Free Children of Paradise: A Novel by Fred D'Aguiar

about the trickster spider. Trina refits her lips to the flute and repositions her fingers and breathes, dreaming of Anansi.
    Joyce stops her work and raises her pencil to her lips and stares into the distance, and a tune springs to mind: Captain, Captain, put me ashore.
    Her captain did just that. Put her ashore. Left her there and continued on his merry way. Left her with what? An appreciation of life on the water and the days measured by tides; sighting swaths of land from the river, a view of the land that will make it never the same once she sets foot on the muddy banks again.
    —Why did you call this boat Coffee ? Why not Tea or Hot Chocolate ?
    —Coffee was an eighteenth-century enslaved African who ran away from his plantation and led a slave rebellion. He lived in the interior and evaded capture.
    —Sounds like my kind of guy. I mean I like his trailblazing spirit.
    —I get you.
    Joyce asks him about his family and he says he has no one and she refuses, point-blank, to believe him. This annoys him, albeit teasingly.
    —You calling me a liar?
    —Yes. A man of your, how shall I put it, obvious qualities must have someone to love and who loves in return.
    His anger dissipates. He is a liar to her because he is someone whom somebody cannot help loving. He says he likes the way she insults him, and can she elaborate a little?
    —Well, you have a sound trade, and you have all of your teeth and your fingers and, I bet, even your toes.
    He laughs and coughs and gives the wheel to his first mate so that he can find a drink to stop himself from choking.
    —All my teeth! You will be entering me for a steeplechase next.
    She says that is not what she means. Other women might use the word “handsome” or “good-looking,” but that would give him the wrong idea about her estimation of his attributes. Trina looks up from her sketchbook at this juncture in the conversation. She has not heard her mother talk like this to a man. Joyce sounds playful, with a higher-pitched, lighter voice, none of the usual grave warnings or thinking geared to praising the preacher and his mission. The captain says there is someone but that things have cooled between the two of them. Joyce says she does not mean to pry, but by “cool,” does he mean over or simply in cold storage and liable to be brought into the light and rejuvenated at any moment? The captain says cool as in stone-cold dead, cordial but not intimate, no longer romantic, in fact, a frosty cordiality and therefore no light and no such sustenance at all. Joyce says a lot must have been asked of him for the whole thing to be shut away and starved of light. Trina looks puzzled by all the photosynthesis talk and returns her attention to her sketchbook. The captain says that this person wanted him to settle down with her in the city and give up his boat. She wanted him to make more money than a river captain.
    —How could I give up all of this?
    He spreads his arms at the river and the surrounding country and the light bathing them all.
    —Do you ever regret it?
    She hates herself for saying this the moment it jumps out of her mouth. She looks at her feet, rubs her hands down the front of her dress as if to smooth out the pleats, and shakes her head. She wonders how her talk about God and the commune and her leader has turned to this intimate conversation with a man whom she’s known only a day.
    —Never. Not for one moment. Especially at times like this, with someone new and surprising on my boat.
    She stands next to him as he steers. Trina sits nearby and draws two adult stick figures standing on either side of a child and holding the twigs of that child’s arms.
    —You’re not like a white woman, you behave different.
    She makes a surprised O of her mouth and covers her widened eyes with her hands.
    —I really want to know what a white woman is supposed to be like and just how many of them you’ve met to help you form this expert opinion about me.
    He confesses that