Trinidad Noir

by Lisa Allen-Agostini

  When he opened his eyes, he was lying on the lounge chair in the ladies’ restroom. He was not alone. A woman, her back turned, was pouring liquid into a small bowl. The ascending cane rows that led to a small bun at the top of her head and the small gold hoop earrings were familiar. He knew she would come. He had not been able to bear removing her name as “next of kin” on his employment file. Besides, she was the only real family he believed he still had. During that heated argument with his sister Kathy last Christmas, he had been warned never to come near her or her family again.

  “Fine! Spoil them if you want. You go see,” he had warned. “You know that is not how Daddy bring we up!” Eric believed that Kathy’s children needed discipline. He had tried to explain this to her after punishing his six-year-old nephew for running around the Christmas tree. “That licking ent going to leave no marks, but he go remember not to do that again! What you worried about?”

  But Kathy and her husband felt differently, and the three had argued until she finally asked Eric to leave. That was the last time he had spoken to Kathy. But it hadn’t mattered. He still had Cara.

  The fluorescent bulb directly overhead gave the restroom a whitish-gray cast. Eric stared at the small back and tiny waist of the woman across from him. His Cara. She was still the petite woman he had married, a woman who always took care of herself. As she turned around, he quickly shut his eyes again. She was more beautiful than he remembered. When he felt the cool damp of the cloth she placed on his forehead, he reopened his eyes slowly. His eyes searched to meet hers. He smiled, and she sighed and smiled back.

  “Hello, Eric,” she said softly.

  “You came,” he murmured. “I knew you would.” He reached out, took her hand, and placed it against his chest. Her lips curved into a half-smile, but her eyes misted with concern. She still loves me, he mused. He did not need to hear her say it. She was here and that’s all that mattered. It meant that they could go home together. She would take care of him and make him feel safe again from the cruel world.

  “An ambulance coming and I called your sister,” she said, carefully placing his hand at his side.

  “I don’t need an ambulance,” he replied, raising himself on the makeshift cot. “I need you. Let’s just go home and—”

  “It’s over, Eric,” she said as gently as she could. “You can’t come home with me. The judge said.”

  “What the hell the judge know? He know me? He know you?” Eric lay back as she placed the bowl on the counter.

  Surprised by the strength in his voice, she realized that the call about Eric’s possible heart attack had made her drop her guard. “Calm down, Eric,” she coaxed. “You’re not well.” He threw back the cover and sat up in the cot. The concern in her eyes turned to bewilderment. “But, I thought . . . your heart . . . the office called . . .” she stammered.

  “The only thing wrong with me, Cara, is that this heart mash-up,” he declared. Fixing his gaze on her, he added softly, “And only you could fix it.”

  “So, that is why I here? Nothing wrong with you? You make these people call me from work because they think you dying, and nothing wrong with you? I can’t believe this. What kind of game is this? You wasting my time.” She moved to the chair where she had placed her purse. Her lawyer had warned her to stay away, but she believed that Eric had had a heart attack.

  “Give me another chance nah, babe,” he pleaded, grabbing her wrist. Cara looked at the hand grasping her. He still wore his wedding band, this man to whom she had promised herself years ago when she had thought that he was the most sensitive, mature man she had ever known. In the eyes of an eighteen-year-old surrounded by comparatively immature boys of the same age, those qualities were enough for her to consider his proposal. It had been a chance for her to escape the watchful eyes of her mother and the endless duties thrust upon her as the eldest of six girls. She believed that Eric was misunderstood and needed comfort, needed to be handled with care. Her family did not approve, but she was adamant, and for ten years she had coddled, cooed, and coaxed this man.

  Her mother thought he was too quiet, and the first time Eric beat her, her mother had simply shaken her head and said, “Well, and you want to take man?” It was a question she would hear each time she ran home after Eric’s abuse. After the third or fourth beating, Cara bore the next five years quietly. She would tell herself that he only drank to get away from the pressures of work. She never believed that he meant to hurt her.

  “He just forgets himself when he drunk,” she told one coworker who asked about her bruises. It was only after Eric kicked her in the abdomen while she was pregnant, causing her to miscarry the three-month-old fetus, that her mother offered Cara her old room if she needed a place to stay. That was a year ago. Since then, her mother had made her register at a local center for abused women. Cara would tell Eric that she was going to her mother’s house to help out, but when he called one day and she was not there, they argued and he accused her of seeing another man. Nothing she said could change his mind. Six months after joining the center, Cara left Eric.

  Now she was troubled. She could only imagine the depth of his pain and confusion, and she was unsure whether to explain again that she was not with anyone else and that she cared only about him. She was no longer convinced that she could help him. Eric would have to decide for himself that he needed help. “Another chance? I hear that before. And we try, Eric. I try with you, with your jealousy and your drinking, and—”

  “I will make things better. I go stop drinking. Don’t leave, Cara,” he begged.

  “You need help. The last time you say that, I go back home, and the very next Friday you come home drunk, and you bus’ my head,” she replied, trying to pull away. “The mark still there.”

  “You not going nowhere,” he said, standing and tightening his grip on her wrist. “I didn’t say you could leave.”

  “Eric, you’re hurting me,” she winced, her eyes filling with fear.

  “You ’fraid me, Cara? Your own husband, eh? Look at what they do to we! That you ’fraid the man who love you,” he said, shaking his head. “I would die for you. I would kill for you,” he added softly, gazing into her frightened eyes. She stood frozen.

  Suddenly, as if awakened from a trance, she threw her weight back and jerked her arm once again, hoping to surprise him and run to the door, but he held her firmly with a smirk on his face.

  “Where you think you’re going? We’re not finish here. You forget I know you? All my life I trying to please everybody. But I could never get it right. Always the misfit. Not again, you hear? Is my turn now!” he bellowed. “I go show them who is man! I taking back what is mine!”

  Cara glanced again at the door and prayed that someone would come to the restroom. Where was the ambulance? She had to think of some way to calm him. “You’re right, Eric,” she said, steadying her voice. “I understand, but you need to see a doctor to make sure everything okay.”

  He tilted his head, looked down at her, and decided to relax his hold, allowing her to pry her wrist free. “I don’t want any doctor or ambulance or anything. I just want you,” he said miserably, staring at his hands. “I don’t know what does happen. Sometimes I does get so damn vex at everything,” he added apologetically.

  “But you need to stay in control, Eric,” she said. She picked up her purse to leave, but when she reached the door, his six-foot frame blocked her. His hands were behind his back, and she heard the click of the lock. “Eric, what you doing?”

  “I not ready for you to leave, Cara.”

  “But I need to check to see if the ambulance reach,” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm.

  “Cara. Don’t leave nah,” he begged. “I just want some time with you. Come, please?” He reached for her. She darted from his grasp, tripped over the rug, and fell onto the cold floor. Eric loomed above, one hand reaching down to her. His other hand was in his pocket. “Babe, come. Let’s work this out, nah,” he said gently, pulling her to a s
itting position. “I can’t do this without you.”

  “Eric, you’re not well,” she repeated, shaking her head. “One minute you’re sweet and gentle, the next you’re a raging bull.”

  “I’m real sorry I hurt you, Cara. I just love you so much, I can’t live without you. Tell me what I doing wrong and I will fix it.”

  “You really want to get better, Eric?” she asked cautiously.

  “Yes, darling, but I don’t know what does get into me sometimes. Only you could help me, Cara.” He searched her face. “Stay nah? For me, please?” The fury in his eyes that accompanied his tantrums was gone. Before her stood the sad little boy who had lost his way. In the early years, she had been the only one who could talk him out of his rages, the only one who could once again find that little boy beneath the wrath. Things had been so different then. Maybe she should give him one more chance, but she would need to bring in someone else to guide them through it.

  “Okay, Eric. But you have to promise to go to counseling,” she warned.

  He smiled. “Anything for you, babe. I just want us to be together again.” She reached out and took his hand, letting him pull her up until she stood next to him. He beamed as he led her across the room where they sat on the lounge chair. “Here,” he said, drawing his hand from his pocket. “I want you to wear this.” He held a ring between his thumb and index finger.

  Trembling, Cara reached over and carefully took the faded gold band. She placed it in her palm and stared at its slightly warped shape. Its smooth surface was scratched, and one of the cubic zirconias was missing. It was the old promise ring he had given her in their early courting days. Tears welled in her eyes as she remembered them giggling and strolling, arms around each other’s waists, without a care in the world. She looked at Eric. Blinking away the tears that threatened to spill onto her face, she sighed and nodded slowly.

  “After this,” he said, smiling at her, “you won’t recognize your husband, and you will never leave me again.”

  In the roadway outside the Tunapuna Regional Complex, emergency medical technicians joked as they removed the gurney from the back of the ambulance and placed it onto the sidewalk. “Hmm, these public servants don’t have enough work, or what? They dying of boredom?” Jerome said, causing Phyllis to laugh out loud.

  “Either that,” Phyllis answered between guffaws, “or somebody want to leave half-day.”

  “How long since they call we?” Jerome wiped the sweat from his brow.

  “About forty-five minutes. But don’t worry about that, is probably a false alarm.”

  “Yeah, and besides, that lunch-time traffic to pass the market was a killer.”

  “Never mind that you had to finish eat your sandwich first,” Phyllis teased.

  “Yeah, well, I can’t lift up nobody on a empty belly,” Jerome replied.

  The sudden crack of a gunshot made them stop. Birds flew from the nearby treetops. A second report rang out. Seconds later, a man raced out of an office, leaned over the balcony, and shouted for them to come. They quickly shut the doors of the ambulance and raced to the bottom of the staircase. They dragged the gurney up the stairs and squeezed through a glass door, past wooden cubicles in the air-conditioned office space, and finally stopped outside a restroom where a frightened cleaning lady wearing rubber gloves and an apron pointed to the door.

  “They in there,” she said quickly. “They put him in there after he pass out and he wife come to see about him. I was going to empty the garbage and I come and find the door lock and then I hear—” She stopped. There was no need to say more.

  Phyllis tried the door. She looked at Jerome, shook her head, and stepped back. Gripping the gurney by one end, he rammed the wooden door. The lock broke. The door gave way, and splintered wood fell to the ground. Inside, a woman lay across a blood-soaked rug. Her eyes stared blankly as blood oozed from a small hole in her left temple. Behind her, on a lounge chair, a man slumped to one side. A black-red wound started at his jaw and ended where the bullet exited through his skull. The area behind the man was sprayed dark red, as if a child had dipped a toothbrush in paint and then turned it on the wall. Beneath the chair lay a small gun.

  The medical technicians blocked the doorway to prevent the staff from barging in, but one woman who had pushed through the crowd peered over Jerome’s shoulder into the room. She screamed and then collapsed. Someone said she was the man’s sister.

  “Allyuh can’t do anything?” the cleaning lady asked, looking from Jerome to Phyllis. “They might still be alive.”

  “We can’t do nothing here, nah, lady,” Jerome replied. “Just call the police.”

  LUCILLE

  BY ELIZABETH NUNEZ

  St. James

  Lucille, who lived next door to me, was my best friend in Trinidad, and it seemed I alone knew she wore her surname like an albatross around her neck. It was Smart. She was Lucille Smart, and obvious to anyone, painfully so to Lucille, she was anything but, though, I must admit, in no way duncier than I. We both had to repeat the Exhibition class and were dangerously close to thirteen years old when we eventually won coveted seats at St Joseph’s Convent Secondary School. But perhaps Lucille was actually smarter than I was. Perhaps it was the burden of carrying around that surname that wore her down, chipped away at her confidence until she began to believe the rumors whispered about her: Lucille Smart is not smart; Lucille Smart is duncy.

  Lucille was a Smart because her father was a Smart, but she was not the same Smart as her older brother and sister who were the children of her father’s deceased first wife. The year we took the Exhibition exams for the first time, her brother, Antoine Smart, won an Island Schol, a scholarship given by the colonial government to the smartest secondary school student on the island. Antoine was admitted to Oxford where he was studying languages, but he already spoke three: English, of course, as well as French and Spanish. He had studied French at l’Alliance Française on Victoria Avenue, and by the time he was eleven years old, he was practically fluent. Lucille also studied French at l’Alliance Française, but at twelve going on thirteen, she could barely string together words in a sentence that made any sense. Antoine did not have to spend much time studying Spanish either. He had a friend from Venezuela, and within months he and Pedro were huddled together exchanging jokes in Spanish and laughing, Lucille believed, at her expense. Antoine indeed was a true, authentic Smart. And so was his sister Suzette, Lucille’s half-sister. She won the Jerningham Silver Medal in fifth form in the same year that Lucille and I finally won an Exhibition, eclipsing our victory by her triumph. After all, we had sat for the Exhibition twice; Suzette won the Jerningham Silver Medal on her first try.

  But Lucille’s burden was not only the cruel irony of being permanently welded to a name that so perfectly suited her siblings and was so perfectly unsuitable for her; it was the seemingly added unfairness of being darker than her sister and brother. For in a society where lightness of color was prized, she was considered unattractive, at least less attractive than her light-skinned sister who had the good fortune of having a light-skinned mother. Lest the reader come to the conclusion that Lucille was overly sensitive and paranoid, here are some facts: Lucille and Suzette went to the same secondary school. Suzette was invited to join the school choir where all the girls, coincidentally, were as light-skinned, if not lighter-skinned, than she. Lucille, who to any rational right-thinking person had a better singing voice than Suzette, failed the audition for the choir. Suzette was assigned to one School House where, again, all the girls were of the same complexion. In Lucille’s School House, all the girls were dark-skinned. Suzette played lawn hockey, went sailing at the Yacht Club with other girls in her class, and at Carnival played in the band where the darkest girl was merely tanned. Suzette kept a wide berth from Lucille in school, though she was friendly enough with her at home.

  In those days, mothers kept a strict eye on their daughters, especially their daughters who biologically had passed into womanhood, as Lu
cille and I had when we entered secondary school. The notorious Boysie Singh and his minions were said to be trawling the streets for young girls. It was alleged that they would cut open the chests of girls our age and take out their hearts to rub on the hooves of their racehorses to make them run faster. True or not, we believed this, and our mothers rarely allowed us out of the house after 6 o’clock when the sun abruptly descended below the horizon and the streets turned ominously pitch-black. But Lucille and I were duncy, and to help us keep up with the rigorous curriculum in first form, our mothers arranged for us to take private lessons from a retired school teacher whose house faced the Mucurapo Cemetery, half a mile from where we lived. Usually our lessons ended at 5:30, which gave us enough time, walking briskly, to get home before the brief twilight turned to night, but sometimes we would arrive when the porch light had been turned on and our mothers were at the gate waiting for us.

  It seemed we not only had to be wary of Boysie Singh on the prowl, but also of boys, all boys. My mother’s instructions when I had my first period were straightforward and simple: “Keep away from boys!” I didn’t quite know what she meant. Unlike girls today who are the age I was then, I had no idea how babies were conceived. I took my mother’s directive to mean I was to keep up the adversarial stance Lucille and I had long established with the boys in our neighborhood. They liked teasing Lucille about her name, and since I was her friend, they teased me too. Besides being dark-skinned—I was as dark as Lucille—we were both skinny, and so were unappealing to boys who would get tongue-tied when the buxom, wide-hipped girls passed by. They treated us like their younger brothers, playing tricks on us, their favorite to take advantage of Lucille’s fear of the cemetery.