Sola and I we good right now. She texting and calling regularly. She affectionate, expressing she feelings, telling me she looking forward to Christmas holidays. She say she even go to the pub sometimes with Greg and they laugh over she vexing and accusing me and Greg. She say how she brain not the same since the knock on she head but she say she nah give up she rugby. She want me to give she talk but instead I laugh. I love the lightness. I love how she take my hand in the taxi, rest she fingers between mine like she saying thank you through touch.
No. I don’t want to spoil us by mentioning Jared’s name. She busy anyway. She getting ready for exam and she serious about she studies. And why I not taking my studies serious? I have exams too. But instead I studying man.
“So what time do you get off?” he ask while his eyes dart between me and the TV.
“Don’t know.”
“Are you mad at me?”
I laugh.
“Are we having our first fight?”
“Your shallowness is daunting, Jared.”
“You coming over later?” Ignoring my comment and paying for the beer.
Iris tell me I can leave early if I want. “The place dead,” she say.
I arrive to his place around 10:00. The door open. I wonder if he leave it open for me. “Hey,” I call out.
“Hey,” he reply.
Jared behind his laptop at a desk in a corner of the living room. He don’t look up. Keeps typing. I imagine him writing messages to women behind screens. Women like me, women with constant cravings.
“How was work?”
“Okay. I guess.”
“Want a glass of wine?”
I inhale, exhale.
He close his computer, walk over and kiss me. The phone ring. He answer while walking to the kitchen. Five, ten, fifteen minutes. I move to the kitchen. He at the sink wiping down the counter. He turn around and shrug he shoulders, roll he eyes as if the person on the other end bothering him. He laugh. He look up again and hold up he hand signaling a few more minutes. I stand up to leave. He say goodbye into the phone like a parent forcing him to say thank you.
“Are you okay?” he say.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” I say.
He walk past me and into the bathroom. In between brushing he teeth he say, “I thought you come from the Islands where everything cool and nice.” Spit falling from he mouth.
“Fuck you.”
He take off he clothes and climb into bed leaving me with my “fuck” hanging in the air. He turn out the light like he banging the phone down mid-sentence. He voice in the darkness, “Are you coming to bed?”
I take off my clothes and climb in. I don’t search for he body but lay still till he hand reach between my legs. He spread my legs and enter me with he fist.
“Jared. Jared. Stop.”
“You’re all the same. You want us. You don’t want us. Then you just keep showing up, coming around. Just like Rebecca. Imagine coming around an old man like my dad. Every day she’s coming around.”
He spread me wider, shove his fist farther.
“Jared.”
I cant move ’cause every time I move he fist reaching deeper, he knuckles raw against my insides. I cry out, “Stop. Please. Stop.” He don’t’ stop. He don’t stop until he body tremble and go slack.
He pull he fist from me, jump up, hands on he head, one gigantic step to the bathroom. I can’t find my clothes. I switch on the lights. Blood down my leg from he ring. Shirt inside out, skirt without belt, bare feet into boots. I hear him sobbing in the bathroom. I grab my bag from the kitchen table and walk out.
Down on the street my head down and I walking fast like jumbie following me until I start to suck air in faster than I can spit air out. I cough until vomit spray the front entrance of a secondhand clothing store. I turn red even though no one around. I use the sleeve of my jacket to wipe my mouth clean. I have money for taxi but don’t want sex and vomit filling up the vehicle. I walk. I pass the Lion’s Den, lights dim, blackboard still out with the day’s specials. I pick up pace hoping Iris and RasI don’t see me.
When I reach home I throw my sour smelling shoes into the hallway. I’m tempted to wrap them in plastic and throw them in the dumpster but Sola in my head, “You throwing away a good pair of shoes just because of a little vomit?”
Sola. I want she here now. I want she to tell me to call the police, tell me to do something; I want she to help me describe what just happen. Attack. Assault. Rape. I want Sola’s words to find meaning ’cause she good with words and she know what to do. I call. Kat pick up. “Where’s Sola?” I say.
I hear Kat calling Sola’s name like Sola in another building.
“Hello.”
“I think he rape me.” I press my lips to the receiver. Sitting in the furthest corner of my room.
“Judith?”
“Jared. I think he rape me.”
“What are you talking about Judith?”
“Jared. I go there after work. And the man shove his hand inside me. I tell him to stop. The man won’t stop Sola. The man keep pounding me from the inside with he fist.” I can’t hear what she saying ’cause I sobbing. I think I hear she say, “You drunk Judith?” I think I hear, “You still with that man Judith? What did you expect?” I think I hear a long stretch of silence. I think I say I got to go, then hang up.
I walk into the bathroom, tea-tree oil half open, tampons and pads tucked in a glass jar, armpit and leg hair stuck to the sink, a small piece of shit floating in the toilet. I crouch on the floor, close my eyes and listen to words swelling from my mouth. Like someone in the room with me listening, nodding in agreement. “How you stupid so? You feel this is joke? You provoking the man in his own house. Why you get in the man’s bed? You tell the man to fuck off and then you take your clothes off and get in bed with him? How you so? Why you can’t settle yourself? You have everything and you getting on so. You never satisfy. Stop crying nah. What you crying for? You embarrassing yourself.”
Sleep take me on the bathroom floor. I wake up when I turn my head and catch the end of the counter with my forehead. “Fuck.” I run the shower and wash myself with small hard slaps.
SOLA
JUDITH IS ON THE phone speaking in a crackling loud whisper. “I think I’ve been raped.” Judith’s whisper turns wet and watery. I sit on the edge of the bed with a copy of Middlemarch dangling from my hand, phone supported by my shoulder, while I bite the flesh bubbling at the sides of my nails. I chew and listen to Judith pulling tears through her nose. “Judith I don’t know what else to say,” after the absence of words grows like a puddle spreading into river.
“Okay,” she says.
“Don’t have anything more to do with him. He’s an ass, Judith. I couldn’t understand why you were with him in the first place. I will call you after my exam tomorrow. Okay? Judith okay?”
“Okay.”
“Go and sleep.”
What does she want me to do, catch the next bus to the city so she can explain how she thinks she’s been raped by this guy? How does she not know but thinks she’s been raped by a man she’s been sleeping with for the past month, a guy she says means nothing to her, nothing but sex and movies.
A click on the other end of the phone and Judith is gone. I notice blood circling the outside of my nail, a piece of nail hanging. I rip it with my teeth, feel the flesh let go and more blood rise and drip onto the middle of my white t-shirt. I take my shirt off, throw it into the sink, bandage by finger and scrub out the stain with soap and water. I leave the shirt in the sink, flip my phone shut, toss George Eliot against the wall and kick the chair out of my way. Kat swings her head through the crack of the door.
“You okay?”
“I don’t understand her.”
“Who?”
“Judith.”
“You two have a
lot to work out.”
“Okay whatever Kat.”
I grab my jacket, put on my running shoes and run down the stairs. It’s late, I have an exam tomorrow but my heart is beating fast and I know I will never be able to sleep now. I tell myself I will walk and study. I will go over the essay questions the teacher gave us that she said would be on the exam. But instead I’m studying my own words that flew out of my mouth moments earlier to Judith. Words dropping out like foam spilling from beer. “Why were you with the man anyways? Why were you going over there? Something wrong with you?”
And I think of Mikey’s words. “So why you at the man’s house Sola? People see you Sola.” Mikey and I under the flowering skin-up tree. We are both sitting crossed-legged on the bench. Our hands weaving through soft green and purple peas. I search for worms the colour of grass crouched hiding at the bottom of the calabash. “Sola if you lying to me I swear to God I’ll beat you worse than Thompson ever did.”
“They lie,” I say. “Confusion people.” Words I heard on the road every day when I was a child. “He lie, she lie, they lie.” I actually believe they are lying. But then there I am in Mr. Robbie’s house drinking Juicy Cool orange, grape, cream soda. And so what if I am going over there I hear my small self say. It’s none of people’s damn business. The man nice to me. The man say I the only one he let come visit ’cause the other children unruly, undisciplined. The man say he wife going to send a bicycle for me. I’m in the man’s house almost every day until Mikey threatens me, then I stop going every day but I still go. I look forward to going.
I try to bring my mind back to the exam tomorrow but there’s Mikey again calling me from outside Thompson’s house. “Sola, you there?” Mikey unlatching the back door. Ma Tay behind him. They see me on the couch cutting my toenails with scissors too big for my hand. Someone hollering from across the road, “He coming.”
“Girl what happened to you?” Mikey says.
My left eye swollen shut. My top lip bleeding. Thompson coming in the front door, “What the ass?”
Ma Tay say, “Sola get your shoes!”
I slide into my slippers and walk past Thompson.
“Ungrateful child,” Thompson hisses at me.
A full moon. Neighbours watching. Dogs barking. Mikey’s hand on top of my head as we walk from the yard.
Wet snow starts to fall. I am wearing only a t-shirt under my jacket and thin cotton socks. I run back to the house. My whole body is trembling, my teeth like fingers on the keys of a piano pounding a fast rhythm. The next morning I wake up to Kat returning from her run, Kat filling the kettle, opening the fridge and gulping water, humming a familiar song. Notes crumpled on my bed, opened texts and fiction scattered on the floor. I think of calling Judith, asking her to tell me again what happened. But I don’t. I go to school early instead.
In the middle of my first exam the same chill from the night before sidles up my legs, spine and neck. My teeth and heart clattering. The nervousness runs up and down my torso, then back into my feet and hands. I get up and ask to go to the bathroom. I walk up and down the hallway. As soon as I sit on the toilet the nervousness gallops up my body again and I can’t sit long enough to pee. I am walking toward the farthest window. Hands opening and closing fast like both hands are cramping and I am trying to get rid of the stiffness. Now I am shaking my hands violently like something is stuck and I can’t shake it off. I hear my silver moon boots slapping the polished floor. I breathe deep into the length of my stride and convince air to pass through lungs. I force myself to think of Judith, hoping thoughts of her will distract my heart from beating wildly. Another twist of nerves hurling inside.
A swoosh of memories. Sipping cold sweet drinks while swinging legs from concrete counters. Skipping from behind bush fences smiling. Balancing buckets of water while thumping home barefoot, slippers looped through thumbs. I can’t stop myself from visiting him. I liked visiting him. I can’t stop feelings of giddiness then shame then giddiness again. I forget to look up and greet the elders. Comments growing more vivid around me.
“Girls in heat earlier these days.” Mr. Loyd’s voice from behind the shop counter. And I don’t know what that means.
“She’s a fast one just ask Mr. Robbie.” Girls cackling on the bridge.
“What are you doing in the man’s house, Sola?” Mikey grabbing me by the elbow while yelling over his shoulder. “I getting the police Mr. Robbie.”
Steady clicking heels on tile. “What are you doing out here?”
The supervisor for exam-room 215 asks. I am at the end of the hall bent over the fountain letting water bubble over my lips, nose and cheeks. I duck farther under the fountain turning my head left to right letting water cover my whole face up to my hairline.
I go back in the classroom, sit with pen poised over paper but nothing runs through. I beg the professor afterwards to let me write the last hour over, tell her I’m not feeling well and can’t sit long enough to finish the exam.
I don’t phone Judith after the exam. I don’t phone or text her the next day or the day after that. I am vexed for screwing up my exam and I don’t want to screw up the rest of them. I let the days accumulate until the space between us becomes too big, too awkward, too questionable. Awkward because I never phoned her back and questionable because I never believed her about the rape.
JUDITH
I SQUEEZE THE FLESH between my legs until tears fill my eyes. Minutes later a purple smudge run the inside my leg. I sleep past my first, second, third class. I take another shower. I let the water go as hot as my body can take and then bang the tap shut. I cry. I tell myself stop the damn tears. That’s nothing. Check Melina I tell myself. You ever once see Melina cry after the boys hold her down. What about women all over the world? Women assaulted, killed, maimed, beaten all the time. What you have to cry about? What happened? Stupidness. Real stupidness. I turn the hot water on again to rinse last piece of soap. Heat cutting into skin. I turn off and slide down the tiles, let the cool air cover me until my teeth clapping.
I don’t go to school. I don’t go to exams. I don’t get up early to walk the track at the college, I don’t wait for Sola to call me and I don’t call she. I find the envelope in my desk where I keep second-semester school fees. “Fuck opportunities,” I say. I count the money then put it into an envelope marking Drey on top. I see Mom shaking she head, “Don’t give up Judith.”
I think about telling Fabian I not going back. Fabian watching me like I someone else’s child, like how Pauline and he could make such a child. I imagine Drey convincing me to stay. “So many people wish they in your shoes Judith. Why you giving up now?”
I call Drey. I surprise he home. But there he is breathing into the phone, “Who you want to speak to? Judith. That you?”
I tell him I okay. Nothing wrong. Just lonely maybe.
He laugh. “Lonely for me?”
“Maybe.”
Drey talk about he garden. “Judith if you see mango tree, the one hanging over the road. Ceylon mango for so. Look like we the only yard with mango. Anytime a mango drop neighbours running. And if you see tomato and cabbage, beans and corn. They growing tall and nice and we just about to roast some corn before rain come again.”
I tell him to stop ’cause I miss home and I don’t want to hear about roasted corn, ripe Ceylon mango. I tell him I have money saved from work and can help pay for he ticket.
“Ticket where?”
“Ticket here. Didn’t you say you want to experience snow?”
“Yes but that just talk. Snow a serious thing, Judith.”
I tell him I want him to come. I tell him I lonely. I tell him there’s a week in February where I don’t have school even though school done for me. I tell him it’s a change to see he sister. Me mentioning Arlene make him pause, make him say he’ll think about it. And then there are things I don’t tell him. I don’t tell him I quit schoo
l; I don’t tell him I plan to pick up more shifts at Lion’s Den to make money so when I come back I have my own money. I don’t tell him I coming back; I don’t tell him about visiting Sola at school, she concussion, and how she never bother to check me after I tell she about the rape; and I don’t tell him nothing about Jared and I never will.
I stay in bed a few days. Aunt Rachel come home with containers of different soups. One night carrot and ginger the next broccoli and bean and the next noodles cabbage and hot spices. I miss Fabian’s soups steeped in coconut milk. I miss flour dumplings, breadfruit and sweet potatoes.
On Friday I call in sick to Lion’s Den. “You okay Judith? We saw you passing late the other night. So movie man can’t call you a cab? RasI told me to mind my own business but I can’t help myself. Judith any man who lets you walk alone at night is no’ a man at all.”
I force a laugh and tell her I okay. Just a cold I say.
Dolma phone the next week. “How you scarce so? Why you stop come visit?” and “What happen to Sola? ’Cause she never call and when I call she fast to say goodbye.”
“I haven’t talked to Sola for almost two weeks.”
“You two have a falling out?”
“Don’t know.”
“How you mean you don’t know?”
“I don’t know, Ms. Dolma. I just don’t know.”
“When you coming to visit next? I hope we see you over the holidays. I know if she don’t see you she’ll be walking around the house with long face. And you and Sola special. It’s rare to find friends from same place here you know. You feel there lot of Small Island people this part of the country? Don’t be stubborn like Sola ’cause you’ll lose. Sola Queen Stubbornness.”
Big Island, Small Page 11
