how the one-armed sister sweeps her house
In Baxter’s Beach, Barbados, Lala’s grandmother Wilma tells the story of the one-armed sister. It’s a cautionary tale, about what happens to girls who disobey their mothers and go into the Baxter’s Tunnels. When she’s grown, Lala lives on the beach with her husband, Adan, a petty criminal with endless charisma whose thwarted burglary of one of the beach mansions sets off a chain of events with terrible consequences. A gunshot no one was meant to witness. A new mother whose baby is found lifeless on the beach. A woman torn between two worlds and incapacitated by grief. And two men driven into the Tunnels by desperation and greed who attempt a crime that will risk their freedom – and their lives.
A haunting, terrible tale. Lala has a husband. He’s not a good man. In fact, he killed a man, whose wife had a husband and doesn’t anymore. Lala has a child, for a week. Then she doesn’t, and her husband blames her and she knows he’ll kill her if she doesn’t leave. Lala doesn’t leave.…
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya
Simon Barthélémy