Trouble in Paradise

Elisabeth was from Canada, twenty-two years old. She was the girlfriend of a businessman, also from Canada, who was building condominiums in Kingston, Jamaica, and she was just gorgeous. And she had a very sexy, come-on voice.

Her boyfriend's foreman was a Jamaican named Rodney, who was much older than her, over fifty. But there was something about this man: he was nice and charming, and he knew how to treat a woman.

At first, Rodney was her confidant, but then he became her friend. Then, one night while her boyfriend worked late, they went out for a night on the town. They got drunk and ended up in a hotel room together.

Rodney felt bad about it, because he had a woman and several children with her, and Elisabeth was his boss's girlfriend. Though Elisabeth had flirted with him, he had never taken her flirtations very seriously; she was much younger than he was, and her boyfriend was a rich man.

However, he wanted her very much, because she was beautiful, and it was obvious that she wanted him. Therefore, they had a series of liaisons over a six-week period. They couldn't wait to see each other.

Rodney was even aware of her past: Elisabeth had confessed that she was a topless dancer— something she hadn't told her boyfriend. "I've done it all," she said, while drunk. "I've even had sex with other women."

However, he didn't care about her past, because he was in love with her. If he wasn't so much older than her, if he didn't have a woman and children, and she wasn't the mistress of a rich man, he would have run of with her, if that was what she wanted.

But that was what she wanted. After six weeks, she wanted to run off with him. It could have been anywhere, for all she cared. It could have been the Sahara Desert.

"But where would we live, miss?" he asked.

"I don't care. I only want to be with you."

"But we are of different races. I'm black and you're white."

"I don't care. I would love you even if you were green."

The truth was that Elisabeth wasn't really white; she was créole, a mélange of several races: white, black, and even Native-American. Elisabeth only looked white to Rodney in comparison to the other Jamaican women, but part of her mother's family was from New Orleans.

"And we will be poor," he pointed out. "I have nothing to offer but my soul."

"I don't care," she said again. "All I want is your beautiful soul."

In the end, Rodney was so in love with Elisabeth that he was willing to leave his woman and their children and run off with her anywhere. It could have been the Sahara Desert, for all he cared.

It could be, he was charmed by the way she repeated "I love you" over and again as they made love. Nobody had done that with him before, and he was sure that nobody would ever do that again, at his age.

So they ran off together and they lived in a miserable little shanty in a miserable little shantytown near Kingston, despite his misgivings.

The truth was that they weren't thinking very rationally. It was difficult. During the hurricane season, the roof usually had a leak, and Elisabeth had to fix it, though Rodney was a carpenter. Elisabeth had to learn to cook over a fire without gas or electricity, and she had to drag water over a long distance from a pump to wash clothes. What's more, she had to slaughter chickens, and a neighbour had to show her how to do it.

Sometimes, she even had to call her parents in Canada and ask for money— that was the worst part of it. She always had to call collect from a pay phone.

They had several children together, some of whom died early in childhood. By the time she was thirty-five, she was large, with enormous breasts that hung down over her belly, like the other women of the shantytown. What's more, she dressed like a woman of the shantytown, with a long skirt and a turban on her head, and you'd have never thought, from a distance of a hundred yards, that she was white.

However, that only made Rodney want her more, though he remembered her in a bikini from when she was young. He didn't care about her size, because nearly all the women in his life had ended up plus-sized anyway.

Of course, they quarrelled— she even threatened him with a knife a few times. His friends said that he should beat her just to show who was boss, but Rodney didn't believe in hitting a woman. He had hit his first woman several times, usually when he was drunk, but he was resolved never to repeat that mistake with Elisabeth, no matter how much his friends might have thought that she deserved it.

In their poverty, only two things kept Elisabeth going: love and religion. What kept Rodney going was sex and the herb that made Jamaica famous.

When they made love at night, after the children were supposed to be asleep, she still cried out, over and over again, "I love you!"

That was because she meant it, at least at the time. But love wasn't always enough: she started going to church and got baptized. However, she never doubted that she would be in heaven with Rodney after they died, because she believed that he was a deeply spiritual man, despite all his faults. He had a beautiful soul, she thought.

The preacher thought that she had a beautiful body. He liked her body (as well as the bodies of about eleven other middle-aged women in his congregation), but Elisabeth could say with confidence that Rodney was the father of all of her children.

Then, when he was about seventy years old, Rodney died after a brief illness. When her mother pleaded with her to come back to Canada, Elisabeth reluctantly returned to Canada, tired, with her six children in tow.

However, her parents didn't know what to make of her when she arrived at Pearson International Airport with six grandchildren that they had never seen before.

Their daughter wasn't the same. Their baby was no longer young.