Auntie shakes her head, bats at a mosquito with a meatless, vein-lumped hand and says, "How you mean?" which, around here, is often rhetorical. The ceiling fan is on but all it's doing is circulating old air, picking up dust, introducing smells from the four corners of the house to the living room. The smells come in cycles: rotting bananas from the bucket under the sink, mothballs among towels that were never allowed to dry before being put away, the thing that died behind the filing cabinet, feet, ancient curtains, and mosquito nets. Mum and I are staying with Auntie in Trinidad for seven days because Mum isn't sure how much longer Auntie will last.

These are Mum's words, paraphrased: Auntie is old, and more of a cousin than an Auntie. Her mother had taken in my grandfather as one of her own children when his mum died and his father took to roaming the countryside. Both of Auntie's hips have been replaced thanks to, and this is what she said, Sai Baba's guidance.

"Bridgette gets into trouble," Mum says, still on the subject of Germans. "She'll ask a stranger, 'How can you keep your dog on such a short leash?' So they'll run off and find a longer leash for the dog. Of course, the dog then jumps over the wall and hangs itself. Voomph!" she says, miming a dog leaping over a wall. She almost falls off her chair doing the impression.

Auntie is sitting in a pleather armchair at least as old as I am. It's brown in places it shouldn't be. In order to sit in the chair, she has to throw herself backward so that the chair bends her body for her.

"She had a terrible accident on a bicycle. Fell over the front of it." Auntie is talking about someone I don't know. Mother looks at the floor. She is thinking about the accident she and her father had when she was 16. Her father, my grandfather, worked for a car company and was sent a rotation of fancy vehicles to test-drive for about a week each. They had been riding a motorcycle, one of the test vehicles, when, bam, like being pulled under a wave, each element a split second flash: asphalt, metal, bumpers, elbows and knees, sharp, cold pain, bright lights. No one died in the accident, but from what I've heard in the various retellings, they had come close. This is a thing she can't forget, a thing she has referenced throughout her life whenever appropriate, whether to teach a lesson, remember her father, or just because we were on the subject of accidents and it had been her turn to speak.

When the underwater volcano erupts, a tidal wave will wash over Trinidad. The inhabitants don't seem concerned -- it's become something of a joke. If they die, they die. I imagine my aunts, uncles, family members I've never met floating over the island. Most of them are enjoying the view, accepting their deaths, thankful to be part of the disaster, part of the news. I would watch live, aerial footage from the comfort of my own home, nestled on a mountain, far above sea level. Powdered news anchors faking concern with maps of the island next to their heads. This will be the first time many of them have ever seen a map of Trinidad. They are intrigued by its shape, naturally. Mum would hear the announcement from the kitchen and walk toward the television, not quite believing the report, unsteady hand reaching to cover an open mouth.

Mum asks me to close the grill gate. It's getting to be dark outside; dark enough for drivers to consider turning on their headlights, but not so dark that the streetlamps have turned on. Her concern here has to do with kidnapping, a trend in this country. Their last target had been a woman she knew, or at the very least, a woman she had known about through a relatively close friend.

Ruined photo albums would drift across the Atlantic. Floating first, then sinking, gradually, like everything else. Those who slip off the edge of the island will tumble far out of reach, will feed deep sea fish -- glowing, boneless, alien things -- and then underwater wormy things will pick the remaining meat off of bones, sucking them clean, leaving a sparkling, unharmed skeleton.

A number of bodies would remain on the island. Bodies on top of houses, in trees, all over San Fernando, Port of Spain, along Pointe-a-Pierre Road which took us to and from school after Hurricane Gilbert mangled Jamaica when I was two years old and my brother was five. Blue/grey rubbery things tangled in power lines, stuck in cars, draped over street signs, sporting wild, comic, eyeless expressions. I'll dial a Trinidadian number just to hear a recording, just to send a surge of electric warmth through the waves.

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