“I called Ife, though. She said it was all right.”
“She did, enh?”
“Ifeoma tells me you have a new dependent now?” asked Michael. “You still full of surprises. Where he came from? You hiding a paramour here you not telling me about?”
I scowled. “He’s a little boy, maybe three years old. His parents got killed at sea in that bad storm.”
“Christ.”
“I found him washed up on the beach the next morning. They’re letting me foster him till they know what to do with him. He don’t speak English.”
“Wow. You want to keep him, then?”
“I don’t know.” I don’t need you, I thought. I got a baby without you this time.
Michael eyeballed the house. “Not bad,” he said. “Good bones.”
Orso said, “I’d like to figure out the facing direction, though. Maybe the entrance should be somewhere else.”
“Why?” I asked him. “I like it where it is. You know; right off the driveway?”
Ife was glaring at me. Now what?
“It’s a matter of balance,” Orso replied. “The line the eye follows as you enter the property. What parts of it get the morning sun first, where you plant your decorative shrubs, that kind of thing. You see? The built environment should complement the natural environment.”
“I get it!” said Ife. “The chi of the land needs to be in harmony.”
Orso lit up like a Christmas tree. “Exactly! I didn’t know you were into feng shui?”
“Just a little. I took a course last year.”
Someone else was tromping up the gravel road. I squinted. Blocky body. Grapefruit pink t-shirt. Black walking shorts. Oh, shit. Hector, just dropping by, like I’d told him he could. Yes, the universe was unfolding the way it always did: in chaos.
Hector waved when he saw us. “Good afternoon,” he said when he was in earshot. Ife pursed her lips when she saw him. I was pretty bemused myself. First time I’d seen him in something that wasn’t neon and skin tight. His colour sense hadn’t changed, though.
“I’m interrupting something?” Hector asked. “I could come back another time.”
“No; stay.” Be good to have at least one adult in the party that I wasn’t vexed with.
“I brought beer.”
“Then definitely stay! This is my daughter Ifeoma, and that’s Michael, and that’s his friend Orso.”
Orso and Michael exchanged glances. Hector smiled a greeting. Then he spied the tricycle where I’d stashed it beside the house. “Yours that?” he asked me. “I used to have one like it. In green.”
“I figure maybe Agway could use it,” I told him. “But it going to need fixing up.”
He went over and inspected the trike. “It only need some screws tightened and a new seat. New wheels. Maybe a fresh paint job. You want me to do it for you?”
“All right,” I told him. Be a good way to get to know him.
Michael said, “We could go in and look around now?”
“I guess so.” To Hector I said, “Michael wants to renovate the house for me.”
Orso told Ife, “You know, I even make up a bagua first for each property we design? Mikey, you coming?” Orso and Ife headed up the porch steps together, chattering happily about whatever a bagua was.
Blast you. I was calling him “Mikey” long before you even knew him. Chuh. I picked up the duffel bag. Hector and I followed.
“Saturday a good time to come and fix up the tricycle?”
“Yeah, man.”
“YOUR LIVING ROOM WINDOW’S TOO SMALL and dark,” said Michael. He and Orso were sitting on my couch, poring over a lined notebook they had put on the coffee table. “What you think about one big picture window?” He reached for his beer bottle and had a drink.
“Maybe. You went grey since I saw you last.”
“Salt and pepper, thank you, please.”
“You look good.” He did, damn him. If anything, more beautiful than he’d been at seventeen. He used to be lean like a whip snake. He had filled out. He was sporting a sexy goatee. And he looked relaxed.
“And that pantry is a disaster; you saw it, Orso? Narrow and dark with a naked lightbulb and a pull string.”
“I saw,” said Orso.
Over by the television, Agway, enraptured, was watching a fashion makeover programme. Stanley had wandered over to us to see what the adults were up to. He patted my arm. “Grandma-I-mean-Calamity; you could help me pick a science fair project?”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“But I need to tell my teacher my project next week!”
“Of course, darling. I’m back to work next week. Come to the library then, and we’ll find you a good project.”
“What kind of science you like, Stanley?” asked Hector. I’d brought the chairs from the kitchen and put them around the coffee table.
“I don’t know,” Stanley answered shyly.
“You can give Hector a more informative answer than that, Stanley,” said Ife.
Stanley looked at the floor. “The cool stuff, I guess.”
Hector laughed. “So, you think biology is cool?”
Stanley screwed up his face.
“Okay, guess not. Not even boa constrictors?”
Stanley shook his head.
“Not even sharks?”
Stanley’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! Sharks kick ass!”
“Stanley!” said Michael. “Sorry, Ife. Beat you to it.”
Michael reached for Orso’s hand. I wished they wouldn’t do that in public.
Hector said, “I once spent a summer catching sharks and sticking cameras to them.”
“You did?” Hector had made a new friend.
“I did. Maybe your gran can bring you by my boat one day, and I’ll show you what the sea looks like from shark’s-eye view. I even have a few shots of a shark making a kill.”
“Cool!” said Stanley. “Calamity, we can really go to Hector’s boat?”
I nodded.
Hector glanced Orso and Michael. They were still holding hands. “The two of you live here on Dolorosse?” Hector asked them.
“No,” Orso replied. “We have a beautiful house on the big island. Up by the hill at the foot of Grandcastle Street. Michael’s construction company built it.” And he patted Michael’s hand. They beamed at each other.
Time to nip that line of conversation in the bud. I leapt to my feet. “Anyone like a drink? Coffee? Tea? Cashew wine? Hector, come and help me throw together some snacks.”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” said Orso.
“Me neither, Cal,” said Michael. He turned back to Hector. “And it’s Dolores.”
“You mean, like Mary? Pleased to meet you, Dolores.”
Michael laughed. “No, I mean that’s how we pronounce the name of the island. Like the woman’s name.”
Orso leaned back in the settee. “You were on the right track, though.” He pointed to himself. “Mary.” Then at me, with a sly smirk. “Not Mary.”
Ife and Hector cracked up laughing. What the ass? Then Michael must have gotten the foolishness devil in him too, for he pointed to himself. “Mary.”
Ife tapped her own chest. “Not Mary. Not last I checked, anyway.”
Quizzically, Michael pointed at Hector. Hector flicked a glance at me. “Mary,” he said.
Orso snapped his fingers. “Yes!”
“…and Joseph.”
“Oh,” said Orso. He didn’t look any too pleased.
“Really?” Ife asked.
I shook my head and stood up. “Well, since I’m clearly not part of this conversation, why don’t I just get us some snacks? Sound good?”
Michael said, “You know, it’s kinda isolated all the way out here. You should come and visit us, Hector. Meet some of the gang.”
“I could fry up some plantain.”
“I would love that,” Hector replied.
“Good,” I said, pretending I’d misunderstood. “So you can come to
the kitchen and give me a hand, then.”
“Mummy, I’ll help you. Looks like the guys are getting to know one another.”
Hector smiled his thanks at her. “Really?” she asked him again. He laughed.
I picked Agway up from in front of the television. “Come, babby,” I said through my teeth. “Time for your lunch.”
As Ife followed me and Agway into the kitchen, I heard Hector say, “So, you live together, then?”
“Oh, yes, my dear. Number thirteen Grandcastle; a good luck number.”
I waited till I was out of earshot, in the kitchen. “Oh, yes, my dear, a good luck number,” I mimicked under my breath. I sucked my teeth.
“Please don’t start that,” said Ife. She sounded exasperated.
I put Agway in the highchair. Sally from over the way had lent it to me. I got a broad mango from the fridge; put it on a plastic plate and set it down on the table in front of Agway. I fetched two ripe plantains from the pantry. “Put the frying pan on to heat for me, nuh?” I asked Ife.
But she wasn’t going to let it drop. “Why you get on so bad around Daddy all the time?”
I got a sharp knife, started peeling the plantains. “Because he don’t have manners. Why he and Orso have to be always flaunting themselves like that?”
“Flaunting how?”
Agway had peeled his mango with his teeth. He put it down on the table beside the plate and started happily devouring the skin.
“Holding hands like two nanas, telling people they living in the same house, calling other men ‘my dear.’”
“And when you do that, what you call it?”
“When I do what?”
“Hold hands with some guy. Call him ‘my dear.’”
I sucked my teeth. “Oh, don’t be dense. You know that’s different.” Sometimes I couldn’t understand what went on in the child’s crystal-gazing mind.
“Buuds!” said Agway, showing me the seagull design on his plate. “Buuds, Mamma!”
“Oh, isn’t he sweet, Ife? He’s learning so fast!”
“You make him call you Mamma?”
That pulled me up short. “I didn’t make him do anything.”
“How come you want that little boy? You never wanted me.” Ife’s voice was tight.
“What? Ife, that’s nonsense.”
“It is not! You make him call you Mamma when you don’t even want me to call you Mummy. You never used to want people to know you had a daughter. So how come he’s calling you his mother?”
“Ife!”
“You didn’t want me then, and you still don’t want me.”
“Stop the stupidness. Just put some oil in the frying pan for me, please.”
“No.” She went and sat beside Agway. He was drawing sticky circles on the table with the peeled mango. “Nobody want fried plantain, not even you. You just trying to distract the three of them from talking to each other.” She held her hand out to Agway for his unwanted mango. He put it in her palm. She started eating it.
“More sweet things again? Last thing you need, you know.” When the silence had gone on a little too long, I looked up from my chopping to see her hurt, wet eyes. My heart clenched. I sighed. “Oh, sweetheart,” I said. “I didn’t mean it like tha—”
“Ifeoma is fine the way she is,” came a voice from the doorway. Michael was standing there. “She’s all curves, just like you. She have your eyes, the shape of your face. It’s just your sharp tongue she don’t have.”
“How long you been eavesdropping on me and my daughter?”
“She’s my daughter too. At least her father wanted her.”
“Mummy, Daddy, don’t fight,” moaned Ifeoma. Agway’s eyes were taking it all in.
“And how come you call him ‘Daddy’? That man was never a father to you!”
“And whose fault was that?” Michael demanded.
Orso and Hector had joined Michael in the doorway, and Stanley was peeking around the jamb. “What going on?” asked Orso. He put a protective arm around Michael’s waist.
I stamped my foot. “Don’t touch him like that! Not in my house!”
“Calamity,” came Hector’s voice. “Please put down the knife.”
I’d been pointing with the sharp kitchen knife in my hand. They were all staring at me, even Agway. I put the knife down on the stove. “I don’t like it,” I said slowly and carefully to Michael and Orso, “when you carry on with your sodomite ways in front of children. This is the house my father died in, and I’ll thank you to respect his memory.”
“Clearly that respect don’t cut two ways,” Orso said.
“I think I’m going back to the boat now,” Hector told us.
I glared at Orso, my mouth working. My blood was boiling. I could feel the sweat popping out on my forehead. I rushed at him. “You. Shut. Up. You just shut up right now!”
Something materialized out of the air and landed on the ground between us. It shattered when it hit.
“Now she’s throwing things at us!” hissed Orso. Agway started to cry. “Michael, we leaving this house this minute! I refuse to do any work for that woman.”
From the shards mixed in with a few coins, it looked like the piggybank that used to sit on my little vanity table in the house on Blessée.
Michael cut his eyes at me. “Later, Ife,” he said, his voice low and controlled. “Same time Sunday?” She nodded.
Michael and Orso left the kitchen. As they headed through the living room, Orso said loudly: “I told you that woman don’t have no kind feelings in her heart for you! Never did, never will.”
My ass. “What you know about it?” I yelled after him.
Hector’s eyes were big as limes. He cleared his throat. “Maybe they could give me a lift into town. To buy the things for the tricycle.” And he fled too.
I rounded on Ife. “What he mean by ‘same time Sunday’?”
“Sunday is when we go and see Grandpa,” Stanley piped up, mischief on his face.
“I told you not to tell her!” Ife said to him. “I told you it would only cause trouble.”
Stanley pouted. “Grandpa told her first.”
“And so everything Grandpa do, you going to do?”
The hot flash passed, leaving me shocky and shivering. “You go to Michael’s house every Sunday?” I asked them. “When it’s like pulling teeth to get you to come and see me?”
Ife looked down at her hands. “I finally realised you couldn’t stop me,” she said. “I found his number one day and called him. It’s been good for Stanley to have more men in his life.”
“Men?” I squeaked. “Michael and Orso?”
“Orso’s teaching me how to play cricket!” Stanley told me. I just stared from one to the other, lost.
Ife stood up. “You happy now?” she asked me. “Now that you’ve tried to make everybody as miserable as you?” She wiped Agway’s hands clean with a corner of her sackcloth dress. “I pity this child,” she said. “Come, Stanley.”
“Okay. Ka odi,” he said to Agway, waving.
“Ka odi,” Agway replied.
“What, like even the two of you talking so I can’t under-
stand?”
“Who have ears to hear, will hear,” Ife told me. She stepped over the ceramic shards, out into the living room. Stanley followed.
I yelled, “You best watch Orso with that child! You hear what I’m telling you, Ifeoma?”
The front door closed very quietly. A few seconds later I heard Ife start up her car and drive away.
“Shit. I really gone and done it now, Agway.”
He climbed backwards off the chair, toddled over to the tv and plumped himself down to watch the cartoons.
I got the broom, started cleaning the mess up. I knelt with the dustpan to sweep up the piggybank pieces. As I did, a stab of pain went through my trick knee. I used one hand on the floor to steady myself, then began brushing the shards into the dustpan.
My hands. When age spots started coming out on m
y hands? I put down the dustpan, sat back on my haunches. My palms still looked more or less like I remembered them, but the backs of my hands were a roadmap of the tiniest wrinkles. “Next thing you know,” I whispered, “my bubbies going to be neighbours with my navel, and I going to be wearing a diaper.”
Who tell me to set my cap for Hector, anyway? What a forty-year-old man could want with a matriarch? I watched the wet tears plop into the dustpan amongst the pieces of broken crockery.
Uncle Time is a spider-man, cunnin’ an’ cool,
him tell yu: watch de hill an yu se mi.
Huhn! Fe yu yi no quick enough fe si
how ’im move like mongoose; man, yu tink ’im fool?
—Dennis Scott, “Uncle Time”
Someone knocked at the door. It was about the time when Mr. Mckinley came by every Saturday with the morning’s catch. I put my hand over the receiver. “One minute!”
“You have to go?” asked Gene. He’d called to see how Agway was doing.
The knock came again. “Soon come!” I yelled at the door. “Yeah, I have to go.”
“You busy Thursday evening?”
“No. Why?”
“You want to go and catch a bite?”
“Yes! I mean, that would be nice. Listen, talk to you later, all right?”
“Later.”
I swear I sprouted wings and flew all the way to the door. Mr. Mckinley and his two strapping sons had given up on me and were walking away. “Morning, Mr. Mckinley,” I called out. “Morning, Gerald, Leonard.”
They came back.
“What allyou have for me today?”
“Nothing,” answered Mr. Mckinley.
“Nothing?”
“Me and the boys didn’t catch nothing but few little shrimps today. Other than that, not a stinking thing in the nets, pardon my language.”
“But how—?”
“It’s Gilmor. Years now the fishermen been saying that Gilmor killing the fish.”
“You want any of the shrimps?” asked Leonard, a beefy man in his twenties with arm muscles like cable from hauling nets.
“Yeah, give me about two pounds, nuh? Let me get a bowl from the kitchen.”
They ladled fresh shrimp into my bowl. I counted out the money from my purse and handed it to Gerald. “So what allyou going to do about this state of affairs?” I said lightly. “Can’t make us have to import snapper from Trinidad.” My mind was really on seeing Gene next Thursday.
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