The Angels' Share

by Garfield Ellis

  “Thank you,” I tell her, finding it hard now to give her the silent treatment my anger had wanted me to.

  “You are welcome,” she says. I am sure I can detect some feistiness in her tone.

  The vehicle secure, I begin to work in earnest, spinning the awkward handle of the jack to raise it.

  “Why you don’t take off your shirt?” She is stooping now in front of me. Her hand is on the tire and her eyes are staring knowingly into mine, as if to say she understands me more than I think—like she knows why I am angry and why I am making a fool of myself. “You don’t see you sweating?”

  But I am stubborn and I continue to turn the awkward handle.

  “And why you don’t take the spare tire off the back before you start jack up the wheel so that you have it beside you when you ready? And why you don’t loosen the lugs on the tire before you start jack up the van?”

  She is a very sexy woman. She is stooping, and her already short dress has slid farther up her legs. The sheer stockings leave little of the color of her skin for me to imagine. Her legs are smooth, they are like the insides of naseberry. I admire their shape and smoothness and I know that the way she is stooping, if I flick my eyelids, I can trace her legs to where they join the rest of her. It is hot, I am miserable, I am sweating, and I have suddenly gained an erection.

  “Take off you shirt, nuh. You don’t see how you sweating?”

  Now it isn’t pride that prevents me. I am embarrassed to stand and show the bulge in my pants.

  “I am fine,” I tell her.

  “Well, suit yourself. But you not doing it right. Anyway, let me stop bother you. Next thing you go insult me.” With that she stands and moves away to the front of the vehicle.

  She is right and I know it. Not just about the shirt, but about the loosening of the lugs and the removing of the tire from the back. She was right about the rocks to kotch the vehicle and the speed at which I drove up the road. She has been right about everything and if I had not been busy being angry, things would probably not have gotten to this.

  In one way I am happy that she has walked away because it gives me a chance to stand and fix myself in my jeans before I remove my shirt. It takes me a few minutes to take the tire from the back, but all the time I do not hear her, I do not see her. I place it on the ground near the front of the vehicle and she is not there looking over the wheel. I move to loosen the lugs on the wheel and see her shoes. She is sitting on the bumper at the far side of the vehicle and her legs are stretched out in front of her. I do not know what to say to her. I do not know how to approach. So I loosen the nuts, lay the wheel on the ground, and continue silently to jack the vehicle up.

  There is a new silence, one I do not control. One I do not want. But I work on. The van is high enough. I stand to remove the punctured wheel and she is leaning against the front of the van now looking at me with a hint of satisfaction on her face. Not smugness, not an I-tell-you-so satisfaction—just a simple satisfied look with a bit of approval in it.

  I pause before removing the tire and meet her stare across the space. Our eyes lock for a moment and the silence between us changes immediately. If we never speak another word, this silence would not be an uncomfortable place to be.

  “Where did you learn so much about cars?” I break the silence.

  She removes herself from the front of the Pathfinder and comes toward me to stand near the wheel as I pull it from the axle. I sense she is leaning on the fender as she speaks. “My stepfather was a mechanic.”

  “Yes?”

  “So I learn. But him was always sad. I don’t know who can run mechanic shop in that part of St. Elizabeth. Mus’ be donkey him was goin’ fix.”

  I chuckle at that. “Well, you learned something.”

  She hisses her teeth. “Not enough vehicles in this part of St. Elizabeth to support a mechanic shop.”

  “Well, you should tell him.”

  “Him stupid like what. Mamma have farmer boyfriend now. She much happier. At least him give her food.”

  The tire change complete, she holds the door for me as I throw the useless tire inside and slam it shut.

  “You have to wash off yourself,” she says as she heads for the passenger side. “You can’t put on your shirt so.”

  “And some food, I need some food,” I tell her. “I am starving to death.” Strange, I have just lost a tire yet my anger is evaporating.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Today Little Ochi is teeming with people. There is mix of Kingstonians, tourists, and some with the excited look of returning residents. Ten minutes in the bathroom at the restaurant and I am now as fresh as I can expect and I have on a clean Polo shirt from my bag.

  As we enter the large yard, we are met by a man as straight as a cane stalk in a black and white uniform. He points us to a hut like a boat near the sea. We climb the short stairs into it, and I, with my best imitation of Willy’s air, tell him to bring us some fish to choose from.

  Before I can settle or the man can leave the booth, Angela rises and stares at me. “So you not goin’ choose you fish?”

  “No.” I sit back. “Let him bring them. The sun too hot.”

  “Well, I not goin’ make him choose any stale fish for me! You ever hear anybody come to Little Ochi and don’t choose their fish?”

  I almost tell her that Willy does, but I do not trust how that will make me look, so I stand reluctantly.

  We walk into the main building toward the back where there is a bank of large freezers thrown open. The assistant gestures toward them. I point to a large snapper for myself and then ask her which she wants.

  “I don’t want none a those,” she quips, and gives him a haughty but sweet smile. “Where the fresh one them?”

  “All a them fresh.” He smiles back.

  “Today fish,” she tells him, and moves off around the back to where women are busy scaling. She stops at another freezer, looks inside, and points to a fish almost identical in size to the one I had chosen, almost identical in every way. “How about that one?”

  He smiles and picks it up.

  “And the one beside it!”

  So he collects the two fish, each about twice the length of my palm and as thick as my hands when I cup them into prayer.

  I order mine steamed and she wants hers fried.

  “So what’s the difference?” I am trying my best not to sound agitated as our guide leaves with the fish. “You must try not to insult these people, you know. I never insult people before they cook my food.”

  “You don’t see the difference?” She calls out and asks the man to stop. “Look at the eyes. You see how they clear, like glass, like ice water in a glass, like you can see through them? All right, now look at the one you was going to buy. You see how the eyes start getting white, like the eyeballs them start get white and cloudy? Okay, well, the whiter the eyes the staler they are. And you see that one?” She points to a fish near the corner. “You see how most o’ that one eyes white like milk? Well, that one soon start to spoil. When they keep the deep freeze open like this, the fish can’t keep a hundred percent fresh so one and two get old. Them won’ sell them to you spoil but I don’t like when them stale.”

  I keep my mouth shut.

  At the spacious and ample bar, she orders a lime squash and tells the bartender she does not want it too sweet and that she prefers it with two cherries. He laughs and tells her that if she does not like it when the waiter brings it, she should just send it back and tell him how it tastes.

  There is a kind of charm about her as she moves and makes her demands. Her voice is always strong and firm, her manner direct and a little saucy, and sometimes as she speaks I am tempted to raise a cautionary hand. But her delivery causes no offense; it draws smiles, sometimes even laughter . . . a kind of respect.

  We sit to wait. The day continues to grow hotter, but we are right on the beach and there is a wind blowing across the place. As I look around I can see a space filled with activity: people milling
around, some strolling along the beach, others, like us, sitting in booths waiting for their food.

  Tourists, Kingstonians, fishermen, and common folk mixing into one melee of color and activity. Off to my left, a bit down the coast, I see a small boat being beached. A few people move toward it as two fishermen disembark while it settles in the sand.

  “The whole process is here.” I smile at her.

  “What you mean?”

  “From the fish in the water to the fish on your plate, you can see the whole process. You see the man catch it. You see the people buy it, you see it being scaled, and then cooked, then eaten . . . the whole process.”

  “And you did want to buy stale fish.”

  I smile at that. “Well, that’s why you’re here, to make sure I don’t. And thanks.”

  “You are welcome,” she says with playful sarcasm.

  “And thanks about down the road,” I tell her too. “Helping with the car. Some women . . .” I think of Audrey. “Some women would just sit in the car and wait. Thanks.”

  “Eeem,” she says, staring at me squarely. This time she really is pleased, so her reaction is less open, less buoyant. As if a shyness is creeping in, or a blush, and she needs to control herself.

  Three old men walk toward our booth in straw hats. They pause below us, between our booth and another, a bit off from the traffic and closer to where the people take a break from the sun. They find a large coconut tree. Two have banjos and the other has a small drum.

  They are old; average age maybe between sixty-five and seventy. They seem a remnant of some mento band from the Harry Belafonte days when sweet mellow ballads with stories of love and obeah could bring a crown to life. They seem spent, wizened—as if by congregating around the tree they are spared the force of the wind long enough to be able to stand and strum a few tunes.

  The lead singer is thin as a toothpick, tall as I am but so stooped that he seems five inches shorter. The melody they squeeze from the old banjos is mellow and old but some around seem to enjoy it. I don’t—they look as ridiculous as those people in straw hats the minister of tourism has singing “Welcome to Jamaica” at the airports. I turn my eyes from them.

  “Why you don’t love you father?”

  The question takes me by surprise and I am not sure how to answer. I mean, I know how to answer it. I can either be firm, and put her in her place, or make a conversation of it because after this lunch, I am sure I will not see her again.

  But since the day has been improving and I do not wish to be as boorish as I was in the van, I decide to engage her. “How can you ask that? He is my father.”

  “No, you don’t love him, you know. Him love you but you don’t love him.”

  I am thirty-seven years old and she cannot be more than twenty-two or -three. I do not think this is a conversation I would want to pursue with someone like this. But she has a maturity beyond her years, an oldness in the way she looks at me, and a certainty in her analysis and observations.

  “You’re not easy. How can you just say that? You don’t know me and you don’t know my father.”

  “I know though. I can tell.”

  “You can?”

  “Is the work that I do. A man can come up to me and I just know him so. Just know certain things right away. I can know if him lonely, if him happy, if him wicked or show-off. I just know.”

  “And you know I don’t love my father?”

  “I can see it in your eyes. Everything is in your eyes. Is not that you don’t have love for him, you know. You just don’t love him.”

  “And how,” I ask with a hint of sarcasm, “do you differentiate between those?”

  “How you mean! You have love for him, you just don’t love him. Is like food: the fact that somebody hungry don’t mean they don’t have food. They probably have the food and just don’t feel to eat it. You never hear people go on hunger strike yet?”

  I laugh aloud. “That is pretty good.” Our drinks come so she does not respond. She eyes the waiter easily as he places the lime squash before her. She checks with a lazy sip but the waiter is not fooled by it. He waits even as I drink my beer. She takes another sip, cocks her eye in a sort of absentminded approval. The man smiles and leaves.

  “Me . . .” She looks slightly away to the beach. “Me, I don’t like my father. I hate him like poison.”

  “Why?”

  She hisses her teeth. “Have too much woman. If it wasn’t for him my mother wouldn’t have to take up with that dirty old mechanic. Wouldn’t have so much pickney. But she all right now and is a good thing him gone too.”

  And that is the thing about her. In five seconds, she has clearly stated how she feels about her father and why. Just like that. No beating around the bush. Just open and straight. She would not make a good executive. Yet in everything she does she makes me feel inadequate about myself.

  “Him never love nobody but himself. Not even me.”

  “When you say gone what do you mean?”

  “Gone. Just gone, you know. Him find another woman and just gone.”

  “And you don’t know where he is?”

  “Know, yes, know more than that too.”

  “So you see him then.”

  “Me?” She hisses through her teeth again. “The day I was leaving to go HEART, my mother told me to stop by him house and get some money. Instead I stop by him workplace—first time me ever go out to that big old bauxite factory. Lean on the gate and red up mi clothes. Me ask him for some money, him look on me and give me two thousand dollars. So I ask him if that is all. You know what him tell me say?”

  “What?”

  “That me is a woman and I will survive.”

  “And you did.”

  “I did have to survive, yes. But the day him visit my workplace him nearly get a heart attack. Him tell me to survive, but him couldn’t take it when I turn up to serve him.”

  She seems to be entering a place of reflection, so I allow the quietness to stand with us. Then she turns to me with the lime squash almost halfway down the glass and the straw in her hands working one of the cherries to the brim. “But your father, now, I like him. Him nice. Him just cool.”

  “Yes,” I nod at her, but do not finish the line as I think it, women like my father. “But he is troublesome sometimes and mischievous.”

  “But him love you though. You can see it every time him look on you.”

  “You think so?” I sigh a laugh into the space.

  “So why you don’ love him?”

  I laugh slowly. “You think I have chosen not to love my father?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “What kind of work do you do?”

  “I can read you like a book, you know?” She looks at me with those wise old eyes.

  “No, I am going to answer your question. I just want to know where you learn to be so wise and sure about everything. Is it the bartending?”

  “So now the next thing you goin’ tell me is that this is not a bar and you not some lonely man who need somebody to confess to. I can read you like a book,” she says again, and turns away from me with the same air with which she walked away from me half an hour ago when I patronized her at my punctured vehicle. Only now she is not as dismissive. Just easily letting go of something she feels is not worth pursuing. Just a sort of backing away from me, not to kill the mood, but to leave me to my space and my privacy, while she watches the three old men of the makeshift mento band trying to bring life to a memory that is perhaps only in their own heads.

  I wish the food would come, but as far as I look, there is no sign of our attendant. So I join Angela’s line of vision to watch the trio sitting on the stools.

  “It’s not that I don’t love him,” I finally say. For my beer is finished, and there is nothing to do, so words are filling the space between us. “It is not that I don’t love him. I love my father. It’s just that he gives me too much trouble sometimes.”

  “So you say.” She speaks lazily as if she is throug
h with the conversation or bored by it.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “If you love him, how come you leaving him down here?”

  “He wants to stay.”

  “So if you have a baby and him want do something that is not good for him, you goin’ let him do it?”

  “You tell my father that. You call him a baby, and let him hear. My father is fitter than me, he is no child.”

  “Once a man twice a child—you ever hear that?”

  “Well, he hasn’t reached his second childhood yet. You know why my father is down here?” I look at her and I don’t know why I am telling her all this, but it is so easy to do. I do not allow her to answer. “He is here because he is trying to find a woman that he has been in love with for thirty-five years. Left his wife, run away from home to find a woman who is married and he has not seen for thirty-five years. And drags me with him, with all kinds of trickery. I left my work for a week now and I have an important job. And every day the story changes and he adds another day, and then he has another story. Till now I have been here a week and he wants me to do another week. If I am not careful, I would be down here a month with him.”

  “So what wrong with that?”

  “What!” She is such a strange woman. How can a rational person ask a question like that? “How you mean if something wrong with that? I am an executive. People pay me a lot of money to take care of their very important business. I can’t just walk off like that. How can you ask me a question like that?”

  She turns back to me so that we are facing each other once again. A slow sober intelligence fills her face. She has things to say and she feels that I have given her space to say them. So I pause to hear what she has to say. First she says nothing, just stares at me for a while, then she finally speaks.

  “Make me ask you something. What better? To spend time with your father who love you or to go America to watch Venus Williams play tennis, which one better?”

  “He told you that?!”

  “Which one better?” she insists.

  “That’s a very technical question to answer. It’s not as easy as that. There’s timing here. I have to go to work.”