She sees me looking but ignores me. There is a weary sadness about her.
Father elbows me and nods. I raise my eyebrows in acknowledgment. I’m not happy enough with him yet this morning to do the buddy-buddy girl thing he is seeking.
The shirtless man in the dirty jeans has reemerged. He begins to fuss with the long fire side. I stand to move away before the mix of dust and stale food make me sick.
“Where is the bathroom? Where they wash their hands, Daddy?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“The people who work here—him.” I nod at the old man. “Where do they wash their hands? Where are their toilets? They use the bush? When they use the bush, where they wash?”
He ignores me of course, stands, and then moves across to where the young woman is sitting. “How you look so sad this morning?” he asks her.
I cannot believe this one. Why do I fear that the next statement will be, This is my son.
“You look like the Vassals from down Alligator Pond,” he adds.
The smile escapes her like a precious, private thing. She catches herself and retrieves it quickly.
“You such a nice young lady,” he continues. “Tell me what you doing up here?”
“Waiting on somebody. You see a red car stop? How long you up here now?”
“Not too long now.” He sits beside her, stretching his legs toward the street. “You would have to ask my son, him notices everything. I’m getting old. You sure you not a Vassal or Turner, then?”
She smiles longer now. “No sir, I come from Ballards Valley way. I am Thomas, Angela.”
“You know that Angela is Spanish for angel . . .”
He is acting more like a man on vacation than someone who is seeking a long-lost love. There is no urgency in him. He has not told me where we are going or when we intend to get there. I had expected that once I agreed to go with him, we would have been halfway there by now, would have spent last night hustling from Mandeville to get to wherever this woman may be. But it seems my submission has been an excuse for him to shed whatever urgency his quest may have had, as if I have given him years and not a couple of days.
So after he spent last evening shopping for me, he went for a long walk around the adjoining golf course. I took the opportunity to have the vehicle cleaned. I am not sure what time he got back. I had eaten, had a drink at the bar, and gone to bed early. This morning he woke me, said he was headed out to the golf course again. He invited me, but I declined. Now it’s close to eight o’clock and I still don’t know where we are going or when we will get there.
So here we are, missing my continental breakfast at the hotel, at this awful-smelling jerk pit with no toilet or bathroom in sight, with this little man as stale as the fire side he is trying to stir to life, rustling up something for us to eat. And instead of discussing the trip with me, my father is over there at the edge of the road trying to steal smiles from a young woman like a pickpocket.
I leave him to his endeavors. Somehow, I now feel a bit guilty for ignoring Audrey’s calls. She has left four messages on my phone since yesterday, but I have not even listened to them. My anger and resentment toward her is dissipating a bit even though she was wrong; we had come too far together for her to say the thing she said. There are places you do not go, things you do not say, lines you do not cross however angry you become. For they are like bullets fired in the air, which you cannot take back and you have no idea where they will fall or the damage they will cause. We have quarreled before, and I am accustomed to the wounds her tongue can make, but she has never crossed the line before in the way she did that morning. “You don’t even love you damn father.” And over an orgasm at that.
How could she say something like that . . . in that ugly way?
I head toward the other side of the shed where it hangs onto a concrete building with a sign saying Hill View Hide Out Restaurant & Bar. There is no wall here and I have an uninterrupted view of the valley below.
I look out onto the plains of St. Elizabeth and everything beyond: from the sea that peeps between hills way off to the south, to the smoke curling from the rusty red compound of the bauxite plant that sits square in the center of everything. It is a massive, sprawling valley.
Though it’s close to eight o’clock in the morning, the sun has not yet made its way up the hill to where we are. But down in the valley and way over to the plains, I can see its shadow shrinking its way eastward. And as it comes, slowly, creeping, there is a moment when part of the valley has a hint of sun, and part still sleeps quietly and peacefully snuggled into the gray bosom of the morning.
My wallet is in my hand and I do not know how it got there. But it is there, and protruding from an inner pocket is the yellowing edge of a piece of paper. I take it out gently, unfolding it. Its creases are almost as brown as the land around me as I open it. Ten Questions for My Father. Here this morning on the edge of the precipice, the old writings of years ago, drawn by the tentative hands of an uncertain adolescent, still hold. Ten Questions for My Father.
When I am away from him, I do not remember these questions. And even if they come to mind, I usually discard them. I have formed my own conclusions about them, provided my own answers and justifications. I am a man now, I tell myself. I have gone through the years when the questions would have mattered. For any son may find more questions for a parent than can be answered in two lifetimes. And no span of life is able to resolve all the stories that fill them. That, I tell myself, is the reason for forgiveness . . . it fills those gaps of unanswered questions.
The questions came from a suspension I had from school for fighting when I was twelve. My classmates and I had been teasing each other under a big tree in the schoolyard at lunch break and I had been boasting about my father as I usually did. But my best friend, in trying to win the argument, shouted out that I was lying because I could not even remember the last time I’d seen him. “Your father not even come look for you,” he had sneered.
It was a secret we shared and he’d betrayed me.
I gave him such a beating, I was suspended from school for two weeks.
It took my mother two days of insistent badgering to extract the reason for the fight from me.
That was after my father had come. He drove up in his brand-new fishtail car on his way from work to his house in Sydenham and threatened to beat me till I had absolutely no backside left. “I went to school for fifteen years and never get detention. You are twelve and get expelled for two weeks. Two weeks.”
I never told him the reason for the fight, though he asked repeatedly and slapped me so hard I almost fell to the ground. But people said I had a devil in me then, and a sullen silence that could infuriate the Lord Jesus Himself. So I never told him.
But my mother had a way of getting things out of me and after two days she succeeded. When I finally told her, she gave me a long, measured look and said, “Some things you must let pass sometimes or you won’t have many friends.”
But as I said, I had a devil in me. I drove my mother to the edge of madness. I never got suspended again, but I romped at school till my clothes were so dirty that my mother cried when she washed them. I stayed out late after school with rowdy friends when I knew she would be worried. And I would refuse my chores and leave them half or badly done. And worst of all, though she often forced me to go to church, I would stay outside and hang out as if I were on a school break.
I drove my mother to the edge of madness.
Then one day she took me to the pastor, and right there in his office, in the middle of asking for his help, she broke down in tears. “He hates me, pastor. He hates me. I try my best but I don’t know why he hates me.”
The pastor nodded his head, looked gently at her, and asked her to excuse herself so he could talk to me alone.
When she left, he leaned back in his chair and peered across at me; my shirt buttoned haphazardly, shoe laces untied, dirt on my face, and it was only halfway through Sunday morning.
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So he looked at me, and instead of preaching or sermonizing, which I was prepared for, he threw a large Stagga Back at me, speaking as I caught the large candy. “Women are like that, they get hysterical sometimes.” Then, as I contemplated the large gummy sweet, he leaned forward over his desk and trapped me with the softness in his eyes. “It’s your father, isn’t it? You have a lot of things you want to say to him, don’t you?”
I remember feeling as if a hand had reached inside and touched my most tender part. I jumped as if stung by a bee.
“Is so men stay.” He leaned back in his chair with a friendly, victorious smile. “That is how we are, men. Well, some men . . . some fathers stay so. Me, if I see my father now, I wouldn’t recognize him, probably only saw him one time in my life and it was a stranger who pointed him out to me on a bus one day . . . See you father there! But I don’t make that cause me to destroy myself. The most we can do, people like you and me, is try to be better when we become men.”
I remember squirming in the seat, sullen and silent. I could not sit still or meet his eyes.
“Tell you what you do.” He was leaning forward again. “When I was your age, nobody really understood me either. And sometimes, to tell you the truth, I never even understand myself. But it is all right. You are a good boy and you will be okay, you will grow it out. But you can’t go around angry like that, because you poor mother don’t understand and will think is she you hate . . . and you don’t want to distress her. So tell you what you do. After church, when you go home, sit in your room and write down the ten most important things you would like to ask your daddy. Keep it as your secret, and when you get a chance, give it to him. Mail it too if you want. Or just keep it as your own secret—or, if you really feel you strong enough, call him one day, tell him you want to talk to him, and read them to him.”
“Ten questions?”
“Yes, ten questions.”
So I went home and wrote the ten questions down, and my whole life turned around. I can only recall one major fight afterward, but that is another story. My mother said it was the pastor’s prayer. But I knew it was the weight of the responsibility of the ten questions I carried around in my breast pocket everywhere I went. And the hope that I would one day do what I wanted with it. And somehow, too, those questions ensured I was good, pinned me down against my pride. For to be angry at anything else now, to me, was a sign of weakness I could not admit to myself or to anyone . . . so ultimately, then, in a reverse kind of roundabout way, the ten questions were my source of strength and resolve as I moved through my teenage years.
I never asked my father those questions, never showed a soul the list. I tweaked it over the years, removing childish questions as I grew, changing one, honing another. But somehow, this list, this old original list written by uncertain teenage hands, feels more powerful and fills me with more emotions than any version I hold in my head.
“Memories? Old memories?” He is beside me now.
“Yeah.”
“What is that you hiding?”
“Not hiding anything. What is in my wallet is my business, old man.”
“You ever seen anything pretty so, boy?”
“What?”
He points ahead as the morning creeps up the hill and the valley brightens and the clouds and mist roll toward the colder, darker side. The land below me has more yellow now, and even the hills way over in the distance are changing in the face of the coming day.
“You have a point there, old man, it is amazing.”
“You know where you are?”
“Manchester.”
“Yes, but where? This is the Spur Tree Hill, boy. There is no other view like this anywhere else in Jamaica. And I should know. I travel everywhere.”
“I must admit it’s beautiful.”
“See! And we not even start off yet. Suppose you had gone back.”
“Ahh,” I wag my finger at him, “I said a couple of days. No more.”
“Come.” He slaps my back. “The food ready.”
“Already? How long have I been standing here?”
“Is so beauty stay, man, it kills time. Come.”
* * *
The young woman is sitting between us. And why am I not surprised? My father introduces her as Angela from Ballards Valley. I see now that she is younger than she appeared from afar. Though her movements are assured, I am certain she is not more that twenty-two or so.
A dish of ackee and salt fish and a bit of roast yam arrives. I look suspiciously at the butter draining from the heart of the yam. It seems to me that the vegetable could do with a little more scraping or a good peeling. The roasted salt fish still has the black of the grill on it. A large bowl of mixed vegetables and a big black pot of steaming chocolate tea complete the offering. The spread will not win a beauty contest, but it smells good and my mouth is watering.
Father reaches quickly for a fresh broccoli spear, spins it in his hand, and smiles before crunching down on it. He then pours himself some chocolate tea and pushes the pot along the counter. I am the last to taste the food, and I crush the butter-soaked yam into a serving of ackee and, on swallowing, immediately forget how dirty the man is who cooked it. I glance up to see everyone staring at me. I nod to the man and his smile broadens to show bad teeth.
“Try more of the roast yam.” He pushes the plate across to me. Butter drips to the counter. I taste it. It is beyond belief. I try not to look too pleased as my father passes a blackened piece of cod fish to me.
“First you eating roast yam and salt fish, don’t it?” This comes from the woman beside me.
These are the first decent words between us since I sat and nodded to her at my father’s introductions and my mouth is too full to respond. I nod to her and the hot butter runs down my chin. I bite into the yam; it holds its heat and delivers it to me slowly. My mouth burns but I dare not spit it out and embarrass myself.
“Don’t bite too much, it will burn you,” she advises.
“You always take a big first bite.” My father smiles proudly at me and then nods to the man. “Naya, man, this is the best roast yam I ever have. Glad I wake you up this morning.”
So we eat.
* * *
The food has been excellent, we have seen the view from Spur Tree, and father is finally ready to set out on his quest.
“You drive in the front with Everton. Open the back there, Everton, let Angela put her things in the van.” I wish someone would ask my opinion on these things. I am not saying I would have refused, but he could have at least asked me if I could give her a ride. Nothing much, just a simple, Everton, can she come with us? But suddenly, whether I like it or not, my car has an extra passenger. Suddenly there is a woman in the seat beside me.
She is curled sideways, so she is able look at him and then through the windscreen with just a swing of her head. This is a convenient position for her to sit in, for I am not sure what to say to her and this way she can engage in continuous conversation with my father.
I do not know where I am going and I certainly do not know where we are taking her.
“Is she part of the trip now?” This comes out into the car without my intending it to.
There is a short, uncomfortable silence as we slip down Spur Tree Hill into the deep indigo valley. I have insulted our guest. But they could have at least asked me.
“Turn left,” he says at the bottom.
The countryside is dry, and my father points this out. That takes care of the silence.
Everything down here contradicts the view from the jerk pit on the hill. The land is dry along the road, and the grass is like a dirty gray carpet. The greenery is in trees that fan out on both sides farther back toward the hill and to the homes that sprinkle the countryside. There is a fierce sense of independence to the place, for every house we pass is on a large plot of land, and every plot adjoins another large area with vegetation and a crop of some kind.
Father and Angela are discussing bush fires.
“Things not so bad now,” she says to him. “Sometimes down at Ballards Valley the fields burn without anybody lighting them.”
“Bush fires are common down here,” he responds. “That is the only thing with St. Elizabeth. It gets too dry sometimes. Pretty, beautiful people, but not much rain.”
“I can imagine how a place like this would burn easily,” I try to join the conversation.
“One time I saw two cows fight over water, right down here,” my father says.
Angela giggles. I shake my head. Sometimes when he tells a story it is hard to know if he is telling the truth or simply trying to lighten the mood.
“Right up by Junction,” he says. “Right up there—cow kill its mother over little water in the pass.”
“Is that where we are going, Junction?” I ask as I stop to let a line of goats cross the road.
“I am going to Ballards Valley. That is on the other side from where you going.”
And where is that again? So now I am the only one who does not know where we are going. I hold my tongue. “Okay.”
* * *
By the time we get to Ballards Valley, I have thawed a bit. I learn that Angela has not been home for three years and has come because she had gotten word that her mother is not well. She is anxious because she is not sure what reception awaits her. She had left for a three-month hospitality course at the HEART Academy in Runaway Bay and had not returned nor sent a message since then.
But now she is back. And the closer we get the quieter she becomes, the sadder her countenance, and the more she pulls at the false hair that hangs down her face.
I cannot help but wonder what secrets she holds behind that sad face and what fears she seeks to calm by tugging at the ends of her hair. But though I am part of the conversation, I remain a passenger in it. My father seems to understand her and they have obviously established something that makes him know what not to ask her.
The Angels' Share Page 7
