‘But the duppies, Juleen, that’s what matters here, OK? Now that I know the dead live amongst us,’ I said, although I tried to hide the surge of elation I felt, I feel. ‘Why don’t I know this story when everyone else seems to? What did they teach us at school, Juleen?’ I demanded, my tongue already tangled, my breath still sharp with the taste of conch, as we drove past the Tamarind Tree once again.

‘Don’t you go crazy on me, girl, please, mi laard!’ she yelled, teasing but serious. ‘I’ve heard all that stuff from the old folks, and lots of other stories have come out recently too, but take it easy, one thing at a time,’ she warned.

‘Don’t worry, love, we’re all right, my dead man’s breadfruit and me!’ I tugged on one of her braids.

‘I don’t like you one bit, amiga, you know that? Yo deh crazy!’ She sped up. A misty rain grew denser and we stopped speaking, hoping to beat the downpour, then said our goodbyes here in front of the house.

My breadfruit seems to have multiplied. After I washed the dishes, I started slicing it to fry. I cooked enough for two large coladas and had three-quarters left over. I submerged the slices in salted water, as Juleen had instructed me. I’ll have it for lunch tomorrow. I’ve spent the afternoon drifting, rambling, revisiting details from the colonial period, probing for connections, flipping through a mental album of the island-born women in my family, an appendix to the pages of San Andrés history. I’ve been thinking about their choices, about their labels as insular women, their moods, their voices.

Rebecca is the last woman I’ve got, the oldest of them all. Everything’s blank after her; better put, everything’s murky. I don’t know who brought her into the world, to be silenced as she was; I’ve studied her for a long time, and that’s my sense of her, poised on the edge, just as she looks in the portrait, paralysed in that wicker chair in the Kingston photo studio, with her ankles crossed under her skirt, her faraway stare. I wonder if she got distracted by something in the studio, or if she was tired after the hairstyling and wardrobe session, knowing already that this is how she’d look to us, beholding her from the future.

Light, puff, exhale.

Repeat.