The Angels' Share

by Garfield Ellis

  “All right, let me ask you something else. Suppose no woman exist. Suppose your father don’t come to look for any woman. Suppose him just want to see the country one more time and want to see it with him favorite son. Suppose him proud and don’t know how to really tell you. Suppose him dying. Suppose this is him last trip. Which one better, eh? Which one better?”

  What manner of woman is this? What kind of woman has God put in my life this day to ask me questions that shut me up and fill me with guilt and feelings of inadequacy? What kind of work does she do to make her so old for her twenty-two or -three?

  “The fry fish is my own and I want another lime squash.” The food is here and she has taken charge for I am now staring open-mouthed at the three old men working the tunes from their tired instruments, and my world is suddenly not the same. My focus is gone. I do not see anything except old men working to make sense of old dreams in their heads. And I see my father alone somewhere on a beach reaching out to me for help and I’m not giving it to him but allowing him to search in places where he would never have searched before.

  And I remember a conclusion I had come to my last Sunday at his house in Hampshire. A date that now seems an eternity separated by adventures and exploits I could not have imagined then. He had been helping me up the hill from the wine cellar and I had said to myself, My father is lonely. My father needs me. And in all the adventures and exploits I have forgotten that. And it has taken a young woman I do not know—do not care about or understand—to remind me of that. Suppose him dying. Suppose this is him last trip. Jesus Christ.

  “You not eating?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. “Yes. But I would know if he is dying.”

  She smiles. I do not remember ever seeing her do that. It is a powerful thing that smile, huge and sexy. A squaring of her lips, a baring of her teeth that reminds me that she is not as old as she speaks.

  “I would know if he was dying.”

  And the smile holds. “How you look so frightened?”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. I never want to frighten you. I just tell you because I see it already. The steam fish good, don’t it?”

  I taste the food and it is good. I expected it to be, as it is the same steam fish I had the last time. I slip two okras into my mouth and slurp them down. The flesh of the fish eases onto the fork without much prodding and, yes, it is succulent and the seasoning fills my senses as I eat.

  “What do you mean you see it already?”

  She grows quiet and the smile disappears. Now she is paying more attention to her food than it demands. She has regained her old features and the smile has gone as quickly as the sun at the threat of the May rains.

  But I will not let it go. The moment had led her to overreach and I will not allow her to scamper back inside. I must know what she is hiding. What is it that keeps that sadness and the flicker of shame so close to the surface, that holds that smile perpetually in check in the same way she suggests that I hold the love for my father in check, like a hunger strike. What is her hunger strike?

  “What do you mean you see it already?” My voice is softer.

  Now she lifts her face to look tentatively, bravely at me. “You know . . . where I work. I see it there, already.”

  “And where is that, where you work? What did you see?”

  “Nothing, just one old man. Never good-looking like you father or anything like that but him was nice. And him come in and nobody wanted to touch him, to look after him. So I do it. I take care of him. And it was something like that, you know. An old man who was just searching for somebody to just listen and understand—if only for a short time.”

  “So that is it?”

  “That is what?”

  “What kinda work do you do? You not a waitress or bartender, are you?”

  “No, but I have the training.”

  She drops the fork and takes the drink from the waiter. She ignores him and he leaves quickly, handing me my beer as he goes. I wait for her to drink and I place my beer near my plate. She knows I will not touch my food till she answers.

  “I work in a massage parlor,” she says.

  “Oh . . .” I hiss my teeth, pick up my fork, and place another chunk of steamed fish into my mouth. I had been worried she would say something worse than that.

  “So you are a masseuse. What could be so bad about that?”

  “I am not a masseuse. I don’t work at that kind of parlor. I am a massager.”

  “Masseuse.”

  “No. Massager! You never hear ’bout sensuous massage yet? You play with men. They come in and you play with them. You massage them, you know, the whole way.”

  “The whole way?”

  “Lord! You play with them. You feel they up till them come. How you so hard to understand?”

  All of a sudden the steamed fish is raw and uncooked and smells like unwashed stale flesh, left unclean in a hot damp place for much too long.

  “So this man come in,” she says. And now I want to shut her up, but I see that she is almost in tears. No, she is in tears—not much, just a small one in the corner of her eyes. And there is a determination in her face, as if she must say this thing. As if to say it is a sacrifice she has decided on, and I must make her go through with it, no matter what.

  “So this man come in, and him old and nobody wouldn’t tend to him. So I take him. And when we go in the room, him never so bad, him clean and so and him firm still, you know. You wouldn’t even know him age, for you know short people don’t show age. And him tell me say him wife dead fifteen years and that the doctor told him that him time is near. So him say that in five years a woman never touch him. Him never see a woman naked. Just a little old man, you know, that is how him say it. Little and neat, talk nice and decent. Just want see a woman naked one more time. So I take him and take care of him.

  “That’s how I know that old people stay like that sometimes. Sometimes them have a final journey to make and they need somebody to help them with it, you know, like the song that your father always singing, you know? Help me make it through the night.”

  “What do you mean take care of him?”

  She looks up at me and there are full tears now. There is a dignity too, and strength—a determination, as if to say, Fuck you and your high horse.

  But I ignore it. “So you massaged him, you helped?”

  “You think it easy, you think is something I like? You know how much cock you have to play with for one day, how much dirty, stinking cock I have to play with? But old people need help. And him never see a woman naked in five years, and me believe him. So I help him.”

  “You slept with him?”

  “I help him.”

  “You slept with him?”

  “Why men always ask question that they can’t take the answer, eeh? Why onoo always ask question and onoo know onoo can’t deal with the answer?”

  “You slept with him!”

  “What I should do? Him was dying, him needed me, and him give a big tip.”

  I cannot eat this food. I cannot look at her anymore. I wish I could cry. I wish I could know what to do. I was not constructed for moments like this.

  “Don’t it?” she is saying. “Don’t it?” Somehow she is still talking to me.

  “What?” I whisper.

  “Don’t it?”

  “What!”

  “You goin’ hate me now, don’t it? You goin’ scorn me now, don’t it?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  There is a half-filled bottle of my father’s pimento wine on the table in the small veranda of the cottage. Beside it is a glass with a finger of wine in it and close to that is a half-smoked spliff. I always figured my father was drinking his pimento wine when he knew he would not be seeing me, but I didn’t know he was smoking weed. But what should I expect? I have left him here to be chaperoned by a man who owns a marijuana field on the St. Elizabeth hillside. Father has found his freedom at last. Maybe this is what he has been searching for, a simple life where he
can smoke his weed, drink his pimento wine, and die in peace.

  My instinct tells me he is not here. But I check the cottage anyway. The rooms are empty and the beds are made. He may have gone to play dominoes or have dinner with his friends. He may have just gone for a walk. Whatever the case, I have no option but to wait on him.

  “Sometimes people have to wait long on your father,” my mother once told me. I do not remember what it was that led her to say this. But I was sure that he would always come when he promised. Till he did not—and I would be waiting hours, then days, sometimes weeks before some word would come. And every time he promised, I would believe all over again. It seems I have always waited for my father. That was one thing about him I could always depend on.

  “You are the lucky one,” my mother said. And it was not something new between us. There came a time when I could anticipate when she would say it . . . You are the lucky one. Yet I could never understand what luck could be found in a child sitting and waiting on a father who did not come.

  The only time I remember him coming the exact time he promised was when I was thirteen years old and I told him I wanted to be a Christian. My mother said he would be dead set against it. When I told him, he did not say much, only that first he wanted to meet with the pastor.

  So we arranged a meeting at my home with the pastor, an evangelist, and my mother. Father was a world of friendliness and small talk. So light was the mood that I felt that my mother and I had worried over nothing.

  As I remember, we were having a great conversation, talking about school, and my father was boasting about how well I was doing and how my writing had improved. I don’t remember if he was even looking at me. Then out of nowhere he asked, “So why you want to be a Christian?”

  “To serve the Lord and help my friends serve the Lord.”

  “Then do you want to be a Christian or serve God?” Before I could answer, he let loose a barrage of questions like bullets from a machine gun. “Do you know what a Muslim is? Do you know what a Hindu is? Do you know what a Catholic is? Why do you want to be a Pentecostal and not an Adventist? Why don’t you want to be a Baptist?”

  Then he turned to them and asked the very same questions in the very same order and of course they answered him with very patient, knowing, we-were-dying-for-you-to-test-us looks.

  “Come now,” he said to them with disbelief, “were you aware of all these differences before you were baptized?”

  “Yes,” they nodded confidently, with poise, waiting for his next question the way a batsman would wait patiently for a ball he had picked before the bowler lifted his hand.

  “So why did you become a Pentecostal?”

  This was my mother’s favorite part, how they were waiting for the question, how they answered him for ten minutes, drawing from scriptures and stories and history. And how impressed and satisfied she was at how they had laid him straight. And how pleased I looked and how happy.

  And how my father nodded in wonder as the scripture was expounded to him. Raising his eyebrows at times, widening his eyes. How patiently he sat, sipping his drink. And, when they had finished, how he nodded with the quietness of one who was truly amazed.

  Then he lifted his glass, took a drink, crossed his legs, smiled shyly at them, and asked: “If you were aware of all of this before you made your choices, why would you want to deny my son the opportunity to become aware of them and then make up his own mind?”

  Well, no, it was the silence that followed that was my mother’s favorite part.

  “Everton,” he then said, “you are too young to make this decision for yourself. So God has given me to you to make them for you. I am more traveled, have read more books, have seen more things than all of these people here have seen. Take it from me, if you never listen to anything else I have to say, let this baptism thing wait. When you are fifteen, if you still want to get baptized, we will talk about it again.”

  “But suppose God comes before I am fifteen?” I asked.

  “I will deal with him. I will take the blame. I will tell him is my fault. I stopped you. Just like Abraham, I will sacrifice myself. You don’ worry about a thing.” Then he turned to the respected pastor. “Please leave my child alone.”

  I hated him for six months. He was never there and when he came he crushed my dreams.

  I never got baptized then, and I never quite got back to that place where I felt the conviction I had at twelve years old.

  The whole episode became a sort of folklore in our house and sometimes it would come up out of the blue, and somewhere at the end or near the end, my mother would look at me and tell me how I am the lucky one. And I would never understand what she meant, for there was nothing about my existence that felt lucky. He was never around; I had to wait on him; I had to solve my own problems of youth and adolescence that boys needed fathers to guide them through.

  I never felt lucky, for he and his other children lived in a nice house with a car in the garage: they were the lucky ones, they had him twenty-four hours a day.

  But that was how she was, no matter what; when it came to my father, she always found a way to make some sort of an excuse for him. Like the day with the brethren, he had embarrassed her and still she found a way to admire the cleverness with which he had done it.

  * * *

  By the time he comes through the gate of the cottage, I am halfway into a third glass of his pimento wine. And the old dirt-crusted bottle is almost empty. It is a strong wine, and I usually don’t drink more than a single glass.

  He does not look any different to me as he opens the small gate from the beach. He does not look like a man who is about to die. He is shirtless and a long towel is strung over one shoulder. He has obviously been swimming for he is wearing shorts and, though he is dry, his skin is white from salt and his hair is unruly on his head. No, he does not look as if he is going to die. But he still could be, for anything is possible with this mischievous old man I call my father.

  He steps past the pool, sees me, and wavers a bit in recognition.

  I have planned on how I will approach him—the various topics are listed in my head like a management presentation. But as he opens his mouth to greet me, I shout at him, “Why you never loved my mother?”

  I don’t know where it came from. It was never a question on the list in my head. I have never contemplated it. But as he moves onto the veranda without answering, I stagger slightly to my feet. “Answer me right now, Daddy. Why you never loved my mother?”

  “I loved your mother,” he replied tiredly.

  “You never loved her. It is because she was black, wasn’t it? Is because she was black!”

  “Una is black.”

  “But Una different, Una almost clear and she come from a different family.”

  “So now it’s not a black thing?” He sits on the side of the veranda close to the door that leads inside. He picks up the bottle and checks to see what’s left in it. He gives a sad smile. “Hmm.”

  “Why you never loved her?” I insist as if there is nothing left in my thought process.

  “Do you have something to ask me, son?” he says softly, soberly. “Well, go ahead. I am sitting down and I am listening.”

  “I have asked you, and you have not answered.”

  “You sure that is what you want to ask?”

  “It was she, wasn’t it?” It comes to me as clear as a bell. “It was she, wasn’t it, Father?”

  “What now?”

  “It was she, and it was me. It was she you left in that beauty contest to chase after this woman, wasn’t it? She was pregnant with me, wasn’t she? Remember, Daddy, I was born in October 1968. The beauty contest was August. She was seven months pregnant with me and you took her out to a beauty contest and left—went to buy her a drink and left her sitting there. You never remembered her for two days. It is she. It was me! Say I am lying, Daddy, tell me I am lying.

  “And now you want me to leave my job and follow you all over Jamaica to find that
same woman again. The woman who you used to destroy my mother, you using to destroy my career! She probably doesn’t even exist now, probably died years ago, and you probably using her as an excuse like you use everybody else. To clear your conscience. Say is lie I’m telling, Daddy, say is lie I’m telling this evening.”

  “You know you drunk!”

  “Do not patronize me, old man! I have asked you a question. And I deserve an answer.”

  “You asked several questions and you haven’t given me a chance to answer any.”

  “Well, answer me now.”

  “I do not have to explain anything to you.” He makes to rise.

  But I am close to him and my anger is real. “Do not move until you answer me.”

  “And what you goin’ do? Punch me out? Lay me down?” He waves me away and stands anyway. “I walk miles of life already, so what you goin’ do now, big son? I walk miles already and every inch of those days have some part that I don’t like—that I wish never went the way it went. Every life has regrets. But one thing I never regret is your mother. You think you know the story, but you don’t know.”

  “I know.” I am beginning to tremble. “For I lived with her all my life and I see her wait her life for you. You think I don’t know that day after day and night after night you sneaked in and out of her bedroom? You know how many nights I lay in my bed and wish you would stay, that I would wake up the next day and see your car parked there?”

  “Everton . . .” There is exasperation in his voice, but guilt is shining through. “Everton, you know nothing.”

  “I know more than you think I do.”

  “Concepts, that is what you know. You don’t know a thing. This is not some marketing thing with concepts that you young people talk about these days. Everything for you is some theory. Some concept that you sell, ideas that you can’t touch that mean millions of dollars. This is man-and-woman story between your mother and me. Is not no damn concept in your head. That is not how life goes.”

  “I am efficient; I think logically, things must happen in a certain order.”

  “That thing you call precision and efficiency is anger and resentment.”