At Old Fort Craft Park, Delores links arms with the flush-faced men in floral shirts who are too polite to decline and the women in broad straw hats whose thin lips freeze in frightened smiles. Before the tourists pass Delores’s stall, she listens to the prices the other hagglers quote them—prices that make the tourists politely decline and walk away. So by the time they get to Delores—the last stall in the market—she’s ready to pounce, just like she does at Falmouth Market on Tuesdays as soon as the ship docks. The tourists hesitate, as they always do, probably startled by the big black woman with bulging eyes and flared nostrils. Her current victims are a middle-age couple.
“Me have nuff nuff nice t’ings fah you an’ yuh husband. Come dis way, sweetie pie.”
Delores pulls the woman’s hand gently. The man follows behind his wife, both hands clutching the big camera around his neck as if he’s afraid someone will snatch it.
To set them at ease, Delores confides in them: “Oh, lawd ah mercy,” she says, fanning herself with an old Jamaica Observer. “Dis rhaatid heat is no joke. Yuh know I been standin’ in it all day? Bwoy, t’ings haa’d.”
She wipes the sweat that pours down her face, one eye on them. It’s more nervousness than the heat, because things are slow and Delores needs the money. She observes the woman scrutinizing the jewelry—the drop earrings made of wood, the beaded necklaces, anklets, and bracelets—the only things in the stall that Delores makes. “Dat one would be nice wid yuh dress,” Delores says when the woman picks up a necklace. But the woman only responds with a grimace, gently putting down the item, then moving on to the next. Delores continues to fan. Normally the Americans are chatty, gullible. Delores never usually has to work so hard with them, for their politeness makes them benevolent, apologetic to a fault. But this couple must be a different breed. Maybe Delores is wrong, maybe they’re from somewhere else. But only the American tourists dress like they’re going on a safari, especially the men, with their clogs, khaki apparel, and binocular-looking cameras.
“Hot flash and dis ungodly heat nuh ’gree a’tall,” Delores says when the woman moves to the woven baskets. At this the woman smiles—a genuine smile that indicates her understanding—the recognition of a universal feminine condition. Only then does she finger her foreign bills as though unwilling to part with them. “How much are the necklaces?” she asks Delores in an American accent. She’s pointing at one of the red, green, and yellow pendants made from glass beads. Delores had taken her time to string them.
“Twenty-five,” Delores says.
“Sorry, that’s too much,” the woman says. She glances at her husband. “Isn’t twenty-five a bit much for this, Harry?” She holds up the necklace like it’s a piece of string and dangles it in front of her husband. The man touches the necklace like he’s some kind of expert. “We’re not paying more than five for this,” he says in a voice of authority that reminds Delores of Reverend Cleve Grant, whose booming voice can be heard every noon offering a prayer for the nation on Radio Jamaica.
“It tek time fi mek, sah,” Delores says. “Ah can guh down to twenty.”
“Fifteen.”
“All right, mi will geet to yuh for fifteen!” Delores says, suppressing her disappointment. As she counts the change to give back to the woman, she catches her eyeing the miniature Jamaican dolls. Delores imagines that those dolls, however exaggerated, might be the only images the woman sees of Jamaican people on a short one-day cruise stop. Her husband, who snaps pictures nonstop, surveys the table of the Rastas with their long, oversized penises, the smiling women with tar-black faces and basket of fruits on their heads, the grinning farmer carrying green bananas in his hands, the Tshirts with weed plants and a smoking Bob Marley with IRIE written in bold letters, the rag dolls wearing festival dresses that look like picnic tablecloths.
“If yuh buy three items yuh get a discounted price, all these t’ings are quality,” Delores says, seizing the opportunity. “Yuh wouldn’t get dem anyweh else but right yah so.”