Then the stone belly girl got down on her back, sniffled, and lifted her thin cotton dress toward her narrow chest. This dress was so unlike the gowns the girls in the Miss St. Kitts Pageant wore. But sheíd worn it every year since the first when her father, loud and drunk, had pushed her into the mud behind the grandstand and busted a small flat rock on her stomach with a nailhammer. Now her father came toward her with the big rounded stone, smooth as a calabash in his hands, and lowered it gently down, sea salt glistening on its black skin, onto her brown belly. The stone belly girl wanted to blow her nose, but instead relaxed under the weight, as she had learned to do, and watched the polished hammerhead go up and come down. Once and then once more before the stone broke like an egg, the two halves rolling off her, and she stood up and coughed.