Jasmine

On the trawler out of Amsterdam, Jasmine and the other illegal passengers sleep on tiered bunks. When they switch boats to a shrimper going from Grand Cayman to the Gulf Coast of Florida, they sleep under a tarp where Jasmine learns “to roll with the waves, and hold the vomit in” (104).

The captain of the ship is called Half-Face as he had lost an ear, an eye, and most of his cheek in Vietnam. Another passenger, a Jamaican named Kingsland, tells Jasmine that Half-Face is well known in the Caribbean as a former demolitions expert. Jasmine also meets Little Clyde, who has suffered terribly at the hands of vigilantes in his previous attempts to sneak into America, and the Mauritian, a delicate, Indian-looking woman who spends the majority of the trip crying and singing Gilbert and Sullivan show tunes.

Half-Face instructs them all that if they get caught as undocumented people in America, they are to pretend never to have known him or his ship. He offers accommodations to anyone who needs them when they get on land. Kingsland says to Jasmine, “Don’t truss dat mon, no way” (106), and gives her a small knife to defend herself, telling her she can depend on that blade if nothing else.