“He just don’t understand English,” I told him.
“What then? French?” asked the woman whose son wanted to go and play in the cashew grove. I sometimes saw her riding the same waterbus with me on my way to work in the mornings. I’d never spoken to her before this.
I shook my head. “We don’t know what he talks yet.”
Agway, restless, started to fuss. “Look at that,” said Mrs. Soledad. “Maybe he need to change his diaper. Big boy like this, and not potty-trained yet. Calamity, take him inside.” She shooed me towards the house like any hen. Gratefully, I climbed the steps to the porch. To the crowd, she said, “Allyou must go away and leave the child to settle in. Calamity could explain about the
cashew trees later.”
Like hell I could. Inside, I put Agway on the couch and peeked through the jalousie windows at the front yard. With me no longer there to interrogate, the crowd began to thin. As the Lessings turned to leave, Mrs. Lessing said to her husband,
“Cashew trees? Her father used to raise cashews once upon a time, nuh true?”
“So he tell me.”
“I’M SO GLAD you can do this, Mrs. Soledad. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Yeah, man.” She was dandling Agway in her lap. She’d agreed to come and look after him every Tuesday through Thursday when I would be at work.
“Okay if I pay you every two weeks?”
“Ouch!” Her hat was on the floor, her head cranked towards her shoulder. Agway had discovered her two long plaits and was yanking on one as hard as he could.
“Shit, I’m sorry!” I leapt up to help her. “It’s just this thing he likes to do.”
Between us, we got him to at least give her enough play so that she could hold her head upright. To distract him, I gave him Dumpy. Didn’t work; he just took it in one hand.
“I should tell you, he don’t seem to like sweet things.” She nodded. Agway held Dumpy up in the air and inspected it.
“And I brought home some liquid painkiller. He might need to get it every four hours or so. Depend on if the leg’s paining him or not.”
“All right. Where he going to be sleeping?”
With a happy screech, Agway slung Dumpy across the room. Mrs. Soledad hissed as the motion pulled on her head. Dumpy hit the coffee table and knocked a vase down. I managed to catch it before it rolled off the table.
“You right, you know,” said Mrs. Soledad.
“Pardon?”
“You can’t thank me enough.”
AT LUNCH Agway licked all the butter off his baked potato before eating the potato itself. Then I put him on Dadda’s bed for a nap. I sat on the bed and watched him sleep. I would have to stay with him the first few nights to keep him from falling out of the bed, and to keep him company. But he would have to learn to sleep alone soon. After all, suppose I wanted to have an overnight guest? My body tingled with the memories of Gene’s skin against mine; of Hector’s eyes searching mine.
This room looked like an old man’s, not a young boy’s. I got a bucket from the kitchen and loaded it with Dadda’s colognes and creams and medicines from the top of the dresser, leaving only the dust. I got a singlet out of the dresser drawer and used it as a dustcloth. Better. I was halfway to the living room when I remembered the bucket full of medicines I’d left in Dadda’s room. I went back and got it. Threw them all out. Wasn’t making that mistake twice in a lifetime.
I took Dumpy from the living room and put him on top of the dresser. More like it.
I pulled open Dadda’s closet doors. A dry smell drifted out. I dove behind the hanging clothes, took out the suitcase Dadda kept in there. I piled all the clothes from the dresser into it and sat on it till I could get the zipper closed. “Beg pardon, Dadda,” I whispered. “You see that it’s in a good cause though, right?”
Out in the living room, the land line rang. So loud! It could wake Agway. I got to it on its third ring. “Hello?”
“Cal? That’s you?”
“Michael?” My skin flushed hot. My fingers itched fiercely. Chastity’s once favourite mug, her blue-and-white cocoa-tea mug to match the broken plate, rolled out from under the couch.
“Girl, you never answer your cell phone?”
“Uh, reception still not too good out here. How you got this number?”
“Well. Good to hear from you, too. I heard about your father. Ife called me. I’m so sorry.”
“Beg pardon! I was going to phone you. Tomorrow. I just been so busy.” I was going to kill Ifeoma.
“Cal, you don’t have to pretend. I know how things stand between you and me.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
“Besides, it’s hell organizing a funeral. When Orso’s sister died last year, all the details simply overwhelmed us, you know. Phoning everyone, and the cards to be sent out, and the flowers. She had left Orso orders that she wanted a wreath made of pink orchids, and he couldn’t find any anywhere in the city.”
“Mm-hmm,” I murmured. Orso. Michael’s man. I would never get used to how affected Michael sounded now. It’s so he used to sound when we were growing up? I couldn’t remember.
“But listen to me rattling on,” said Michael. “To tell the truth, I’m nervous. Didn’t know if it would be okay to call you.”
“It’s good to hear your voice, Mikey.” It was, too. That was a surprise.
“How are you?” he asked. “It must have been dreadful.”
“I guess I’m all right. After all, I knew he was going. Was just a matter of when.”
“And, girl, how did you manage out on that lonely little island for so long? You moving back to Cayaba now?”
“I don’t have an apartment there any more. So I’m here in Dolorosse.”
“My God. But you’re selling that old house, aren’t you? You’re moving back into the city?”
Agway came crawling out of the bedroom, his face puffy with sleep. When he saw me, he rocked back onto his behind and sat rubbing his eyes.
“I’m probably going to stay here,” I told Michael.
He was silent for a second. Then he said, “All right.” Now he had on his brisk “here’s what we’ll do now” tone. “What kind of shape that house is in?”
“Truth? The outside steps falling down, and the porch feeling sort of rickety. And there’s two broken windows that Dadda never fixed, just boarded up.”
“That settles it, then. I’m coming out there.”
“What?”
“Michael Jasper Construction is going to get your house back in shape. You home in the day tomorrow?”
“Yes, but—”
“Good. Eleven a.m. do you?”
“Michael, I can’t just—”
“You will be there?”
“…All right. Yes.”
“We’ll do a first inspection. Be good to see you again. Ciao, sweetie.”
“But…”
I was talking to a dial tone. I hung up and went to check Agway’s diaper.
The touch of chagrin I felt when I heard Michael’s voice was still there. Three—no, nearly five years since I’d seen Ifeoma’s father.
I slept beside Agway that night. About six next morning, I had a hot flash that half woke me up. Then I nearly died of fright when my old red tricycle landed with a crash right beside the bed. Scared the piss out of Agway. “It’s okay,” I said to him. “It’s a tricycle. Can you say ‘Trike’?”
He blinked sleepily at me. I got out of bed. My nightgown was soaked through with sweat. I had a look at the trike. It still had the slightly warped running board and rust spots in places. It still had the streamers coming out of the handlebars, raggedy where wind, sun, and a none-too-careful six-year-old me had torn them. My heart was stuttering from the scare, but I smiled. “I think you’re going to like this one, Agway.”
He kneed his way across the bed to me. I sat and pulled him into my lap. He got a fistful of my nightie in lieu of hair, and put his thumb in his mouth. He had dried tear-
tracks on his face. The fright from the tricycle, or had he been crying in his sleep?
A CAR WAS PULLING UP in front of the house. I put Hop on Pop down on the couch beside me, scooped Agway up from my lap, and took him with me to the living room windows. “’Op,” he said. “Pop.”
“Good boy.” It was Ife! And she’d brought Stanley. But on a weekday? We went out to meet them.
Stanley got out of the car and stared at the cashew grove. “Cool!” He slammed the door, catapulted himself toward the trees.
“Stanley Fernandez, come back here right now!” shouted Ifeoma.
“But, Mum…!” Stanley stopped on the gravel path outside the house, his shoulders slumped.
Ifeoma didn’t remove her shocked gaze from the trees as she said, “This minute, Stanley. Come and stand by me. You are not going in there.”
Good a time as any for me and Agway to make our entrance. I carried him down the porch steps to my family.
“Mummy,” said Ifeoma, “how did that—?”
I gave Ife a kiss on the cheek. “Why you not at work?” I asked her. “Why Stanley not in school?”
“I just decided to give us a little holiday,” she said. Then she bit her lip. Something she wanted to tell me, then.
I put Agway down on his feet in front of Stanley. “Stanley, meet Agway. Agway, Stanley.”
Stanley stared doubtfully at him. Ife gave him a gentle push forward. “What do you say, Stanley?”
“Hello?” Stanley enquired.
Agway made a friendly warble. I’d heard it a few times now. I figured it was his equivalent of “?’sup?”
“Agway’s saying hello,” I told him.
“You gave him a name?” Ife asked.
“I didn’t hear him say hello,” said Stanley.
“Of course I gave him a name. You want me to call him ‘Hey, You’?”
“But his parents probably already gave him a name.”
“They not around for me to ask them.”
“Mum, can I get my hair like that?”
“Maybe, darling.”
“Maybe? I’m cutting those horrible knots out of Agway’s hair first chance I get. You can’t be serious, Ife. Don’t tease the poor boy.”
Ife pulled Stanley to her side. “You mean, don’t tell him I’m going to give him something when I have no intention of doing so?”
Here we go. That one was from chapter six, verse 212 of Ife’s Epic Litany of The Wrongs of Calamity. “I got you Black Barbie,” I told her.
“You said you were going to get me Pretty Changes Barbie.”
“And you wanted your hair straightened to match hers, and you asked me how to make your skin ‘nice and light’ like hers. You wanted me to buy you self-hatred.”
“Okay, you’re right. Maybe I should let Stanley do something that would help him to love his blackness. Like…” She looked mock-thoughtful, then snapped her fingers. “I know! Locksing his hair!”
“Ife! Be serious!”
“As a heart attack.”
God, Agway’s hair. I’d managed to cut two or three locks off this morning, but he’d screamed bloody blue murder when he’d seen the pointy scissors. I’d had to stop. Couldn’t take scissors to the head of a child who was squirming and fighting you the whole time.
Agway waddled a little way away, squatted down. Hugging his knees, he studied the ground all around him.
He best had learn to stand a proper haircut before he was old enough for school. Children were pack animals; let any one of them act different from the group, and the rest would bring him down.
“Why he walks so funny?” Stanley asked.
“It’s those patches on his knees; see them? They stick together if his two legs touch.”
Ifeoma looked at Agway’s legs. Her face went smooth with pity. “My God,” she whispered.
Agway picked up a pebble. He stood and came over to Stanley. Gravely, he handed Stanley the pebble. Stanley took it, stared aghast at his hand, then looked at me. “It’s all dirty,” he said. “Why he want to give me that for?”
Agway had been watching Stanley’s reaction closely. He’d been doing this with me since we woke up this morning—giving me pebbles. I couldn’t figure out what the blazes he wanted me to do with them. When I’d thanked him for one, he’d just looked disappointed. When I’d tried putting one in my purse, he’d burst into tears.
Stanley tossed the pebble away. “No!” I shouted, too late. But Agway shouted with laughter and clapped his hands. “To rass,” I muttered. Ifeoma tisked at my language. “That’s what he wants me to do with it.”
Stanley picked up another stone and gave it to Agway. The child stared at it, turning it around in his fingers. Then he flung it away from himself as hard as he could. He made a little dancing motion with his feet, grinned and chirruped encouragingly at Stanley. He searched around in the dust at his feet, picked up and discarded two more pebbles before he found another that he liked. He handed it to Stanley.
Ifeoma and I watched them trade back and forth like that for a bit. “Children,” I said to her. “For the first little while, they not exactly human, you don’t find?”
She gave a little wry snort. “Yeah,” she said. “Once I was in the shower, and I asked Stanley to look on my bed and bring me the bra that was on it. He brought me Clifton’s jockstrap.”
“No! Why?” This was more like it.
“That’s the only thing he could find that looked to him like underwear. He say he thought it was a one-bubby brassiere.”
I laughed. “You want to come inside for something cold to drink?”
“Okay.”
The boys were still doing their pebble toss. “Stanley, you want to go inside and watch tv with Agway?”
“Yes, Grandma.” Stanley wasn’t looking at us. He was looking for a stone for Agway.
“Well, don’t wait for us. Just go on in.”
“All right. Come, Agway.” Stanley reached for Agway’s hand.
The child gazed up at him, his face open and innocent. He put his hand into Stanley’s. They toddled up the stairs together.
When they were inside, I said to Ife, “You want to tell me what’s wrong?”
She replied, “I pined for that Pretty Changes Barbie for weeks, you know.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ then.”
“I didn’t sleep all night Christmas Eve. I kept imagining opening the box and seeing her inside.”
“Okay. I going to break this down for you. What happened to the Raggedy Ann I got you for your birthday that time?”
“That not fair! You can’t—”
“What happened to her?”
Small voice: “I tried to put her through the meat grinder.”
“What happened to the whatchacallit there—the Turnip Patch doll?”
“Cabbage Patch.”
“And?”
Smaller voice: “Left it outside in the rain.”
“For three days. Don’t forget that part. It was slimy with mildew when I found it.”
“Well, all right. Dolls kind of bored me. They looked so nice on tv, but when I got them, they were just plastic.”
“You see? So how I was to know you could tell one from another?”
“Because it was the one I asked for.”
I sighed, took her arm. “I have lime wash with brown sugar. Just the way you like it.”
“With ice?”
“Plenty ice. Come.”
IN THE KITCHEN, I got the ice and the bottle of drink out of the fridge, and poured lime wash for all four of us. I put Agway’s into a child’s sippy cup, the kind with the lid and the teat. He understood teats.
“Soon come, Ife.” I took the drinks out to the boys. Stanley was introducing Agway to the joys of science fiction tv.
Ife came out of the kitchen with our glasses. She handed one to me. Sotto voce, she said to me, “Clifton didn’t come home last night.”
“I see. You want to go out on the porch and talk?”
We sat on the porch steps. Ife said, “How that cashew farm come to be there, again?”
“I came home one night and it was just there.” I didn’t mention the little detail of my magical power surges. Sometimes a half-truth is better than a whole one. “You know strange things always happening in Cayaba.”
“But that don’t make no sense!”
“True that.” I swirled my lime wash around in my glass. The ice cubes clinked in the translucent pale green. “Plenty in this world don’t make sense.”
“Not like this!” She took a big gulp of her drink. Thought a bit. “Two, three weeks since I last been here? Maybe in that time—”
“In that time what, Ife? A whole cashew grove sprout and grow in two weeks?”
“Well, the trees not so tall…” she said lamely.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t do like everybody around me doing. Don’t try to come up with a story to explain it, then talk yourself into believing the story. That thing out there don’t have no explanation. Until or unless it choose to go away back again, I have to live with that knowledge every morning I wake up and see it. Don’t let me have to live with that alone.”
“But—”
“Please, Ife.”
Ife stared into her glass.
“Now, tell me about Clifton. What’s wrong? Something happen to him?”
She shook her head. “No. He texted me this morning. He’s okay.”
“Then why he didn’t come back? Don’t tell me he’s seeing somebody.”
“Nah. We were fighting. Again.”
“What about?”
Her smile was sad. “Better you ask what we don’t fight about. We war about whether Stanley going to take cricket or band. Whose turn it is to wash the dishes. Whether hotels should be able to have a lockdown on beachfront property or not.”
“And last night? What the fight was about then? It’s you who started it? I know your mouth hot.”
“I had a good teacher.”
“You know, I have this book you should read: Anger Management for Women.”
“Oh, yes? You read it yet?”
“Don’t be fresh. I’m your mother.”
She laughed bitterly. “Not ‘Calamity’?”
I closed my eyes. “Bravo. Hat-trick.”
The New Moon's Arms Page 17
