“Worship”

by Danielle Richardson (Sint Maarten/Saint Martin)

“Make haste finish peeling them shrimp for me, please,” Esther’s mother said. 

She was standing at the stove with her legs in a triangle and a spoon in her right hand, stirring the tall black soup pot that Esther knew came from her grandmother. Esther watched as her mother passed her free hand across her forehead, making sure to keep the red kitchen towel balanced over her shoulder. The kitchen was hot, the air peppery with a hint of sweet Ketjap sauce. They’d opened the windows and the screen door a half hour before, but all that did was let enough breeze in to flap the curtains into the sink, the lacy tips darkened by sudsy dishwater. 

“Yes Mommy,” Esther said. 

“You know how the church people them like a li’l fish stew after service.” 

Yes, Esther knew. It was difficult not to know the routines, likes, and dislikes of everyone she’d been going to church with three times a week since she could walk and remember. At thirteen years old, she often felt she’d spent at least half her life inside a church. Tomorrow was the mid-week service, the Wednesday night one, and every mid-week service came with dinner and socializing afterwards, everyone gathered around with their Bibles in their laps as makeshift tables for their warm plates. Esther always thought that had to be some kind of sin, but no one else seemed bothered. They were all too happy to lick their salty lips and suck their teeth at the children who yawned amongst them. 

In the kitchen, Esther found herself yawning too, but she didn’t cover her mouth the way she was raised to. Her hands were too busy peeling the shell off a jumbo tiger shrimp, splitting it open down the middle, twisting the tail off gently so as to not tear the grey flesh underneath. Mommy woke her up early for some cleaning this morning with a firm, ‘You think just ‘cause you have off school mean no work? We don’t know nothing ‘bout no Carnival break in this house,’ before she turned the radio up loud from her favorite gospel station, effectively waking up the whole house, which was just Esther at the time. Her father and older brother had already left for work. Mommy made her sweep, mop, and dust until she missed school enough to wish that they weren’t on Carnival break. 

But this year was particularly special. Sint Maarten was celebrating fifteen years of uninterrupted Carnival. The Grand Parade was happening later today, and Esther could just imagine how many people would be there. She’d never been to Carnival before, but she saw clips of the previous years’ parades on TV. 

Her brother would go outside and adjust the antenna until they caught the local news, and Esther watched it after her parents went to bed, her face aglow in the darkness of the living room. The local channel cut off at midnight, so she could only ever catch the last hour of the news, which was always filled with Carnival footage during the season. Even though her mother told her dancing in the street was sinful, Esther was captivated by the unbound joy she saw on TV, and she coveted it in secret like every proper strong temptation. 

Hovering over the stove, her mother started to hum, the familiar rhythm filling Esther’s mind with the lyrics. 

Hear my cry, O Lord 

Attend unto my prayer 

Esther kept her eyes on the shrimp, how its stubbly legs tickled her fingers as she peeled another shell. Then her mother began to sing in earnest, the words starting at a mumble and gradually rising to a hearty cry of praise: 

From the ends of the earth 

Will I cry unto thee 

With an inviting smile, Esther’s mother turned to her, nodding excitedly. She cricked her hand in a sort of, well, come on! gesture, but Esther wasn’t in the mood to sing, not in the middle of Carnival break with sleep in her tendons and her fingers stinking of shellfish. But her mother kept smiling at her, so with a sigh, she started: 

When my heart is overwhelmed 

Lead me to the rock 

Her mother picked up an old glass jar and a metal spoon, clinking out a fast-paced beat on her makeshift instrument and joining her voice with Esther’s. Mother and daughter sang: 

That is higher than high 

That is higher than high 

Now Esther was smiling too, if indulgently. Sometimes, her mother just did silly things, and that was when Esther loved her most. 

“Morning!” 

Rachel’s sharp voice came from the kitchen door, and both Esther and her mother jumped. Esther took a moment to catch herself and then ran her fingers under the faucet for a bit, the warm water soothing her tips made pink from the shrimp’s ice. The stubborn door gave a low groan when she wrenched it open, letting Rachel inside. 

“Rachel,” Esther said to her school friend. “What you doing over this side?” 

Rachel was dressed in her usual off-from-school outfit of shorts and a loose T-shirt knotted around her waist, but her shoes were different. She liked to take every opportunity to show off her toenail polish outside school, but today, she wore sneakers, scuffed and white with holes on the tips for air.

“Nothing, nothing,” she said. “Just wanted to see if you and me could go liming for a bit, if that’s okay?” She addressed this last part to Esther’s mother, who had her back turned to them from her stance at the stove. 

“Hm,” Esther’s mother grunted. “I suppose that’s fine. I could finish up the cooking from here.” 

The two girls gave each other matching smiles, too-big teeth spread between brown gums and full lips. But they kept their excitement quiet; they didn’t want Esther’s mother to think they were gonna have too much fun. 

The woman whipped her head around then to lock them both in place. “Just don’t be getting my good girl chile into no mischief, nuh,” she said, fixing Rachel with a stare the younger girl had received from her many times before. 

Rachel nodded. 

“You hear me?” 

Rachel nodded again. “Yes Ma’am.” And that was all Esther needed to hear. In a rush, she kissed her mother goodbye, grabbed her house keys from the glass bowl on top of the fridge, and was the first of the two girls to step outside. The air was still warm, the humidity pressing up against her skin. In the gravel lot across from her house was Rachel’s older sister, Lisette, her face sour as she idled in the car. Esther could tell she was their unwilling chauffeur for the day. 

They kept the windows down as they drove out of Esther’s neighborhood, just to hear the dogs bark and chase the car to the end of the street. Rachel laughed and leaned out the window from the front passenger seat to bark back at them. 

“So, where we going? I was thinking beach,” Rachel said.

Esther paused thoughtfully then said, “T’is the Grand Parade today, right? Lewwe go Festival Village.” She hissed softly when her hand met the hot metal of the seat belt buckle. 

“Your mother done don’t like me already, Esther. She would for sure get on if she knew.” 

“And why she must know?” 

Esther felt something new today, a sort of rebellious conviction. She was never the type of girl to misbehave or sneak out or step out of line, but this year, she was especially tired of that. She was thirteen now, fresh into secondary school, where people cursed and kissed their boyfriends in the upstairs bathrooms, but she didn’t even want any of that. She just wanted to go to Carnival. After all, she was positive her mother had gone when she was young. Why couldn’t Esther? 

“Listen, I just going drop ayu off and pick ayu up later, okay? I gotta get back to work,” Lisette said as she tried to overtake the car in front of them. She couldn’t; the road had too many blind corners. 

“Thanks again,” Rachel said. 

Traffic got a lot heavier once they hit Pondfill Road, and somehow, the heat made the cars move even slower. They were at a standstill on the road, the stream of vehicles barely inching forward every few minutes. Esther’s neck grew sticky, her hand doing little to stop the sweat that kept beading there. The Festival Village was just a straight shot ahead, but they couldn’t see any part of the parade from this far down. They only heard the metallic sound of the music, the distant shrill of brass, the same sounds Esther heard on the radio when it wasn’t tuned to a gospel station. 

“You know what,” Rachel said, cracking her door open to put one foot on the steaming pavement. “Lewwe just walk the rest of the way nuh, Esther.”

Esther shrugged and stepped out of the car, wishing Lisette a good day. They walked on the side of the road with the storefronts, not by the Salt Pond; neither of them wanted to put up with the sun and flies at the same time. Before too long, the road crowded with more people, walking up to join the parade. They were almost a sort of parade of their own, marching forward with the distant music to guide them. The closer they got, the clearer the music became until they could actually make out the rhythm the steel pan players drummed. Esther felt a shift as everyone began to fill in the lyrics, like the afternoon heat rushing into that spot between her shoulder blades. 

Would you like to rock it with me, baby 

Would you like to jam it with me, honey 

People were dancing now, pelting their waists to the beat, reaching around them for dance partners. Rachel grabbed Esther’s hands, and they swayed energetically, Esther adding some tempo to the same little two-step she usually did in church. Then Rachel spun her around, and Esther stumbled over her own feet, the right trapped uncomfortably behind the left for a moment. Rachel only laughed the way she usually did and joined the crowd in more singing. 

Sweet calypso, music jammin’ for so 

Come and rock it with me, baby 

Although Esther didn’t know the words, she still felt like she knew the song, knew it somewhere deep behind her navel. As everyone sang and danced, they grew closer to the Grand Parade until they came right upon it, the two crowds merging in a congregation of colors and limbs. 

The steel pan band carried on from the back of a big truck leading the parade. They looked like soldiers in their matching hats and costumes, yellow fabrics reflecting off their metal instruments to create gold under their hands, those tools that drummed away with that melding of gentleness and intensity that only the best steel players could master. The brass band stood on another truck with sunshine at their mouths. Esther watched how their cheeks would bunch up with air, almost like they were smiling, before they blew light up past the lush green hills and into the sky. 

In the streets, dance troops sported homemade outfits, and Esther wished she wore something to blend in too, to make her a part of it all. But then Rachel took her hands again, and they followed the broken white line right in the middle of the road and the people, bodies loose and floating. And Esther realized that she was already a part of this, had always been, since the day her mother brought her to church, and she first clapped her star-shaped hands during praise and worship.