Bodysurfing

DOMINIQUE LYEW

Raina surfaced into the rumble of the waves, then sank again into the hum of the blue, and felt a small pull from behind. Body surfing helped her stay present. Once one wave was gone, she had to be ready for the backlash — the pull and push of the next one. To catch the wave, you have to jump in the right spot right before it crests. Too much behind it, you’re passed over. Too far ahead, you’re hit by its full force.

She had been away from this water for a while. A Kingstonian, she traveled to Portland for the steady waves of Boston Beach. Over the past few years, as she worked in Nashville, she had watched the livestreams of Gaza’s destruction, and seen ICE take over the streets and minds of immigrants like herself. Packed her passport in the pocket of her purse — something she was originally too afraid to do, she was now too afraid to do without. The truth is, from the time she arrived in the United States seventeen years ago, she had felt the fear and vulnerability of her visa status. The laws had always been on the side of not caring. Not seeing her as a full person, one who had to plan her life around the lack of America’s promises.

Ducking under the wave, the hiss and crash above is replaced by steady white noise as the water envelops you. It quieted her brain to be down there, in the muted expanse. You can feel the power of the wave as it passes above you, but under it you’re held, surrounded by it, and protected from any direct hit.

Back home now, she found herself under a wave, swept up in the chaos of figuring out a new life, but also held by the hum of the ocean. Her family, her friends from high school, her parents’ friends, the nurse who worked at her prep school saying hi in the supermarket. They saw her and knew her in a way that Americans she had been around everyday did not. Could not. The familiarity that surrounded her held her steady. In America, you could easily be surprised. It was hard to always jump at the right time, and you could easily end up pushed over and smashed into the sand.

Sometimes, even after you’ve successfully caught a wave, you can get stuck spinning around near the shore. In the churn of the shoreline water, it can take a second to figure out the way up. The way to escape, her mother taught her, is to reduce panic, study the motion of the water, and trust yourself to find the surface.

When she surfaced again between the swells at Boston Beach, her mind was swirling. She hated that she compared the two countries so much, preferring to forget that half her life had been spent in a version of herself tailored to fit in where she didn’t belong. Her eyes were hazy from the high of her one spliff; it was supposed to keep her present, too. She pushed herself a little beyond where the wave crests fell and looked towards the sand, trying to ground herself again. For a second, she thought she saw him, but she wasn’t sure. But then he called to her, “Raina?! Das you I seeing? Is Joey!”

Joey popping up in Portland was kinda crazy. It was about three years ago that she met him at Trinidad carnival, her in her elaborate wings and he in his shirt from his friend’s brand. He was a fisherman by trade, and the dexterity of his fingers translated beyond tying line, she remembered that much. He looked a little older now, with a little less hair and a little more belly. Still beautiful. “Joey?! After I’m the Jamaican, nuh must be in my country. What you doing here?”

They embraced, his skin water combining with hers and dripping from their arms, and he lingered a little bit longer than a friend, his hand a little lower on her waist than appropriate. She wondered how long he was staying.

“Just a lil visit inno, my sister now graduate from UWI. She a big doctor now yuh know- Zaidie. So I hadda check she.”

“Congrats to Zaidie! How you never tell me she was at UWI Joe?”

“Well yuh know I didn’t want to bother you, I figure if yuh stop answer my texts yuh didn’t have time to look for she…”

He smirked at her. That smile, that smile, that smile! It caught her at Carnival and was catching her now again. How long is he staying again? Ask him, girl.

“Joey now you know I’m bad at texting but no hard feelings yeah.. America was mashing me up.”

“How it mash YOU up Raina, you cyah get mash up nah!”

“You’d be surprised…you want to hear for real? How much time you have?”

“Today… some. I’m staying by this lil place called Seacliff- yuh could take me back?”

“Yea of course, I drove.”

“Alright then, one second…”

“Georgie!” he called to the beach. “Georgie, this is Raina!”

She waved politely at the friend as she walked closer to the shore. She remembered the first time she met Joey. How they spent two days straight together after she saw him on Carnival Tuesday. Was she about to do it again? I mean, she happened to be on a solo trip, but who knew his situation? Georgie walked up the sandbar, towards the parking lot, and Joey bounded back to her, energy bouncing off him as always.

“Yea girl, so tell me now… who I must beat for you?”

Laughing was easy with them, like the last time. She poured out her normal complaints about her life in the warmonger’s country. The isolation. The white people. The fear of being picked up and shipped to El Salvador. The feeling of being unknown, unconsidered.

“Sometimes the people who must see us, see us, yuh understand? Sometimes is better some people don’t see us at all!” He calmed her effortlessly. “I’m just glad you not dere anymore. But I see you back in Jamaica glowing, looking sweet as ever, yuh go figure it out soon.”

And she knew this, too. But Raina found it sweet how easily he got to the core of what she feared. Only a month in Jamaica had already proved to her that being around the people in her old life was grounding.

“So how’s the music going Joe, I soon hear you on a Private Ryan playlist or wa?”

He grinned again, but his brows betrayed a little tension in his face. “It happening but slow… maybe 2027 for the playlist… but something coming. I just helping out my pops in the meantime, fishing. De other day we pull one out and it was bouncing everywhere, look like yuh bamcie on the road.”

Raina sighed, she forgot the corny part of Joey, but at least her answer was becoming more clear. She touched his leg, “Oh you still remembering my bamcie…”

When they got to Seacliff a few hours later, Georgie had conveniently gone to dinner. The guys were sharing a room on the ground floor, and Joey held Raina’s hand as he led her through to the back patio. The small hotel was perched on a sheer cliff, about one hundred feet up, overlooking the ocean. Dark blue sea spread as far as she looked, stretching all the way to the horizon to meet the soon-setting sun. The rumbling of waves hitting the cliffside was all-encompassing and constant, reminding her of the dull hum under the waves from this morning. But now, she was far above any need to duck, and could fully train her attention on the man next to her.

Joey jumped into a hammock on his patio, lighting a spliff. He offered her a seat in his lap and a sip of the spliff. She accepted both, happy to create a new moment with one of the strongest connections she had ever had. A little afraid, but mostly just there, enveloped in the rumbling, not resurfacing. Really, she had only stopped answering his texts because the distance between Nashville and Port of Spain felt too hard for her to manage. Being so understood by a person thousands of miles away, and so misunderstood by the people close by, it didn’t make sense and her brain couldn’t process it. A wall in her heart was the only way to believe that her dream of making it in America still worked. A dogged pursuit of excellence the only thing keeping her stagnant, tied to the now falling empire. It wasn’t until that president started mirroring Hitler ever more closely that she realized between her depression and the slide into authoritarianism, she had to get out. And even if she felt a little scared about how to be Jamaican again, she felt the comfort of belonging, of possibility. You can’t just run into Joeys in Nashville.

He was holding her now, arms wrapped around her waist as they looked out to the expanse together. She kissed his arm, and he raised it to her shoulder, lightly pushing her to face him. They melted into each other.

Georgie, bless him, stayed out for five hours. On his return, Joey walked her to her SUV, protesting all the way about her driving at night. Raina waved him off; she wasn’t about to let Georgie sleep in the hammock. As Joey leaned against the car he teased, “So you gonna ghost me again now Raina? I leave in two days but you know I always have an amazing time with you.”

“Nah I won’t ghost you again. I don’t know what we doing still but I won’t ghost you.”

He chuckled low, “I don’t know either but as long as we talking, we go find out.”

He kissed her lightly through the window. “Reach back safe ok, lemme know when you reach home.”

And she did.

For a few months, they spoke regularly — calls, texts, even a video call every so often. Neither of them seemed to want to be seriously romantic (to the point where she lowkey forgot his last name), but they knew there was something there. She made plans for Trinidad carnival in February. He said he would be home. He asked if she would be up for him visiting Jamaica in May for his birthday. She said she would love that.

Illustration by Ikem Smith

But then, one morning in January, she said good morning, and he didn’t text back. Weird, but not a huge deal. In three days, it became a huge deal. “In some ways, I deserve it”, Raina thought. “I ghosted last time after all.” But it still stung. Could it be someone else? Someone closer? She knew this whole distance thing didn’t make sense. She didn’t know why she kept opening herself up like that, wishing for something she could be cradled in. It wasn’t serious yet, she knew that. But also, wasn’t the last time magical? She was late for work, so she headed out with her hair hastily brushed into a low bun. She grabbed her keys and started the engine, turning up the radio until the soca drowned out her anxiety.

“Come home to me, come home to me, come home to me!” she sang out, letting her disappointment float away on Nailah Blackman’s shiny synthesized voice. It was one of those songs that took her right back to that first Tuesday, to the joy in Joey’s eyes as they flashed rags in the air. He was a stranger then, a friend of a friend’s cousin, and they were no one to each other. And yet in that moment, Nailah bound her up in excitement, and Joey was the only one who matched her energy, singing the chorus to her as she sang to him. “If I ever let you down again, it was a misunderstanding…” the car radio crooned. A lump formed in her throat as she thought about the text. Should she try him again?

“Zip 103, your high energy station!” the radio shouted, way too loudly, jolting her out of her thoughts. She turned it down a few notches as they read the breaking news. A fishing boat had been targeted again. Another US bomb dropped on alleged drug smugglers. Three men killed instantly, three men with no names yet. Raina’s mood shifted quickly to a hot anger. She could not escape that man, that president. His terror poured into her sea; her people disappeared for his oil. She didn’t expect this type of intrusion when she first left the US; she thought she could be done with him. She thought she was safely under the waves, back in a country without enough firepower for them to care. Who would expect a sitting president to bomb small fishing boats in the Caribbean? Unprompted?

In the parking lot at work now, she opened her Instagram feed and saw a reel of the drone’s-eye view of the bombing. It was a fuzzy, colourless view of a white cross in a white box flashing over the small boat, before a sudden disintegration. In the boat’s place, all that was left was open ocean with a few pieces floating nearby. The victims probably had not even known the drone was there, so high in the sky it was. She imagined the three unnamed men laughing, swapping stories, before a blinding flash ended their conversations forever. The video, the view from those who pulled the trigger, showed you couldn’t see who or what was on the boat. They were just shapes on the way home. Casualties in an undeclared war. Scanning the caption now, she saw the names of those who had been lost. Dario Fraser, Joseph Fraser, and Matthew Ramoutar.

She texted Joey again, immediately fearful, “Hey Joe, I know we haven’t spoken in a little but let me know if everything is ok.” An hour later, after her first meeting of the day, he still hadn’t responded. Raina didn’t want to look for his profile at first. They hadn’t followed each other on purpose, at least not yet. They wanted to keep it casual for now, and she didn’t want to see who he featured on his stories. But now, she was afraid that his last name was Fraser, afraid that his dad’s name was Dario. The wall around her heart re-emerged as she tried to distance herself, making herself believe that he was fine, that he had just found another girl, or that he had forgotten her. She couldn’t deal with America taking something else from her.

Raina tried to focus on work, but as the hours passed, the quiet of her phone screamed at her. She could not drown the thoughts in the hum of the ocean. She felt pulled to the surface and tied there, hit with crest after crest, unable to jump in time or frankly even to anticipate the next one. She thought of his smile, his eyes, his hands. His laugh. That feeling of calm in the hammock in that moment of peace. The start of something. He knew her. She knew him. He might be gone now, stolen, and there was nothing anyone could do. That president was saying they were “narco-terrorists”, and the UN was acting powerless, putting out statements and not much else.

When her boss finally walked out the front door, she gave in. She typed “Joseph Fraser” into Instagram and saw Joey’s smile gleaming back at her from the second profile she clicked. There was no new story. In his latest post, he stood hugging the shoulders of an older man holding a fishing net, his beautiful smile stretched on both their faces. The caption said that he was going to Venezuela to bring back a boat with his dad. In the comments, Raina saw his friends writing RIP, dropping flower emojis. She was torn from the ties and thrown into the shoreline. Out of breath, she was spinning, spinning in clouds of sand.

Who do you tell when the person who kills your [almost] man also controls the world? How do you know which way is up?

Between September 2025 and March 2026, approximately 163 people have been killed by the United States armed forces in extrajudicial bombings of small boats in the Caribbean. Operation Southern Spear, as it is called, has not released any evidence to support their claims that any of the victims were smuggling drugs. Victims’ families who have spoken to the press say that their loved ones were not involved in the drug trade and worked as fishermen or labourers.