Black Cake: A Novel by Charmaine Wilkerson Read Free Book Online

silently. She didn’t know that such a thing could happen.
    Gibbs took a chunk of pineapple from Covey.
    “If you go to London, do you think you would come back?”
    “Not if I go, when. ”
    Each time they met alone, Gibbs insisted that leaving the island was the key to his future. The rest, he’d have to see. At some point, he stopped talking about his future only, and started talking about a life together with Covey.
    We, he started saying. We.
    Gibbs, who had shoulders as broad and brown as a guango tree.
    Gibbs, whose arms around Covey’s waist burned her with a warmth that ran down through her middle.
    Covey’s father had forbidden her to stay out with boys alone, but Covey and Gibbs kept finding excuses. The swim club, the debate team, and in the summer, the recitals to practice for Independence Day. They lived in a town surrounded by quiet coves and lush tree cover. It was easy enough for a pair of teenagers to find places to steal time together and, like each generation before them, they were emboldened by adolescent love.
    Covey and Gibbs, holding hands down by the breakers.
    Covey and Gibbs, kissing in the hollow of a sea cave.
    Covey and Gibbs, clinging and probing and whispering promises.

Lin
     
    T hings hadn’t been easy with Covey. That she was a girl-child was bad enough. That she had grown to inherit her mother’s eyes and bust and teeth had become a problem. The local men were already taking notice of her looks, not to mention the wife of one of Lin’s suppliers who, everyone knew, was that way. But the worst part of it all was the disrespect his daughter had begun to show him.
    When Covey was old enough to understand that her mother wouldn’t be coming home, she started acting up, started getting home late from school. Lately, she’d been telling Lin that she was studying with a friend after class, or training extra hours at the swim club, but he could see that the girl had been up to something. She would walk into the house with that look on her face and Lin knew that there had to be a boy. But Covey denied it.
    One afternoon, Lin ran out of patience and grabbed Covey by the hair. That was when he realized what had been going on.
    “What is this?” Lin said.
    Covey’s ponytail was stiff with salt. She’d been swimming in the sea after school again. Lin had forbidden it and, still, his fool of a daughter had been going out there in the afternoons. And lying to him about it.
    “Are you mad?” Lin said. “Haven’t we talked about this before? Do you know what can happen to you if you go out there alone?”
    “Nothing is going to happen to me,” Covey said, picking up a mango and running the point of a paring knife along its skin.
    “And right you are, Coventina. Nothing is going to happen to you because you will not be going out there again.”
    Covey cut her eyes at him and turned away. Back in Lin’s day, a girl would never have given her own father an insolent look of that sort. Nowadays, there was all manner of loose behavior going around. The previous week, Covey had sewn herself a new skirt, or Lin should say, a new strip of cloth, halfway up her backside. All the girls were wearing them, Covey had said. Lin put a stop to that business right away, made her let out the hem. But this was what the world was coming to.
    “Anyway, you can’t stop me,” Covey said, slicing a piece of mango away from the seed and swallowing it whole.
    That was it. Lin pulled his belt out of his trousers, brandished the leather strap, and taught Covey a lesson. Or so he hoped. Covey was fearless. And a fearless girl, without a mother or husband to keep her in check, was a dangerous thing.

Storm
     
    I n September 1963, the crew of a jetliner flying from Portugal to Surinam noticed an area of significant disturbance off the west coast of Africa. This was followed by reports from ships traveling east of the Lesser Antilles. By the time the first advisory for Hurricane Flora was issued to the general