Free The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson

almost two decades in what Hyacinth referred to alternatively as “foreign,” “up there,” and “that man country,” Hyacinth never stepped foot past Bridgetown. Everything she needed was in her yard.
    As soon as Phaedra was old enough to write, she wrote to her grandmother. At first, she just added a few
x
’s and
o
’s at the end of her mother’s letters. But soon, she was writing her own short letters every month, catching her grandmother up on what she was learning in school, which psalms she knew by heart, pretending that she’d made closer friends than she had. It was hard for Phaedra to reconcile the hardness in Avril’s voice when she talked about Barbados in general and Bird Hill in particular with the peaceful place Hyacinth described. But the different ways Phaedra and her sister saw the world in general and their parents in particular taught Phaedra that two people could feel different ways about exactly the same things, and that they could both be right.
    It was Phaedra’s grandmother who told her that she should start keeping track of her dreams. Her mother bought her a dream catcher at a powwow out at Floyd Bennett Field, and she placed it above her bed in Brooklyn, hoping to hang on a bit longer to the Technicolor pulse behind her eyes. Avril always told her that dreams were just another world we lived in, different from but related to the waking world.
    In her grandmother’s house, there was a carafe filled with water on the night table that Phaedra sipped from each morning to help her remember where her dreams had taken her.There was another glass of water beneath the bed to catch tricky spirits. The carafe was one way Phaedra knew that beauty was not something reserved for the wealthy, but a common, everyday kind of thing that was available to anyone with eyes open enough to see. Phaedra had taken to writing down her dreams, imitating her grandmother, who kept a notebook by her bedside for precisely this purpose.
    For days, Phaedra dreamed of schools of flying fish jumping out of the water, not unlike the ones she’d seen on Sunday afternoons after church when Hyacinth let her and Dionne go to the beach with the Lovings. The third day she dreamed of fish, she woke up later than usual, having slept in to savor the feeling of the sun on her skin and the light reflecting the fishes’ silver flesh. When she awoke, she wandered into the kitchen, where her sister and grandmother were mixing salt fish and flour together for fish cakes.
    â€œGood morning, Granny,” Phaedra said, hugging her grandmother from behind. She felt Hyacinth stiffen at her embrace, but she leaned in further to smell the nutmeg on her housedress.
    â€œWell, hello. I see Sleeping Beauty finally decide to wake. What sweet you this morning so?” Finally too uncomfortable, Hyacinth pulled herself free from Phaedra’s grip, making an excuse of reaching for the fish draining in a colander.
    â€œI had the best dream. I dreamed we were all at a picnic at Pebbles Beach and the flying fish were jumping so high it looked like they could touch the sun.”
    â€œHmmm, have you ever thought that maybe you were just dreaming that because we’re going to the beach later?” Dionne asked.
    â€œWe are?” Phaedra said, the pitch of her voice turning up with excitement.
    â€œYes, darling. You don’t remember the church picnic is today?” Hyacinth looked out at the plants encroaching on the white hydrangeas below her kitchen window. “Looks like a whole army of weeds take over my garden. I don’t know how it is that I have two strong girls here with me and I still have to be bending down and cleaning up all the time as if I’m a young person.”
    â€œWhat do the fish in my dreams mean, Gran?” Phaedra asked.
    â€œIt means a baby soon come. Take note, darling, and see if your dreams don’t bear fruit.”
    Phaedra looked out