobody could accuse Pastor of putting on a pappy show with them bush baths, because without telling nobody he take the child to the pools for a baptism. To properly welcome him into his home.

But if you going in the pools it have a system you must follow. The people in the area know about the currents, so anyone who go in was to tie a red ribbon ‘round the nutmeg tree to let everybody know they swimming. And then when they come out, you untie it.

So if anyone see the red ribbon still tied up in a bow come morning, they would know something wrong—that they should call for help. 

Well, the next day, Pastor not in his house, and the red ribbon tie tight on the tree. 

So a search party go in and find Pastor pass out cold on the riverbank. No sign of the child. It look suspicious. Of course it look suspicious. 

When he come to, he say he was giving the child a bush bath when he get pull under. Fus’ that pool –the same one you now bathe in– have a strong current as it is, but it was storm weather that day. Not an occasion for no baptism. But the good book say the strongest iron tested in the fire, right? 

So say Pastor, but still: he blame heself. But plenty other people blame him too—and not for no accident. Now Pastor had plenty sway down here, but tides could turn after something like that. People start to talk and stories start to share: about all the things they keep secret—things Pastor did get away with in the past. And then they say the police was going and get involve too. 

Well it eh take long before the Pastor gone missing, and people find the red ribbon tie ‘round the nutmeg tree again. The parishioners that still held they faith say he gone to absolve himself with a serious bush bath. Not for killing the child, but for lacking the strength to protect him. 

Big difference, they say.

This time, they find Pastor bobbing face down in the shallow water by the rocks. He was tangle up with the forest, sand and rocks in he pockets, and a vine loop around he foot like slipknot. 

People stop bathing in the pool after that. And even the most devout parishioners join back Pentecostal and decide bush bath is obeah and they swear off it for good.

The woman pulled the tail of the ribbon and undid the bow.

“But you was the only one in there, right? Must have just been some mook passing through who tie this then.”

“And wait nah,” she continued, “Ent it rain today? And you eh find the current was strong?”

I shook some of the water from my hair, watched it seep into the dirt.

“Well, at one point it feel like something was pulling me under,” I said. 

“Or trying,” she said as she walked away from me, “to pull itself up.”

Back in the car, my mind was racing and I kept wiggling my toes and scratching at my feet whenever I remembered the sensation of whatever it was that had grabbed me in the water and the story the woman had told me. And then there was my mother. Going into the bush hadn’t done much to clear my head because I couldn’t stop thinking about that moment back on the bus route. In about a half hour, I’d be meeting my mother for the first time in 15 years, but I wasn’t thinking about what I’d say or imagining what she looked like and whether it lined up with the image I had in my head. It was just that memory replaying over and over again and the nagging feeling like there was something else—something just beyond, tucked into a deeper part of my memory. I felt like I could reach out and grab it if my arms could stretch just a little further.

A blaring horn shook me out of my stupor for a moment, and I realized the turnoff to the hospital was right in front of me, and I had to pull a sharp left to make it.

“But hol’ yuh mudda—” a pedestrian shouted at me as I got much too close, swerving onto the shoulder to avoid hitting him.

I pulled into the hospital parking lot, found my spot and finally, breathed out. I told myself to calm down. And then it came to me. What must have been the precursor to the only memory I had of my mother.

We were standing on the side of the bus route in front of Morvant, where Red Band Maxis flew up and down the interminable roads at blistering speeds. We were going to cross together. 

There were no walkways or zebra crossings on that stretch. Crossing was a matter of courage. My mother was holding my hand—tight—as we stepped off the pavement. I remember feeling safe as my mother pulled me along to keep stride with her grown-up steps. But then, in the middle of the road, her fingers went limp and she slipped away from me. 

And I was standing alone in a river of asphalt, with my mother watching me from the other side. And she was just looking at me with this blank expression, like she was waiting for something to happen and time was standing still. 

My memory jumps back to the part I’d always known after that. I’m back on the pavement, back in my mother’s arms, being hugged and cradled and my baby-boy, my sweet darling-ed. And she’s talking to me, almost crying, saying “you must be careful. You must be careful next time, Travis. You mustn’t let go when we crossing. You could get bounce down if you not careful.”

Up until then, I’d only ever had a single image of my mother in my heart. Of the woman cradling me beside the bus route after she’d saved my life. But now, when I closed my eyes, leaning back in my car seat in that hospital parking lot, I could only see the woman with the blank face, staring at me from across the way.

For the first time since Granny sent me the number, I called my mother.

Her voice was fragile, like a twig on the forest floor.

I wanted to ask her if she remembered that moment on the bus route—whether I had it right, but I couldn't find the words. What came out was simply:

“You ever try a bush bath?”

It was the worst way to start a conversion left off 15 years ago. But she answered. In that same almost-crying voice I remembered, she answered:

“I did. There was something I felt like I needed to wash off.”

A black bird cried and darted from a telephone line to a drooping tree.

“And did you?”

My mother didn't ask where I was, or whether I was still going to make visiting hours. She didn’t ask why I wanted to know or whether I was thinking of taking a bush bath myself. She seemed to know it all already.

For some reason, I thought of the too-orange nutmeg flower I laid on the riverbank rocks as my mother said:

“I not sure. I did never feel like nothing wash off. Except maybe if…” she trailed off.

There was nothing but the somber static of the hospital room on her end and I wondered whether she’d lost the strength to speak. 

And then:

“You still coming up?” she asked weakly.

The key was still in the ignition. I could twist it to the left and pop it out. I could head up to my mother’s room and tell her that the bush worked and she was purified. That the only memory I ever had of her was being in her arms and knowing that she loved me and nothing else. Or I could twist it to the right and drive off. 

I put my fingers on the key and pinched it hard.

And I turned.