Bathsheba McKenzie was Harmony's first real friend in the pine barren, a Cat Island woman whose farm was once not far from their apartment. She'd come to Nassau to bear children and work for the tourists in the first of the big hotels to go up after the war, while her husband laid stone for houses till his health gave way and he died in her bed, aged forty-three. After that she'd sought comfort in the soil, planting and growing and selling in her hours off to feed and clothe her family. Every profit she made she hoarded for her sons' education and a home among the trees, all the while knowing she was likely to achieve only one or the other. When her second son had finished his studies he set himself up in a successful dry-cleaning business and gave her the land she wanted -- six acres of it off Gladstone Road, which she cleared and planted with guinea corn and tomatoes and fruit trees.

When they'd moved into the apartments a mile or so north of Bathsheba's property the summer Harmony was eleven, the first things Shelly bought were live. A pair of goats from the big farm on the other side of Gladstone Road, a rooster and three hens, a couple of rabbits. As she said, that was all they needed. Goats and rabbits and chickens knew how to multiply themselves. Not long after they arrived two cats and a dog appeared, strays who walked out of the forest and stayed. The goats bred and the hens clucked often, depositing eggs all round the clearing while the rooster crowed triumphantly. But after a while one of the cats discovered how to open the door of the rabbit hutch, and one morning Harmony woke to find stray tails and bloody bits of ear strewn about the yard.

In the end, the hens didn't last very long either. At first they thrived, scratching the ground incessantly for the feed Harmony threw them, strutting proud as their rooster of their fat sleekness. Then came a time when Shelly forgot she was a mother, forgot they had to eat, forgot everything except for the fact that she'd discovered a new high and would do anything to get it. Those were days when the hens scratched the dust in vain, and one after the other they stopped laying eggs. Harmony took to wandering through the bush, visiting the neighbours they were beginning to have, raiding their gardens.

She was stealing tangerines and grapefruit when Bathsheba found her in the orchard eleven years ago. Harmony'd discovered the property one sweltering day in the summer, when the smell of ripe mangoes led her to a low wall of odd-shaped stones rising up out of the woods. Beyond the wall was a grove of trees planted in potholes in the rock, and among them a fat grey donkey gorged itself on fallen fruit. Mangoes were everywhere -- purple Haydns and stringy native ones, on their trees and on the ground, rotting in the heat. That day Harmony carried away four: one for eating on the way home, one for giving to Shelly, one for the goats and the last to savour later. So when the food ran out and she and Shelly were eating eggs faster than the hens could lay them, Harmony took a seed sack and followed the trail to the orchard, climbed over the wall, and set about collecting fruit.

It was early winter, and the citrus were full and readying on the trees. Harmony worked fast, filling the bag with ripening globes and noting where later fruit grew in tight clusters. She was so busy she didn't hear the growling till it was upon her; then she turned to face the largest potcake dog she'd ever seen, a pale hairy creature whose Shepherd blood showed in the hackles rising on its neck and the teeth it bared at her.

"Whoa," she said. The dog snapped.

"Sit, Ralph," said a voice behind the dog. Ralph sat with a grin, rumbling a little every now and then. Harmony looked up to meet the eyes that owned the voice and saw a straight stout person with smooth, old, bark-brown skin, a pine staff in her hand and a broad hat on her head.

"So you the one who been tiefin my produce," the woman said.

Harmony said nothing.

"What happen to you? You dumb, hey?"

Harmony said nothing.

"En you suppose to be in school?" asked the woman. "I got a good mind to beat you and call the police for you."

Harmony said nothing, rooted to the spot, a tangerine in her hand, bearing fruit like one of the trees.

"What you gat to say for yourself?" asked the woman. "I believe she simple, Ralph. I'n never see nobody get catch redhand tiefin from Bathsheba McKenzie and don't say nothin to defend theyself."

"I'n been tiefin your fruit," Harmony said.

"Brazen too," said Bathsheba McKenzie. "You see that? She standin up in my face with her hand full of my produce and the first ting outta her mouth is she'n tiefin my fruit. You ever see, Ralph?"

Ralph barked.

"I know," said Bathsheba McKenzie, "people does drag they children up these days."

"This the first time I mean."

"First time?"

"Tiefin your fruit."

"So you tiefin it now, hey?" asked Bathsheba McKenzie. "She tiefin it now, Ralph. She looked critically at Harmony. "First time?" she asked again.

"We'n got nothin home to eat."

"Oh no?" asked Bathsheba McKenzie. And Ralph, who had stopped his growling chorus, began again.

"Nothing cept for birdseed I mean," said Harmony.

Bathsheba McKenzie stared at her for a long moment, then she threw her head back and laughed so hard her hat fell off and Ralph had to retrieve it for her. Finally she stopped and looked at Harmony again.

"Who ya people, child?" she asked. Harmony told her. "So that white woman is your ma? She don't work much, do she?"

"I guess not," said Harmony, surprising herself with the admission.

"When you speak to your elders you must say Sir or Mam, you hear me? You don't favour her much," said Bathsheba. "She got big bones and you light. You looks like a little scrawny bird, come to think of it. Bird with plenty hair. Looka that hair, Ralph! Drownin in it. Birdseed, hey?" And she began laughing again. "So you been eatin birdseed," she said at last. "What happen? You get tired of birdseed and so you come on my land and start tiefin my produce like any old bird?"

"When I found this place you had so much mangoes they was rottnin on the ground. I figured you wouldn't miss couple."

"Well," said Bathsheba, "the child got some sense. What you name, child?"

"Harmony."

"Bathsheba McKenzie. I farms for a livin. When you takes my produce you takes my livin. You hear me?"

"Yes," said Harmony.

"Yes what?"

"Yes Mam," said Harmony.

"So you hungry, hey?"

"Yes Mam."

"Well listen. Why you don't keep them tangerine and grapefruit you got there this time? Next time you come ask me, you hear? And while you askin, I ga comb that head for you."

"Yes Mam."

So Bathsheba became a friend. After that day she taught Harmony and Shelly how to slaughter goats, and trapped them raccoons for pies when the money ran thin. She walked over to the apartments when she received shipments of landcrabs from the island, entered their kitchen and showed them how to cook and clean them; and when she had a bumper crop, she left bags of produce at their doorstep in the early morning. It was Bathsheba who made Harmony get up to go to school, for, as she said, a dumb bird is a useless bird. It was she who washed and starched her uniforms and combed her wandering hair; it was she who fixed her grits and cheese for breakfast. And it was for Bathsheba that Harmony remained in the barren.

When Harmony was sixteen and just about to graduate from high school Bathsheba had a stroke and couldn't work the land much any more. The donkey had to be sold and Bathsheba's family began talking about parcelling up the farm and selling it too. But Bathsheba fought her way back from speechlessness to tell them about themselves and continue living off her fruit for eighteen months more, though she could no longer plant as she used to. Two years after the first stroke, Bathsheba had a second which cut off her movement entirely. Her daughter drove out one day to collect her and not long after the land was sold. From the trail in the bush Harmony watched the bulldozers ripping up the trees; and when they returned to break the ground for the buildings she felt tears pricking the backs of her eyes. She turned her back on the land and never used that trail again.