(This is part of a storytelling experiment called WELCOME TO YOUR QUARTER-CAREER GAP YEAR)
“You’ve been staying at my house, eating my food, and you don’t even know how we’re related!” says Victor after hearing your admission of ignorance. You both are sitting at his dining room table eating mangoes as a post-lunch snack. “That’s grounds for deportation!”
This is mock outrage; it’s obvious. But he sucks his teeth and mutters, “Unbelievable,” to add to the effect.
“Well, I know we’re cousins,” you respond sheepishly, “but if we’re second, third, or fourth cousins, I couldn’t say.”
Fawnie enters from the kitchen with a plate of pineapple.
“You are his first cousin once removed. And you and me – we’re second cousins,” she says nonchalantly.
You flash a “How the hell did you get that?” look at her.
“Here,” she picks up a pen and notebook from a nearby table and starts drawing a rough family tree.
First, she draws you and your sister, and links them to your mother and father. Then, she links your father to your grandmother, and your grandmother to your grandmother’s sister. Then, she shows that Victor came from your grandmother's sister, and that she (Fawnie) came from Victor.
“Ahhh, I see,” you say, taking it in. “So why isn’t Victor my uncle?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” she says, and goes on to explain. But after a minute of listening, you’re still confused, so you just move on.
“Well, I know one guy who knows how this all works,” you say. “Jensen. The guy you spoke to on the phone a couple days ago,” you say, pointing to Victor. “I call him the ‘genealogical detective.’”
In one way or another, Jensen is your cousin. And the first time you met was at your paternal grandmother’s (Grandma Dexter’s) funeral two years ago, but you were so overwhelmed by the hundreds of relatives that you met that day, that you don’t remember the meeting. Your sister met him, too, and a few weeks ago, he called her, trying to learn more information about your immediate relatives. While they spoke, she mentioned that you were in Antigua, and since he was visiting the island in a couple of days (he lives in St. Thomas), she passed along his info to you. Last week, you talked to him on the phone, so today, he's supposed to visit.
During your phone conversation, you passed the phone to Victor, because by virtue of his age, Victor knows more about the Dexter clan than just about anybody. From what you heard, it seemed like they developed a quick rapport. And after Victor hung up, he announced that they had decided that when Jensen visited, you would all visit the town of Swetes, where most of the family resides.
After taking one last bite of mango, you ask Victor another family question that you'd been wondering about.
“So do you know Riley, my father’s nephew?”
“Riley? Nope, I don't know any Riley” says Victor.
“How about Raymond? Or Aunt Eileen?” you press.
“You sure they’re not on your grandfather’s side of the family? The side of your father’s father?”
In a flash, you see your mistake. Your father was the only child to your grandmother and grandfather, so he was the only link between two sprawling groups of relatives. And since your father passed away three years ago, you and your sister are the only surviving links to that diverse heritage within the same small country. At present, Victor, Fawnie, and the soon-to-arrive Jensen, is part of Grandma Dexter’s side of the family, while Riley, Raymond, and Aunt Eileen, are part of Grandpa Joe’s side of the family. You never met Grandpa Joe. He died when your father was 13, so Riley and your Aunt Eileen (who both live in the town of Bolands) are the best folks to speak with to understand that part of the family.
When Jensen arrives, you’re surprised at what you see. His name sounds conservative, almost aristocratic, and after speaking to him on the phone about his fascination with documenting the family, you build an image in your mind of him as a glasses-adjusting, librarian-looking fellow. But he’s the complete opposite: he wears a dark brown t-shirt and dark brown jogging pants over sneakers, and on his head, he has on a black skull cap over dreadlocks. Not the head-in-books kind of look you were expecting, but of course, it doesn’t matter either way. You give each other a good-natured bro hug, like you haven’t seen each other for ages.
“Wah gwan, suh?” he says.
“I’m well,” you respond, knowing that you'll remember this meeting more than the first.
After he greets Victor and Fawnie, you all sit down on the porch, shielded from the early afternoon sun, and start talking family. In true detective fashion, Jensen asks question after question to Victor, weighing each answer and then following up with a bunch more. It’s fascinating to behold, the back and forth of it all, but not the content – because to you, the names and the places are all foreign. You just sit there and nod, like they're speaking another language that you don't understand, but don't want to let on that you have no idea what they're talking about. You don’t pick up much, which is quite frustrating, but you’re happy that everyone seems to be having a good time.
After thirty minutes, the decision is made to travel to Swetes, where much of the Dexter family currently lives. So you, Victor, and Jensen pack into Jensen’s rented sport utility vehicle and leave.
The drive is about an hour, and Victor and Jensen continue to rattle on indecipherably, but it’s pleasant to see other parts of Antigua outside the rural and beachy Ft. James area, and the tightly packed metropolis of St. John's.
Out the window, as you pass through the grassy and untamed landscape between towns, you see a few small, four-room homes with dusty trucks on blocks out front, but occasionally, you also see a three-story luxury house in the midst of more modest buildings. To some, this is confounding. But not to you: this is Antigua in the throes of development.
When you reach Swetes, the car pulls into an empty grass lot at the edge of a residential neighborhood. At the back of the lot is a dense thicket of uncleared land, full of tall grass, trees, bushes, and shrubs. This is where you’re headed, so everyone gets out of the car and starts walking and pushing through the brush. The path guides you downhill, and as you bob and weave past branches and sidestep thorny bushes you realize that you’re almost at the bottom of a valley. In the distance, you can see lush green hills dotted with houses and patches of trees. Victor tells the intricate history of the area as you walk. He points to the houses on the hilltops that are owned by government officials, mentions where the sugar plantations used to be, and speaks about how the water and electricity were able to reach all the homes in the area. It’s a fascinating little summation and you learn a great deal.
Then, you come to a cleared area of land where it looks like a house once stood. On the ground is black dirt with piles upon piles of tree trunks and branches on top of it.
“This is where it all started, where the family started,” says Victor. Then he points at you, “Your grandmother was born here. So was your father. He was raised here till about 6 years old, when he was then sent to live with his father in Bolands."
You look around and try to imagine the area as a place where you father ran around as a little boy.
“Yes, this whole area was lively and bustling,” Victor continues. “But it’s hard to build on these slopes, so they started to build further away, like back where we parked, where the ground is more level.”
He points to a fenced-off area with tilled ground. “Over there – we still use that. Your cousin Lester still harvests carrots and sweet potatoes there.”
“Lester – Uncle Waylon’s son?” says Jensen.
“Yep,” Victor answers. You have no idea who Lester is, so you go back to imagining what it was like for your father growing up here as a boy.
After some more talking, the three of you return to the car and head back the way you came. But before you leave the area, you stop by two adjacent houses a few blocks away. These are the homes of some of your cousins. Once again, you have no clue how they’re related, but you take Victor and Jensen at their word.
While most of the relatives talk on the side of one of the houses, you sit on the porch and chat with an 80 year-old guy who’s supposed to be your cousin.
You want to learn more about him, but he only speaks in Antiguan dialect, which you have a hard time understanding. So, after asking a few questions and not being able to make out the answers, you decide to stop saying “I’m sorry could you say that again?” You’re embarrassed, and don’t want your cousin to feel like there’s something wrong with him, so you just nod and smile. You feel ashamed that you don’t know more dialect, but as a creole language, there’s no real way to study it. There’s no "Rosetta Stone: Antiguan" you can pick up.
Eventually, Victor and Jensen finish catching up, and you all drive home.
On the ride back, Jensen gives you a website where he logs all the different Dexters on a grand family tree. And when you view it later that night, everything starts making a little bit of sense. Many of the names you’ve heard today are there and stop feeling so foreign. It’ll take you a while to learn more about each person, but from now on, you know that the next time the family has another sprawling talk about relatives, you’ll have a cheat sheet to help you along.
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